When I heard the news of Hollywood legend Rob Reiner’s tragic death, I began to think about a film he directed,The Princess Bride, and how it has helped me remember that true love is less about grand adventures and more about meeting others in their need.
Reiner, who died Dec. 14, had a long career directing, writing, and producing numerous films, including This Is Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally, The Bucket List, and, of course, The Princess Bride.
For those who haven’t had the pleasure of seeing it, 1987’s The Princess Bride is a hilarious action-adventure that tells the story of the princess Buttercup and her beloved, Wesley. Based on a book by William Goldman, the movie is full of iconic lines. One of the best-known is about love. At the beginning of their love story, Wesley works as a farm boy. Buttercup continually asks him to complete menial tasks. All Wesley ever says in response to these requests is, “As you wish.”
In time, Buttercup comes to realize that, whenever Wesley says “as you wish,” he is really saying, “I love you.”
Before they can be wed, Wesley is kidnapped by the Dread Pirate Roberts and presumed dead. The story of how they end up back together is such a good one I would hate to spoil it for you.
While the main plot of the film is a story of romantic love, the movie depicts another kind of love characterized by the line “As you wish”: the one found between a grandfather and his grandson.
The Princess Bride opens on a boy sick in bed and playing a video game. His mother enters his room and explains that his grandfather has come to visit him. The boy is annoyed, but he finds out that the old man has brought a present.
The boy eagerly opens the gift only to reveal a book, an outcome he finds very disappointing. The grandfather explains that when he himself was sick during his childhood, his own father read the book to him, and today the grandfather has come to read it aloud to his grandson. The book is, of course, The Princess Bride. The boy is skeptical that he will enjoy it. He asks whether there are any sports in the book.
“Are you kidding?” the grandfather asks. “Fencing, fighting, torture, regence, giants, revenge, chanses, escapes, miracles…”
“Doesn’t sound too bad,” the boy responds. “I’ll try and stay awake.”
The boy is soon swept up in the story — though he asks to skip the kissing parts.
Most of the film’s scenes depict the story of Buttercup and Wesley, but their story is punctuated by brief interludes in which the boy objects, asks for clarification, or simply comments on the proceedings and the grandfather — usually exasperatedly — responds.
As a boy, I always thought these scenes were funny, but I was more interested in the exciting medieval love story that was unfolding. Today, however, it’s become clear that the grandfather and young boy have more to teach me about the kind of love most people experience on a daily basis.
While it can be tempting to want our love stories to be full of excitement, swordfighting, and high adventure, few people are called to participate in the kind of swashbuckling love story Buttercup and Wesley have. However, everyone is called to love those whom God puts into our lives in the same way that the grandfather loves his grandson.
Ever since the Fall of man in the Garden of Eden, man has been a profoundly broken creature. We are depressed, we are poor, we are sick. And God calls us in our brokenness to love and care for each other.
Over the course of His public ministry, Christ constantly reiterated the importance of loving one’s neighbor — that is, those in need who are closest to us. As Pope Leo XIV has indicated, a crucial piece of loving our neighbor is listening to them and working to genuinely understand them and their needs. In the words of The Princess Bride, it is discovering a need and responding, “As you wish.”
Many times, our neighbors are within our own homes. In his book Family Unfriendly, Catholic writer Tim Carney describes how parents are given constant chances to practice the kind of love Christ speaks of.
“God told us to clothe the naked and feed the hungry,” he wrote. “And every morning [parents] wake up with a house full of naked hungry kids.”
The grandfather in The Princess Bride loves his grandson, not through grand declarations and dramatic fights but through a simple gesture. He is present with his grandson through an illness by reading a good book aloud to him.
When the grandfather gets up to leave at the end of the movie, the little boy says, “Grandpa, maybe you could come over and read it again to me tomorrow.”
The grandfather pauses and replies simply, “As you wish.”
The post Op-ed | ‘As you wish’: What Rob Reiner’s ‘The Princess Bride’ tells us about true love appeared first on CatholicVote org.