Lessons on honor from With Honors

I watched With Honors directed by Alex Keshishian in 1994 when I was a bright-eyed college freshman at UP Los Baños.

The film is a tale about living life simply. It is a story about a homeless man who teaches some snobbish Harvard students a thing or two about life.

The film stars Brendan Fraser as Monty, the self-absorbed graduate student obsessed with finishing his thesis and graduating with honors to satisfy his demanding professor. In one unexpected incident, he loses his precious thesis in the basement of the library’s heating plant. It is found by a homeless man living there, Simon (played by Joe Pesci). Simon agrees to return the thesis one page at a time. Quid pro quo. Barter. Monty gets a page in return for certain favors. Since there is nothing Monty can do about it – else his beloved thesis goes up in smoke – he just lets Simon get his way.

Little does Monty know that his relationship with the bearded vagabond will change his life. It also affects the life of his housemates who include Everett (Patrick Dempsey), a wisecracking, happy-go-lucky radio host, immature and sex-obsessed Courtney (Moira Kelly), and the nerdy Jeff (Josh Hamilton). Simon becomes something of a father figure to the four students and provides an earthy balance to their overly academic viewpoint in life. Simon proves to be their equalizer.

Maybe it is practically an "unheard of" film. I was lucky I got the chance to watch it. Yes, it is simple, maybe even too juvenile for others to appreciate, but it taught me that not all things should be based on "books."

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against books because I am a bookworm myself. Nor do I have a grudge against the academe that provides vital knowledge and readies us for the real world. But the film just strengthened the fact that not everything in life is taught within the four corners of the classroom. It also emphasized that experience is still the best teacher and that wisdom can also be acquired through other people who have gained it themselves.

In my appreciation of the movie, it helped that With Honors had a great soundtrack. I am not sure if it was only nominated or actually won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song in 1995 for Madonna’s I’ll Remember. But this I remember: After watching the movie, I immediately bought a copy of the soundtrack even if I had to spend part of my just-enough weekly allowance. Can you believe it?

With Honors is also one of the movies that did not make it to the list that "made" Brendan Fraser. Hunky as he was even before this film, With Honors featured the pre-Bedazzled, George of the Jungle, or Blast from the Past Fraser. But I think Brendan Fraser is really good here. Maybe With Honors was the one that actually jump- started his career.

On the other hand, Moira Kelly was already the pretty face she is in this movie. I was in high school when I first watched her glide on ice with DB Sweeney in Cutting Edge. She was just as beautiful, though her role here is not as "cool" and imposing. Patrick Dempsey is funny playing the curly-haired, easy-going disc jock compared to his recent role as the sleek New Yorker fiancé of Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama. But I was unfamiliar with the other projects of the younger Josh Hamilton aside from his peewee role as Miranda’s date in one Sex and the City episode.

The movie, for all its humor and some "kilig" moments shared by Monty and Courtney can really tug at your heartstrings. Compared to his other roles as the pesky police aid in Lethal Weapon or the villain for Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone, Joe Pesci is funny here, all right. But his character is the one that has the most profound effect on the lives of the other characters.

Simon has asbestosis, a lung disease he got when he worked in a mine, and he has no family to call his own. In his deathbed, he just wants Monty and the group to be with him, reading verses from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The part when he dies while being read a poem is one of the unforgettable moments of this film.

Monty does not finish his thesis on time. He argues history with his professor. He doesn‘t even graduate with honors. But the lessons he learned from Simon will prove to be the most important ones he and his friends will ever learn in life.