I would explain the movie, but I never do these things justice. Here's the synopsis I stole off of IMDB. If you ever have an intention of seeing this movie, I warn that this spoils a little bit of the plot.
Walter is a timid teenager played by Haley Joel Osment, who is dropped off at his great-uncles farm in Texas during the 1960s by his neglectful mother. The two oddball and rich uncles are played by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine. Even though the uncles have never raised any children, they accept the responsibility of taking care of Walter for the summer. Since they don't have a TV or telephone in the house, the uncles entertain Walter with colorful stories from their past when they were young and fighting for the Foreign Legion and Duvall's love affair with the Sultan's daughter. The stories are so fantastic that Walter is not sure if they are true or made-up by his uncles. The uncles purchase an old lion to hunt, but Walter makes the lion his pet instead. The uncles must contend with their greedy relatives who are after their money and only Walter knows where it is. With the guidance of his uncles, Walter becomes a man when he begins to believe in the values of the stories.
Now, this story is completely ridiculous. But the uncle (Duvall) near the end of the movie explains it to Walter with this doozy of a line, in the movie called the "how to be a man speech"
"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in."
I have to admit, when I first heard this line, I thought someone just shoved a spoonful of sugar in my mouth. I looked at it as just some cheesy, feel-good, warm and fuzzy speech, that lacks any definitive statement. And maybe it is cheesy, but take a closer look at what it says, more importantly what it says about how we live our lives today.
I like, first off, how the speech starts off with, "this may or may not be true". Because if you break down the rest of the speech, you get things like, "maybe people are basically good", "maybe honor, courage, and virtue mean everything" "maybe money and power mean nothing" "maybe good always triumphs over evil". The whole speech leaves the truth something that has to be discerned, and I love that it is phrased as a choice. You have to choose to believe that people are basically good. You have to choose that good always triumphs over evil. The world that we live in makes none of these things clear. There is enough problems, and enough pain and suffering in the world to make people doubt that good triumphs over evil, that people are basically good.
Basically, the uncle's speech offers the choice between light and darkness, cynicism and joy. So the story he tells is ludicrous, but the uncle chooses joy, chooses to live with honor and courage, because that's what men "should believe in".
One of my new favorite writers, Henri Nouwen puts it so beautifully, when he says, (my emphasis in bold)
"I am tempted to be so impressed by the obvious sadness of the human condition that I no longer claim joy manifesting itself in many small but very real ways. The reward of choosing joy is joy itself. There is so much rejection, pain, woundedness among us, but once you choose to claim the joy hidden in the midst of suffering, life becomes celebration. It is the same joy that comes from seeing a single child walk home amid all the destruction, devastation, and anguish of this world. I am called to enter into that type of joy."
Secondhand Lions moved me, because it reminded me that every day we make a choice between cynicism and joy. Walter could have remained bitter over his mother's limited ability to love him, he could have chosen to be angry and cynical about the world around him, the world that left him without parents. He could have told his uncles that their story is, to put it bluntly, a load of crap. But he didn't. Instead he made the choice to believe in a story. And so in the movie, when Walter returns to his uncle's house, choosing to believe that his uncles were telling the truth and that they were in fact, the only ones who could help him become the man he was meant to be, I was...crying.
I was crying because I found it so beautiful, the power of believing in a story. We believe in stories because they discuss and uphold values that we cherish. It helped me realize that I want to do this. I want to share stories that will help people choose light over darkness, choose joy over cynicism. I want to help people come home from their lost, cold, dark, sad, and angry wanderings and share the power of joy. That's why I am doing this, taking the time to dedicate to writing so people can see how much joy finding and believing in a story can bring, I don't care how overly sentimental that sounds, because I'm not a cynic. I believe this life is good. This may or may not be true, but this is what I should believe. I choose to live in joy.
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