Last week found me lying in bed, quite morose I might add, sick, delirious, and in desperate need of a way in which to relieve my boredom. The four walls and ceiling had, up till that point, provided much of my entertainment. Summoning the strength required to lift the remote control from the bedside table, to point and flick – much like Hermione in Harry Potter – at the television set and eventually turn on, was a feat I’m proud to say I managed.
If I confess one thing this week, let it be that I love black and white films. I’m not sure if that love came from growing up with my grandma (Norman Wisdom was a constant childhood companion of mine) or the fact I really spent too much time watching television. But when the screen lit up in all its black and white glory, I was hooked.
Three came home was the title of the film. The name of which sadly gave away much of the plot but I still managed to enjoy it. It was that good I didn’t change over once. Not even during the ad breaks. I won’t mention at this stage that I actually dropped the remote somewhere under the bed. And that getting on my hands and knees to retrieve it would have damn near killed me. These irrelevant facts should not stop you from watching the film. If anything, it should make you want to watch it more.
It was a World War Two epic, not your standard fare as it was set in Borneo, where western prisoners of war were in abundance. It depicted a life of hardship, of imprisonment and oppression in dire proportions. It made my own sickness seem insignificant in comparison – well, it would have done if it wasn’t a film. But you know what I mean. I even cried during one scene, or so I thought, until I realised it was actually snot that had worked its way down my face.
As the credits rolled, the image that stuck with me was not of the woman who had overcome the unfavourable odds stacked against her, it was something much more subtle; her eyebrows. Here was a woman whose husband had been ripped from her, who had been beaten, abused, nearly raped – and the only message I took from it all was her god damn eyebrows.
At one point during the film, the husband asked her: “Where’s that Yankee spirit?” Clearly it was all used up on making sure her eyebrows stayed strong throughout her two year incarceration. If you can put on a good face, you can conquer the world – or something like that. Whether it came rain or shine, no matter if she starved for months on end, was beaten black and blue, or cried till she made herself sick – through it all, her eyebrows stayed immaculately arched, not a single hair out of place.
It had been three days since I’d last seen a mirror. Buoyed by the near-magical appearance of her eyebrows during her two year ordeal, I had much hope for mine. Sadly, I was mistaken.