Film
COLD WAR
Zula’s Shame Versus
Wiktor’s Desperation
An Impossible Love
“I knocked, I cried, she wouldn’t open up.” That is Wiktor’s torment. These lyrics begin Pawel Pawlikowski’s film Cold War and foretell the fate of Wiktor and Zula’s love. A love that never had a chance. Theirs is a war originating in Zula’s history. A history that spawned deep shame and distrust of love. Just…
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CAPERNAUM
Desperation & Heartbreak Of An Abused & Neglected Boy
Finding A Voice
Zain is the face of desperation. The poster child for what neglect, abuse, poverty, and heartbreak can do. We watch Nadine Labaki’s film Capernaum – as despair, longing, anguish, the deepest of grief, emotional torture; and finally frustration and rage take over Zain’s otherwise stunning features. But, even more to the point, Zain is the…
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SUMMER WITH MONIKA
(Ingmar Bergman, 1953)
Reality & Childhood Trauma
Ends An Idyllic Summer Love
Summer love on a deserted island isn’t real life. That’s the Gordian knot in Bergman’s 1953 Summer With Monika. This erotic and heartbreaking film tells the story of two adolescents caught in the throes of an idyllic love. It’s a love they both long for, given their troubled and sad early lives. And also an escape…
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WILD STRAWBERRIES
(Ingmar Bergman 1957)
Cold Mother Stops Emotional Time
& Sentences A Boy To Loneliness
“One sleeps in one’s childhood’s shoes,” Bergman remembers Swedish poet Maria Wine, saying, and “that was the real starting point of Wild Strawberries.” (p. 212*) It’s true. And, some live inside the echoes of a cold mother. Every psychoanalyst knows how our childhoods slumber within each waking and dreaming moment of our lives, creating their…
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IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK
That “I Got You” Kind Of Love
The Best Remedy For Hate, Helplessness & Despair
The River’s family’s “I Got You” kind of love is If Beale Street Could Talk’s most potent reminder of exactly what transcends hate, helplessness, and despair. We see it when Tish’s dad holds her: “I got you, baby, I got you.” When Tish says to her newborn son: “I got you. I got you. I…
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CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?
Writer’s Block?
It’s That Critic In Your Head
Lee Israel has talent; she just doesn’t believe she does. We can see it in Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me. In a creative way she impersonates the letters of great writers, adding her own writerly wit; but, hiding behind their names. (In fact, the NY Times called her book: Can You Ever Forgive…
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