About a week ago, Dwight and I watched On the Beach, a 1959 film directed by Stanley Kramer and starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire and a pre-Psycho Anthony Perkins. I’ve been going through something of an annihilation-of-humanity phase lately, which is how this film popped up on my radar. I haven’t been particularly depressed, mind you, no major existential crises to speak of – just a little more fascinated than usual by apocalypses and dystopic future societies.

And this has been very much reflected in my Netflix queue.

On the Beach is a well-made film. Well-written, well-directed, well-acted, solid all the way around. The story, though, is what really pulled me in. Based on a book by Nevil Shute, it imagines a near-future (well, a near-future for those living in 1959) in which most of the world has been killed off by the radioactive fallout of a nuclear war. The only place still inhabitable is Australia, but not for long. The radiation is slowly approaching, and those in Australia have only a few months before they, too, bite the big one. And they know it.

What a great premise. I love to explore the various ways in which people might deal with this knowledge. It’s the classic, “the world is ending tomorrow, how do you spend that last night” question. But the question becomes even more interesting, I think, when you have more than just one night, more than just a few hours in which to contemplate not only your own death, but the death of all mankind. What happens when one has weeks, or months, to think about this? (Hhmm – I think I just found tomorrow’s question of the day.)

Okay, so the whole nuclear war shtick, as much as I love it, is a bit dramatic and a bit dated. But the premise of On the Beach is still extraordinarily relevant, and I’ll tell you why. It’s relevant, because it highlights an unpleasant reality we all have to deal with. We all have to, sooner or later, face up to our own mortality, as well as the mortality of everyone we know and love. Granted, it may not be as a result of a fiery, global thermonuclear war, but we’re still all going to die. Making peace with that fact is, at least for me, one of things I struggle with most. Even as I tiptoe ever closer towards a comfortable acceptance of my own death, the thought of Dwight’s is something I still can’t really bring myself to think too deeply about.

As much as life really pisses me off sometimes, I hate the thought of it all ending. I especially can’t bear the thought of my relationship with Dwight ending – which is probably why the final scene of On the Beach tore me up more than perhaps any scene of any movie I’ve ever watched. The young married couple, cuddling together in bed for the last time, reminisce about the first time they met. After their stroll down memory lane, the wife muses aloud, “and now it’s all over, isn’t it?” “Yes,” the husband replies. “It’s all over.”

And then they (presumably) pop their suicide pills.

Even though dying quietly and painlessly together is actually just about the most ideal scenario imaginable, that one scene touches on everything that has the power to instantly reduce me to tears. Hell, I can barely type this now without crying. And it’s been a week since I’ve seen the damn movie.

Besides just the narrow, narcissistic focus upon the deaths of myself and my loved ones, I also find it interesting to contemplate the Death of All Mankind. There are the usual, philosophical-type questions generally posed by this kind of film – are we a species hell-bent on destroying itself? Is there any hope for us? Fortunately, we seem to have made it out of the Cold War era in one piece, but what else could be around the corner? And, what might the world be like completely stripped of humanity? (Read Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us for an answer to that particular question.)

All of this is fascinating and important to me in one final way. I strongly believe that it is death that gives life meaning. Without the gnawing, ever-present knowledge that one day it will all end, I find it a little harder to truly enjoy life, and a lot easier to take it for granted. I think this is why I like the Impending End of the World scenario so much. It puts everything into perspective. It reminds me to feel everything more deeply. I appreciate Dwight more, and savor the little moments. Same thing with my family. My friends. My dogs. The thought of death forces me to focus on what I love, and to avoid getting worked up about the things that in, the end, really don’t matter all that much. I don’t want to waste a single minute. I want to live my life so that when the end finally comes, I have as few regrets as possible. I want to do, and see, and experience, as much as I can.

What I appreciate about On the Beach is that it seems to share a similar philosophy. Although some of its characters grasp on to various self-defense mechanisms (as many of us do in real life) to cope with the situation, the film itself doesn’t clutch to false hope, or indulge in fairy tales in an effort to make an unpleasant reality more palatable to the viewer. I suppose that compared to some other apocalypse-themed movies, On the Beach could be considered unrelentingly bleak, but I find its honesty beautiful and poignant. Because like it or not, we are all going to die. And what matters is how we live our lives in the meantime.