By Bernard Rowan
Recently, I watched the 2021 British film, "The Last Bus," with my wife. The story is a realistic but moving appraisal of mortality and love, accented by the penetrating music of Nick Lloyd Webber. The movie reveals an ordinary heroism and humanity that goes unnoticed.
Timothy Spall and Phyllis Logan are the lead actors in the film, a married couple who move from one end of Great Britain, John O'Groats, Scotland, to the other, Land's End, in Cornwall, England. The film doesn't directly reveal the occasion for this move: the death of their only child, a daughter. The couple live their life of simple but thorough commitment, a story we learn too little about. We learn that Tom was a mechanic, skills that serve him well on his last bus journey. Mary loves gardening.
After finding that his beloved wife has passed away in the garden, Tom thinks of the idea to return to John O'Groat's. He does this, as we learn, to scatter Mary's ashes in the ocean. He also wishes to place a treasured picture of his family on his daughter's grave.
Tom's heroism occurs in making the journey, as he is ill. Along the way, he finds friends and a few pathetic strangers, but in each case, he preserves his journey. The image of Tom's awkward gait, clutching his suitcase, which holds the treasures of his life and love, belies the power of his example. He mends a stalled bus, hurting his finger. After falling asleep on the bus, a couple takes him in.
Something similar happens again when he loses a connection and takes to walking the route: a Ukrainian worker invites him to his wife's birthday party. Tom stands up to a drunk harassing an Arab woman and her child. He shames a bus driver who throws him off a different bus because his pass isn't valid. Tom experiences the spirit of a group of cheerleaders. He provides a steady and moving rendition of Amazing Grace at one bus stop. He teaches by gesture, word and touch several young men and women who are having trials in their pursuits of love. Others panned the film but I found it wonderful that he became a social media sensation. When he reaches the last stop on his last bus, a crowd is there to welcome him. Tom completes his quest and the film ends there.
In "After Virtue," Alasdair McIntyre wrote about life as a story and the meanings it suggests. Characters represent a life's narrative, its virtues and the way the narrative is set in wider traditions of meaning and community.
Tom is an English gentleman, as noble as a royal or knight. His determination reflects the virtue of love as a lived experience arising from a lifelong commitment through all manner of struggles and joys. In his condition, people crudely think Tom is everything, from past it to "pissed." The journey shows he trusts in God, in others and in himself. He is a disciple of St. Joseph, Prince Albert and many other characters. Tom doesn't exhaust the symbolic list of representative fathers, spouses and people but his star is much brighter than his gait and appearance reveal to the pedestrian.
Korea has some icons of Korean motherhood, as in Shin Saimdang, but fathers aren't usually celebrated in their fatherhood. An internet search finds some hits about Korean fathers in K-pop, "goose fathers" and other such tropes. I'm not sure they're adequate to the idea of a representative father. Nor are the stories of Dangun, Hwanin and Hwanung, or of Prince Sandalwood. The Korean father shows and expects filial piety, loyalty to one's parents and to one's spouse and children. These virtues serve mutual self-development and happiness.
The truth my friends is that we shall ultimately face the last bus. How we do so is important. It amounts to a life's summation. The last bus and bus stop may not look the same for any or many of us. Still, we should face it. When my hour arrives, I shall remember my twin, Tom, and perhaps have no better guide for doing so.
Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and a professor of political science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University.
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Timothy Spall and Phyllis Logan are the lead actors in the film, a married couple who move from one end of Great Britain, John O'Groats, Scotland, to the other, Land's End, in Cornwall, England. The film doesn't directly reveal the occasion for this move: the death of their only child, a daughter. The couple live their life of simple but thorough commitment, a story we learn too little about. We learn that Tom was a mechanic, skills that serve him well on his last bus journey. Mary loves gardening.
After finding that his beloved wife has passed away in the garden, Tom thinks of the idea to return to John O'Groat's. He does this, as we learn, to scatter Mary's ashes in the ocean. He also wishes to place a treasured picture of his family on his daughter's grave.
Tom's heroism occurs in making the journey, as he is ill. Along the way, he finds friends and a few pathetic strangers, but in each case, he preserves his journey. The image of Tom's awkward gait, clutching his suitcase, which holds the treasures of his life and love, belies the power of his example. He mends a stalled bus, hurting his finger. After falling asleep on the bus, a couple takes him in.
Something similar happens again when he loses a connection and takes to walking the route: a Ukrainian worker invites him to his wife's birthday party. Tom stands up to a drunk harassing an Arab woman and her child. He shames a bus driver who throws him off a different bus because his pass isn't valid. Tom experiences the spirit of a group of cheerleaders. He provides a steady and moving rendition of Amazing Grace at one bus stop. He teaches by gesture, word and touch several young men and women who are having trials in their pursuits of love. Others panned the film but I found it wonderful that he became a social media sensation. When he reaches the last stop on his last bus, a crowd is there to welcome him. Tom completes his quest and the film ends there.
In "After Virtue," Alasdair McIntyre wrote about life as a story and the meanings it suggests. Characters represent a life's narrative, its virtues and the way the narrative is set in wider traditions of meaning and community.
Tom is an English gentleman, as noble as a royal or knight. His determination reflects the virtue of love as a lived experience arising from a lifelong commitment through all manner of struggles and joys. In his condition, people crudely think Tom is everything, from past it to "pissed." The journey shows he trusts in God, in others and in himself. He is a disciple of St. Joseph, Prince Albert and many other characters. Tom doesn't exhaust the symbolic list of representative fathers, spouses and people but his star is much brighter than his gait and appearance reveal to the pedestrian.
Korea has some icons of Korean motherhood, as in Shin Saimdang, but fathers aren't usually celebrated in their fatherhood. An internet search finds some hits about Korean fathers in K-pop, "goose fathers" and other such tropes. I'm not sure they're adequate to the idea of a representative father. Nor are the stories of Dangun, Hwanin and Hwanung, or of Prince Sandalwood. The Korean father shows and expects filial piety, loyalty to one's parents and to one's spouse and children. These virtues serve mutual self-development and happiness.
The truth my friends is that we shall ultimately face the last bus. How we do so is important. It amounts to a life's summation. The last bus and bus stop may not look the same for any or many of us. Still, we should face it. When my hour arrives, I shall remember my twin, Tom, and perhaps have no better guide for doing so.
Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and a professor of political science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University.
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