When
a ten-year-old boy loses a mother due to an auto accident
in which he was a passenger, he will understandably be grief-stricken
and need emotional support. In A Rumor of Angels,
directed by Peter O’Fallon, James Neubauer (played by
Trevor Morgan) is now twelve years old yet still lacks a shoulder
to cry on. He lives with misfit Uncle Charlie (played by Ron
Livingston), a stepmother Mary (played by Catherine McCormack),
and occasionally a father Nathan (played by Ray Liotta) along
a beautiful coastline along the Atlantic Ocean (Maine in the
story, Nova Scotia in the film). His father is rarely home,
and his stepmother tries to control his behavior rather than
comprehending that he needs to bring his grief to some kind
of closure. One evening, he bicycles to the home of Maddy
Bennett (played by Vanessa Regrave), breaks her fence, and
then rushes away as she fires a shotgun to get him to stop.
In the morning she goes to the Neubauer residence to demand
that James must fix her fence, something that the boy does
not know how to do. Maddy insists that James must do the repairs,
so Charlie takes him to the property and measures the area
of wood needed to replace the portion of the fence that has
been broken. Maddy then shows James how to do the repairs,
insists on punctuality, and offers to pay him $2 per hour
(later, $2.20) to continue refurbishing other sections of
the fence, including painting them to the tune of Mozart’s
39th symphony. With Maddy in the role of scintillating instructor,
James makes quite a fascinated student, not just on how to
fix a fence but on Morse code and ultimately matters of the
heart, as they both grieve for loved ones. Maddy lost not
only a husband but also a son, the latter at a military engagement
in Haiphong harbor on September 15, 1974. She believes that
her son communicates to her, and she claims to write down
what he says in a book; she believes that angels are talking
all the time, hoping that someone will hear. The liaison between
Maddy and James, however, bothers Mary and Nathan, who try
to stop the two from seeing each other, again using behavior
control rather than emotional understanding as ways to control
James. The boy is then provoked to run away from home. But
soon after he arrives at Maddy’s house, she has a heart
attack. To retrieve his son, Nathan chases after him, and
reaches Maddy’s property in time to summon medical help.
When Nathan tries to scold his son for talking harshly to
Mary, James erupts with anger that his grief has never been
appreciated, saying, "I want to talk about Mom. You never
want to talk about her. Mom died while I was holding her,
and never once did you ask what that was like." Thereafter,
his father has a change of heart and provides his son a much-needed
heart-to-heart talk. Reconciliation results. But in time Maddy
dies. After her death, the harbor lighthouse begins transmitting
a Morse code in which she talks to James from the dead. A
Rumor of Angels is based on a nineteenth century "handkerchief
book" discovered by cowriter James Eric, Thy Son Liveth:
Messages From a Soldier To His Mother by Grace Duffie
Boylan. The story, first adapted as the play Messages,
points out that parents need to listen to their children,
for otherwise they may behave inexplicably. As Uncle Charlie
says early in the film, by the age of fourteen they could
become crackheads. MH
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