Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Prof. Popinjay

Alright, strap in because I’m about to get nasty. I know most films I see inspire a quickly scribbled paragraph and a joke or two but this is not one of those. This one gripped me. Fair warning: If you’re not in the mood for a gritty and thorough analysis, feel free to move on. I won’t be offended.

This movie is amazingly executed. It’s well acted by all members of the cast. The script is rich with real human drama and does not pull any punches. It stirred powerful emotions in me and I kept thinking about it long after it was over. In fact, several days after, even weeks after, I was still bringing it up. I hated it.

But I also kind of get it.

This story was called The Great Santini. Robert Duval, who would play the Great Santini is pictured on the box looking very militant and self-satisfied. I half expected this to be a movie about his heroic effort in some battle or other. The film even starts with Duvall’s character having a going away party with the men in his charge. It’s an interesting point that his men seemed very loyal and appreciative of him.

But this movie is not about him. It’s about his son.

You see, The Great Santini (an honorific seemingly perpetuated by the fact that he uses it instead of the more commonplace “I”), is an arrogant, narcissistic, overbearing, racist, bigotrous, drunken, toxically masculine, douchebag who has to be the biggest and best at everything. This naturally poses a paradoxical problem for himself and his son as The Great Santini grows older and starts to lose his edge while his son grows into a more capable young man.

As this film is apparently all about The Great Santini, with these plot points in mind, you’d expect the story would follow him as he lives, laughs, loves, and learns but it doesn’t. I mean he doesn’t! The film follows him while he continues to be all the despicable aforementioned character traits I listed in the previous paragraph. Even the freaking tagline of this movie sounds like it was invented by him as it completely misses the mark as to who or what this is about.

“The bravest thing he did was let his family love him.”

I’m sorry but if The Great Santini’s immediate family expressed anything remotely close to love for him in this film it was purely a product of Stockholm syndrome.

His son in the meantime is… Oh by the way, The Great Santini has another son and a daughter too but as one is too young to be significant and the other is a female, neither of them matter. They want to matter so badly but alas, time and nature has dealt them a bad hand in their age and gender and so they must forever play second fiddle to their older brother. Anyway, what was The Great Professor Popinjay pontificating about? Ah, yes…

The Great Santini’s primary son in the meantime is realizing that unquestioning and prompt obedience to his father may not be the right choice in any and all situations and must find the courage to stand up to him to make good decisions for himself and others. Once he finally stands up to the Great Santini, does he finally gain the man’s respect? Of course not! Spoiler alert! The Great Santini instead gets drunk, slaps his whole family around, has to be retrieved in his stupefied state by his oldest reluctant son as per mom’s demand and just a few short scenes later The Great and Powerful Santini finally dies in a fighter jet combat training routine. Oh, I forgot to mention, the plot of Top Gun Maverick is taking place off camera in this film but try not to think about that.

So his son learns from his father’s drunken ramblings that he is suffering from terrible Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and so comes to understand the man a bit better. The Great Santini was broken in so many ways. Would he have ever accepted help? Would it have been effective if he had? It was too late to find out. He was gone.

I’d like to complain and point fingers as to who was at fault for this man being the way he was, who was making excuses for him, who was enduring and enabling his behavior to the detriment of all in his path. Of course he is at the center of the abuse he inflicted despite his trauma. I won’t make excuses for him. But this is the way it happened. It’s not my story. And I know very well that getting help for a person with little to no insight into their own mental health problems is never easy, if it’s even possible at all. There’s so much that could have been done and should have been done but it wasn’t and so this story, if it is to be about the Great Santini, is a terrible tragedy. Did he ever let his family love him? I think not as that would involve admitting that he needed it. Was his family brave to love him despite his behavior? I have to say yes and yet, abuse should never be excused or enabled.

Ultimately, the son took the helm as man of the house and The Great Santini would have been proud in death (if that’s possible) even though he never would have been able to admit it in life. The most important part of this whole thing and the real point of this film is, it was not The Great Santini’s death that freed his son from his oppression. His son did it himself by eventually making good and right choices in spite of The Great Santini while he was alive.

So here’s what really gets my goat! The author of this story patterned the Santini character after his own father who was very much alive at the time of the book’s publication! It’s been stated that the author’s father was actually much worse than the character but the book helped mend their relationship a bit as his father saw fit to prove he was not as bad as the character. Maybe that’s the silver lining? I say good on the author for holding his father accountable but as the real Santini’s reaction was to go to his son’s book signings and sign books with “I hope you enjoy my son’s work of FICTION!!!” I have to wonder if he was being a loving father or just trying to save face. I feel so much pitty for this author and his father. A childhood should not be something from which one should have to recover.

So why did this grip me so emotionally? I’m happy to announce the reason has nothing to do with my own father as he is the exact antithesis of the Santini character. However, I’ve spent a chunk of my life contending with the mental illness of certain people who were important to me and it’s not been an easy trek by any means. All I can do is pray they get the help they need. I hope the same for anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation.