Films About Mentors

Today I finished watching The Wonder Boys, a film made in the year 2000, which stars Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, and Robert Downey Jr. It's a comedy-drama about a professor of creative writing who is also a novelist, one who has been writing his second novel for the past seven years. (People think he has writer's block, but it's quite the opposite; the novel has grown to gargantuan proportions.) It's one of those "one crazy weekend" sort of stories.

It's the first non-horror film I've watched in months, as far as I can remember.

I watched it for two main reasons:

1) It's set in a university, and I'm very drawn to university stories right now.

2) It involves a mentor-student relationship, and I'm especially interested in those right now. In fact, this is why I sought it out (although it had been on my radar for quite a while).

I'm looking for mentor films right now. When I say "student-mentor", I'm not especially talking about formal education. And I'm definitely not talking about the flogged-to-death storyline of an unconventional teacher come to a tough, inner-city school and changing the kids' lives around. To Sir, with Love should have been the last of those. I'm more talking about a mentor relationship between an old master and a young prodigy-- that kind of thing.

I love hearing people talk about their teachers, mentors and inspirations. I find it very inspiring when someone mentions one of their old teacher's sayings, or when they say something like: "I come from the school of such-and-such."

I've always wanted a mentor but I've never had one. I'm forty-nine years old in twelve days so it would be rather ridiculous to have a mentor at my age. But I've always craved a Gandalf or Van Helsing figure look up to.

(Writing this, it occurs to me that I very much did have a mentor in my own father. His influence on me can hardly be overstated and I often quote the things he said. But...a mentor is different from a father.)

I'm even rather envious when I hear people describe their relationship with their spiritual director, their old family doctor, their old teacher, their solicitor, etc. the groundskeeper of their old school or college, etc., when that professional relationship has become a friendship or quasi-friendship. I've never had that.