Wet Wet Wet

Don't Stop The Rain

We all know the weathermen got the forecast wrong this summer. Big deal. It's weather. It does what it wants. I'm bored rigid of listening to people banging on about the washout summer. Rain is good. Rain makes things grow and keeps our island green and pleasant. Without rain Britain would be an insufferable desert wasteland. And, more importantly, without rain we would lose some of the greatest scenes in cinematic history.

The Shawshank Redemption is a fine film. Morgan Freeman's voice-over is like honey dripping into your ears and blocking out all the pain in the world. And how is the actual point of redemption put across? I'll tell you how: with rain. As Red narrates to the viewer: "Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit smelling foulness I can't even begin to imagine, or maybe I just don't want to. Five hundred yards. That's the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile." When Andy emerges from the sewer, washed out like a turd, he stands up in the falling rain, arms outstretched like Jesus, and the shit is washed clean away. That's what rain can do.

And what about Singing In The Rain? Not Singing In The Sun, you'll note. Gene Kelly wasn't fart-arsing about with a parasol in pair of fucking board shorts. He was fully suited, avec trilby hat and umbrella. He used the rain as a partner, splashing in its puddles and revelling in its feeling. Rain was the second half of one of the greatest dance sequences in film history. Sunshine is Eric and Ernie.

And can you imagine how dull and lifeless the final scene in Blade Runner would have been if Rutger Hauer's face had been dry? If he had been wincing into the glare of a glorious sun-lit day? It's the rain that washes the blood down Deckard's and Batty's faces, and drums a steady beat with Vangelis's haunting synthesiser backtrack.  Batty recalls the glorious moments of his life, while recognising that they will soon be gone forever.  "All those moments will be lost in time," Batty says, "like tears in rain." Our tears fall like rain, watching Batty as he heads toward his time to die.

Rain is romantic, too, for those of that persuasion. Could there be a closing scene as romantic as the final frames of Breakfast at Tiffanys? The yellow New York cab pulls up in a downpour and Audrey Hepburn pushes Cat out into the rain. We see Cat soaked and bereft. Hepburn runs to find Cat, only to find George Peppard. The rain, the soaked macs, the New York streets: I've never met a woman who didn't get a tear in her eye as Cat is found and the couple kiss and make up. Wouldn't have worked in sunshine.

And rain is funny. Really funny. When Withnail and I go on 'holiday by mistake' we laugh at the sheer grimness of the wet and cold on what was to have been a restorative break. On the flipside, Withnail's final rendition of the Hamlet soliloquy, delivered in torrential rain outside the wolf's enclosure of Regent's Park Zoo, is heart-breaking. "I have of late, - wherefore I know not, - lost all my mirth, and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory."

Don't lose your mirth in the rain. Dance in it. Let it fall where it may and bring with it your dreams.