Good morning.
(Mild spoilers ahead but not really).
Screaming at Caleb turned into an effort to salvage the day with whatever that thing is that people call 'self-care'. To me, it's akin to attempting to carry on a long, deep conversation in a language I don't know, having hurriedly looked up a few key words in a battered thesaurus I keep in my bag. I don't know what I'm doing but I guess I can try and go through the motions.
Ruth took a hold of whatever ruinous mind I had left, inviting me to watch Midsommar with her. It came out on iTunes this week and while she's seen it, loved it and has been anxiously awaiting the director's cut, she was game to watch it again, still feeling guilty for encouraging me to watch Ari Aster's last movie, Hereditary, which, while it illustrated grief and shock in a way you just never see put to film properly, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy and therefore did not invite Caleb to watch it with me. As it stands I was wrong, presently he can serve as my worst enemy and depending on how the rest of today goes, I may suggest he take in a double feature.
Midsommar draws many parallels to my own life. We have a commune, an adorable blonde girl in a flower crown, a bear featured early on, not to be seen again until the bitter end, some handsomeish men arguing nonstop, fighting for supremacy, understanding and common sense. There is some singing, some crying, more than a handful of vicious suicides so graphic I think I'm perhaps not as jaded as I once confidently assumed, and then a metric shit ton of human sacrifice and an exceeding weird uncomfortable sex scene with an audience.
So basically my life, in a two-hour celluloid extravaganza of colour and beauty, set in the mountains of Utah, I think. I was told, anyhow.
I'd like my flower crown now, please. That's the only thing missing. I'll be your fucking May Queen.
It was definitely almost a three-hour departure from all of this bullshit, only spanning three hours as people would walk in to see what the ungodly sounds were, and Ruthie would patiently pause the movie and explain it to them. I wanted to laugh and then I wanted to cry. Then I was sad it was over because it seemed as though the right people were truly getting their due and otherwise I'm almost relieved Aster is going to move on, apparently wanting to make a comedy so that I never have to go through one of his movies again.
I'm still thinking about it and how it made me feel. That's the best part, the measure of success to me, not in making a masterpiece but finding something to evoke a feeling so intense in your viewer that they are rocked back in their seat, changed somehow. That's the hallmark of a good job, to me, be it movie or music. It's the feeling I get when I listen to Pachebel's Chaconne in F Minor. A sort of weightless, melancholic, hypocritical joy that takes hours to reabsorb.
Maybe I can't explain it properly. Maybe I'll just pull my sleeves down over my fists and resume my argument with Caleb instead, as last night we indulged in an angry, overheated, wordless reunion of forgiveness in which we let history decide our roles and he wore the bear suit while I burned him alive in my mind.
(Mild spoilers ahead but not really).
Screaming at Caleb turned into an effort to salvage the day with whatever that thing is that people call 'self-care'. To me, it's akin to attempting to carry on a long, deep conversation in a language I don't know, having hurriedly looked up a few key words in a battered thesaurus I keep in my bag. I don't know what I'm doing but I guess I can try and go through the motions.
Ruth took a hold of whatever ruinous mind I had left, inviting me to watch Midsommar with her. It came out on iTunes this week and while she's seen it, loved it and has been anxiously awaiting the director's cut, she was game to watch it again, still feeling guilty for encouraging me to watch Ari Aster's last movie, Hereditary, which, while it illustrated grief and shock in a way you just never see put to film properly, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy and therefore did not invite Caleb to watch it with me. As it stands I was wrong, presently he can serve as my worst enemy and depending on how the rest of today goes, I may suggest he take in a double feature.
Midsommar draws many parallels to my own life. We have a commune, an adorable blonde girl in a flower crown, a bear featured early on, not to be seen again until the bitter end, some handsomeish men arguing nonstop, fighting for supremacy, understanding and common sense. There is some singing, some crying, more than a handful of vicious suicides so graphic I think I'm perhaps not as jaded as I once confidently assumed, and then a metric shit ton of human sacrifice and an exceeding weird uncomfortable sex scene with an audience.
So basically my life, in a two-hour celluloid extravaganza of colour and beauty, set in the mountains of Utah, I think. I was told, anyhow.
I'd like my flower crown now, please. That's the only thing missing. I'll be your fucking May Queen.
It was definitely almost a three-hour departure from all of this bullshit, only spanning three hours as people would walk in to see what the ungodly sounds were, and Ruthie would patiently pause the movie and explain it to them. I wanted to laugh and then I wanted to cry. Then I was sad it was over because it seemed as though the right people were truly getting their due and otherwise I'm almost relieved Aster is going to move on, apparently wanting to make a comedy so that I never have to go through one of his movies again.
I'm still thinking about it and how it made me feel. That's the best part, the measure of success to me, not in making a masterpiece but finding something to evoke a feeling so intense in your viewer that they are rocked back in their seat, changed somehow. That's the hallmark of a good job, to me, be it movie or music. It's the feeling I get when I listen to Pachebel's Chaconne in F Minor. A sort of weightless, melancholic, hypocritical joy that takes hours to reabsorb.
Maybe I can't explain it properly. Maybe I'll just pull my sleeves down over my fists and resume my argument with Caleb instead, as last night we indulged in an angry, overheated, wordless reunion of forgiveness in which we let history decide our roles and he wore the bear suit while I burned him alive in my mind.