An Odd Occurrence in the Back of My Throat

Susan and I decided a while back to split our Netflix queue so we could each choose our own movies. Sometimes we like each other's choices; sometimes not so much. And sometimes the results are... disturbing.

* * *

Coming home tonight, I eat some leftover Tuna Helper (mmm... hot tuna), run a quick Auctioneer scan, putter about a bit, then head up to the bedroom to check on the wife. Nothing much happening, not in the mood for a boardgame, garbage on the tube. Should we watch the Netflick that arrived today? Sure. I glance at the cover blurb briefly, something called Eight Below. Dogs in the Antarctic... a nature film?

Previews begin: a Little Mermaid ad. Hmm... fast forward. Studio fanfare... wait a minute -- it's a Disney flick! And not Pixar.

"What are you trying to do to me?" says I.

"You suggested we watch the movie," says she.

Grumble.

It begins poorly, introducing us to our hunky leading man with some heinously trite dialog, then for an hour proceeds to fail to meet my (now significantly lowered) expectations.

It's a simple story: our hero is a guide at an Antarctic research base. He takes the scientists out on their missions and makes sure they come back without blackfoot. To get to the hard-to-reach places, he employs a dog sled team, each member of which we get to meet in an excruciating expository sequence wherein our hero pets each dog, names it, then drops a frozen fish at its feet.

The canines, however, are pretty cool: Husky sled dogs who sleep in the snow and don't dick around. They are by far the best actors in the film. They save a researcher from falling in a crevasse, then pull him out of a hole in the ice through which he has stumbled after breaking his leg. (Our hero is apparently doing a shitty job.) The dogs save them both, and now it's Act II, but I get some Jack London flashes, which are just enough to keep me from heading down to my lair to get some Un'Goro Crater questing done.

The biggest winter storm in history has rolled in, and the brass orders the research outpost evacuated posthaste. There's no room in the plane for the dogs. They leave them. "We'll be back to get you in a few hours, buddy." The storm rolls in faster than expected. No one is allowed back in. For six months. I knew it was coming a half-hour ago, but I still find myself affected by the aerial shot of the 8 dogs leashed out in the yard watching the plane leave them behind.

So you get the idea. The dogs escape from their tethers and fending for themselves through the winter. They stalk seagulls. There's a fight with a really bad CGI leopard seal over a pretty cool model of a frozen beached killer whale carcass. It's all pretty pat, and all fairly calculated. I should be done with it.

But something is happening which is, for me, and unusual occurrence. I'm starting to get a little worked up. Old Jack doesn't have the strength to break his chain and dies on the leash. A lump forms. Dewey slips off an embankment while cavorting under the aurora australis, breaks something inside, and dies while his twin brother Truman snuffles and begs him to get up. A hitch, just a little. The pack finally leaves the body behind, but Max the frolicking youngling refuses to leave him for a while, then when he, too, gives up, the rest of the pack has disappeared into the blizzard and he is left alone to wander the wasteland. The screen blurs.

So, of course, most of them survive the winter, our hero makes his way back, and all are reunited. I figure that's it -- the odd happenings in the back of my throat are a strange anomaly.

But the credits roll, and I'm suddenly awash in flashbacks of our dog Josie, a Doberman with diabetes who we had to put down last year. (It snuck up on us, and turned out to be fairly awful, involving her vomiting the contents of her bowels onto the vet's floor when she began to go into organ failure, just prior to the final injection.) I look down through a haze of tears at our two current dogs, Duke & Leia, 200-odd pounds of Rott/Dobe/Chow mix, both lying comfortably at my feet, looking up at me, and I am suddenly on the floor with them, sobbing. For Josie. For these dogs whom I love and will someday die. For the fucking dog actors in the fucking Disney film. I cradle them tightly to me, while Susan looks down from the bed and smiles softly. I'm glad they don't pull away. Leia licks my face. Duke farts.

* * *

It's been a long time. More years than I can even guess. I had forgotten how husked out you feel. How your head aches from the tension in the back of your throat. How tiring it is. But I also feel kind of relieved, because treacle or not, I had actually been touched to the core by something, which doesn't happen often. I wasn't sure if I still had the capacity to feel so deeply. My cynicism is so ingrained that I thought I might be... broken? No. That's too strong. Perhaps just rusted. Apparently not.

Whether I have this kind of empathy for humans is still an open question, I suppose, but I like to think it's possible.

So thank you, Walt Disney, for making a crappy movie, and making me cry like a little girl. I needed that.