Why We Need 'The Sound of Music' More Than Ever

As the classic musical film turns 60, we could all use a little more of our favorite things, Nazi-flag-ripping, and "Edelweiss."

On a night not long ago, I woke up at around 3 a.m. only to watch my mind spiral for hours: Wait, did the president just fire the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the guy in charge of the U.S. military? I read that earlier in the day, but only now did it kick in. It seemed bad. Right? VA services are being shut down. Elon Musk’s minions are rifling around in Social Security and IRS databases. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. government employees have been laid off. The United States seems to suddenly be allying with … Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

What is happening?, I thought, toggling between the worst Handmaid’s Tale-like thoughts and that catchy viral song “Hostile Government Takeover”: “Now that we’re a part of a Nigerian prince scam/Surprise, surprise it end up being a white man/Oh! I just wanna know what the hell do I do?”

To calm myself back to sleep, I began instead to sing another song to myself: “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music. As I thought about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, and brown paper packages tied up with strings, wouldn’t you know it? I actually did fall back to sleep, without one bit of chemical help.

I had just rewatched my favorite childhood movie, thrilled to show it to my partner, who had never seen it. And 60 years after its original release, the United States finds itself uncomfortably close to the predicament faced by Captain Von Trapp, his new nanny/wife, and their musical children. Many of us grew up watching the movie version of their lives, which reminds us that not only can music be a balm for a motherless family, but also that, as they end up fleeing the Nazis occupying their home country of Austria, fascism is bad. We thought this was a settled issue. Now, maybe not so much.

While it’s a whimsical musical and a beautiful romance at times throughout its 174-minute run time, the more you watch it in adulthood, the more you notice that it’s a political film as much as anything else. Watching it now in early 2025, it felt different from any of the dozens (scores? hundreds?) of times I’d seen it before. Suddenly, the Nazis moving in on the Von Trapps, trying to bully the captain into joining them, feels personal.

This was the first time in my life I truly considered what I would do in their position. So many times I had imagined myself as one of the children harmonizing on “Do-Re-Mi” or “The Sound of Music,” or as Maria herself skipping through the streets singing “I Have Confidence.” I had never noticed this one tiny detail before: While the Von Trapps are hiding from Nazis in the abbey, hoping to escape, the youngest of the seven children whispers to Maria, their nanny-turned-stepmom, asking whether it will help if they sing about their favorite things, the way she once boisterously instructed them in song to cheer themselves up. Maria answers solemnly that this is one time when it will not.

I felt that acutely. Though after trying this technique to lull myself to sleep recently, I would also say that it can’t hurt to think about your favorite things very quietly, to yourself.

The classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, was based on the 1949 memoir of Maria Von Trapp, a former nun turned nanny, turned stepmother, of the Trapp Family Singers. Many liberties were taken with the storytelling, but none of them matter to us now. What feels suddenly salient is the way it captures upper-class life in Austria as the Anschluss, the German takeover of the country, happens in 1938. None of this is explicit, and you have to know some history to understand what’s truly happening. It’s an otherwise little-explored corner of World War II history because so many absolute atrocities were happening in other places at the time, or would soon. It was an annexation, not an invasion, though I’ll leave it to historians to illuminate the differences. Plenty of people opposed it, including the likes of Captain Von Trapp, whether it was because he didn’t like Hitler or, it seems more clear, because he valued his homeland’s independence and culture. One can imagine Canada or Greenland feeling that way if Trump’s wishes came true.

I have been watching this film over and over and over since I was a small child. I know every word, every note, of every song (except “Something Good,” which I always thought was boring and would fast-forward through when I watched on VHS or DVD). Rewatching it recently, though, entirely new parts stood out for me. That guy at the big Von Trapp party who questions why the Captain is flying an Austrian flag so proudly in his foyer, rather than professing his loyalty to the Nazis. The excellent bit where the Captain comes home to find that someone on his staff has hung a Nazi flag on his home while he was gone, and he pulls it down and rips it clear in half, making for one of the sexiest gifs of all time. (Something you realize quickly when watching this film as an adult is that Plummer is fine.) The family’s truly gripping and daring escape from the country after occupying forces insist the Captain join them or face consequences.

I understood these moments of heroism at a fairly young age … because Nazis were universal movie code for “bad” that even toddlers understood. Now I understand them on a different level, because I find myself thinking, “What would I do? Might I actually face a similar moment in my own damn American life, and soon?”

We’ve reached a time in U.S. history I never could have dreamed of, a time when we apparently need to rewatch Sound of Music not because the songs are great, but because we need a refresher on the fact that fascism is bad. You will see a lot of trivialization of this film out there, a lot of people apologizing for loving it, a lot of people calling it schmaltzy. Maybe we need some schmaltz now. Anti-Nazi schmaltz all around, I say.

Even most of its silly songs serve a purpose. “Do-Re-Mi” teaches the kids music fundamentals, setting the stage for their performance and escape. “So Long, Farewell,” has a double meaning when they sing it onstage at the festival they’ll use to veil their escape. Maybe one of the dumbest-seeming, if catchy, songs is “The Lonely Goatherd,” and I’m mystified by the kids putting on this elaborate a puppet show at home—but, you may notice, it is very much about Austrian culture. Yodeling, remote towns, goat romance.

More obviously, we have “Edelweiss,” which is the Captain’s most overtly public display of resistance in the entire film. The fact that the crowd joins in with him makes it impossible for the Nazis to stop the show, all of which serves as a lesson to those of us who may face similar situations in the coming years. The Captain tears up that flag at least as much because he resents the incursion as he objects to what the Nazis are up to. If it plays to us now as if he’s also standing up to Hitler on behalf of all of the people he oppressed and slaughtered, I can’t see much harm in that.

We can still learn a lesson here from him about standing up for your beliefs in the face of terror, because the Nazis are, if nothing else, pretty scary here. (Except Rolf, whose turn from delivery boy to Nazi would make its own interesting story.) Why not preserve your culture of yodeling and goat-herding, especially when it involves sensational feats of rhyme? “Remote heard,” “goatherd’s throat heard,” “moat heard,” “tote heard,” “foam afloat heard,” “pale pink coat heard,” “gleaming gloat heard,” and “lonely goatherd” ALL RHYME IMPECCABLY, Y’ALL. These are not even slant rhymes. Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift are still trying to catch up.

There are absolutely dangers to nationalism, but one can also sympathize with not wanting your country simply handed over to another, particularly one run by Adolf Hitler. This is the kind of thing we sought to eliminate throughout the world after World War II, but now we’re teetering on the brink of a return to what Foreign Affairs calls “might-makes-right” politics: “Trump’s skepticism about U.S. support for Ukraine and Taiwan, his eagerness to impose tariffs, and his threats to retake the Panama Canal, absorb Canada, and acquire Greenland make it clear that he envisions a return to nineteenth-century power politics and spheres of interest, even if he does not frame his foreign policy in those terms,” Council of Foreign Relations’ James M. Lindsay and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ Ivo H. Daalder write. “In that era, the great powers of the day sought to divide the world into regions that each would dominate, regardless of the desires of those who lived there… [Trump’s] is a Thucydidean worldview—one in which ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.’”

Critics at the time weren’t focused on the movie’s anti-imperialist ideas, perhaps because they didn’t feel vital at the time. Several major film critics of 1965 were the ones who first labeled the film as too corny, full of “romantic nonsense and sentiment,” as Bosley Crowther groused in The New York Times. Judith Crist of the New York Herald Tribune called it “icky sticky,” designed for “the five to seven set and their mommies.” Joan Didion complained in her Vogue review that it was “more embarrassing than most, if only because of its suggestion that history need not happen to people … Just whistle a happy tune, and leave the Anschluss behind.”

Perhaps the Los Angeles weather was putting everyone on the West Coast in a better mood, as the Los Angeles Times was on board with the film’s "three hours of visual and vocal brilliance," and Variety appreciated it as "a warmly-pulsating, captivating drama set to the most imaginative use of the lilting R-H tunes, magnificently mounted and with a brilliant cast." Audiences loved it, making it the top film of 1965. It endured for a Titanic-level run of four and a half years in theaters. It won Best Picture and Best Director (for Robert Wise) at the Oscars. It ran on American television annually in the ‘80s and ‘90s, solidifying it as a classic and crowd favorite.

It's true that The Sound of Music is not the most damning of portraits of the terrors of the Third Reich. But given that it was based (lightly) on one real-life family, who happened to be in a country whose Nazi takeover was relatively bloodless, and that it paints a pretty inspiring portrait of upper-class resistance, and that plenty of other films covered the atrocities of World War II, and that 1960s audiences likely didn’t need much reminding that Nazis=bad, it’s an excellent film. Perhaps it wasn’t obvious at the time what the movie would do over the following 60 years, which was to appeal to all ages, especially kids like me in the ‘80s, who would at first glom onto the songs and Andrews’ irresistible nanny energy, and grow up knowing that fascism is worth tearing up a flag over. What a bonus to see a group of nuns helping the family in its daring escape. Progressive, badass, rebellious nuns!

The next four years are likely to be difficult on the psyche for those of us worried about hostile oligarch takeovers that erase decades of progress, rolling us back to a new Dark Ages. There’s nothing wrong with finding a little hope and sweetness, as well as inspiration, in a 60-year-old film that gives us both Nazi flag-ripping and tunes that can calm our minds and lull us into desperately needed sleep. A few of my favorite things? Soothing songs from great musicals, nuns who can make Nazis’ cars break down, and a handsome man in a suit confidently ripping a swastika in half, over and over in gif form, as many times as we need it.

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