empire of the sun - part one

several weeks ago i listened to this movie being viewed on the other side of a door and down a bit of hallway. despite the distractions of the moment and the distance and obstructions between myself and the film, i could recall a surprising number of images from this movie i haven't seen in over fifteen years. i won't even begin to list them all as they flashed through my mind, dredged up by the delicate netting of sounds and broken dialogue floating in from the other room, but they came. unbidden. concrete. full of life and color. almost impossibly vivid.

tomorrow i watch it for the very first time since crossing the line into adulthood and i find myself impatient to see it again. i can already tell it's going to be a dense and charged experience--just looking at the poster begins to stir something deep. on one hand i will be reliving the act of watching the movie, filling in the gaps of my child's interpretation of the story, fleshing out my memories and correcting the images that have strayed off course a bit (did he really touch his mother's lip that way? were her lips really that red?). and on the other hand, i will be reliving my life then, as a child growing up in a family of four and as daughter to a father who loved this movie very much.

i watched this movie throughout my childhood sometimes sitting down and focused, other times it played as a background to foreground events. i have no sense of how many times i watched this movie since the day my father bought the tape at a flea market. i remember knowing that some moments didn't fully make sense because i was missing some significance of the scene within the greater framework of the fabula. the weight and presence of the story was such that i knew nothing was extraneous or unconsidered, even if it's meaning was somehow deeper than i could consciously comprehend. but even with my partial understanding, this movie evoked a depth and sense of aloneness in me that left me in a quiet state of awe/terror.



and now, i am beginning to realize that so much has occurred within those simultaneously unfolding stories i don't know if i'll be able to fully hold onto their convergence tomorrow night.

to be continued...