Local Hero Movie Night

The original film’s poster from 1983. Goldcrest Films

This past week the Humanities House/ Learning Community gathered for one of it's many movie nights over the course of the year to watch the 1983 film "Local Hero", a story about a salesman for a big oil company and his efforts to buy a coastline village in Scotland to build a refinery, but over time comes to like the village and wants to instead live there.

The theme for the Humanities Movie Nights this semester is change. In our previous film this semester, "Eighth Grade", we saw an eight grade girl named Kayla and her evolution from being angry and disappointed in herself, closing herself off from social interaction and wanting to change who she is as a person, to a more confident and forgiving girl who understood that it was ok to make mistakes and come back from them.

"Local Hero" has the main character change over the course of the movie as well. The protagonist, "Mac" Maclntyre starts as a hot shot oil salesman and is overly cocky and arrogant. He is used to his American lifestyle in Texas with a sports car, fancy house, and is a womanizer at his company. Once he arrives in Scotland we start to see his transition right off the bat as he cares for a rabbit that is struck by his car on the way to the village. The slower pace of life, close knit village people, and fantastic scenery eventually lead Mac to love the life of these people.

We see Mac become engrossed by the beach the village is situated on. Exploring the beaches in his free time to collect seashells, even taking time to clean the shells once home. Another example is his amazement over the Aurora Borealis, since Happer wanted him to search the sky for comets by Virgo. Mac can barely contain his amazement as he tries to explain the colors and patterns that are forming in the sky to Happer. Where he initially complained about going to the village, saying he would rather just talk over the phone, his attitude changes by the end of the film. During his time in the village, Mac settles into the quieter life and gets to know the people who live there. He becomes friends with the Hotel owner Gordon and comes to enjoy the others he interacts with, starting to believe that destroying the village to build the Knox oil refinery is a mistake. Mac seems disappointed to leave when Happer tells him to head back to Texas as fast as possible to inform Knox of his new plan to move the oil refinery and instead build a sea and space research center, Mac appears shocked, almost as if he needs more time before he is ready to leave after being there for so long. The movie ends with Mac back in his Texas apartment, reminiscing on his time in the village as he places the multiple shells he brought back on his kitchen counter to display.