To be honest, it took me a really long time to write this blog post. I watched Marcel the Shell with Shoes On a few months ago but didn’t get around to writing the post. I mean, how can you convey how this incredible film made you feel? Seriously. It was that good. It was a really cute film, and for some reason I found Marcel’s voice very soothing. Before I saw the movie, I saw the trailer for it. Normally the films I see from A24 are R-rated features like Midsommar, Hereditary and X, all films that I don’t have the stomach to watch unfortunately because I am not a big fan of scary movies with a lot of blood. To be fair, I have seen quite a few A24 features, like Lady Bird, Uncut Gems and Minari, and those weren’t super bloody features. But I was really excited when they said they were coming out with a PG-rated feature about a shell who goes on an adventure to find his family. I had not seen the original “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” clip when it came out (or maybe I did, but it was a long time ago, so my memory is fuzzy) When I saw the trailer, the song they played during the trailer was “Take Me Home” by Phil Collins, and that has been one of my favorite songs since I was a kid. I remember on the way to school in the car with the radio on, my mom and I listening to those powerful drums and the moving vocals of Phil Collins. There was something so beautiful about this song, and it still gives me goosebumps when I listen to it. I ended up watching the trailer for Marcel the Shell with Shoes On three times, and each time I watched the trailer I started crying because it looked like a very touching story.
From what I can remember about the movie, it is about Marcel, a small shell who goes on a big adventure with his Nana Connie and his trusty friend, Dean Fleischer Camp. They have to go on a journey to find Marcel’s family because the family lived in the house of a couple who got into an argument and the boyfriend walked off with Marcel’s family of fellow shells in a drawer. Marcel learns the spirit of not giving up on himself, even when he faces challenges along the way when trying to find his family. The movie also shows how Marcel’s journey goes public on YouTube and how Marcel deals with being famous on the Internet. I thought the most touching part of the movie (then again, the entire movie was quite touching) was when Marcel reunited with his family, and he sings “Peaceful Easy Feeling” by The Eagles. For some reason, I couldn’t stop tearing up during this scene because it was really adorable and also just really poignant considering Marcel lost his Nana Connie while on his journey. Nana Connie has so much wisdom and she was really supportive of Marcel throughout his journey. For some reason, this movie made me think of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie or really any SpongeBob episode where they featured real people because in the movie David Hasselhoff makes a cameo appearance as a live action human being (not a cartoon) and takes them back to Bikini Bottom (I saw the movie back in 2004 so it’s been more than a minute, so my plot details are pretty fuzzy.) I really love the song “Peaceful Easy Feeling” by The Eagles, so I think that is why the scene where Marcel sings it is really touching. I thought it was cool how Marcel got to appear on 60 Minutes because that was his dream.
The movie also made me want to appreciate the little things in life. Marcel lives a very simple and beautiful life, and his Nana Connie tends the garden, and he has his living space set up in a certain way. And his voice was also really soothing and sweet. I honestly don’t know why I didn’t watch Marcel the Shell with Shoes On when it first came out, because it would have cheered me up when I was in high school. This is the original video. It really warms my heart each time I watch it.
Content warning: I briefly talk about abortion in this review since the movie touches on abortion.
I was browsing on Netflix what movie to watch, and I came across this movie called The Miracle Club. A few months ago I heard Dame Maggie Smith was in another movie, and I was like, What?!? Fuck yes!!! The woman has had a very long career as an actress: she was Professor McGonagall, she was the Dowager Countess, and so many other roles. So, I was very pumped she would be starring in a movie with Kathy Bates, another great actress. (I loved her as Molly Brown in Titanic) I had not known much about the movie before watching it, but it was such a great film overall. The acting was great, and it made me want to visit Ireland again.
The film also talks about some heavy subjects as well. It takes place in the 1960s and it’s about a woman named Chrissie who returns to Ireland after her mother’s death. Chrissie travels with two older women, Eileen and Lily, and a younger woman named Dolly, who formed a group called The Miracles as part of a talent show. They get the opportunity to go to Lourdes, France, because they believe that a pilgrimage to this place will help them heal from their problems. Eileen has a lump in her breast, Dolly’s son, Daniel, cannot speak, so she hopes that he will talk on the pilgrimage, and Lily wants to go because she has always wanted to go. However, Eileen and Lily bear a grudge against Chrissie for not coming back to Ireland until after her mother died. While on their trip to Lourdes, Chrissie tries to patch things up with Eileen and Lily, but it is difficult at first. However, the relationship between these four women is tested when they finally get into the baths at Lourdes. Dolly tries to get her son to get into the baths to try to cure him of his inability to speak, but he refuses to get in. I appreciate that they didn’t just magically cure him because it showed me that Daniel was going to talk when he was ready, and that Dolly didn’t need to feel like a failure just because her son wasn’t able to talk. Dolly feels like she failed as a mother, and she beats herself up. She also confesses to Eileen, Lily and Chrissie that she tried to abort Daniel when he was in the womb. Chrissie ends up being able to relate to Dolly because she tried to abort her child when she was pregnant. It is such a deep and profound moment between these two women, especially because Lily and Eileen made a lot of assumptions about Chrissie and were angry that she didn’t come back to Ireland. Lily has a moment when she is about to go into the baths and is sitting with Chrissie, and she says she won’t ever forgive herself for the grudge she bore against Chrissie, but Chrissie forgives her. Even though the four women found that the pilgrimage to Lourdes didn’t work these miracles they had wanted (Eileen still had to go to a doctor for her lump, it wasn’t magically cured by getting in the water) the priest who goes with them, Father Dermot, tells them that the real purpose of the trip was to have faith even if there weren’t miracles. This kind of reminds me of Buddhism because there is no magic; we bring out our Buddhahood as we are. Buddhahood isn’t a far-off destination we need to escape to; it is present in our immediate realities. It’s why I have to chant every day, because I have to understand that my enlightenment, my absolute happiness, is within my life, not outside of me.
I love the part where Dolly, Lily and Eileen leave their husbands to fend for themselves when they leave for Lourdes. The men are so used to letting the wives take after the kids and clean, so of course they are resistant to them going off to Lourdes. It kind of made me think of this movie I saw called Bad Moms, but of course this movie was set in 1967 and they were going on a trip with a priest, so they couldn’t get too wild like the women in Bad Moms. But it’s kind of similar to the movie Bad Moms because when Amy decides she is not doing anyone’s dirty work, she has her son and daughter figure things out on their own rather than doing their homework and making them breakfast. Kiki also learns to set boundaries with her husband and lets him take care of the kids for a while (of course, because he made her take care of the kids all the time, it is stressful for him at first and he is always calling her for help) In The Miracle Club, there is a scene where Eileen’s husband, Frank, go gets the groceries and he accidentally drops them everywhere and is having trouble picking them up. A woman in the neighborhood comes along and helps him and makes some comment about how now he knows what it’s like when his wife has to go out and get groceries and cook all day. When Dolly is away, her husband tries to change their kid’s nappy with disastrous results. And Lily’s husband sits in bed drinking tea and eating crumpets alone in bed. Through their pilgrimage, these four women become closer than ever.
Overall, I really liked this movie. For some reason, I totally forgot that it was set in the 1960s. I somehow thought it was set in the modern day. A couple of other great movies that take place in Ireland are The Banshees of Inisherin and Belfast. The former is a dark comedy that was pretty hard to watch at times, but it resonated with me because the main character experiences depression and loneliness, although I am grateful that today I can go to therapy and talk about my anxiety and depression with someone. Back then they called it “despair” and there probably wasn’t therapy or medication one could take to manage their depression (the film is set in the 1920s on a remote island, and this of course was way before cell phones and computers were around) Belfast was intense but a really touching film about a boy growing up during the 1969 riots in Northern Ireland. It also has Van Morrison’s music in it, which I love. I also really love Laura Linney’s acting in The Miracle Club. Several years ago, I watched a movie called The Nanny Diaries, and she played a really mean character named Mrs. X. Mrs. X treats Scarlett Johansson’s character, Nanny, like total dirt and Mr. X is a scumbag who makes inappropriate advances towards Nanny. I guess that is what I love about watching movies, though, because actors are so versatile and can play a variety of roles. Also, this is a tangent, but for some reason Dolly’s character (the very beautiful young one with the brown hair in an updo) kind of looked to me like the American singer Lana del Rey for some reason. Every time she was on screen, I just thought, “Wait, is that Lana del Rey?” and then I realized “Oh wait no, that’s a different person who just looks very similar to Lana del Rey.”
The Miracle Club. Directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan. Rated PG-13.
Disclaimer: This movie review does talk about suicide. If you or someone is in crisis, please call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
A few months ago, I watched the trailer for a Belgian film called Close. It was so touching and powerful that I wanted to watch the movie, so I decided to watch it last night. As you know, I love movies distributed by the film distribution company, A24, and honestly, after watching this movie, all I could think was, Man A24 you got me with these tearjerker movies! It was a very powerful story, and the acting was incredible. It is a powerful story about friendship, grief and love. The film score was also breathtaking, and by the end credits, my tear-ducts were exhausted, and I had a huge wad of tissues at my side.
If you haven’t seen the film yet, it takes place in rural Belgium and it’s about two thirteen-year-old boys named Leo and Remi who have a close friendship with each other. They ride their bicycles through the countryside on the way to school, they have inside jokes that they share with each other, and their bond is just so pure and authentic. There was one scene where they are eating together, and Leo jokingly slurps up his spaghetti noodle while placing his hands behind his ears, and Remi follows suit, prompting them and their parents to crack up. Remi is also an oboist in the school music group, and Leo and him crack jokes while Remi rehearses for his oboe recital. Leo also comes to Remi’s recital, which means a lot to Remi because he and Leo have such a special friendship. When Remi played his oboe solo, I broke down crying. It was just such a beautiful piece, and seeing the special connection that Leo and Remi share during that moment Remi is playing showed me how incredibly deep and beautiful their friendship is.
Seeing Leo and Remi share these incredibly natural moments together was so beautiful, which made the rest of the movie very devastating to watch. Leo and Remi’s friendship changes over time as the bullying at school continues and people start to make homophobic and unkind comments about Leo and Remi’s friendship. In one scene, a group of girls ask Leo and Remi if they are a couple, and Leo tells them that they are not. Remi wonders why Leo finds it so problematic that they have this kind of close platonic bond, and he tries to not let it affect his friendship with Leo. But Leo has changed. He has started letting the bullying get to him, so he tries to distance himself from Remi so that people will stop teasing them. However, Remi becomes hurt when he sees Leo is purposely trying to ignore him and distance himself from him, and he attempts to make new friends, but he has such a close bond of trust with Leo that it’s hard for him to feel comfortable making new friends. He even goes to visit Leo when he is playing ice hockey, and Leo tries to ignore him, but Remi wants to continue to support his friend. However, as Leo continues to distance himself, Remi becomes lonely and soon he stops coming to school. One day, on a field trip, the teacher is doing rolecall, and he finds Remi isn’t on the bus. While on the field trip everyone seems to be having a smooth and fun time, but then the chaperones have to get everyone back to the school since there has been an emergency. They head back to the school, and several parents are lined up to meet with their kids. Everyone gets off the bus, but Leo stays on. His mom comes to pick him up, and when Leo asks her to tell him what is going on, she tells him she will tell him when he is off the bus. But Leo insists on knowing what happened, so his mom hesitates then tells him that Remi died. Leo then has to navigate the intense painful grieving process that comes after finding out about Remi’s death.
The scene where Leo meets with Remi’s mother, Sophie, was powerful. Sophie works at a hospital in the neonatal unit, and one day Leo goes to work to visit her because he is carrying a huge feeling of guilt. He feels that he was responsible for Remi’s death, and he wants to let Sophie know that he feels that way. When she approaches him, he tries to tell her this, but he hesitates because he doesn’t know how she will react to his apology. Sophie tells him that she is at work and that he needs to come back another time, but she ends up giving him a ride home after finding out he took the bus to see her. While she is driving him, Leo confesses that he feels responsible for Remi’s suicide. Sophie gets quiet and then starts crying, and then she tells Leo to get out of the car. Leo gets out and runs through the forest. Sophie realizes that Leo might endanger himself because he feels so horrible about what happened, so she runs into the forest to get him back, and she finds him standing in the forest, holding up a large stick to defend himself. He is sobbing and is racked with so much grief and pain, because he regrets ostracizing himself from Remi and he realizes that no amount of guilt is going to get Remi back. Sophie understands this because she is also racked with grief at losing her son, and she embraces Leo in a huge hug.
There was another really sad scene where Sophie and Peter are eating dinner with Leo and his family, and Leo’s brother, Charlie, is talking about his plans to travel with his girlfriend. Peter suddenly starts crying because he is remembering his son, Remi, and Sophie gets up and goes outside because she is grieving, too. It just reminded me that suicide has an impact on loved ones, and even when you think no one will need you when you are around, it’s not true at all and when someone takes their own life, it really hurts their family, friends and people who knew them. It’s why, when Leo is in a group of his classmates and they are remembering Remi, he realizes that these people didn’t really know Remi like he (Leo) did because they were never that close with him. One of them talks about how Remi seemed like a happy person all of the time, but Leo knows about how Remi being ostracized was impacting his mental health, and so he questions the student, like “How do you know Remi was always happy?” And he finally leaves when the other students are sharing their thoughts on Remi because they all feel to Leo like very shallow remembrances. It reminded me of this book I read called The Reading List, and the protagonist has a brother who takes his own life. When she looks on social media, she finds people have written all of these shallow comments about her brother’s mental health and she realizes that these people aren’t offering genuine condolences because they rarely knew how deep his depression was or how hard it was for him to ask for help.
This movie also reminded me of the harm that homophobia has on kids, because I just feel like if the kids were more accepting of Leo and Remi’s friendship, then Leo wouldn’t have felt the need to ostracize himself from Remi. It would easy for me to tell Leo, Oh, haters are gonna hate. Just do you. But kids are still growing and forming their identities in a very cruel world that tells them that they can’t be themselves unless they hide who they are. Also, being ostracized hurts like hell, so it was understandable that Remi was feeling incredibly isolated because his one true friend no longer wants to hang out with him. It was painful to see Leo and Remi being called homophobic slurs and being disrespected. It also showed me though how ideas of manhood can influence kids and have a huge impact on how they view themselves. I used to use the term “toxic masculinity” but as I am learning more about it, I am coming to understand that masculinity isn’t in and of itself toxic. It’s cultural standards about how men should express their masculinity that can be a real problem. Gillette called this out in a commercial that featured boys bullying another boy, boys fighting and their fathers shaking their heads, laughing and joking “Boys will be boys,” and then these grown men catcalling women and engaging in sexual harassment. It then shows what happens when we have these tough conversations around outdated gender norms, and help these boys develop healthy self-esteem. They show these young men intervening when their fellow men try to catcall women and remind them how uncool that is, they show a father encouraging his daughter to affirm she is strong, and one of the dads at the barbeque breaking up a fight between two boys. I understand that the ad got a lot of mixed responses, and Saturday Night Live even parodied the commercial.
However, the first time I saw it, I got goosebumps and thought that Gillette did send a pretty important message about how, when men are forced to conform to stereotypes about what it means to be a man, they face a lot of stress to keep up with these unrealistic expectations, and it can lead to increased physical and mental health issues. It’s why I appreciate shows like Ted Lasso because they allow men to be vulnerable and also show what happens when men have spent years of their life not being allowed to be vulnerable, and how being vulnerable takes courage. Ted is trying to help these young men be the best versions of themselves, and he even starts a group where he and a few other men on the AFC Richmond team talk about their feelings with each other in an honest, judgement-free way. Ted also learns how it’s okay for him to ask for help, too, and that he doesn’t have to handle his panic attacks on his own. At first, Ted thinks it’s no big deal and that he doesn’t need therapy, unlike the young men he coaches on the team. However, when he has a severe panic attack, he realizes that he can’t deal with his panic attacks on his own and that he needs Dr. Fieldstone’s help. At first, it is hard for Ted to open up about his mental health, but when he goes through the intense process and opens up about his childhood and his life, he develops a close bond with Dr. Fieldstone and learns to trust her. Ted struggled to be vulnerable because he didn’t want to seem like he was letting anyone down, but what this show taught me is that it takes courage to admit you are struggling and need help.
The film Close reminded me of the power of friendship, but also of close male friendships. As a woman, I don’t have much insight into male friendships, but seeing these kinds of movies has helped me understand that male friendships can be just as complex and intimate as female friendships. Remi and Leo sleep in the same bed, they ride their bikes together, and they enjoy each other’s company. They just let themselves exist in each other’s company without a hidden agenda. Which is why it was painful to see Leo pushing Remi away. Leo starts doing stuff to distance himself from Remi, like kicking Remi out of his bed and forcing Remi to sleep in his own bed. It’s like the kids at school weren’t allowing Leo and Remi to define friendship in their own unique way. To fit in, Leo had to adhere to a certain idea of what it means to create friendships as a man, and Remi felt like he was losing Leo when Leo started acting differently towards him. It reminded me of this movie I saw called Moonlight, because there are two young men, Chiron and Kevin, who form a close bond with each other. Both of them admit to liking each other, and they kiss on the beach under the moonlight. Kevin is tight with Chiron and stands up for him, but then the school bully is picking on Chiron, and he wants Kevin to participate in the bullying. Kevin doesn’t want to betray Chiron’s trust, but he also doesn’t want the bully to beat him up, so he decides to participate in a cruel game where he has to pick out a young man in a circle to beat up, and he picks Chiron and beats him bloody. The bully gets off scot-free (I think) and Chiron ends up going into class and hitting him over the head with a desk, and Chiron gets arrested. Later on, when he is an adult, Chiron has adopted a tough-guy persona and is buff and has a set of grills, and he deals drugs. He has put on emotional armor so that he doesn’t get bullied like he did when he was younger. However, what breaks him emotionally is when he finally goes to visit his mother at a rehabilitation center where she is recovering from addiction. She admits she treated him poorly and loves him a lot, and they both break down in tears. When Chiron meets up with Kevin, they share a beautiful embrace and a really tender moment. This movie illuminated the beauty of men just being authentic and vulnerable with each other.
Close. Directed by Lukas Dhont. 104 minutes. Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving suicide, and brief language.
Content warning: brief descriptions of sexual violence.
Wow… I just finished the recent remake of The Color Purple, and my tear ducts did quite a workout during the course of this movie. I hadn’t seen the Broadway musical The Color Purple, and I had also not seen the older version with Whoopi Goldberg, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I remember reading the novel by Alice Walker for an African American Studies course in my sophomore year of college, and I remember it being just such a powerful book and so incredibly well-written. I decided to watch the 2023 movie last week, but I didn’t finish it until tonight because I was busy with some work stuff and some other stuff, so I didn’t finish the film until now. I think I just needed to have a good cry, and honestly, I hadn’t ugly cried during a movie since Elemental. I was sad that The Color Purple didn’t win an Oscar for anything, but now that I think about it, I think I put too much stock in what the Academy Award committee thinks about movies. I was excited to watch these awards shows this year, like the Golden Globes, the Grammys, the Screen Actors Guild Awards (I missed the Emmys. Darn!) and the Academy Awards. But while writing this, I had to remind myself that even if the film didn’t get an Oscar, it can still be a really good movie. I keep forgetting that there are plenty of good movies that didn’t get nominated or win Oscars or big-name awards. Art is a subjective experience, and everyone has different tastes with regards to music, literature, and movies, so I need to view the art through my own lens.
The Color Purple is a film that addresses a lot of serious issues, in particular the issue of sexual violence against Black women. Celie lives with her abusive stepfather, Alfonso, who rapes and impregnates Celie. Nettie supports Celie during the course of her pregnancy, and during her time of grief, when Alfonso takes away Celie’s children. A sleazy man named Mister takes interest in Celie, but Alfonso tells him that he can’t have her and that he should have Nettie instead, but Mister insists that he marry Celie and Alfonso lets him marry her. However, Mister is also abusive to Celie and drives Nettie away when she tries to defend Celie against Mister’s abuse. Nettie and Celie lose touch, and it seems that their friendship is over. Nettie has been writing letters to Celie, but Celie isn’t able to read them because Mister steals the letters from her and hides them so that she doesn’t find them. Celie’s life changes when a sexy performer named Shug Avery comes into town, and she is immediately smitten with her. Shug Avery represents freedom, sexuality, empowerment and independence, and she, too, develops feelings for Celie. However, Mister also loves Shug and while he treats Celie like dirt, he treats Shug like royalty, but Shug sees through Mister’s deceiving looks and understands that Mister abuses Celie and finds out that he is hiding Nettie’s letters from Celie, so she digs them up so she can read them. The film shows the power of friendship and sisterhood, especially in the face of trauma and grief, and I broke down in tears during the number where Celie gets to run her own clothing shop because I was just so happy for her after the hell that Mister and Alfonso put her through for so many years.
I really loved Sofia’s character in the film. When we first meet her, she is married to Harpo, Mister’s son, and is expecting a baby. However, she doesn’t let her husband talk down to her or treat her like a servant and has him do the domestic duties around the house. She and Celie become good friends, and she instills confidence in Celie when Celie is so broken-down by Mister’s abuse and doesn’t have anyone else that she can trust or confide in. She sings a song called “Hell No,” which basically tells Celie that she shouldn’t let any man talk down to her or treat her terribly because she deserves so much better. Later in the film, Sofia and Celie are out with her and Sofia’s kids, and this white woman named Miss Millie pulls up in her car and delivers a condescending remark to Sofia about her kids’ skin color (I wouldn’t even call what she said a compliment) and tells Sofia to come work for her as her maid. Sofia tells her to back off and a bunch of white policemen beat her and arrest her. Celie visits Sofia in prison and finds Sofia is no longer her extroverted confident self and that she has been beaten very badly. It was painful to watch this because it reminds me that when Black people have tried to assert their dignity to white authority, they are unfairly punished. It reminded me of this film I saw called Twelve Years a Slave; in the film, Solomon Northup is a free Black man who lives in New York. He has a comfortable life as a violinist and has a wife and two children, and a group of mysterious white men persuade him to join them for dinner. However, they end up drugging his wine, causing him to pass out, and they kidnap him and sell him into slavery. It was painful to watch, but it showed how brutal slavery actually was. When he was in prison, he tried to tell the white guard that he was a free man, but the guard tells him that he isn’t a free man and proceeds to call him a “runaway [n-word]” from Georgia. During the twelve years he is held captive, Solomon endures brutal treatment and the white slaveowners get rid of his legal name and refer to him as “Platt.” The white slaveowners demean and dehumanize the slaves on the plantation, and while they are all cruel people, Master Epps was one of the cruelest. After he gets out of slavery, Solomon comes back to his family, but it’s with a deep and painful heaviness because he went through these really painful experiences, and it really shook his confidence in himself and his life because he went from this environment in New York where he could live confidently as a Black man and feel good about himself to an environment in South where white people made him feel that he didn’t deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.
I love the scene where Celie leaves Mister’s house. It was a powerful scene because up until that point, Celie had put up with so many years of abuse from Mister and her father that she didn’t know what it was like to live freely. I really appreciate the characters of Shug and Sofia because they showed Celie that she didn’t have to take poor treatment from these men in her life and that she had to love and respect herself. Shug also encouraged Celie to embrace her sexuality, and I really loved the number “Push Da Button.” When I read the novel The Color Purple in college, I remember at the time I was struggling with my identity and in particular, my sexual orientation. I started looking up about asexuality, which is a sexual orientation in which one feels little to no sexual attraction towards others, and I started learning more about my reproductive health at the time, too. It was a challenge to embrace my asexuality for many years and it still is, but I’ve learned that it’s just another sexual orientation, it’s an intrinsic part of who I am, and it doesn’t define whether I am capable of a loving relationship or not. My sophomore year of college was, looking back, a time of discovery. I learned so much about myself and I learned to love my body and sexuality, too. There is a scene in the book where Celie masturbates and explores her sexuality after falling in love with Shug, and I remember that part precisely because it resonated with me at the time. Reading the part made me uncomfortable at first, but that’s because I had grown up with the people around me believing that it was taboo or a joke to explore one’s sexuality and body. But I realized at some point that many people go through their own journey of exploration, whether it’s their sexuality, their body or some other part of their life, and over time I learned to not feel ashamed for it. Exploring my body helped me appreciate it because I take it for granted a lot, and I need to become aware of its beauty and its practical functions so that I can take care of it every day. Loving my body is still a work in progress, to be honest, but I am getting better at embracing it.
Shug Avery also reminded me of Ma Rainey in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which is one of my favorite movies. Like Shug, Ma Rainey is unapologetic and celebrates her sexuality and independence. At the beginning, she is with her girlfriend, and she comes in late to the music studio, leaving the white record executives and her back-up band wondering where she is. When she arrives, she comes with a no-nonsense attitude, and there is one pivotal scene where she demands for the record executives to get her a Coca-Cola since the recording studio is extremely hot. The executives are upset that they have to cater to this Black woman’s needs, but to be honest, I don’t think Ma could have afforded to back down and be a pushover because of the times she was living in. There is a scene where she tells one of her band members that the record executives don’t care about her as a person, and that they just want to make a profit off of her voice. She knew that these white record executives weren’t going to compensate her fairly for her work, so she had to stick up for herself, or else they were going to steal her music, which is what they did to Levy, one of her band members, in the end because he was too eager to impress the white executives with his music. Levy’s fellow bandmates kept telling him that the white record executives didn’t care about him; to them, he was just a Black person and thus not worthy of being treated with respect. But he wanted these white people to respect him, and they ended up ripping off his music by having a white band record the song that he wrote without him getting any credit. During the behind-the-scenes feature after the movie, there is a part where Viola Davis is talking about the characters of Ma Rainey and Levy, and she says that Levy was more impatient and he wanted to become a quick success, and his ego was shaky. But Ma Rainey knew her worth as an artist, and she had spent time working hard at her career. She was focused on doing her job and producing the music that she wanted. She didn’t care about catering to other people’s taste; she tells her bandmate that she loves performing blues music because it makes you feel something deep. I think as a musician, I always have to remind myself why I love music, and I think it’s because music makes me feel things. It conveys human emotions and experiences, both the good ones and the bad ones. Viola Davis says that it is important to know your worth, and I resonated with that. People can rip you off and profit off of your stuff, and not everyone is going to respect you, so it’s important to first and foremost respect yourself. I feel like when you respect and value yourself, it helps you go through the process of creating art in a more authentic way, because you’re doing your best and you’re not focusing all the time on whether people like your music or not. I think this is what I need to do more of. Like Ma Rainey, Shug has a strong sense of self, and so she is able to encourage Celie to love herself and live in an authentic way.
I really love the choreography in The Color Purple. It was so powerful, and the minute the film began I found myself jamming to the music. I can’t imagine how many hours of practice these people had to put into dance. And I love the scene where Celie is reading Nettie’s letter and Nettie is telling her that she went to Africa and they raised Celie’s kids there, and as Nettie is speaking, there is a choreography of dancers from Africa, and the movements and the syncing of these movements was just really beautiful. It reminded me of when I watched this clip of Black dancers performing to “Wade in the Water,” and while watching it I got goosebumps because it was such a moving performance. I felt the dancer’s heart resonate deep within me, and I could feel her passion with every movement of her body, every rhythm and flow. I think that is why watching The Color Purple was such a moving experience because I could feel the heart and soul that the dancers put into this choreography. I had a similar experience watching Beyonce’s video album, Black is King. It was the year many of us were in quarantine, and that summer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd and other Black people were killed at the hands of police. I was confused, pained and frustrated, and I didn’t know how to express my pain at ongoing systemic racism and police brutality. When I watched Black is King, I cried through most of it, and watching it was a sort of healing for me. It reminded me that my people are beautiful, my people are awesome, and like many marginalized groups we have fought so hard to get our humanity recognized. When Beyonce was dancing and singing to “Find Your Way Back,” I just couldn’t stop crying because it was so empowering to see Beyonce and all these Black artists create this art as a way to help people like me, who were grieving the death of George Floyd, a safe space to experience joy, hope, frustration, and beauty. The video album also features a lot of collaborations with African artists, such as Burna Boy. It was a beautiful experience where I saw Black people reclaim and celebrate their heritage and tradition, and after having to watch the killing of George Floyd’s murder on my social media feed so many times, I needed to watch something that sent the message that Blackness was something to be celebrated and embraced rather than feared and hated. It also helped me understand my connections to the African Diaspora because it’s easy for me to only focus on my experience of being Black in America, but Black is King reminded me that Black music in America has deep roots in African musical traditions and those traditions need recognition and celebration. I took an African Popular music class in college, and it was so cool to listen to a variety of different artists from countries such as South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana. I had not listened to many musicians from Africa, other than Angelique Kidjo when she sang “Gimme Shelter” with British artist Joss Stone, so it was an enlightening experience to be in that class listening to and analyzing music by African artists.
The acting in The Color Purple was also phenomenal. Colman Domingo, man, what a talented actor. I have seen him in a few films, and he has such a wide range of acting chops. He was in If Beale Street Could Talk and plays Tish’s dad. He was also in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and plays one of the people in Ma Rainey’s band. He was also in this movie I saw called Zola, where he plays a brutal pimp. I didn’t recognize the actor who played Alfonso at first, but then I looked it up and saw Deon Cole was playing him. His role in this film was a huge contrast to other stuff I have seen him in. He was in the Old Spice commercials, and he was in a show I love called black-ish, where he plays this loveable but also goofy character named Charlie. It was different to see him go from playing this sweet and funny character in blackish to playing this really cruel character. But this reminds me why I love movies and actors so much, because they play a variety of roles and bring a sort of versatility to each role they play. I also really love Taraji P. Henson’s performance, and I hadn’t heard a lot of Fantasia’s music, but I loved her as the older version of Celie. Overall, this is a beautiful and moving film, and I recommend it.
The Color Purple. 2023. Directed by Blitz Bazawule. Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content, sexual content, violence and language.
I just finished watching a movie called The Humans. I love films from the distribution company A24, and The Humans is an A24 film. I didn’t know much about the movie, but I saw the trailer a while ago and it looked interesting. I read some reviews saying it was a horror movie but without jump scares. I’m not a big fan of horror, and as a child I was always stressed going into movie theaters and Blockbuster during Halloween because they always had these big advertisements for scary movies, and I got nightmares. And not just Halloween, but summer as well. I was around eight or ten years old and there was a poster for a film in the Chucky franchise, and the minute I turned to look at it, I almost screamed. So, I thought it was really interesting when I looked at the genre for The Humans and saw that people were calling it a horror film. I remember seeing a movie called Lamb (another A24) film and it was categorized as horror, but it didn’t have any jump-scares. It just had a lot of disturbing scenes. There are some jump scares in The Humans, but it’s not like anything supernatural is jumping out at you. It’s just the sounds and the overall atmosphere of the movie that makes it extremely unsettling.
If you haven’t seen the movie, it takes place in New York City, and the family is meeting together for Thanksgiving. Erik and Deidre have two daughters, Aimee and Brigid, and their mom, Momo, has dementia. They all go to visit Brigid and her boyfriend, Richard, for the Thanksgiving holiday, and at first things start off really chill, but as the film goes on, the interactions get more stressful and there is a lot of tension in the family. The apartment Brigid and Richard live in is pretty creepy, and they always hear suspenseful noises coming from upstairs or stuff is coming out of the walls. I think the most stressful part of this film was the conversation that Brigid has with Erik and Deidre. Brigid is a musician, but she keeps getting rejected for opportunities. She has her parents and sister listen to a piece of music she composed, and they like it, but she said she didn’t get the grant for the music, and she feels dejected. Erik doesn’t provide any consoling advice, and instead tells her that she should find a real job instead of chasing her passion. Brigid is upset that her dad doesn’t support her dreams, and Richard tries to reason with her, but Brigid is sick of feeling like no one supports her dreams. Erik is in a lot of hot water himself; he tells his daughters that he and Deidre had to sell their lake house because Erik lost his job at the school that he worked at for having an affair with one of the teachers, so he is working at Walmart to pay the bills. Even though he assures Brigid and Aimee that he and Deidre are working it out, Brigid and Aimee wonder why he did what he did and whether he has anything saved up, and they start to worry about his financial situation. Aimee is also dealing with a lot of stuff; her partner, Carol, broke up with her and is seeing someone else, she lost her job, and she has health issues. In between these stressful moments, Erik is hearing strange noises from the house and honestly, the ending of the film gave me the creeps. I really thought some ghost was going to pop out, but it was just more of a suspenseful moment, the feeling of being in this dark room when everyone else has gone. Honestly, I felt for Erik at that moment because as a kid I remember hating dark spaces. We went on a tour to this big cavern when I was younger, and it was pitch black and I’m pretty sure I almost got a panic attack. There was another time when I was in fifth grade and we had to learn about slavery and the conditions on the slave ships, and the teachers had us go in this classroom and we had to lay down next to each other and they turned off the lights. We had to imagine that we were slaves on these ships with no ventilation, no lighting, all cramped together in chains. The minute they turned off the lights, my heart started racing, my breathing shortened, and I started to hyperventilate. I did not want to be in the pitch-black room anymore, and I almost screamed and started crying. The kids around me had to convince that it wasn’t real, that I was going to be ok, but honestly that did very little to assuage the intense panic I felt at that moment in that pitch dark room. I remember my parents saying I used to not be afraid of the dark as a kid, but honestly, I can’t remember that time anymore because as I got older, I started hating being in rooms where it was pitch black and I couldn’t see anything. Maybe this is why I fear death because it’s going to feel so weird losing my consciousness, losing my breath, losing my hearing, my taste, my tactile senses. While Erik was in the dark by himself, I felt like I was in that dark room, wondering how you are ever going to get out. Erik starts panicking and he rushes downstairs and recites a Biblical verse over and over again while crying. Brigid tells him his cab is ready to take him and Deidre home, but it takes him a while to recover from the scare he had until he finally musters the courage and strength to leave the house.
I also related to the theme of family tension, especially when Brigid was talking to her family about her dreams as a musician, because there were many times I would talk to my family about wanting to move to a big city like New York or Los Angeles to follow my dreams as a musician, and they would tell me, “It’s too expensive to live there” and I would always get so defensive and upset, to the point where I would be passive-aggressive during meal times or throw tantrums because my dreams weren’t working out the way that I wanted them to. It’s something I still struggle with, to be honest, and sometimes I wonder if something is wrong with me, because there will be times during family meals where I will be totally quiet and thinking about some stressful event, and I will just be reluctant to talk about it with my family because I worry about them judging me. I also related to Richard’s past struggles with depression, because I have struggled with depression. It’s not easy to talk about one’s mental health, especially because there is a lot of stigma attached to talking about it. There is a scene where Richard talks about how he was depressed, and Brigid tells him he doesn’t have to bring it up with her family because she doesn’t want him to feel pressured to talk about it, but he tells them he was depressed at one point. Erik then tells him that in their family, they don’t believe in depression or taking medications and going to therapy. Instead, Erik believes that religion is the best antidepressant, and he wonders why his daughters aren’t religious anymore. I’m a religious person, too, but I realized after a certain point that the purpose of my prayer was to give me the wisdom to seek proper treatment for my depression. I was just praying for it to go away, but I realized that it was neither realistic nor safe to wish a serious medical condition like depression away, and that I needed to get help for it right away. As much as I loved my friends and family and people in my religious community, I found seeing someone who is trained in dealing with mental health issues to be immensely helpful and therapy gave me tools so that I could continue to do the work on myself to manage my depression. I also realized that a lot of people struggle with depression, so I could use my experiences with mental illness to encourage someone going through it. It’s easy to think there is something inherently flawed about you when you go through a depressive episode, but getting the right treatment helped me learn how to manage it better and that instead of beating myself up for being depressed, I needed to have more self-compassion and understand that recovering from depression takes patience and effort, and that I needed to take it one day at a time. It definitely wasn’t an overnight one-time event, and for many years I struggled with moments where I felt ok and where I felt like, I’m not feeling great, I need to go see someone about this.
One part of this film that I really loved was the dialogue. It was just incredibly brilliant. When I first saw the trailer, I thought it was going to have supernatural creatures because the characters at one point talk about these scary stories and scary dreams that they have, but there are no supernatural entities that jump out during the film. It’s just the overall suspense that leaves your heart racing during this film. It’s not a fast-paced movie at all; in fact, it reminded me of my experience watching this film called The Zone of Interest (which is another A24 movie. Like seriously, A24 is killing it with these incredible dramas. I don’t know how they do it.) At the beginning, it was slow and starts off with a pitch-black screen and ominous choral music at the beginning, but as the film builds it just gets more and more disturbing and by the end I was like, Wow, that was…something. I like films that don’t feature a lot of frenetic action or stylized violence. Sometimes the films that get me are movies that start off slow but build with suspense until my skin is crawling. Also, I saw June Squibb (the actress who plays Mo-Mo) in another movie called Nebraska. I haven’t finished the film yet, but she was a really great actress in the movie. I also really love Beanie Feldstein, who plays Brigid, in Booksmart, which is a funny movie about two high school straight-A students who decide to party and not take themselves seriously during their senior year. I also love Amy Schumer, who plays Aimee, in her sketch show Inside Amy Schumer. I watched that show a lot when I was in college and going through a rough time. I haven’t seen a lot of work by Steven Yeun but I saw a movie he was in called Sorry to Bother You. It was about a Black man named Cassius living in an alternate reality who becomes successful as a telemarketer when he starts to sound like a white person, and the film shows the dark side of capitalism. Steven Yeun plays one of Cassius’s friends who rejects capitalism and ends up dating Cassius’s girlfriend, Detroit, when Cassius becomes a sellout. Another Steven Yeun movie I love is Minari (another A24 film), which is about a family from Korea who moves to the American countryside and learns to adjust to their new life in America. I really want to see his Netflix series with Ali Wong called Beef because I watched a lot of awards shows this year, and Beef won quite a few awards. I saw Richard Jenkins in this movie a long time ago called The Visitor. It’s about a middle-aged man living in New York who meets a couple who is undocumented, and he lets them stay with him. It was a very moving film, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it again. Richard Jenkins was also in another film I love called Kajillionaire, which is about a family of con artists living in Los Angeles who encounter a mysterious woman who goes on a heist with them and falls in love with the couple’s daughter, Old Dolio. Richard plays Old Dolio’s dad, who doesn’t have any real love for his daughter and is just stringing her along so that they can scam people out of their money. Even though it was a depressing film, I loved the acting in that movie.
I didn’t know this movie was based on a play until I saw the opening credits. I’ve seen a few films that were originally plays, and it’s interesting to see how they bring the play to the big screen. There was a film I saw called The Whale that was originally a play. The movies Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom were originally plays by August Wilson, and the movie Doubt was a stage play. Watching these movies makes me want to see the original stage plays.
A couple of days ago, I watched one of the Oscar nominated films with my family. There is a movie directed by Alexander Payne called The Holdovers, and if you haven’t seen it yet I really recommend you see it because it is a really touching and moving story. I had seen Alexander Payne’s other movie, The Descendants, a long time ago. It’s about a father living in Hawaii who is doing his best to raise his two daughters and cope with his wife being in a coma. It was a very moving film. I heard about The Holdovers from watching all of the awards shows this year, and I saw one of the actors in the movie, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, win several awards for her performance in the movie. I saw Da’Vine in one movie called My Name is Dolemite, which stars Eddie Murphy, and she was really good in that role. I can see why she won so many awards this year for her role in The Holdovers, though, because she was really good in the movie. Update since last writing this post: I nearly teared up when Da’Vine won for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars this year. Her speech was also very moving; she said that she thought she had to be someone else, but she realized she just needed to be herself. This was a good reminder for me because I tend to be critical about myself and think, Maybe I should be someone different or change who I am. I still want to grow and develop, but I am learning that I can grow and develop in a way that is true to myself. It made me think of the concept of cherry, plum, peach and damson in Buddhism; each tree has its own unique qualities, and one cannot be like the other. I also love Paul Giamatti, and he was really good in his role in this movie (I remember watching him as a kid when he starred in this funny movie called Big Fat Liar with Frankie Muniz and Amanda Bynes.)
If you haven’t seen The Holdovers, it’s about Paul Hunham, a curmudgeonly history teacher at Barton Academy, an all-male boarding school in New England who stays during the school’s winter break to look after five young men who won’t be able to come home during the holidays to see their families. Paul runs a pretty tight ship, and this is evident even before the kids go on vacation. Many of his students got bad grades in his class and are close to failing. However, one of the students, Angus Tully, is the only one who got a B+ in the class. Five kids end up staying behind at the school, and even though Angus is planning to go to St. Kitts with his mom, his mom cancels the plans for him to go with her and he has to end up staying at the school over winter break. I seriously thought that the five kids were going to all stay with Mr. Hunham, but Alexander Payne got me with a plot twist (and your girl here loves a plot twist.) One of the holdovers has a wealthy father, and the father ends up picking up the kids to go on a ski trip with him, which leaves Angus as the only one to stay with Mr. Hunham. Over the course of the film, Paul, Angus and Mary, the chef at the school, get to know each other and find out they have a lot in common with each other even though they have gone through different things in life.
I really loved the scene where Mary, Paul and Angus are at a restaurant and Paul orders cherries jubilee because he sees someone at the other table ordered one, but the waitress tells him they can’t bring cherry jubilee because Angus is under the legal drinking age and cherries jubilee has alcohol in it. Paul tries to argue with her, and Angus is upset at being treated like a little kid, but I love Mary because she just calmly asks the waitress if they have cherries and ice cream, and the waitress gladly brings them cherries and ice cream. They go outside the restaurant and enjoy their own cherries jubilee by pouring alcohol over the cherries and ice cream and lighting it on fire to mimic the flambee style they saw at the restaurant. It was also really touching when Angus got to visit his father. Angus and Paul end up having a lot in common, one being that they both take the same medication.
I really loved Mary’s part in the movie. Mary’s only son, Curtis, was killed in the Vietnam War and she is grieving his death. There is a part in the movie where Paul, Angus and Mary go to a Christmas party held at Lydia’s house (Lydia is on the staff at the school.) They are having fun, and Angus even falls in love with and kisses Lydia’s niece. However, Mary ends up thinking about her son, Curtis, and gets really drunk, and Paul finds out that even though he was in love with Lydia, he finds out at the party that she has a boyfriend already, so Paul suggests that he, Mary and Angus leave the party. Outside of the house, Paul argues with Angus and tells him he thought he was going to go home on break to see his father, and Angus tells him that his father is dead. Mary calls out Paul on his behavior towards Angus, and Paul self-reflects. When Paul changes his relationship with Angus, Angus begins to open up to him and trust him more. Even though Paul got in trouble for taking Angus off campus, I still appreciate that he did that for Angus. While the three of them (Paul, Mary and Angus) are eating Christmas dinner, Paul has them list off any requests or wishes they have, and Angus’s wish is to go off campus to explore the city of Boston. However, Paul knows he will get Angus and himself in trouble if he does that, so he says no, leaving Angus feeling angry and hurt. However, Mary is very straightforward and honest, and so she says Paul should take Angus to the city because that is what he wanted. Angus didn’t get to leave the campus all winter break unlike the other students, so it wouldn’t be fair for him to have to stay while everyone else had fun. However, after they get back from the city, Angus’s mom and stepfather come to the school and let Paul know it wasn’t okay to bring Angus to see his dad. Angus’s dad struggled with mental illness and became very abusive towards Angus’s mom, and so she didn’t want her or Angus to see him again. They threaten to take Angus out of the school, but Paul admits he was the one to propose the trip to Boston and so he gets fired. I was kind of sad that Paul got fired from his teaching position at the school, but I also admire that he was honest and wanted to stick up for Angus.
This movie really taught me that sometimes you find friendships in the most unlikely connections and it’s not always about having a lot of friends but making a few close connections with others where you empathize with the other person’s suffering and genuinely want to help them. You may not always know how those bonds develop, but they do in the most interesting ways. Many people felt sympathy for Mary after she lost her son in the Vietnam War, but through her friendship with Paul and Angus, she found people who could genuinely show up for her and sit with her pain rather than run from it. I have learned through my own experiences losing loved ones that grief is an uncomfortable process, one that brings up a lot of emotions, and it can be uncomfortable to sit with yourself and process that emotional pain. But it really helps to have people around who can show up and just sit or listen without judgment, whether they have experienced your exact situation or not. Angus and Paul can also relate to Mary’s experience with grief because they themselves have experienced loneliness and loss. Angus wasn’t allowed to see his dad for many years and that was a painful experience, and he can’t go home to see his mom. Paul also deals with loneliness, and he is able to sit with Mary’s grief and show up for her, even if it’s just to watch TV together. The three of these people laugh, cry and survive the winter break together, and they develop an incredible bond with one another.
It was pretty painful watching the scene where Angus gets injured while messing around in the gym. He runs down the hall and Paul has to run after him to catch up, and when Paul finally reaches the gym, Angus jumps over some gym equipment when he isn’t supposed to, and it’s not until Angus lets out a severe cry that Paul realizes Angus is badly hurt. The doctors have to fix Angus’s shoulder because it got dislocated when he jumped over the equipment and injured himself. It was pretty painful to watch this scene, to be honest, because I saw Angus in so much pain.
Honestly, if you haven’t seen this movie, I recommend you see it. It is really good. And the trailer is excellent; it’s what got me to watch the movie in the first place.
The Holdovers. 2023. 133 minutes. Rated R for language, some drug use and brief sexual material.
I am gearing up for the Academy Awards, which is coming up this Sunday, so I am trying my best to cram in as many movies as I can before the awards ceremony. To be honest, I haven’t made time to watch all of the movies. I’m still trying to finish up Killers of the Flower Moon, but to be honest, it is really intense and during the first hour and a half I found my stomach getting pretty queasy. But I had to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo about how I was feeling after the movie, and I realized that it wasn’t the director’s job to make me feel comfortable. This was a very disturbing movie about the Osage murders, and the murders weren’t pretty, so it would be a pretty big “fuck you” to the Indigenous community if someone watered down the history of the Osage murders. I haven’t read the book Killers of the Flower Moon yet unfortunately, but after watching the first half of the movie it reminded me that is why I need to study history, especially Native American history. I remember we studied about it in history class, but that was several years ago and that class flew by pretty quickly, so by the time I graduated I had forgotten most of what I studied. Also, it’s one thing to read a classroom textbook about white settlers’ exploitation of Indigenous peoples, but the thing about movies is that those images stay with you for a pretty long time. My experience watching Killers of the Flower Moon made me think of when I was in my junior year of college, and the summer before school started, I was reading a lot of reviews about the film 12 Years a Slave. Many people said it was harrowing to watch, and so when my professor put the film on the curriculum for the class to watch, my stomach dropped a little, and during office hours I expressed my reservations about watching the film. I ended up watching the movie after he gave me a very no-nonsense reality check about the movie, and I ended up watching it four times because I wanted to study and analyze the movie. Looking back, I think watching it one time would have sufficed considering my sensitivity threshold when it comes to violence in movies, but as distressing as it was to watch Solomon Northrup’s trauma unfold within the first ten minutes of the movie, from the minute those white men got him drunk and had him shackled in chains to the moment he left the plantation after twelve years of being whipped, prodded, beat, strung up in a tree and called the N-word, the acting was very spot-on and the film score was brilliant, beautiful and gave me chills.
A couple of weeks ago, I did watch Maestro, a Netflix movie that actor Bradley Cooper starred in, directed and produced. Honestly, I cried after watching it. At first, I was ambivalent about watching it because it received a lot of push back from people. Bradley Cooper had to put on prosthetics to look like the Jewish composer, Leonard Bernstein, and considering the history of Hollywood casting non-Jewish actors to play Jewish characters or real-life people in biographical dramas and other movies, I can see why it received some pushback. However, I read somewhere that Leonard Bernstein’s children didn’t mind that Bradley Cooper, who isn’t Jewish, was playing Leonard Bernstein. As someone who loves listening to classical music as much as I love playing it, I really appreciate that they made this movie. I don’t know a lot of movies where classical musicians, conductors or composers are the main characters on the big screen. I haven’t seen Amadeus, but I remember watching TAR with Cate Blanchett and thinking, Oh, man, this is the year for classical music! We’re not just playing on the film score; we’re actually acting! The girl who played Lydia Tar’s love interest in the movie is a real-life cellist named Sophie Kauer, and in general I was just happy to see a film about classical music. During the film Maestro, I remember getting goosebumps when Leonard conducts the orchestra in a performance of “Adagietto” from the composer Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. It was a beautiful performance and it really tugged at my heartstrings. I really loved that scene because it reminded me of when I was in my senior year of high school, and my orchestra played the “Adagietto.” It was honestly the highlight of my senior year because it is such a beautiful piece, and it challenged me as a musician, especially because it is a long piece and requires a lot of control when playing it. The cello part has a lot of whole notes, and the piece has a wide variety of sounds and colors, from the soft to the deeply intense. It is also hard to play in tune, and intonation has always been a pitfall of mine when playing the cello, so it really forced me to have a keener ear when working on the piece. As someone who feels intense physical reactions when I hear music, I remember while playing the piece during rehearsals I would often get teary-eyed because it was such a moving piece. The movie Maestro also reminded me of TAR because both of these conductors were members of the LGBTQ community. Of course, Leonard Bernstein was a real person and Lydia Tar was a fictional character, but it was encouraging to see not just representation of classical musicians on screen, but also classical musicians who identified as LGBTQ. I also saw the actor Gideon Glick from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in Maestro; he plays Tommy, a young man who Leonard has an affair with. In TAR, Lydia finds herself falling in love with a cellist named Olga, which puts a strain on Lydia’s marriage to her wife, Sharon.
I am currently watching The Holdovers with my family. I really wanted to see this movie because Da’Vine Joy Randolph won several awards for her performance in the movie, and I also really loved the trailer. So far it is a really good movie, and it has some heartfelt moments. Over the weekend I watched an animated feature called Nimona, which stars Eugene Lee Yang of Buzzfeed and The Try Guys, actress Chloe Grace Moretz, and Riz Ahmed. It was a really excellent film about a shapeshifter named Nimona who becomes a sidekick to a knight who is framed for a crime he didn’t commit. Nimona has a sharp wit and also kicks butt. I don’t have the stomach to see Chloe Grace Moretz in her earlier film Kick Ass, but I was at least able to see her kick ass in a PG-rated setting when I watched Nimona. I really resonated with Nimona’s struggle of being different and not feeling like you belong anywhere, and how it can put you in that dark place of despair sometimes because you don’t fit in anywhere and want to be accepted for who you are. I really appreciate the LGBTQ representation in this movie, too.
On Saturday, I watched the Screen Actors Guild Awards. I saw it a couple of years ago, and I really loved it, and I didn’t want to miss out this time, especially because I was bummed about missing the Emmys. Honestly, I’m glad I didn’t miss it, because after a historic writers strike last year that lasted from July to November, it was time for me to pay my respects to all the writers, producers and actors that work hard every day to produce the shows I love. Of course, I also watched it because I love seeing the people getting dressed up. And because I love movies and TV. Honestly, it made me wonder what it was like actually being at the awards ceremony. It seems so glamorous to me as an outsider, but I guess this reminds me of when I went to Los Angeles and had this glamorous idea of how it was going to be. I thought I was going to see celebrities just walking around, but I didn’t end up seeing celebrities and that was probably the best thing, because I would have tried to disrupt their day to get an autograph and they probably wouldn’t be too thrilled about that. I remember talking to the Uber driver while we were going through Sunset Boulevard to get to the place I was staying, and I was feeling so intimidated that we were going past all of these famous people’s homes, and he told me that at the end of the day, celebrities are just human beings. And I’m glad he said that, because I didn’t want to keep walking around thinking that Hollywood was this glamorous thing and that actors just came out of the womb reciting lines from memory. I think watching interviews and Variety series like Actors on Actors helped me see that the people who recite these brilliant lines of dialogue and get inside the minds and bodies of these characters are people with families and bills to pay. Of course, I love entertaining my little fantasies about being at these glamorous awards ceremonies now and then, because I enjoy daydreaming.
There were some really powerful moments during the ceremony. Barbra Streisand received the Lifetime Achievement Award and delivered a speech about her love of movies and acting and how important the work of actors is. I haven’t seen many of Barbra Streisand’s movies, and I have only heard a few of her songs, so I have a lot of catching up to do, but hearing her speech reminded me why film is such an important medium. I’ve learned from watching these movies and television shows that film is a really powerful way not just to entertain, but also to gain more insight into the human experience. The human experience is complex and full of emotions: joy, sadness, grief, anger, fear, love, gratitude, the list goes on. I really admire that there are people out there who can convey various human emotions, play different characters, and share stories that resonate with people from all walks of life. I remember doing theater briefly in middle school, but I ended up sticking with orchestra. I wasn’t all that great at it, but I still loved going to plays, musicals, and the cinema and watching other people do it. I think that is why I loved The Fabelmans, because it gets into the mind of a young filmmaker who is trying to chart his own unique path in life amid societal pressures and the pressures of growing up. I was curious about how these people got into filmmaking and how they became so good at what they did, and I feel like the secret to Sammy charting his own path in the movie was that he just kept making and directing films. He didn’t start with a big budget; he was making movies with his high school classmates. He spent hours making the movies and editing the movies, even when things got tough in his life. He managed to create something profound out of his painful experiences.
There were other great parts about the SAG awards. I was really excited when Da’Vine Joy Randolph won for her role in The Holdovers. I haven’t seen it yet, but I really liked the trailer and I love Paul Giamatti’s acting. I was also really happy when Ayo Edebiri, Lily Gladstone and Elizabeth Debicki won awards. Elizabeth Debicki is an incredible actress; she played Princess Diana in a series called The Crown. I also really loved her in the film Widows, where she plays one of the women who has to go on a heist mission after her husband gets killed. I thought Pedro Pascal’s speech was really heartfelt; I don’t think I have the stomach to watch The Last of Us (I’m squeamish about zombies and blood, unfortunately) but it was nice seeing him have a heartfelt conversation with Tan France, who interviewed the winners backstage. I was really happy when Succession won because I just finished watching the show, and it was really good. I didn’t really get into the buzz about Succession until after the show had wrapped up. The only reason I started watching it was because it won several awards and received lots of nominations at the Golden Globes, so I was like, Dang, this show must be really good. For some reason, I got emotional after Succession was over. Maybe it has to do with it being close to my period, or I’m just an emotional mess, but I just got teary-eyed. I keep forgetting that even though it’s a comedy-drama, a satire, a black comedy, it was still in the drama category for a reason. I think because I had my own personal experiences with grief this year that season 4 really knocked me out of the emotional ballpark. I haven’t seen Oppenheimer yet, but it won quite a few awards, and Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey, Jr. won for Best Actor and Best Supporting Male Actor in the Motion Picture categories. I’m curious about Beef. I don’t know much about it, but Ali Wong and Steven Yeun both got awards last night for the series and it got good reviews.
Honestly, this was a really good ceremony. I loved the conversations between Tan France and the winners of the awards. They were just so delightful and sweet. And the best part is, the actors got to make their speeches without the swear words being bleeped out because it was technically on Netflix and not live TV. If they swore on NBC or ABC, they would be bleeped out. Also, I really love the part where Billie Eilish signed Melissa McCarthy’s face. And Idris Elba. 🙂
Written a couple of weeks ago when I first started watching the show. I don’t remember when that was but it was probably the week of January 15th.
So I decided to watch the show Succession after hearing a lot of buzz about it. I wasn’t super hip to the show when it first came out, but I saw it advertised all the time. When I watched the Golden Globe Awards this past Sunday I saw it kept getting all these nominations and awards, and I was like, Wow, this show must be really, really good. And as stressful as these first few episodes have been, it is quite good.
To be honest, I was really nervous to watch the show at first because I was reading the parent’s guide on IMDB and they mentioned that there is a scene where a character vomits. I have emetophobia, so I am pretty sensitive to vomiting scenes in movies. But I read on some other sites that have trigger warnings, such as Does the Dog Die and a tumblr dedicated to emetophobia warnings in movies and TV shows, about the scene, and after a while, even though my heart was racing and I was getting pretty nervous about watching the scene, I thought, It is literally just one scene. I don’t want that to make me not watch the show. And thankfully, I knew that the minute Greg goes to the theme park I could close my eyes and not have to watch the scene, which didn’t last super long.
The first episode, titled “Celebration” opens up with an elderly man waking up and walking through the house. He urinates and has to get the assistance of the lady who is helping him. The show opens with an incredible theme song by Nicholas Britell. It conveyed a lot of the power and prestige that runs throughout the show, and I love how he uses the strings and piano. I really love Nicholas Britell’s music. I remember he composed the music for the movies Moonlight and Vice, both movies I really enjoyed watching. Seeing the footage of the Roy family was also really intriguing, just seeing them grow up in this wealthy lifestyle. I was also excited to see that actor Will Ferrell was one of the producers on the show.
There were a few scenes from the Celebration episode that stuck with me. One is when Greg meets the Roy family for the first time when he goes to Logan’s birthday celebration, and everyone pretty much ignores him. He is the only one not wearing a fancy suit; he is wearing baggy clothes and he stands out. Greg has a really unlucky gig at an amusement park when a bunch of kids jump all over him and he vomits. When he gets fired he has to contact his great-uncle Roy (Greg’s mom is connected to the Roy family) for a job, and when he arrives it’s like the family treats him with a cold distance. There is also another scene where Conner, who is the firstborn of Logan Roy, gets Logan a sourdough starter but Logan calls it “gunk” and dismisses it, which frustrates Conner because he just wanted to get his dad something to make him happy. There is another scene where someone gives Logan a really nice watch as a gift but then when they are playing ball in the park as a family, Logan gives the watch to a family that is nearby. I also saw how Roman’s character was, because Roman promises this kid in the park that he will give him one million dollars if he hits a home run, and when the kid doesn’t win the game, Roman acts cruel and tears up the one million dollar check he was going to make out to him, prompting his sister, Shiv, to knock it off. Throughout the show, Roman comes off as overconfident and thinks that when he becomes the Chief Operating Officer of Waystar Royco he is going to get this prestige but he is unaware that it is going to be much more than a job to him. He also does something wild. He goes into one of the offices, unzips his pants and starts jerking off against the window. He cleans up his mess, but it kind of showed me how this power and influence can go to people’s heads.
Yesterday I watched a movie called You Hurt My Feelings. I really love movies distributed by a film company called A24, and I really loved the trailer, so I was excited to watch this movie. I haven’t seen much of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s other work, to be honest, except for a sketch she did on Inside Amy Schumer called “Last Fuckable Day.” If you haven’t seen that sketch, by the way, it is absolutely hilarious and calls out a lot of ageism and sexism in Hollywood.
You Hurt My Feelings is about an author named Beth who is also a creative writing professor. Her husband, Don, is a therapist who struggles to connect with his patients, and her son, Eliot, works at a weed shop and is having a hard time moving forward in life. He is a writer like his mom but doesn’t believe in his work. Beth has a sister named Sarah who is an interior designer and volunteers with her at a local church by giving away clothing, and Sarah is married to Mark, a struggling actor. Beth is working on a novel and has written several drafts of her manuscript, and she is rightfully proud of herself, and her husband seems to think that her story is good. And on the surface, she is happy in her marriage with Don and they celebrate their anniversary on a happy note. She is encouraging to her students and celebrates their ideas for stories even if they don’t seem that great. But things go downhill when Beth meets with a publisher and the publisher tells her that her manuscript wasn’t that great, and this crushes Beth’s self-esteem. And the ultimate blow for Beth is when she and Sarah are out and about and they run into Mark and Don talking at a department store. Beth overhears Don telling Mark that he doesn’t actually like Beth’s novel, and she runs out of the store in a panic, feeling betrayed that Don lied to her face about liking her book. Sarah tries to calm Beth down, but Beth’s life and marriage is already shattered. The movie shows how Beth tries to regain her self-worth after finding out her husband, whose opinion she valued so highly, doesn’t actually like her book.
The movie shows how difficult it can be to give one’s honest opinion about something because you are worried about hurting the other person, but it can hurt worse when you lie about liking someone’s work and not give them your honest opinion from the get-go. The film explores how rejection and failure impact how the characters see themselves in relation to their work and careers. Mark is in a store with Don and someone approaches him and says he recognized Mark from this movie where he played a pumpkin. Mark is ecstatic that he got recognized for something, but when he asks the guy if he can take a selfie with him, the guy hesitates and they declines, leaving Mark feeling dejected. Mark reveals to Sarah one day that he is uncertain about why he is pursuing acting, and he realizes that he did it because he wanted to become famous. She encourages him to do it because he loves it, not because it brings him fame. I resonated with this because when I first started auditioning for professional orchestras and pursuing a music career, I had this idea that I was going to become famous and make a lot of money and that everyone was going to respect me. But I think as I dug deeper into my Buddhist practice, I saw over time how I based so much of my self-worth on having this prestigious career, so I had to take a step back and really ask myself why I wanted a career in music. I still love to play my cello, but I am realizing that whether I have a prestigious career in music or not, it doesn’t determine my worth as a human being. When I based my self-worth on my success as a musician, I think it became really hard to handle stuff like rejection and disappointment, and over time I had to understand that rejection, disappointment and failure are a part of any career, and that the important thing was to not give up on myself. I think that is why I love reading the Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda’s works because he reminds me that my life is a treasure and that I have inherent worth regardless of whether I am facing success or failure in life. It is still a daily struggle to believe in my worth, but as I continue this journey of awakening to my self-worth, I have become a much stronger person, and I am able to encourage other people who struggle with low self-worth.
The movie also reminded me of another film I saw called The Wife with Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce. In the movie, they play a couple named Joan and Joe Castleman who are excited because Joe won the Nobel Prize in Literature. However, as the movie progresses, it is clear that there is a rather sinister backstory to Joe’s success as a writer, namely that his wife wrote most of his work and he didn’t give her credit for it. Joe is not a great character, and he basks in praise while his wife is just seen as, well, his wife. Their son, David, wants to become a writer, too, but when he asks his dad if he read his story, Joe hedges and doesn’t want to share his honest opinion about David’s story. It’s not until they meet at a bar that Joe shares his honest criticism about David’s story, but David wants to hear that he did a good job, not that the story was bad, and he gets angry with his father for not telling him that he did a good job. Joan encourages David because she believes that everyone needs validation, but Joe says that getting external validation won’t help David grow in his writing career, so he is hard on him. This leaves David feeling terrible about himself throughout the movie. In You Hurt My Feelings, after Beth finds out that Don didn’t like her book, she goes through each page of the manuscript saying “Shit for brains” over and over. The novel is based on her childhood and dealing with a lot of verbal abuse from her father, and in real life, Beth’s father would call her “Shit for brains” and “stupid” her whole life, so this made her feel very poorly about herself. Don told Beth for years that he loved her work, especially because she wrote about twenty drafts of the manuscript, but to hear that he actually didn’t like it, after years of lying to her and telling her that he did so that he wouldn’t hurt her feelings, took a blow to her self-worth as a writer.
This reminded me of a scene in The Wife when Joan is having a flashback to her 20s, when she was a student at Smith College in the 1950s and she fell in love with Joe, who was a married professor with kids. Joe has an affair with Joan and loses his job (and also his wife, who divorces him) and they are happy together at first. Joan is an aspiring writer and seeks advice from a famous female writer named Elaine Mozell. Joan thinks Elaine is going to tell her “Yeah, girl, go for your dreams! The sky’s the limit.” But Elaine gives her pessimistic advice on having a career as an author, telling her that her works, like Elaine’s, will end up on shelves unread because it was a male-dominated field where female authors often didn’t get their works recognized or published, so Joan is better off not pursuing a writing career so that she doesn’t have to deal with disappointment or rejection. Joan sees firsthand how rejection can really take a blow to someone’s self-esteem, in this case her husband’s. Joe has Joan read her manuscript, and even though he asks for her feedback, she tells him her honest opinion, that she doesn’t think it is that good. That is not the feedback he wants to hear. He wants her to validate that he is a good writer because he cannot handle the rejection that comes with it, and he gets angry and threatens to divorce her if she doesn’t tell him that he is a great writer. He projects so many of his deepest insecurities onto her at that moment, telling her that if he doesn’t make it as a writer, he is going to have to go back to being a professor at a “second rate college” and making brisket (at first I rolled my eyes and was like, Oh boo-hoo, but then I had to remember that this was the 1950s and women still had to follow these societal expectations that they would stay home and let the men become successful in their careers while they held onto their unfulfilled dreams.)
Honestly, as much as I loathed Joe’s character and how he treated his wife and his son and crushed every last ounce of their writing dreams so that he could fulfill his, I somehow could relate to his struggle with self-worth and this idea that your career defines your worth as a human being and that if you fail or fuck up, it means you are a failure for the rest of your life and you will never recover. I remember when I worked really hard for this one audition for a symphony orchestra, and when I got on the list of substitute cellists, I felt my ego take a boost. But then my sister and dad asked me to do chores, and I had to get off my high horse for a while, and that somehow made me mad, so I lashed out at them and threatened to kill myself (I was a real nut.) I continued to define my worth by having this prestigious career for years after that. I worked at Starbucks and thought that working there instead of playing for the symphony meant that I had failed, and so I felt really ashamed going into these classical music circles and academic circles and telling people I worked at Starbucks because I thought they would see me as less than. I would tell people at work that I was going to be this successful musician and then I auditioned for another professional orchestra, but I got rejected and I just broke down crying. I think holding onto these unrealistic ideas about success and inflated self-worth made it hard for me to do my best where I was, because I was always thinking, When I quit food service, when I get this music career, when I play with these famous musicians, then I will finally feel like I made it and I will finally feel good about myself and I will finally feel worthy. I felt like every time I faced rejection or disappointment, it took a blow to my self-worth and so I constantly vacillated about whether or not I could make it as a musician. There was one time I went to a professor’s house to audition for a spot in his advanced chamber music ensemble, and I was so nervous because I really wanted this person to like me. I wanted him to think highly of me, so I tried to avoid talking about how I was paying off my student loans and working at Starbucks. But I honestly couldn’t B.S. anything. At the end of the day, I was just me and I couldn’t meet this man’s expectations no matter how much I tried to put on airs or be someone I wasn’t. I just wasn’t at the skill level he wanted me to be at, and this really made it hard for me to feel good about myself. But after I chanted about it for a while (key word: a while. It wasn’t overnight) I realized I needed to stop worrying about being rejected by this guy and focus on my efforts to pay off my student loans and do my best work at Starbucks. I also had to appreciate that I was with a really good music teacher and he and I worked very well, and he helped me do a lot of inner transformation, or human revolution, in overcoming my arrogance. I really thought I was hot shit as a musician, but that is because my ego was so huge. I realized that I didn’t need to think less of myself, I just had to change the way I thought about this career. When I actually met with professional musicians, I began to realize that this career wasn’t just about me-me-me. I would still need to learn to work with others and acknowledge that there will always be people with more credentials than me, and that is an opportunity to learn from people. It took a really long time to get to that realization, though, because I had to do a lot of human revolution, or inner transformation, where I developed greater self-worth and started to focus on doing my best and making sincere efforts rather than solely focusing on winning the audition.
It is still a challenge for me to take criticism and feedback well, to be honest. An I think that is why You Hurt My Feelings resonated with me so much because it showed me that it can be really hard to face honest criticism from those closest to us. I still find myself getting defensive or upset when I receive negative feedback, or when I don’t get a response after sending in a job application. No matter how politely the rejection email is worded, the rejection still stings, but then it’s like I have to keep reminding myself to use the rejection as an opportunity to improve and get better. And I really resonated with Beth’s struggle with self-esteem. I grew up with supportive people in my life and I think I felt pretty comfortable in my skin, but then I went to a new school and I really struggled with low self-esteem because I struggled academically, and this was new to me because people always praised me as this smart kid. But my self-esteem took a real hit when they chose some of the smart kids for a Gifted and Talented program, and I wasn’t selected, and it really hurt. It’s silly to be thirty and still thinking about that stuff. It’s like, Get over it, that was twenty years ago! But at that point in my life I really suffered from low self-confidence. I often wrote in my notebook that I was stupid, that I was ugly, that I was worthless, that no one liked me. And the reality is, no one was calling me these things. But I often said those negative things about myself because I wanted people to tell me, No, no, that’s not true. You’re smart, you’re capable. It’s because I didn’t believe those things myself, so I was constantly wanting the people around me to affirm that I was worthy and beautiful and smart. Of course, wanting validation is totally normal and human, but when I started doing a lot of inner work on myself, I realized that it’s important to develop my own confidence. That was the hardest to do for so many years because I wanted people to affirm that I was enough because I didn’t want to believe myself that I was enough. I had really supportive family growing up, so I’m sure it was painful for them to hear me say these awful things about myself because they never called me stupid, ugly or weird. Looking back I also remember being around a lot of kids who also had low self-esteem even though they were talented and smart, but at the time it seemed that everyone else had it together on the surface. This perception of my environment carried on into middle school, high school, college and even after college, and it is still something I have to remind myself is just my perception. Because we are all human and we all struggle with something.
The Arts Are Life 