the new terrance malick film. i've been trying to avoid even watching a trailer. i want to come to it clean. no ideas. no expectations. but the fates were against me and it played before jane eyre last night...
what a montage.
my hand found its way to my heart in a vain attempt to keep it from slipping out and falling into the images flickering before me. i don't even know what the film is about, but we are already resonating in quiet, aching spaces.
a movie hasn't broken my heart like this in a while. i still can't make sense of it all--or not in a way that doesn't simply contain spoilers. but it was flawless. nothing wasted. so many perfect moments. so deep and powerful and churning i never even spent a second being envious of the actors lucky enough to tell such an incredible, elegant and heartbreakingly beautiful story.
it makes me think of my friend and her time in india--how the caste system has relegated individuals to living in houses made of cardboard and tarps and no one is even asking whether or not it's humane. it makes me think of true love. missed connections. made connections. requiting the unrequited. it makes me long, which connects me to be-longing. it makes me think of art and how it's the evidence of a soul--my soul. it makes me ask if i am living my life enough. if i am grateful enough for how much freedom i've been given.
and it makes me want to go out, buy the dvd and watch it on repeat at least twice in a row.
and of all the myriad thoughts, emotions, responses, words i have rustling around in response, what i most want to give you i can't seem to find. it's a quiet long shot of the two main characters sitting together in silence on the bridge. they've just said to each other {roughly}:
we should go.
yes.
and then the camera slowly pulls away leaving you to watch them still sitting there not moving and not saying anything either.
the image was taken away and turned into the movie poster of the two running down said bridge which is completely contrary to what the movie is about and even the way their story is told. {bah! advertising decisions.}
anyway, i leave you with these two images {a much more appropriate movie poster is pictured above}: two movie stills that embody some of the spirit of the movie that lingers with me still. but you should go see it and discover it for yourself.
the death penalty. dancer in the dark. and most recently the adding machine.
they evoke so much grief. always disproportionate to the circumstances. and i can't explain it.
i saw the adding machine this weekend and never expected the places it would take me. halfway through the main character is electrocuted. at the top of the scene, his wife of so many harsh words comes to say good bye with a plate of ham and eggs and the first and only tenderness we see from her.
and.
almost immediately i started crying. and crying. and crying. and the tears sped up and i had to hold my breath so the sobs couldn't escape. i didn't want my neighbors {or the actors} to hear my inexplicable monsoon.
the main character, mr. zero, was dead to her already and dead even to the sudden {and sometimes conflicting} gestures of softness she offered. but the change in her was tragic. the knowledge of his impending death so present. her sharp edges blurred. a few hits of color were added. and even the conflict about another woman evaporated the moment the men came to take her husband and she fought all the fight in her to reach him. everything in her hurled against the guard. to stop them. or to touch him. last chance.
it's the final fight for the things we love above all others where our bodies take us places we can't anticipate and even in the face of certain death, failure is not considered and the efforts are never made with an awareness of futility.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
i just just re-watched this last clip of dancer in the dark. again it's these final moments that are about the most tragic thing that i can possibly imagine. i don't think there is any movie or even personal life experience that i have cried as hard for as this last scene.
her last song:
dear gene, of course you are here and now there's nothing to fear oooh, i should have known oooh, i was never alone
this isn't the last song there is no violin the choir is so quiet and no one takes a spin
this is the next-to-last song and that's all, all remember what i have said remember, wrap up the bread do this, do that, make your bed
this isn't the last song there is no violin the choir is quiet and no-one takes a spin this is the next-to-last song
and that's all ...
oooooooooooo
and on the other side of this theme, is my own experience from about seven or eight years ago. simultaneously limited and infinite by its location in the dream world.
my father was being killed {the first words i wrote were: put down} by lethal injection and they had already given him the first of the two shots. i remember the way he was strapped down. and the colors of the leather and the table and his insane asylum uniform. and the way he had already begun to fade. disappearing. slipping away. letting go.
the dream ended before he died, but the threat/certainty/despair was not an easy one to shake. nearing a decade later and the aftertaste still lingers.
when i was younger... you used to hold my arm when i walked.
then suddenly you stopped. one day, i even tripped in your presence
and nearly fell. i was faking, of course, but still
you did not hold me. sometimes we don't do things we want to
do so that others won't know we want to do them.
i tilt back and forth wildly. rising. falling. pushing. pulling. eye contact. shift away. distance. repeat.
and yet for the first time i could receive the arm, but could not offer mine in return. sorry for me. and sorry to you - though you probably don't notice a lack {and that's okay too}.
seen. see. scene. saw.
quote: the village photo credit: imdb.com - the village movie stills.
i have 32 hours of class in 8 days. and this is not including outside rehearsal, research or script memorization.
my biggest goal this week is to find a character in me that is marla singer from fight club. she is incredibly full and alive and off the wall and sexual and bold and i don't even know where to begin.
but bring. it. on.
more to follow after this week of no personal time.
this movie was so much more than i thought it was going to be. for me. personally. and not just the expected the artist envy of: god, maggie gyllenhall is moving up in the world and acting opposite christian bale.
it was more. and grounded in a theme i am finding in movies that is devastating. empire of the sun. donnie darko. the lord of the rings. they all have this one thing that levels me completely every time. i can't even start on it now. at midnight. still raw.
then on top of that whole mess, you have the artist envy of what heath ledger was able to accomplish with the waggle of one finger at times and the lurch of his entire body at others. and as though the above weren't enough there's the icing on the cake: maggie gyllenhall. not even gorgeous or glamorous or anything. just maggie. and that's enough.
jim: i was dreaming about god. his mother: what did he say? jim: nothing. he was playing tennis. perhaps that's where god is all the time and that's why you can't see him when you're awake, do you think? his mother: i don't know. i don't know about god. jim: perhaps he's our dream...and we're his.
jim: learned a new word today. atom bomb. a white light across the whole sky. it was like god taking a photograph.
i'm not sure what i have in my hands, but they are full.
to be continued.....
currently listening to: the welsh lullaby playing in my head that is synonymous to this movie.
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.
i feel like sissi in the princess and the warrior (which you should see if you haven't). coming back from getting hit by a semi and almost dying beneath it, a friend observes that her biggest fear is not that she doesn't fit in her life any more, but that her life will continue on as before.
what is the point of all the work i've done these past 8 months -i have moved mountains inside myself- if there is nothing to show for it?
currently listening to: sea lion - sage francis. photo credit - deep south - sally mann.
i can't wait for the new batman and the new bond movies to be released.
and it isn't just because one features christian bale (who i have loved since empire of the sun and lusted in more recent years - mostly joking ;) and the other features daniel craig (who was in the most awesome shower scene in cinema history, and go figure it would be fully clothed). i like both these stories in particular because they depict "regular" people doing amazing things. aided and abbetted by stuntmen and cgi, of course, but hey, it's a lot closer to us humans than spiderman or superman. i enjoy those movies too, with the exception of the most recent spiderman which was a dis-a-point-ment, but they don't have a new installment in the next few weeks (batman - july 18th) or months (B22 - nov 7th) so they are a little further from the top of my mind.
just spent the best 3 minutes of my work day watching the new bond trailer.
