I have never been so enamored of a movie in which so little happens. In a movie 100 minutes long, you'd think there should be something in the way of regular action, but there isn't.

Rocket Gibraltar is like much of the state of Wyoming. So much open space. Such a huge sky. Animals roam unobstructed and unafraid. The paradox? Beauty by omission. Wyoming isn't magnificent because of what there is to see. Rather, it is wondrous simply because of the things you cannot. There are no skyscrapers hiding the stars, no diesel-belching giants bruising the silence or staining the azure sky a dismal exhaust-gray. Much of it is a postcard, resplendent in its vast, gorgeous emptiness.

Such a movie is Rocket Gibraltar.

It is the story of a family assembling to celebrate Levi Rockwell's (played by the inimitable Burt Lancaster) seventy-seventh birthday. Levi is the lone patriarch of the family whose ideas of success and happiness stem not the fact that he, in his youth, was an accomplished writer, comedian, and professor, but from the fact that his children, and grandchildren, love him unconditionally. What greater mark of a successful life is there beyond unconditional love? I've yet to find any.

The cast of characters includes, but is not limited to, the personalities of:

Suzy Amis (Aggie Rockwell: Daughter of Levi, hopeless romantic, wild child)

Bill Pullman (Crow Black: Son-in-law of Levi's, ex-baseball player struggling to regain his curveball)

Kevin Spacey (Dwayne Hanson: Son-in-law of Levi's, unfunny comedian)

Macaulay Culkin (Cy Blue: Son of Crow Black, favorite grandchild of Levi's, a fact he does not obscure)

Levi's children are trying to express the depth of their collective love for their aging father by throwing him an outlandish catered affair. Ironically, it is his grandchildren, lead by Cy, who know the perfect gift for the old man who makes them boiled shrimp and hugs them and tells them tales of Vikings and the ocean during midnight walks on the beach.

Levi tells his rapt audience (his herd of grandchildren) about the Norse belief that a Viking warrior can achieve immortality if his corpse is incinerated upon a great seafaring warship. If the colors of the fire match the colors in the sky, at sunset, then the warrior had gone to Valhalla (Viking heaven, Levi explains to Cy) to live in peace.

Then Levi and his grandsons take a midnight pee in the ocean. Male bonding, I suppose!

On one of the grandchildren's many sojourns over the sand dunes and through the twisted sawgrass, Cy spots an old boat, long-discarded and in a state of advanced disrepair. I can't help but view the boat as symbolic of Levi, whose children visit him less and less and who is being slowly dismantled by age. I know boats have no emotions, but this vessel just looked sad and lonely. Cy, ever the intrepid explorer, ventures closer. The boat was apparently dubbed "The Rock of Gibraltar" in its happier, more functional days, but, since then, the sun has played havoc with the paint. Only "Rock" and "Gibraltar" are left unbleached by the ferocious sun which roves the sky above the idyllic beaches of Saggaponack, New York, the setting of the tale. The mind of Cy, marked by the indomitable creativity of a child, unsullied by reason and the pressures of the world, fills in the blanks: Rocket Gibraltar.

At one point, after the grand tale of Viking cremation and ascension to Valhalla, Cy sneaks into his grandfather's bedroom, where Levi is ostensibly sleeping soundly. Cy is armed with a glass of lemonade for his grandfather and carries it as gingerly as one would a Fabrege Egg. As he places the drink upon his grandfather's nightstand, he espies a scale model of a Viking warship upon a stand, on his grandfather's windowsill. He tiptoes closer. He pets it as if it were a sleeping puppy.

"Rocket Gibraltar," he whispers in wide-eyed innocence.
"You can have that if you want it," booms Levi.

Cy leaves the room walking as carefully and quietly as he did upon entering, holding his prize as if it was the last model on earth. Clearly, it is his boundless love for his grandfather that imbues worth upon the balsa-wood frame and the overall effect is tremendously moving. The emotion of the moment is magnified by the angelic voice of Billie Holiday dripping like nectar from the blossoming bell-speaker of an old phonograph in a corner of Levi's bedroom.

The plans for the party are in full swing. While the adults are planning the party, which appears to be more for themselves than Levi, and continuing uninterrupted in their own pursuits via cell phones and fax transmissions, the children deliberate on the ideal gift for Levi. The adults buy Levi token gifts, a video of Ginger Rogers traipsing about with Fred Astaire, a book of Pollock's expressionist paintings, et cetera. But none of Levi's grandchildren got him anything, save little Cy Blue. He made a card that had a 77, made from popsicle sticks, glued to it. The proverbial light bulb blinks on during a treehouse discussion. They'll give grandpa Rocket Gibraltar for his birthday! The children erupt into hurricane of activity, virtually unnoticed by the busy adults. After much sweat and effort, the sad, lonely boat is transformed into a "glorious" Viking warship, the name "Rocket Gibraltar" painted along the bow in the shaky penmanship of child hoping not to make a mistake.

Apart from the rather inconsequential, but relatively entertaining subplots of the movie, there is a river of tension beneath the conviviality of the party and its preparation. Levi is dying. Quickly.

The day of the party, Levi dies in his bed after telling his children he'd be down to greet them shortly. He drops Pollock to the bed upon which he and his deceased beloved had once lain; Rogers and Astaire twirl to a dirge crooned by Holliday, and he is gone, whisked away in a sensory cyclone of all that he holds dear beyond his family.

It is his grandchildren who discover him.

I bet you can write the rest of this review.

Kane Rockwell (played by Dan Corkill), Levi's eldest grandson, steals a catering van. Cy gets the gasoline. The other children gather archery equipment and rags from the shed. Together, the children wrap Levi in a carpet, Goodfellas style, and whisk him away to a rendezvous with Rocket Gibraltar and, ultimately, Valhalla.

The adults finally notice that kids are gone. Panic sweeps over the party! Where's dad? Where're the children?

They race to the beach in search of the children, who have loaded Levi aboard Rocket Gibraltar and have prepared his corpse with utmost care, sublime reverence. They shove the vessel into the sea and Levi's remains, within Rocket Gibraltar, drift toward the setting sun.

The adults pull up. They had a police escort.

The children quickly dip their arrows, tipped with gasoline-soaked rags, into the raging fire they made from driftwood and fuel. Flaming comets rain down around Levi's floating pyre, extinguishing themselves in the undulating ocean.

Just as Kane's father, apparently the fastest of Levi's children, tackles him into the surf, Kane fires an arrow that flies true to its mark.

Rocket Gibraltar erupts.

Flames lick at the painted-canvas sail as the adults struggle, albeit vainly, to rescue their father, ironically, from the one thing he ever truly wanted. There is a phenomenal moment when everyone is crying (including me): the children paw happiness from their eyes, the adults' drip sadness. The realization breaks across their faces, gradually, like the coming of morning: Levi is gone.

Arm about shoulder, the adults hunker down into the sand with their children, bidding a final farewell to a man whose entire life was love and familial devotion. The burning boat rocks upon the waves, slowly consumed by the ravenous conflagration, headed toward the horizon where the sun blinks a final farewell. The flames leap before the sun, like subjects before a king. The colors are a perfect match.


Argue what you will about the sentimentality of the ending of Rocket Gibraltar. If your opinion is one of contrivance and disbelief, I only hope that one day you experience a love so strong you'd do anything to honor it. Even in death.

I'm going to hug my grandfathers now. They're both very close to seventy-seven.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older