Last time: Connor blew up the whole enterprise and made us listen to Ramirez again. Connor sucks.
24. Who indeed?
Welcome to my least favorite part of Highlander. I whine like it’s Ramirez, true, but it’s actually this sequence here, which I’ll summarize in a few words and then talk about poor old Heather.
In short: In flashback, we see that Connor stays with Heather while she grows old and dies, living in the shadow of the ruined tower with “Who Wants To Live Forever?” playing in the background. He also comforts her in her last moments (movie’s interpretation)/bores her right into the grave with a twee speech (my interpretation), leaving behind his MacLeod sword and taking Ramirez’s as his personal weapon.
Let me wade in at the shallow end here: I despise “Who Wants To Live Forever?” and have ever since it played on the Highlander series and my mother actually asked me, “Is that Clannad? It sounds like that Robin Hood music.” I was a 20-year-old music snob at that point, so the tone in which I replied, “NO, MY GOD NO IT IS NOT THAT ROBIN HOOD MUSIC,” was probably over the top. Still, the ghost of that exchange haunts me every time I hear this, and my only explanation for the song’s existence is that Freddie Mercury accidentally opened a message from the universe intended for Michael Crawford.
Instead, let us spare a moment for Heather [maiden name unknown] MacLeod, the most screwed-over person in the entire Highlander film. I always find myself assuming that it is, in some way, her tower, which would suggest that something terrible happened with her family; the fact that she would consider marrying a guy who was exiled by his own clan backs this up, I think. Then her happy marriage is interrupted by a blowhard Spaniard, her house is knocked down in a supernatural contest of might, she’s molested by a madman, and even here, at the end, it’s still up in the air whether Connor told her he’s infertile or she just figured it out over the decades. (I imagine when the Kurgan grabbed her, she probably thought, “At least I’ll probably end up pregnant, like the ballads all say.” Poor Heather.)
And through it all, we see in this montage that she just kept on happily running her little farm. It never occurred to Connor to, say, suggest that she run down to the village and see the cute [insert ye olde profession here] sometime during her childbearing years so they could have a putative kid? It’s a solution that’s been used from time immemorial by mere mortals all over the world in cases like this—and yes, I suppose this means I’m citing Heart’s “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You” as further evidence that Connor sucks. This guy is the hero of the movie: I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want something a little more solid than “doesn’t intend to hurt people” to hang my hat on here.
Did I mention this part of the movie has some of the worst makeup effects I’ve ever seen anywhere, including the section on theatrical makeup in my family’s old 1953 encyclopedia? I should have. Literally any way you look at it, Heather gets the shaft.
Next time: Unknown.
Next time on TCBOM!: Now we can start an entirely different kind of party!
