My parents took me to The Sound of Music in 1966. It was showing at a grand, gilded cinema in Beirut—the kind we used to have, with stills from the film posted throughout the lobby. Although I must have been four at the time, I was spellbound. The scene at the start of the film before the credits, with the alps, meadows, and, finally, Salzburg coming in out of the clouds, still fills me with a nostalgia that borders on vertigo.
Mum and Dad were at first amused, then baffled, the finally annoyed when I insisted on seeing it a dozen times before it left the theatre. Needless to say there was some delight on my part when, decades later, they read in some respectable magazine or other that an obsession with The Sound of Music in childhood was very common among gay men of a certain age.
That said, my favourite memory of that first viewing wasn't even the film itself. It was my father taking me across the street to a record shop an purchasing the soundtrack album—maybe my first record shop, and certainly my first soundtrack album. It's difficult to explain in this age of digital streaming and iTunes how magical it might have seemed to a four-year old boy that the transformative experience of watching The Sound of Music could be extended by crossing the street and taking an LP off the rack.
The film iteration of the von Trapp family became people I felt I knew—the children notwithstanding, as I could never keep them straight, except Liesl—and Plummer's Captain von Trapp almost as much as Julie Andrews' Maria.
It seemed therefore unremarkable, though truly lovely, when my best friend Ron Oliver came to direct Mr. Plummer in his third film, Liar's Edge, in 1992, more like a family occurrence than excellent casting.
As to his passing today, I've been relieved not to see the usual level of ostentatious boo-hooing on Facebook that so often accompanies the death of a film legend, even one in his 90s.
Speaking for myself, and, I suspect, a few others, it's likely because Mr. Plummer felt like a beloved member of our families, someone we grew up with, someone we loved, and someone who never failed to delight us, impress us, and inspire us. If he'd really been a member of our family, he might have been the uncle who taught us to tie a bow tie properly.
And now, at the lofty, leonine age of 91, and in all his power, he finally has left us. Fortunately we can all mean it this time when we utter the platitudinous phrases Thanks for the memories and Rest in peace. This time, we get to be dignified, the way he always was. The passing of a giant always leaves a shadow on the sun, even briefly.
