Recently, I was glad to run into a former coworker, Carl Fairy, in Wal-Mart. After we exchanged our greetings, Mr. Fairy told me he enjoys reading my columns. I thanked him for his kind words. As he passed by saying, “Take care,” I turned around and noticed a female staring at me.

With a smile, she said, “I thought I had seen you somewhere. So you are the one who writes for the newspaper. I love reading your columns.” And then commenting on the dismal economy, she added how ordinary people are suffering every day. Jobless people can’t pay their bills, mortgage, rent or even get food. People are becoming homeless and don’t know where to turn while others have watched their retirement savings go down the drain and are feeling overly stressed. Then she talked about how she avoids the news media that harp on more of the same bad news by reading or watching something delightful. She asked me to write stories with happy endings, so here I’m writing about the movie that I watched a while ago to purge off my unhopeful mood.

A woman from the city comes to the country for a summer vacation and seduces a happily married farmer who has a baby. The city woman convinces the man to kill his wife and move to the city with her. She suggests that he drown the wife and make it look like an accident. After agonizing, the man decides to do it.

Thinking about his escape after he drowns his wife, he makes some bundles of sticks and weeds, which will enable him to swim away safely. He takes his wife out for a boat trip. Stopping in the middle of the lake, he walks towards her with his fists clenched. Terrified, she clasps her hands together and begins to pray. Church bells suddenly ring. Shaken out of his trancelike state, the man rows the boat to the shore. The wife starts to cry and runs out of the boat into the woods.

He chases her onto a trolley, which takes them into the city. When they get off, he tries to buy her food and some flowers, but she can’t stop crying and won’t look at him or talk to him. They notice a wedding taking place in the church across the street. They go into the church to watch the ceremony. He starts to cry as the minister delivers the marriage vows. Placing his head in his wife’s lap, he asks her to forgive him. Later, the man gets a shave and a haircut at a barber shop, and he and his wife visit a wedding photographer and have their portrait taken. Then they have a wonderful time at an amusement park, where they play, drink and dance for the rest of the day.

As night falls, they get back on the trolley to sail home by moonlight. However, a violent lightning storm strikes. The man ties the bundles of sticks and weeds to his wife’s back. The couple separates when the boat capsizes, throwing them both into the water. The man safely reaches the shore and organizes a search party to look for his wife. They’re unable to find her. Shattered, the man returns home and finds waiting the city woman who thinks that he went through with their plan. As she tries to hug him and he to strangle her, he hears a cry from his maid, telling him his wife has been found. He runs to see her. She’s alive but unconscious, so he puts her in bed. In the morning, the city woman leaves the village. As the sun rises over their house, the wife opens her eyes and sees her husband and baby sleeping next to her.

“Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” is German film producer and director F.W. Murnau’s first silent film in America. In addition to winning three Oscars at the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1928, the film won a special Oscar for “Unique and Artistic Picture,” the only time this award has ever been given. The story, though overwhelming at times, is comforting. The image used of city represents a dark temptation at first, but city is what brings the man and woman together again. Though idealized, the country is portrayed realistically as a place where you may not have to sail yourself through a crowd, but you do have to face deceptive consequences directly. Superstition, inner passion, pain and romanticism driving the love triangle are appealing.

As reported, people are indulging in comfort foods and watching movies, especially comedies, to safeguard themselves, I’m no exception. Eating dark chocolate and watching a classic movie on the TV are my weapons. Everyone needs a little escapism to make him or hers feel better.

Mandakini Hiremath is a Claflin instructor and coordinator of the university’s writing center.

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