Top 100 Club: JDC

[Sandy]

The Squid and the Whale



If you skate upon thin ice
You'd be wise if you thought twice
Before you made another single move   -- "Figure Eight" Schoolhouse Rock


I had just read saltine's quote before starting this film and it stayed with me throughout.

SOME MIGHT CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING A SPOILER. I OBVIOUSLY DON'T THINK IT IS.

The importance of The Lost Daughter for me was the exploration of that thing about motherhood that is never spoken of but every young mother learns on day 1 of the experience which is the sacrifice of every other possibility for your life except motherhood. I had that profound moment when I brought my second child home from the hospital with my first still in a crib. It's so debilitating mentally and physically and spiritually. NO MAN however involved in the life of his children can ever understand that. For me the film was profound in a way I'm not sure it would strike every viewer.

Compound these despondent feelings with having a spouse who's not interested in participating in parenting. Joan is on her own when it comes to raising Walt and Frank. Sure, Bernard will show up perfunctorily, giving lip service to ease his own mind, but he's not in the trenches. He's not invested. His children are utilized for his own interest; pawns in his chess game. Mostly, Bernard floats above it all, not aware of the damage he's doing until the family rug is pulled out from underneath him.

Poor Joan. She's villainized for seeking love in her life and for not being able to individuate out of that marriage. No wonder she has something to write about. No wonder her words strike a chord in others. Finally, when she's found a voice, she can say goodbye to Bernard. But what a prize to pay. Her children are carted back and forth and her eldest decides she is no longer a good mother. That thin ice is no joke. How often had she stood on the precipice, and seeing the consequences, stepped back in fear? I'm guessing more times than she can count.

The family could have stayed in that figure eight holding pattern for a long, long time; never growing, never living. Now, even with the jagged edges exposed, they can begin to heal.

[jdc]

Thanks for watching, Sandy… not always clear how you felt by the end of your write ups.. I know  “enjoy” is the correct idea but was it  rewarding in any way?




The dad certainly is not a sympathetic character and is pretty clueless to how his casual remarks are interpreted by his children. While the movie is fiction, it borrows from Noah Baumbach’s life…

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/4987307

CONAN: There's so many things in which you recognize yourself, no matter what age or sex you are, in some of these characters, and it is--it's both funny and it's really not a pleasant revelation.

Mr. BAUMBACH: Right. Right. And I certainly, you know, have had to sort of deal with, you know, things about myself and writing it that, you know, I'm not always so proud of.

CONAN: I bet. Treating your first girlfriend, for example. This is--I'm not sure anybody has come out on the good end of this.

Mr. BAUMBACH: Right. Well, that was an example where, you know, if I was going to be true to how I was at that age with other girls, I couldn't depict a particularly sympathetic character.

CONAN: Well, the girl is entirely sympa--she's wonderful.

Mr. BAUMBACH: She is. Not the boy.

CONAN: Cute, smart, interesting. The boy is just a--well, a boar in this particular example.

Mr. BAUMBACH: Well, he doesn't have great examples to learn from.

[Sandy]

That's a very honest exchange with Baumbach. The film feels real, because he was willing to expose/explore the truths about his parents and himself. That's pretty gutsy.

Thanks for watching, Sandy… not always clear how you felt by the end of your write ups.. I know  “enjoy” is the correct idea but was it  rewarding in any way?

Yes!

I was thoroughly uncomfortable watching it, because those truths confronted my own truths and exposed them and they felt raw. I wish I had parented differently in some ways and wonder if I made the right decisions when it came to co-parenting. That internal excoriation was a good exercise though. It allowed me to observe my guilty feelings and then put them into perspective and show some compassion for how I've maneuvered through.

I've heard it said a few different ways, but Brenna Yovanoff says it well, “When you name something, you take away some of its power. It becomes known.”

That particular guilt inside was there, even if I wasn't fully willing to look at it. Now I've defanged it some. So yes, the film was very rewarding.

[Eric/E.T.]

A Ghost Story



Tell 'em, Neil.

I basically slotted this in between grocery shopping and the Cardinals' game. I had been wanting to see this, but my main apprehension was that I thought it'd be a 90-minute sad-fest where Casey Affleck haunts Rooney Mara 'til they both just have to go. Something like that. It was that, in part, but then so much more. You know I've been on my Zen practice, and I'm trying to invest more into pure experience than having to make rational sense of everything I see and do, because that takes something huge and shrinks it down, distorts it. This is the type of film (as with Labyrinth of Cinema yesterday, though different experiences) that you surrender yourself to. I mean, it had me at that overhead shot of Mara and Affleck in one of the more beautifully filmed embraces you'll ever see, but THE SHOT is when Mara has to look at the body, and Lowery lingers and lingers and lingers until we have a ghost. My worries were at the same time being confirmed, but with Lowery's steady hand, I no longer minded if we were just to be haunted by Affleck's presence for another hour-fifteen or so, these frames are so tightly, lovingly composed. But then...Mara leaves, and the ghost does not. It is from that point forward that this thing shoots into the stratosphere, becomes about so much more than two lovers prematurely separated. It becomes about the futility of regret, modernity, and the precariousness of life itself. The monologue by musical artist Will Oldham could be considered a pretentious touch, but in context of what Affleck's ghost is experiencing, it's totally appropriate and adds to the mind-expanding effect of the film. The clincher is the return to the lost love, bringing this thing not precisely full-circle, but back to the origin after going in all sorts of directions, in a way that was emotionally rewarding and perfectly paced.

I know I just got done watching this, I'm trying not to overreact too much in light of that fact, but this is probably going to be my #2 of 2017, just behind The Florida Project. Get Out is brilliant, but I think going with that alternate ending is what pushes it back to #3. This film made my extended MLK weekend.

Apologies if editing isn't great, Cards-Rams going to start. You know how it goes.

[jdc]

Damn.. now you are making me want to rewatch it, it still is only a 1 time watch for me.  No talking about scores unless on the NFL thread, I am going to sit at a bar with my iPad a bit later and watch the reply of the game.  Since Covid, we have had a “no entertainment” rule at bars, they can’t play sports on TV or have live music.  But BYOD to watch