Hachiko – Your Best Friend
The movie Hachiko – Your Best Friend , whose protagonist is played by Richard Gere, tells us about a dog’s great love for its owner. It is based on the true story of Hachiko, a Japanese Akita dog who, after the death of his master, continued to wait for him for 9 years in the station where the man took the train every day to go to work.
The story aroused such great emotion in the population, that it was decided to carve a statue in memory of this faithful dog. The statue, made of bronze, is located right in Shibuya station, where the dog waited for its master every day. A year after this decision, Hachiko also died, right at the foot of her own statue.
Movie plot
A kitten of the Akita breed is sent by its Japanese breeder to a buyer in the United States. While transporting the dog, the cage he was locked in falls from the vehicle and ends up at a train station where a university professor named Parker Wilson (Richard Gere) finds him, lost and slightly injured.
Parker tries to help him and find him a new home. He talks to the station manager, but he doesn’t want to keep him, so the professor decides to take him home until he finds his master. Days go by and nobody asks about the puppy or wants to adopt it. Professor Parker begins to grow fond of the animal, but his wife doesn’t want to keep him, until she realizes that the bond between the puppy and her husband is getting really strong, so she agrees to adopt him.
After days of games and affection, the professor and the puppy become inseparable, so much so that, when Parker has to go to a lesson at the university, the dog, baptized with the name of Hachi, begins to accompany him every morning to the station. After watching him disappear into the crowd, Hachi waits for Parker to return from work, before returning home together.
Parker tries in every possible way to keep the dog indoors while he is at work, but no method seems to work: the dog always manages to escape to accompany him to the station, and does not move from there until his owner returns.
One day, while teaching at the university, Professor Parker suffers a heart attack and suddenly dies. The dog continues to wait for him in the station for hours, until a family member picks him up to take him home. Despite this, the next day Hachi escapes and returns to the station to wait for his master, and stays there day and night.
Professor Parker’s wife sells the house and moves in with her daughter, taking the dog with her. However, despite the distance, Hachi escapes to return to his old home and, when he sees that another family now lives there, returns to the station in search of his beloved master.
He waits for hours and, when he doesn’t see him coming, he keeps wandering around the area and sleeps under the wagons of an abandoned train. He survives thanks to a hot dog seller, a friend of the late Professor Parker, who feeds him.
Years pass and, day after day, Hachi continues to go to the station every morning to wait for his master. Professor Parker’s family can do nothing but observe how, even after many years, Hachi, now weak and aged, does not give up.
One night the dog dies, in the cold under the wagons of a train, dreaming of seeing his master at the station. Professor Parker’s daughter tells her 10-year-old son the sad story of his father and his faithful dog. The son thus learns the meaning of love and loyalty and tells this story at school, when they ask him to describe his hero.
The dog is man’s best friend
It is a film that will certainly not leave animal lovers indifferent. Moving and dramatic, it teaches us the value of love, loyalty and friendship, and how these can truly be infinite. It is not only people who are able to experience these feelings, but also the animal world.
Animals feel the same emotions as us: they love, are happy , sad, suffer from losses, celebrate encounters, etc. Their way of expressing these emotions is simply different from ours, but they feel them the same way.
We must take care of the animal world and remember that even if they cannot speak or reason, they feel pain and emotion and their loyalty can reach surprising levels, like that of the protagonist of this moving film.
