While all these elements certainly combined to mark BTTF as the 3rd greatest film of the 20th Century, they could never fully express Marty’s true quandary – his blinding-yet-forbidden love for one Dr. Emmit Brown – as did Huey Lewis’ heart-rending masterpiece “The Power of Love.”
While both time travel and sexual relationships between minors and old men are commonplace in 2009, both were still frowned upon in 1985, and nearly unthinkable in 1955. Silly nuclear age barbarians. But as the musical tonality and lyrical subtext of Huey’s song so succinctly state, no social stigma, no laws of physics, not even 1.21 jigawatts of electricity can offset the power of one under-aged boy’s love for his eccentric sextagenarian mentor.
Music not only defines the emotional substance, relevance and pace of the story as it plays out in the theater, songs like “Power of Love” and “Back in Time” stay with the audience long after the credits have rolled. Who hasn’t found himself humming the refrain of Marty’s timeless longing during the morning shower, the commute home, or the weekend church service?
In the hands of true master like Huey Lewis and his incomparable News, music maintains a spiritual connection with the heart that no other element of film has yet to make. A song sings not to the ears, but to the soul, the spirit and the imagination.
That’s the power of the “Power of Love.”