Posts Tagged ‘grief’
WINTER LIGHT
Ingmar Bergman (1963)
A Man Who Need Cannot Love
Reverend Tomas Ericsson is a man who cannot need. And, because he can’t, he struggles with both God and love. Tomas over and over coldly rejects his desperately loving former lover, Marta. Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light 1963, slowly reveals the source of his loss of faith. Tomas loved his dead wife: “When she died, so…
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LOLITA
Humbert & Lolita?
Pathological Reactions To Loss
We’ve all been intrigued with Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita since the classic film arrived on the scene in 1962. But, isn’t the burning question: Is there more to understand about Humbert and Lolita beyond, “he’s a pedophile and she’s a troubled 14-year-old seductress?” The answer is yes, there’s plenty. Believe it or not, both have pathological…
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ROMA
Betrayal & Loss
2 Ways Of Managing Grief
Grief is a complex thing. Each of us grieves in our own way and for our own reasons. Alfonso Cuaron’s sensitive and compelling Roma, tells the story of Cleo, a domestic employee, and her employer, Ms. Sofia. We follow two very different women linked together in parallel universes of betrayal and loss. Two women with…
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PHANTOM THREAD
What’s It Really About? Reynolds & Alma’s Perverse Feeding Game?
Paul Thomas Anderson has done it again. He’s a master at exploring the various kinds of perverse power games involved in problems with dependency and love. Anderson’s new film, Phantom Thread, is another brilliant character study to add to Boogie Nights, Magnolia, The Master, and Inherent Vice (to name a notable few). In Phantom Thread,…
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LEO HURWITZ
ESSAY ON DEATH
IN MEMORY OF JFK 1964
“A very dangerous and uncertain world, the President said on that last day …” Leo Hurwitz’s Essay On Death (Watch Film) speaks to death’s randomness. Of course, JFK’s murder wasn’t random. But death can come out of nowhere at any time. And, that means we live constantly with the fragility of life. At the same…
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THREE BILLBOARDS
OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI
How Does The Buck Finally Stop?
Martin McDonagh’s darkly comic and deeply painful Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri gives us a tough look at how anger and blame is one (ineffective) way of trying to handle very difficult feelings. We have Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), a bereaved mom: hardened, blunt, feeling uncharacteristically helpless, and furious about it. The town’s much loved…
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