Parallel Lives of Woe
Dear Leonard. To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard, always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours. - Virginia Woolf to her husband Leonard
The lives of quiet desperation tend to roar more deafeningly even when they cease. Loneliness lingers - in their art, in the lives they’ve affected and shattered, or in the ghosts of memories. The Hours is a film that offers no absolution. There is no joy whatsoever here. But there is beauty in the way everything was laid out, even in the lack of hope or just the mere illusion of it. You can expect nothing less from actresses of the caliber of Meryll Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman (who won the Oscar for portraying Virginia Woolf). Each was effective in her own role; each was affectingly pathetic. In the words of Virginia, each was “living a life I have no wish to live.”
One critic wrote that “Stephen Daldry’s The Hours suffers from misleading ideas about love, life, and death, some of which stem from its source novel by Michael Cunningham. But it remains the best-acted film of 2002, boasting one of the most spectacular casts I’ve ever seen in one movie. It seamlessly sews together three complicated and emotionally demanding storylines. And it works like the best poetry, giving us room to explore ideas and issues instead of narrowing itself to simple moral lessons.”
I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself: So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn’t the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then. - Clarissa Vaugn
Happiness, they say, is fleeting. But it is what everyone wants. What everyone is ultimately demanding from life in whatever form it may come. And when it hides its face, some people make drastic choices, convinced they don’t have any. Some choose life. Some choose death. If one is leaning towards the latter, then stay away from this movie. It can be more than just disturbing. For even when one chose life, she didn’t find happiness.
It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It’s what you can bear. There it is. No one’s going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life. -Laura Brown
My Blueberry Nights
“a story of a woman who takes the long route instead of the short one to meet up with the man she loves”
Moira MacDonald of The Seattle Times said, “My Blueberry Nights is not for those who like movies in which things happen; rather, it’s for those in a mood to float, sometimes deliciously.”
Next to seasoned actresses like Rachel Weiss and Natalie Portman, Norah Jones looked bland. Which isn’t a bad thing because that’s what her character, Elizabeth, is supposed to be. You can look at this movie as a love story, an extended music video, an exhibition on stylized filmmaking, or a lesson on some life characters you’ll meet along the way. The movie was directed by Wong Kar-Wai, a Hong Kong-based filmmaker famous for his highly stylized films, music videos, and commercials.
Elizabeth is a heartbroken girl who ended up spending nights over a cafe run by Jeremy (Jude Law), munching on the blueberry pie nobody else ever orders. Thoroughly unhappy and hoping to find herself, she decided to leave New York one night without saying goodbye to Jeremy. Traveling by bus, she first ended up in Memphis where she juggled two jobs (in the morning she is Betty, working at a cafeteria, and during the nights she is Lizzie, a waitress in a pub). There she met a cop (David Strathairn) who drinks every night because his wife, Sue Lynne (Rachel Weiss), left him. She then moved to Arizona, where she took a job in a casino, as Beth. Here we meet Leslie (Natalie Portman), a girl with daddy issues. She’s a card player who totally trusts her own capacity to read people, but never trust others. Throughout her road trip, Elizabeth sends Jeremy letters, sharing with him her experiences while Jeremy tries to call every diner in the cities of her letters to reach her.
Elizabeth looked at Sue Lynne and Leslie with untrained but curious eyes. These are women who represent what she will never be - self-assured and walking the earth as if the world owe them something for their beauty. But she only wants one thing - a car. Probably so she can drive herself back to New York and back to Jeremy. The last letter she wrote is my favorite:
Dear Jeremy,
In the last few days I’ve been learning not to trust people. And I’m glad I failed. Sometimes we depend on other people’s mirror to define ourselves and tell us who we are. Each reflection makes me like myself a little more.Elizabeth
In the end, of course, she came back to New York for the blueberry pies.
Talking About Love Is…
…like dancing about architecture
I probably should not be writing about another, more so an old, movie, not a lot of people know about.
But there’s something about this little treasure of a film that merits mention even 10 years after its limited release. Playing by Heart, originally titled Dancing About Architecture, is a movie I’ve long been wanting to see ever since I have become an X-Files fan. Gillian Anderson’s in it, yes, joining an impressive list of big-name stars - Angelina Jolie, Ryan Philippe, Sean Connery, Gena Rowlands, Dennis Quaid, Madeleine Stowe, Ellen Burstyn, Jay Mohr, Anthony Edwards, and John Stewart.
Its premise is simple - finding, losing, and holding on to love. Eleven seemingly unrelated characters deal with relationship problems, among which an elderly couple who began arguing about an affair that could’ve happened 25 years ago; an adulterous affair brought about by souring marriages; a socially awkward workaholic who thinks dating is “calculated artificiality ,” after marrying a man who turned out to be gay; and two Gen-X clubbers who amazingly have vocabularies of literature majors.
Angelina Jolie shines in this film, when she was a relative unknown. I don’t know if John Stewart has starred in any other movie but he was surprisingly good, and charming, as Gillian Anderson’s suitor here. Here’s one conversation involving Gillian’s character, one that I’ve had several times in my own life:
Friend: You’re a wonderful person. You should have someone in your life. That’s all I’m saying.
Meredith: I can still be a wonderful person and not have anybody in my life. Look, I’m just not interested in a relationship right now.
Friend: You are such a liar.
Meredith: I am such a liar.
I guess that says it all. But if I can quote one line that represents what the entire film is saying, it will be one from the elders:
…the wonderful thing about falling in love is that you learn everything about that person, and so quickly; and if it’s true love, then you start to see yourself through their eyes…and it brings out the best in you…and it’s almost as if you’re falling in love with yourself.
Music Is Everywhere
There’s this movie I’ve heard of once but quickly forgotten until I read about it again from The Fencesitter. It just came back to me while watching the opening credits that I knew there’s a movie that stars Freddie Highmore, Keri Russel, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Robin Williams.
August Rush is about an orphan who’s looking for his birth parents. He claims to be hearing them through the wind; through music. He leaves the adoption home he’s been staying on for the last 11 years and set on a journey to find the very people who gave him the music . Unknown to him, both his parents don’t know he is alive. Upon his arrival to New York, the city where he was created on the one night that should’ve lasted forever, it soon became apparent that Evan/August is a child prodigy. Untrained and unexperienced, writing and playing music came to him naturally. Which wouldn’t be such a mystery if the people who discovered him knew that his mother was a cellist who came from a line of classical musicians and his father was a rock musician. Nobody believes him when he say he’s following the music to find them. Why would they? They don’t have his gift.
Maybe not everyone will like this movie. It requires forgetting a certain level of maturity. It requires believing in a fantasy. Schmaltzy as the plot is, every music lover will find something to relate to. Even cry about. I loved it because I’m naturally sentimental - I believe in love at first sight and that people can feel they belong together even if they don’t really know each other; even if they don’t end up together just yet, they will find each other in the end. I believe in that kind of magic just as I believe I will someday write music. Fantastic as it may sound, watching this movie reminded me of those things. You know when they say something “has a heart”? Well, this film took mine as well.
Evan/August loves music more than he loves food. The movie clearly shows just how much it does, too. Watch it for the uber talented cast. Watch it for the music.
Facade
People who need peopleAre the luckiest people in the worldWe’re children needing other childrenAnd yet letting our grown-up prideHide all the need insideActing more like children than childrenFrom the song People (sung by Barbra Streisand), Funny Girl original motion picture soundtrack (1968)
Barbra Streisand’s first film role was that of Fanny Brice in this semibiographical movie account of the hit Broadway musical. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1968, an honor she shared with the late Katharine Hepburn.
That scene when Fanny sang People is one of my favorites from the movie. I think it’s all because of Streisand and the song. In what should be a particularly romantic scene, with the two leads enjoying a rare moment alone, I entirely forgot about the leading man and focused on Barbra’s clear, awesome voice (although I must say that’s also because I’m not particularly charmed by the Don Juan type). I was compelled to ask a friend if she thinks Barbra Streisand is overrated. The answer was a clear no. I rest my case.
Fanny was funny. She was not a classic beauty but her ambition and sheer determination gave her a flourishing career in a business that normally only embraces belles and sex symbols. Then she fell in love. It didn’t end well - her husband rained on her parade, that’s why.
In another of my favorite scenes, Fanny comes out to greet the reporters after it became known that her husband, a pathological gambler, had been arrested for embezzlement. She was devastated while her back was turned, and then she faced the cameras with a bright smile and a handful of jokes. That’s an actress for you - image is everything; reality, secondary.
Another friend told me that people who appears to be gregarious and animated all the time are sometimes the loneliest people in the world. “Fun” is their way of taking the very “non-fun” parts of their private lives. I suppose there’s truth to that claim because I’ve seen some first hand. But it shouldn’t be our business to measure our cumulative loneliness. I think maybe we should start learning how to need each other. At least until we’ve come full circle and being needy starts to make us unhappy and it all becomes a joke.
This Is Me, Now
…make the world stop right here. Make everything stop and stand still and never move again. Make the moors never change and you and I never change… No matter what I ever do or say, Heathcliff, this is me - now - standing on this hill with you. This is me, forever.
Cathy to Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights (1939)
The 1939 film that starred Laurence Olivier as the tortured Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as the spoiled and free-spirited Cathy Earnshaw is widely acclaimed as the greatest version in celluloid of Emily Bronte’s classic novel. Its focus on only half of the novel worked to its advantage, I believe. There’s enough torment enveloped in the tumultuous affair between the doomed lovers as it is without dwelling on the vengeful events that transpired after Cathy’s death.
As impossible love stories go, Cathy and Heathcliff are two very complex characters whose love, no matter how grand, was not able to prevail, much less get a chance. Cathy’s pronounciations, quoted above, meant nothing because she changes her attitude toward Heathcliff as soon as she changes from farm dresses to corsets. She realized he is her other half, but thought him beneath her in stature and therefore unworthy. Heathcliff, on the other hand, loved Cathy with all his soul but was far too consumed by his grudges. Even in death, he did not wish Cathy peace.
On a personal note, I’ve never hoped for the world to stop and stay the same. I still want change. Which is one way of saying I haven’t found that hill where I can stand on and declare that, “This is it! I have everything I could ever want, nothing else matters.” Its not even about material things but it will be too sappy to say that its about love. And what if I’ll never get to find that kind? Not Cathy and Heathcliff’s. Theirs is an obsession and the kind of love that destructs. I’ve always wanted a fairy tale. But when you’ve passed that age when you believe in princes and knights in shining armor, you’ll look into the mirror and see a girl in ordinary clothes looking back with her sad eyes.
Well, this is me now. It won’t last forever.