To my mind, summer is the most dishonest season.
It keeps its promises to a point: hot, ripe days, storms and breezes, salt and smoke. But it also lies to you. Intellectually, you know that summer only lasts a few short months, that this ripening just foretells the decay of autumn. But every year, summer whispers in your ear: It’ll be like this forever.
Childhood is like that, too: It seems like it will go on eternally, until suddenly it’s over. That’s why childhood and summer are so often linked in art and in memory. I spent more of my childhood in classrooms than at the beach, but it’s those sunny days that linger in my mind.
Rob Reiner’s “Stand By Me” (1986), one of the most famous movies about this subject, takes place during one of those summers. “Everything was there and around us,” 12-year-old Gordie (Wil Wheaton) tells us. “We knew exactly who we were and exactly where we were going.” Being a kid in the summer is all about existing in an eternal present moment, a feeling of freedom and potential that it will never go away.
But that is the hard truth of growing up, which we all discover sooner or later: Everything ends. Even summer, even childhood—everything. Growing up is about learning how to still find the sweetness in life, even once you become aware of its limits.
Based on Stephen King’s novella The Body, the film follows Gordie and three of his friends: Chris (River Phoenix), Teddy (Corey Feldman) and Vern (Jerry O’Connell). It is Labor Day weekend in 1959, and the boys are on a quest to find the body of a kid their age who recently went missing. They follow miles of train tracks through the mountainous woods outside of town to the place where, they have heard, his body lies. At first, their goal is to get their names in the paper, but as the journey continues, they find themselves confronting their traumas, fears and fleeting childhoods.
“Stand By Me” is a coming-of-age classic because of its evocation of youth, male friendship and the mythical quality of summer. But it is no empty nostalgia exercise: The film is remarkably, sometimes pitilessly clear-eyed about the illusions of childhood and summer. It is a powerful film because it balances the sweetness and possibility of youth with the harsh realities of adult life, without ever losing its warmth and humanity.
The boys in the story are very much kids: on the cusp of adolescence but still more interested in fart jokes and TV cowboys than girls. But their lives have already been touched, and bruised, by the world beyond childhood. Abuse, alcoholism, mental illness, war trauma, class discrepancies: The boys don’t have the words for these things yet, but they’re dealing with them nonetheless, either through their own experience or second-hand from their parents. Gordie’s beloved older brother Denny (John Cusack) recently died in a car accident, and his family is still reeling.
During a stop for provisions, a grocery store clerk tells Gordie: “The Bible says, ‘ln the midst of life, we are in death.’” That is actually a quote from the Book of Common Prayer, but the point stands. Maybe we are lucky enough to spend our childhoods insulated from the horrors of the world, but they are still out there, and they rarely wait until we’re ready to come calling. Eventually, we have to face them.
But “Stand By Me” is more than just a story about the loss of innocence. It’s also about discovering what’s truly good, in yourself and others. The boys play out the expected beats of American masculinity: acting tough, acting heartless, recoiling from anything that might make them seem soft or effeminate (and using much harsher, 12-year-old words for those qualities). There is a gang of older boys—led by the affably sadistic Ace Merrill (Kiefer Sutherland)—who feel like a nightmare vision of what our heroes might grow into. But at the heart of the film is the deep friendship between Gordie and Chris, a bond that allows for norm-defying honesty and openness. They cry in front of each other, comfort each other, help each other to be brave. Chris encourages Gordie’s dream of being a writer; Gordie helps Chris to see that he doesn’t have to be trapped in the same hopeless cycle as his family. They see the good in each other, and each helps his friend see the good in himself.
That’s the ultimate message of “Stand By Me.” As life goes on you figure out what to hold onto, those memories, relationships and lessons that make you feel like you know exactly who you are and exactly where you’re going. Friendships fade, people die, summers end—but some things are never lost.
“Stand By Me” is streaming on Paramount+.
