Ithaca 2016

In 1942, a young boy named Homer Macauley, only 14 years old, takes on the work of delivering telegrams to help support his widowed mother, Katie, his older sister Bess, and his four-year-old brother Ulysses in the small fictional town of Ithaca, CA. His dream is simple yet brave: to become the best and fastest bicycle telegraph messenger in town, gliding through streets with a sense of purpose that belies his years.

The very first telegram Homer delivers lands with a heavy moment of truth. It is for a Hispanic woman who cannot read English well, and she asks him to read the message aloud. The content is stark and heartbreaking: a telegram from the Secretary of Defense announcing that her son has died in the war. That single moment plants a seed of seriousness in Homer’s heart, as he realizes that these messages are not just numbers and names but lives touched by distant conflicts.

Back home, the war’s reach continues to unfold through letters from Homer’s older brother, Marcus, who is serving far away. Marcus writes regularly, sharing stories of life on the front and the emotional weight of his absence. He also reminds Homer that, in his absence, he is the man of the house, a role that fills Homer with a mix of pride and pressure. The family’s burden is compounded by the recent death of their father in the war, leaving Katie to manage everything with courage but obvious strain.

On the job, Homer assumes a quiet responsibility beyond his years. He helps the telegrapher Willie Grogan stay alert—waking him with cold water and strong coffee when needed—so the office keeps moving smoothly. Through his rounds, Homer begins to hear and carry messages of love, longing, hope, pain, and death. Each day’s work chips away at his boyish innocence as he longs for a telegram that will bring Marcus back, a signal that the world continues to turn despite the heavy losses surrounding them.

Homer also wrestles with his feelings about his younger brother, Ulysses. He is envious of Ulysses’s apparent fearlessness and obliviousness to the war’s dangers. The contrast sharpens as Homer wrestles with the weight of responsibility and the pull of youthful curiosity. In the telegraph office, he often checks in, hoping to be called upon to prove his own courage or usefulness.

Katie, meanwhile, experiences moments that feel almost otherworldly—she sometimes believes she sees her late husband, Matthew. These glimpses speak to a family clinging to memory and faith in the midst of upheaval. The house is never free from little tremors of fear and superstition, like when the young Ulysses is startled by a half-man, half-machine window display that seems to loom over the storefronts and the street outside.

One night, Homer reads aloud a letter from Marcus to Mr. Grogan, sharing the heavy sentiment that if Marcus’s brother dies, he will shut himself off completely from the world. The letter reveals the deep emotional toll of war on a family’s morale and on the individual who imagines the future he will have to bear.

The story takes a poignant turn the following day when Homer goes to check on Mr. Grogan only to discover that the elder telegrapher has died after typing one last, dreaded message. The news hits with an abrupt finality: the war’s reach has claimed another life, another family’s calm, and another generation’s certainty. Toby, Marcus’s fellow soldier, and Homer then make their way to the Macauleys’ home to deliver Marcus’s death notice, a moment that seals Marcus’s absence and marks the family’s ongoing struggle to endure.

Through these events, the narrative threads together themes of duty, resilience, and the subtle heroism of everyday life during wartime. Homer grows from a boy who wants to impress with speed and efficiency into a young person who carries the weight of others’ stories—love, loss, and the fear of what the war will take next. The film offers a clear, human portrait of how a community responds to grief, how families support one another, and how a teenager’s sense of purpose can broaden to include tenderness, empathy, and courage in the face of uncertainty.