In der neuen Ausgabe des The Canon Podcasts von Devin Faraci und Amy Nicholson ging es um Stand By Me und ob Rob Reiners Klassiker gut genug ist, um in den Kanon der besten Filme aller Zeiten aufgenommen zu werden.

Inspiriert durch die Rahmengeschichte im Film hat Faraci für mich wunderbar festgehalten, wieso Stand By Me auch noch nach Jahren funktioniert sowie mit zukünftigen Generationen eine emotionale Verbindung aufbauen wird und wieso Stranger Things, in der Stand By Me direkt zitiert wird, nur ein 80s-Eskapismus-Referenzen-Flickwerk ist.

“I’m not wild about the era that I grew up in, which is the era Stranger Things is set in. I’m not wild about it. But here’s the interesting thing about nostalgia and Stand By Me. […] The reason why [Stand By Me] resonated with me as a 12-year-old kid in ’86 – I have no connection to the 50s – is that it’s nostalgia for a state of being and not nostalgia for a thing. It’s not predicated on nostalgia for, even though it’s full of songs, it isn’t predicated on nostalgia for the songs, it isn’t predicated on nostalgia for a certain kind of soda pop, it isn’t predicated on a certain tv show, it’s predicated on that state of being, that state of being a 12-year-old boy, in this weird moment between being a child and an adoslescent. […]

One of the things I love about this movie is the line that these kids walk, which is that they walk a line between being silly and childish and sort of aware of death and bad things in the world. And they live in an exact moment, you know, it’s gonna get beaten out of them any minute now where they can sit there and cry to each other. They live in that exact moment. And I think that’s really beautiful and it’s a beautiful little moment in your life that I think that this movie really captures. It’s nostalgia for that moment as opposed to nostalgia for 1956 or nostalgia for 1983, it’s nostalgia for what was it like to live right on the line between innocence and knowledge.”