Parenthood The Movie - Essay Example

? 2 December Parenthood: The Movie The movie Parenthood discusses several issues about marriage and parenthood. These issues include but are not limited to the optimal control of parents over the children, balance between relationships with the spouse and the children, the effects of divorce upon children, and the stability of relationships. There are five marriages in the movie Parenthood. The first marriage is between Gil and Karen Buckman. The second marriage is of Gil’s sister Helen with Garry. The third marriage is of Gil’s sister Susan with Nathan whereas. The forth marriage occurs between Helen’s daughter Julie and her boyfriend Tod whereas the fifth marriage is of Helen with the biology teacher of Garry. One of the most fundamental themes of the movie Parenthood is that people become more responsible in their duties towards their spouses as well as children with the passage of time. Gil has a very loving relationship with his wife Karen. Gil has grown up under the supervision of his workaholic father. Due to the limited control such a person can exercise upon his children, the children assume immense tendency to become spoiled. Realizing this and not willing to grow up his children the way his father did his siblings and him, Gil does not want to be workaholic. He wants to find time for his children to give them the best upbringing that he can. Gil and Karen have three children. Kaven is their eldest child. He has an emotional problem due to which, he is considered in need of a therapy. Having gained an in-sight into the problems with his children, Gil takes all the blame for the problems of his children and becomes doubtful of the extent to which he has been successful in playing the role of a responsible father. Gil is not sure whether he can provide his and Karen’s forth child that is yet not born with a happy lifestyle since he is financially not in a position to have another child. Helen and Garry are ex-husband and wife. Helen is a bank manager while Garry is a dentist. Garry has left Helen for some reason and is not concerned about his teenager children that he has had with Helen. Helen and Garry parent two children. The elder of the two is Julie who is 16 years old and the younger one is Garry who is 13 years old. The father and the son have the same name, i.e. Garry. One of the most touching and emotional scenes in the movie is the one in which Helen tells Garry that she knows his father better than Garry does, so she would suggest him not to shift with him. The son Garry has just entered the age of puberty and is exploring the world of sex in numerous ways. He is addicted to porn. He is disturbed mentally and generally remains quiet and uninvolved in the social activities. Julie cultivates a hidden sexual affair with Tod who happens to be her drag-racer boyfriend. Julie is just in her high school and has had sex several times with Tod. Garry, on the other hand, carries around sexually explicit videos in a bag. Helen’s ex-husband Garry leaves Helen for another woman whom he marries and has a son with her. The encounter between Helen and her children is the worst among all parent-children encounters in the movie. At one occasion, Helen catches Garry masturbating. Despite knowing that it was masturbation, she comforts herself by thinking of it as drug abuse. In an attempt to console her son, Helen asks Tod to convince Garry that his obsession with the girls is quite normal and predictable of a boy who has just entered the teenage. Tod is able to achieve this. In the beginning, Helen did not consider Tod suitable for her daughter. Finding that Tod has managed to make Garry happy, Helens starts to cultivate a sense of respect and admiration for Toad in her heart. Near the end of the movie, Julie and Tod get married. Julie becomes pregnant. The love marriage is caught in fumed arguments and fights analyzing which, the audience can tell that the marriage is difficult to last. However, Helen admires Tod so much that when Julie resolves to break up with Tod, Helen suggests her otherwise and asks her to change her decision twice. Julie starts disliking Tod for his profession of drag racing. Helen’s role as a mother has been very positive towards Julie after her marriage. Unlike many women that look for ways to get their daughters independent of their husbands, Helen asks Julie to support Tod. Helen is a kind of person that would not let go easily. Her effort to make her daughter’s marriage successful speaks of the fact that Helen believes in promoting relationships and respects them. From her behavior, the audiences get the idea that Helen would have tried her level best to make her own marriage successful as well, but it would fundamentally be Garry’s uncompromising nature that led the marriage to the point of break up. Garry is portrayed as a negative father. The audiences can sense the intrinsic negativity of Garry’s character when he gives a negative response to his son who seeks his consent to live with him. A person who can be as merciless as this to his own son can be much more merciless to his wife. Another view suggests that Helen might not have put so much effort in saving her own marriage, though she would have repented later, so she does not want the same to happen to her daughter. This might be the reason why she tries to make Julie’s marriage successful. In either case, it is clear that Helen’s role as a mother in her daughter’s marriage is rational and wise. In the end, Helen gets married to Garry’s biology teacher. Her new husband plays a good father towards both Garry and Julie. Gil’s sister Susan is a science teacher in a middle school and her husband Nathan is a neurotic scientist. They have a little daughter, Patty. Nathan’s over-obsession with the accurate cognitive development of Patty drives him away from his responsibilities towards his wife. Susan wants more attention from Nathan, both sexually and otherwise, but Nathan overlooks her needs. Even on the romantic occasions where the two should supposedly spend some time with each other, Nathan brings Patty along. His continued ignorance towards Susan freaks her out and she leaves her family. This finally makes Nathan realize his irresponsible attitude towards his wife, so he begs of her to come back. Susan agrees to come back upon his promise to change himself. The fact that Susan becomes pregnant by the end of the play speaks of the fact that the couple’s sexual relationship has revived. The kind of relationship parents maintain with each other also plays a decisive role in the development of the children’s psychology. Gil and Kaven, and Nathan and Susan love each other, so their children are more in control of their parents than Helen’s children. Although Gil’s children are also displaying certain unwanted behaviors, like the emotional problem of Kaven and Taylor’s act of kissing the boys at school, yet these are minor issues since the children are too small to think and behave maturely. Patty is also a fine little kid. On the contrary, Garry and Julie are the most problematic and ill-behaved children. Garry’s short-temperedness can be estimated from his act of breaking into his father’s office and creating a mess there. In addition to that, his obsession with girls and porn also speak of his fanaticism and extremism. Likewise, Julie is involved in premarital sex in just 16 years of age. She has a bad character. She even starts hating her husband with whom she has been having sex for a long time before marriage. Thus, it can be concluded that the parental relationship affects the psychological and behavioral upbringing of the children. Concluding, Gil and Karen are the most responsible parents and Gil is the most responsible husband among other husbands i.e. Nathan, Tod and Garry. Mr. Bowman has just married Helen so cannot really tell how he compares with Gil. As spouses, Gil and Karen are lovers, Nathan and Susan are confused, Tod and Julie are fighters, Helen and Garry are divorcees while Helen and Mr. Bowman are experimenters. As father, Gil is responsible and Nathan is over-concerned while Garry and Larry are ignorant towards their children. Gil and Karen’s marriage is stable, Nathan and Susan were at the verge of breaking when circumstances began to alter for the better, Garry and Helen’s marriage was a failure, Tod and Julie’s marriage may end up anytime while Mr. Bowman and Helen’s marriage is stable so far, though the two have spent too less time together to give a more objective idea. As a person, Gil is the person who has learnt from the mistakes of his father and thus has become more prudent in the nurturing of his own children. Read More