Salvador Mallo, Almodovar’s tortured filmmaker in his new film Pain and Glory, was once a happy boy. And, his beautiful mother, Jacinta, carefree and loving; until they moved to a cave. Slowly, young Salvador (although not consciously aware) begins to carry a heavy burden: his mother’s bitter unhappiness. Jacinta’s growing discontent with her life, with …
Silence isn’t always golden. Not in Ingmar Bergman’s book. And, his various film treatises on silence speak to us loudly on many planes of emotional existence, and those planes are never smooth. Of course, silence can provide a necessary space for personal truths to appear. For imaginings to ripen and take hold. Or, a respite …
Even beautiful love stories have their complications when grieving for an old love isn’t over. Claude Lelouch’s captivating film A Man And A Woman 1966 has a lot to say about what it takes not to turn away from a new chance to fall in love. It’s in the story Jean-Louis tells Anne early in …
Forgiveness is overrated. Understanding is not. And, there’s much to understand in Jennifer Kent’s riveting, violently troubling, and powerful new film, The Nightingale; about trauma, PTSD, unbearable grief, and the sometimes unimaginable sources of empathy. No, no one should ever be expected to forgive their abusers. “Forgiveness” for sadistic cruelty isn’t healing. What helps is …
What are the basic ingredients in Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails’s The Last Black Man In San Francisco? An old Victorian house. A young man who has no home. A mother who abandoned him and can’t keep him in her heart. A necessary fantasy. A Greek Chorus (that speaks the anger, hate, and under it, …
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 …
