‘Hachi’ celebrates bond between man and dog
I avoid watching movies if I know that they have a
heart-wrenching twist that is likely to make me cry. I don’t mind a
scene that gets me a little teared up for a few minutes in the
theater or while watching it in my living room, but I don’t want to
watch something that I know is going to make me bawl for a greater
part of the movie’s running time.
‘Hachi’ celebrates bond between man and dog
I avoid watching movies if I know that they have a heart-wrenching twist that is likely to make me cry. I don’t mind a scene that gets me a little teared up for a few minutes in the theater or while watching it in my living room, but I don’t want to watch something that I know is going to make me bawl for a greater part of the movie’s running time.
For some reason the movies that really get to me sometimes seem to be the ones about animals. I never watched “My Dog Skip” for just the reasons I described. I knew it had a sad ending when my mom described it as one of the saddest movies she had ever seen because of the little Jack Russell terrier that is the star of the movie. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to watch it when it’s been on cable channels on TV, but I always skip it.
“Marley and Me” is another pet-centric movie that I felt I was tricked into seeing. With Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston dealing with Marley’s crazy antics in all the previews, it looked like a comedy to me. But the movie turned out to have one of the saddest scenes I’ve ever seen as the family struggles with an aging pet. Perhaps it got to me a little more than others because I had an aging pet at home and we knew someday we might have to make the decision that it was time to give him up.
So when my parent’s recorded “Hachi: A Dog’s Tale” on the DVR, I wasn’t too anxious to see it. In fact, they weren’t so anxious to see it themselves. They recorded it almost a month ago on the Hallmark channel and had been putting off watching it because my mom knew a little too much about the tale. They finally gave in and put the movie on when we all found ourselves at home on a Saturday evening with not much else to do. The whole movie I knew what was coming, but that still didn’t prepare me for the sadness of it.
The movie is based on the real-life story of a Japanese professor who had a strong bond with his dog. The real-life Hachi was born in the 1920s, and followed his master to the train station each day and met his master at the train station at the end of each day. The story goes that even after the man died, Hachi would go to train station each day to wait for his master. The dog did that every day for nine years, until the dog died. The Japanese train station now has a bronze statue of the dog where he used to wait loyally for his master.
The modern-day telling of the story has been updated to a small, American town and there have been a lot of extra elements added to the story to make it more dramatic. Parker Wilson (Richard Gere) is a professor who takes the train to work every day. One evening when he arrives at the station, he finds a small Akita puppy sitting all alone. The dog has a collar on it with a Japanese symbol and part of a luggage tag remains secured to its crate, also in Japanese.
Parker tries to leave the dog with the station master, but Carl (Jason Alexander) says he could only keep the dog overnight and then he would have to turn it over to the pound the next morning. Parker takes the dog home with him for the night. His wife Cate (Joan Allen) is not pleased to see the fluffy puppy, whom Parker tries to hide in his office. She tells him they can’t keep the dog, and she is adamant the next day. When the dog destroys one of her work projects, he is banished to a shed outside until his owners can be found.
Parker does his best to find the dog’s owners. He puts up fliers around his small town. He carries the pup with him and inquires if anyone would want to keep it until the original owners are found. He even asks a fellow professor Ken (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) what the collar says and if there is any usable information on the luggage tag. The symbol on the collar is Hachi, a Japanese word for the number eight, as well as wisdom or intellect. But the luggage tag is torn so it’s not really useful.
No one comes forward to claim the dog, though Cate remains stubborn in her insistence that they can’t keep the dog. Even their daughter, Andy (Sarah Roemer), sees how attached her father is to the dog even though she is only home for short visits from college. Finally Cate relents and Hachi’s bond with Parker continues to grow. The dog can’t bear to be away from its owner, walking him to the train station in the morning and greeting him there in the evenings. The bond between Parker and Hachi is extreme, but anyone who has owned a dog should know how easily they embed themselves into our lives. The movie is well acted, but the second half of it is overwhelmingly sad so be prepared to cry for quite a bit at this tear jerker.
