THE MAJESTIC

We recently watched Jim Carey in THE MAJESTIC (2001), a wonderful film that runs "against type" for him. In it he plays a serious dramatic role as a Hollywood screenwriter who has just been summoned before the Congress as a suspected communist. Before he can testify, though, Peter Appleton is involved in an auto accident and nearly drowned. When he awakes on an unknown beach with a concussion and amnesia, he is mistaken for a WWII veteran named Luke Trimble who was reported missing in action, and welcomed home as a long lost son. Martin Landau plays Harry Trimble, the father who wants desperately to believe that the stranger is his son Luke.  The two are "reunited" and the whole broken-hearted town begins to heal as it pitches in to restore The Majestic, the town movie house that as been closed since the townspeople went into mourning over their lost sons, fathers and husbands in the '40s. In one emotional scene, a war memorial given to the town in recognition of their sacrifices by Pres. Roosevelt is finally installed in the town square after languishing in the basement of the town hall. Townspeople raise pennants with blue and/or gold stars--blue for a member of the armed forces serving, gold for family members who are MIA or were killed serving their country. There were dozens of them from this small town that had sent more than its share of young men to the War--and lost 62 of them during the fighting. A devastating number for any town...

Since then I have noticed similar banners in windows in my nieghborhood. So out of curiosity I looked up Blue Star Mothers online and forun the following explanation from a local chapter in Colorado Springs:
rrbsm.webs.com/whoweare.htm and a whole set of Resource Links compiled by these moms and families with ways to support active service men and women rrbsm.webs.com/apps/links . With the holidays coming up, there is still time to get involved and send encouragement to someone far from home or their families here at home.