I hadn't thought of him in a while, the last time I had it was considering what to get out of the discount DVD bin. Godzilla double-feature or Hammer vampire essential? Decisions, decisions. In the end I'd chosen Horror of Dracula because I felt it would add more variety to my collection (I own nine Godzilla films already, the rest could) and because I had noted that my stock of DVDs was lacking a certain actor.
I'm very glad I made that decision now.
The other morning, I came down the stairs semi-ready for school and dreading a looming Physics final that had the potential to make or break my year's grades, when my mother gave me a sentence worth of information from the morning's headlines: "Annie, Christopher Lee died.".
Physics went to the back burner.
"What?" I asked, perhaps I'd misheard.
"Christopher Lee died. They just announced it."
I stopped in my tracks and took a moment to process the information. All at once, my mind was a flood of memories.
I was again sitting captivated at age five with him heralding the epic rally of evil before the battle of Helm's Deep in The Twin Towers.
I was being mesmerized and terrified by his prowess and seductive nature as the lord of the undead as his red eyes claimed the will of a young girl.
The feeling of being pleasantly surprised to hear his familiar rumble from the throat of the Jabberwocky made my heart drop into a deep pit.
Sir Christopher Lee, who shared his talent with countless millions of people throughout his multitude of appearance throughout film, stage, and television, has died at age 93.Thunderstruck by these fond moments, I realized that tears were streaming down my face.
I don't want to spend this article going through his life for two reasons; firstly, his career and personal life is so vast that I would have to spend hours upon hours just giving you the bare-bones breakdown, and secondly, there are countless other, more professional tribute articles relaying this information. I am but a humble teenager, not an historian by any means, and fear that I may give an inaccurate description.
But I still wanted to write an article for Lee because I feel that this is a rather large milestone in the history of film; with his death, he cuts a link from an era that will one day be just a collections of images that will be a never-ending mystery. Like a portrait of a long-dead monarch, his legacy will become a hearsay of what he was like when he was alive, but no one will ever truly have the correct answer because no one will be living who knew him in the flesh.
Time is a wily one sometimes.
The strangest thing about Lee's passing, while extremely sad, is that it seems to have taken one of two routes: shock or rally.
Christopher Lee lived a very long life, and to be honest, I and many other people were shocked to hear that he had actually died. He had become an immortal presence in films that we thought could never end.
The other side of the coin would be the rallying of the media; for many older celebrities, their media obituaries are primed and polished just in case of their sudden death and are added to every five years or so to keep them fresh. From what I gathered, many media outlets have had Lee's prepared for a long time, because they were all posted within rapid succession of the announcement being made public. Though this is common play in the world of reporting, I feel that somehow it makes his passing a bit less personal.
So here I am jumping on the band wagon.
I think the biggest reason why I feel so grieved by Lee's death is simply because he was a face that generations upon generations of film goers could recognize. In presence, voice, and tendency to just be amazing, Christopher Lee has become an idol for giving everything he touched a "performance of a lifetime" status.
His level of mastery will be sorely missed, but perhaps it is selfish of us to claim him as ours forever. Lee has left behind a great number of things to be proud of aside from his film characters: being a father, being married for over fifty years, having countless honors for charity work, being knighted, and being blessed with such a long, eventful life.
After sharing such a large part of his time in this world creating characters that helped us escape from the struggles of our own lives, it's only due process that he now receive rest in the cradle of eternity for what seemed an endless age of impressive artistry.
We will miss him.
I have been watching him since I was five-years-old and have grown up with him being a cornerstone of the genres of films I love the most, and his passing is a marker that childhood is behind me. There will never again be a new character that Christopher Lee will animate with his unrepeatable style, and that as a fan, calls for a few tears to be shed.
But he will never be forgotten. He is etched into the fabric of time in ways that will never crumble. Perhaps this is how, ironically, he will become immortal, as an icon for all time for a life spent engaging audiences in a way that others could only envy.
Whether this is the way that existing forever is achieved for the living world or not, Lee is still off somewhere inspiring creativity in a world that we cannot comprehend because it is not a place for us at this time. We may join him someday, but we will never truly know, for like the Gray Havens, it is a one-way boat.
After stars go out in the heavens, they still exist, their molecules becoming heavier as they become different elements, becoming a new form that we cannot see because we were given mortal eyes at our birth. But we know that something still remains after a spot in the sky goes dark, and it is left to our imagination what new flame is kindled in a galaxy far, far away.
Rest in peace Christopher Lee, you will be missed here, but you are needed more wherever you are now.
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