The Last Song
Director: Julie Anne Robinson
Cast: Miley Cyrus, Liam Hemsworth, Greg Kinnear
When a defiant teenager named Ronnie must spend the summer at her father’s beach house, she embarks on a journey that allows a tender romance to be born and ultimately allows the angry teen to heal her relationship with her estranged father.
The piano plays a strong symbolic role in the film. In the beginning, the piano is used to symbolize the broken relationship between Ronnie and her father, Steve. It is established early on in the movie that Ronnie has a gift for playing the piano, but in the wake of her parents’ divorce, she vows that she will never play again. The piano is a painful reminder to Ronnie of the connection Ronnie had with her father; a connection that was severed when her father left. Although Ronnie adamantly refuses to consider playing the piano again, there is a part of her hidden deep inside her fragile heart that secretly longs for the precious gift that she lost.
When Ronnie learns that her father is sick, her frozen heart begins to soften and she chooses to remain behind to care for him instead of returning home at the end of the summer. As her father’s health deteriorates, Ronnie discovers that he has written a song for her; a song that he was never able to finish. When Ronnie chooses to embrace her gift of playing the piano again in order to finish the song that her father began, this act of love symbolizes the healing of the broken relationship between father and daughter. Ronnie’s decision to play her father’s song at the funeral, allows Ronnie to express the love she has for her father and say goodbye to him in her own unique way.
While Ronnie’s love for her dad is reflected through their shared passion for music, her love for Will is born when he breaks through the layers of pain and loneliness surrounding her heart and allows her to see that his heart has also felt the cruel sting of tragedy. The irony of Will and Ronnie’s relationship is that while they have both lost someone they love – Will, when his brother is killed in a car crash and Ronnie, when her father dies of cancer - they both find healing when happenstance brings them together to save a nest of sea turtle eggs and their chance encounter is slowly transformed into love.
© 2013 – 2016 Keriane Kellogg. All rights reserved.
Director: Julie Anne Robinson
Cast: Miley Cyrus, Liam Hemsworth, Greg Kinnear
When a defiant teenager named Ronnie must spend the summer at her father’s beach house, she embarks on a journey that allows a tender romance to be born and ultimately allows the angry teen to heal her relationship with her estranged father.
The piano plays a strong symbolic role in the film. In the beginning, the piano is used to symbolize the broken relationship between Ronnie and her father, Steve. It is established early on in the movie that Ronnie has a gift for playing the piano, but in the wake of her parents’ divorce, she vows that she will never play again. The piano is a painful reminder to Ronnie of the connection Ronnie had with her father; a connection that was severed when her father left. Although Ronnie adamantly refuses to consider playing the piano again, there is a part of her hidden deep inside her fragile heart that secretly longs for the precious gift that she lost.
When Ronnie learns that her father is sick, her frozen heart begins to soften and she chooses to remain behind to care for him instead of returning home at the end of the summer. As her father’s health deteriorates, Ronnie discovers that he has written a song for her; a song that he was never able to finish. When Ronnie chooses to embrace her gift of playing the piano again in order to finish the song that her father began, this act of love symbolizes the healing of the broken relationship between father and daughter. Ronnie’s decision to play her father’s song at the funeral, allows Ronnie to express the love she has for her father and say goodbye to him in her own unique way.
While Ronnie’s love for her dad is reflected through their shared passion for music, her love for Will is born when he breaks through the layers of pain and loneliness surrounding her heart and allows her to see that his heart has also felt the cruel sting of tragedy. The irony of Will and Ronnie’s relationship is that while they have both lost someone they love – Will, when his brother is killed in a car crash and Ronnie, when her father dies of cancer - they both find healing when happenstance brings them together to save a nest of sea turtle eggs and their chance encounter is slowly transformed into love.
© 2013 – 2016 Keriane Kellogg. All rights reserved.