1. This week I held my first ‘Classic Cinema Showcase’ after-school meeting. The idea is to cultivate students’ taste in cinema and fiction by showing them classic films and then explaining what makes them good.

Our first film was Back to the Future, which they had all seen and liked, but when I started explaining how the writing worked they were all fairly blown away.

“We just thought it was cool action scenes, cute girls, funny lines,” one of them said. “I had no idea all this stuff was going on!”

That’s exactly what I’m going for, and it’s a good start.

2. One of the things I pointed out was that the core ‘problem’ of Back to the Future is actually not that Marty is stuck in the past and needs to find his way home. It’s actually that George is stuck in the past, and his son needs him to be a man. George’s weakness obstructs his son’s future (as shown by, among other things, him letting Biff wreck the car, preventing Marty from going on his big date with Jennifer). Lorraine married him because he was weak and she felt sorry for him, which created a weak foundation for their life together: a mistake that they are now stuck with (the fix nature of their future being symbolized by the frozen clocktower).

Then, when Marty goes back in time and accidentally interrupts their meeting, it becomes a matter of life and death for George to step up and be a man. Because if he doesn’t, his future family will be erased. The ending, with George knocking out Biff, then shoving aside the would-be interloper and finally initiating his first kiss with Lorraine, shows him finally accepting his role as the leader that his family needs him to be.

3. Incidentally, note how Marty’s opportunity to help his father be the man he needs him to be is facilitated by Doc. Now, since Marty very much is his father’s son, and we’re shown that he actually shares many of his father’s insecurities (which the original timeline George encourages by saying things like “you’re better off without all the hassle”), the question may arise where his courage and swagger comes from. The answer, though it’s not explicitly stated, is Doc, who is a very confident and courageous man, albeit to the point of self-destructive recklessness (as shown in the very opening of the film by the newspaper headline revealing that he burned down his house, as well as his gadgets running unattended all week).

Marty gets his confidence from Doc, his friend and secondary father figure, which he then passes on to his father (shown in the line “If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything”), the opportunity to so provided by Doc. It all connects and it all flows organically, even amidst the fantastic elements.

4. There are three core problems in the film:

First and most important: Marty needs George to be a man. The stakes are that if George fails in this, he will lose his future and Marty will be erased from time.

Second: Marty is trapped in 1955 and has one chance to get back to 1985. The stakes here are that if he does not, Marty will be stuck in the past forever and will lose his future.

Third: Marty needs to warn Doc that his recklessness will result in him being killed in 1985. The stakes here are that if he fails, Doc will die just before achieving his dream of traveling through time, thus losing his future.

In short, we need to save George’s future (the past), Marty’s future (the present), and Doc’s future (the future). Each of these have appropriate stakes which all matter, but which are of descending importance to Marty.

5. Also, everything in the film is motivated by the characters in ways that are appropriate to who they are. George, being the weakling he is, would never accept the idea that he has to ask Lorraine out at all costs unless it were made a matter of urgency. So, Marty pretends to be an alien threatening to melt his brain if he does not. Doc choosing to piece the letter back together at the end isn’t him arbitrarily changing his mind: Marty had inadvertently revealed that the past could be safely changed by telling him about how his father knocked out Biff. That is, Doc is provided new information which alters his understanding of the situation; information he can’t really address at the moment, but which we see him take in and which would logically lead him to re-evaluate his decision.

6. Obviously, I could go on and on about it; it’s a very well-written film. My plan is to show more such movies and hopefully get them thinking about this sort of thing so that they’ll have a better grasp of what makes a good story or not.

7. Reading Hiroshima with my Juniors, I drew their attention to the phrase shikata ga nai, which a Japanese expression meaning roughly “it can’t be helped.” In the book, it was dealt with in the context of Mrs. Nakamura having to provide for her three children while also dealing with the chronic health issues brought on by her radiation sickness. Living day-to-day, paycheck-to-paycheck, exhausting herself over and over, she simply adopts the attitude of “shikata ga nai.” It can’t be helped. Is what it is.

So many things that we worry over are outside of our power to control. We can either lament it or accept it and try to move on.

Shikata ga nai.