MCF Versus the Volcano

Just, as I've never been struck by lightning, so too have I never jumped into the mouth of a volcano. Granted, unless there are lava men amid my audience, this holds true for my readers as well. But how many of you have taken leaps in a more metaphorical sense?

I think it's safe for me to discuss the movie Joe Versus the Volcano without worrying too much about spoilers. The movie is FIFTEEN years old, and I'm notoriously slow with seeing films everyone I know has already seen. The interesting thing is, before I watched it, I was certain I had seen large portions of it on television before. The DVD I watched this afternoon bore little resemblance to any memory I had of the film, save for a few moments on the island at the end. If I'd seen the movie before, I'd only seen 10 minutes of it, and missed out on the larger picture.

On the surface, it doesn't seem like there's a lot to the picture. Tom Hanks is stuck in a miserable job, learns he's dying, quits, and accepts a rich man's offer to jump into a volcano to appease a native superstition so the natives will trade with the rich man. Along the way Hanks encounters three very different women portrayed so brilliantly by Meg Ryan, that I didn't catch on until later in the film. The journey Hanks' Joe Banks takes becomes increasingly ludicrous, and at some point becomes a blatant fairy tale. From what I've read, the film didn't do very well in theaters, and I suspect most audiences didn't take the time to look beneath the surface and see what a brilliant tale it truly was.

Joe is a hypochondriac, a condition exacerbated by his life-threatening experiences as a fireman and stress from his office job. Trudging to work his shoe falls apart, and when the receptionist Dede(Ryan) asks what's wrong, he sighs that he's “losing his sole”. I don't think I'm a hypochondriac. I once put off having serious symptoms of a major problem looked at for weeks, and passed out at my desk from blood loss before finally going to see a doctor. I never go to the doctor for colds, and with the exception of the month I was recovering from surgery for the aforementioned problem, I don't think I've ever taken a sick day. About two years after this incident, I began having abdominal pains and feeling nauseous all the time. I visited several doctors and endured several tests, and every indication was that I was in perfect health. After about two or three months, the symptoms eventually disappeared. I don't LIKE going to the doctor, and in a strange way I don't like going and having them find NOTHING. I feel like it damages my credibility and brands me a hypochondriac, which could hurt me if I ever visited them with a real problem. Last Summer, I started feeling tired and weak all the time, with frequent dizzy spells. It began one afternoon on the treadmill at work and felt like a heart attack. Several doctors dismissed it as anxiety and one even said I “needed to go to Hawaii”. I cut out caffeine, started taking vitamins, and eventually began feeling normal. Looking back on last year, it's somewhat embarrassing to think that the symptoms were all generated by stress. The one lesson I took from the experience is that work should never affect us when we go home. My job is twice as stressful now than it was last Summer, yet I've learned to shake things off. It's not easy, but health and general well-being is so much more important.

Joe complains to his boss, played by Dan Hedaya, that he isn't feeling well. Hedaya's character scolds him with a philosophy I've often heard my own parents endorse. He points out that he doesn't feel good, that NOBODY feels good, and that it's part of growing up. I've always found that to be a very bleak world view, and while it's true that as we get older our energy decreases and our joints stiffen, so much of that can be overcome with the right attitude. This is precisely the course the movie takes. Joe learns that his symptoms, like my own, were brought on by stress and past traumatic experiences and that his terminal illness does NOT present any actual symptoms. He tells off his boss, quits his job, and asks out the cute receptionist. Joe starts to LIVE and as his attitude changes, so does the look and feel of the film. The gray, desaturated tones of the factory where he works are replaced by multicolored bright lights, first at the restaurant where he takes DeDe, and at various times throughout the film as he journeys first to Los Angeles and then to the volcanic island to meet his destiny. The symbolism is strong and every detail, every object has meaning. There's a jagged line that appears many times, first as the path leading to his factory, then on his factory logo, as a crack in the wall of his apartment, as a bolt of lightning that destroys a boat he was on, and finally as a procession of natives with torches moving up the volcano. I found an excellent web site that analyzes the ”lightning bolt” and other subtle details of the movie far better than I could.

Ultimately, Joe finds himself at the mouth of the volcano with Patricia, the third character portrayed by Meg Ryan. It is there that she speaks the line: “Joe, nobody knows anything. We'll take this leap, and we'll see. We'll jump, and we'll see. That's life.” This is really the major philosophy of the movie. Too many people fall into the trap of a zombie-like existence, going through the same routine over and over and fearing risks and the unknown. Once Joe broke that pattern, his life became healthier and more colorful. In the beginning of the movie he's got a job and, while he never feels well, he's still alive. He's miserable. By the end of the movie, he's dying and on his way to a spectacular suicide, and at one point when things are at their absolute worst, he's DANCING. Joe starts to really live once he's dying, and does more with the time he has left than he did with all the years leading up to his epiphany. On the off chance that someone reading this HASN'T seen the film by now, I won't mention the movie's final outcome.

Now, chances are I'm not going to march in to work and tell off my boss on Monday. I'm not going to quit and use my savings to buy a boat and sail to some exotic location. The movie does have me thinking a lot more about life and risks though, and those occasional leaps we all must take to move forward. There are many things that are “safe” and “smart”, but is it worth it if we're not really living our lives to the fullest? Joe's tale isn't about a man who's dying. It's the story of a dead man who finally comes to life, a journey we should all be fortunate enough to take.

”My father says almost the whole world's asleep. Everybody you know, everybody you see, everybody you talk to. He says only a few people are awake. And they live in a state of constant, total amazement.”—Patricia Graynamore, from Joe Versus the Volcano