Category: movies

What I Am Actually Thankful For

I am grateful for a lot of things in my life. My family, having a car, having a job, my friends, my Buddhist community, food, water and the list goes on. However, I also understand that for American Indian and First Nation peoples, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning, to remember all of the brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers lost in the genocide that the white European settlers committed against American Indian folks. As someone who is not a member of the First Nations, I now use this day as a time for education and awareness. As a kid, I went along with the typical traditions and cultural brainwashing of Thanksgiving as this harmonious ceremony during which white settlers at Plymouth Rock coexisted with American Indian people.

And then, when I grew up and started reading more books and talking with actual American Indian classmates and people, I realized that perspective on history was incorrect. So, I had to educate myself and un-learn a lot of the white colonial bullshit that my elementary school teachers fed me, and I threw that pile of shit back into all of the shitty textbooks that taught me that Thanksgiving was this beautiful holiday. That shit stank, but the truth sometimes has to piss you off in order to set you free. As I grew older, I started reading more literature by First Nations authors such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Joy Harjo, Sherman Alexie and Tommy Orange. For an online book club that my college alma mater does, the moderator chose a novel called Five Little Indians by Michelle Good, a Cree Canadian author. The novel describes the traumatic history of residential schools in Canada and the impact and legacy that these schools has had on the Indigenous Canadian adults who survived its horrors as children. I don’t know much about Canadian history, unfortunately, but reading Five Little Indians gave me much needed insight into how fucked up the residential school system was. It also helped me understand that like the history of the United States of America, you cannot fully understand the history of Canada unless you learn about the countless atrocities that Indigenous men, women, children and non-binary peoples faced throughout the nation’s history. In this government-funded residential school system, many Indigenous children were abducted and separated from their families and placed into these residential schools in an attempt to erase Indigenous education and cultural traditions from Canadian history and assimilate Indigenous children into white Canadian society. There was a significant lack of resources, the staff abused children and white authorities at the schools punished Indigenous children for speaking their own languages. I watched a video to learn more about the history of these schools and when the survivors were describing to the reporter the abuse they experienced and witnessed, it really fucked me up, but I needed to get my mind fucked up because I needed to know how fucked up the residential school system was. I cannot begin to describe the horrors that the kids experienced at these schools. I will just say that reading that book, Five Little Indians by Michelle Good, will stick with me for a while.

One author I really love is Tommy Orange. He is an author from Oakland, California who is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. I really love his writing and recommend his novels There There and Wandering Stars. Movies-wise, I recommend Killers of the Flower Moon and Fancy Dance on Apple TV. Fancy Dance is a movie directed by Native American filmmaker Erica Tremblay, and it is about a young queer Cayuga woman named Jax who investigates the disappearance of her sister, Tawi, while caring for Tawi’s daughter, Roki. I didn’t know much about the history of missing and murdered Native American people before watching this movie, but watching Fancy Dance made me want to learn more about the history of missing and murdered Indigenous peoples. Even though I really loved Killers of the Flower Moon and thought Lily Gladstone was fucking incredible in their role as Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone goes by she/her and they/them pronouns), I really loved that in Fancy Dance Gladstone got to play the main character in the movie and also that their character, like Lily Gladstone in real life, is part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Battle of the Sexes and My Love of Other Sports Movies about Badass Women Punching Sexism in the Face

Last week, I watched a movie called Battle of the Sexes, which is about a tennis match that took place on September 20, 1973, between 29-year-old Billie Jean King and 55-year-old Bobbie Riggs at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas. It was amazing, and I watched it partly because I really love Emma Stone (who I found out actually prefers to go by “Emily” because that is her real name. Since there was another Emily Stone in the Screen Actors Guild, she had to go by another first name, and so she chose “Emma” after Emma Bunton, also known as Baby Spice, in The Spice Girls.) I don’t watch much tennis, so I didn’t have a lot of knowledge about this event in history, but I am glad I watched the movie because it was a pivotal moment for not just female players, but for the sports world in general, which has historically been male dominated. I am glad I rented the movie from the library because there are lots of free DVDs at the library and so I don’t have to pay for streaming (I am on a budget.) Also, I had to take the movie back to the library at some point because

Watching this movie reminded me of a documentary that I watched called LFG (an acronym for “Let’s Fucking Go!”). The documentary is about the U.S. women’s soccer team and their fight for equal pay. It features famous players like Megan Rapinoe, and at first, I didn’t think I would be interested in watching it because I don’t watch a lot of sports on TV in general, but after witnessing the #MeToo movement calling out decades of sexual violence and harassment against women, I needed to learn more about gender inequality so that I don’t think that women getting paid less than men is somehow ok. The women’s soccer team went to court several times to advocate for themselves because they were getting paid a lot less than the male soccer players. It was a serious battle of sweat and tears, and watching these women speak out against the injustice they dealt with in the male-dominated soccer world was empowering to see. I am actually glad I watched the documentary, because it is important to be aware of what is happening in the world, and most times I like to just hide under a rock and pretend like gender and racial inequality has nothing to do with me, which is wrong because it doesn’t just affect cisgendered women, it affects everyone. Also, Megan Rapinoe is freaking hot. Just sayin’.

Battle of the Sexes movie reminded me of LFG because in Battle of the Sexes, female tennis players were getting paid much less than the male tennis players and it wasn’t fair. In the movie, Billie Jean King and her manager, Gladys (played brilliantly by comedian Sarah Silverman), approach the promoter of the tennis tournaments, Jack Kramer, and demand that the female tennis players start their own tour because they are getting paid less than the men. However, Jack starts spouting all of these misogynistic beliefs about women competing in tennis and doesn’t budge. Billie and several other female members of the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association, which is the governing board for tennis in the United States of America, start their own tour despite Jack’s objections, and Jack bans them from the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association, leaving them on their own to fund their own tour. The women encounter numerous battles to keep their own tour, and it gets even more complicated when Bobby Riggs, a pro-tennis player for many years who is much older than Billie Jean King, calls her in the middle of the night to propose that Billie and he play a match against each other. At first, Billie doesn’t want to participate, especially because Bobby, like Jack Kramer, holds sexist beliefs about women participating in sports and loves promoting himself. Bobby has a serious gambling addiction, which leads to him draining his money and tension between him and his wife, Priscilla, who has had to put up with his gambling addiction and is fed up. But then, Billie sees Bobby playing against Margaret Ward, and when Margaret loses against him and she sees Bobby walking around, gloating about his success, it provokes Billie to accept Bobby’s offer to play against her in a match called Battle of the Sexes, where female tennis players play matches against male tennis players.

Also, Billie Jean King realizes that she doesn’t really want to be with her husband, Larry, after she falls in love with Marilyn, her hairdresser. When Billie and the other female tennis players are getting their hair done for their public appearances, Billie meets her hairdresser, Marilyn (played by Andrea Riseborough) and they develop serious chemistry for one another. Even though Billie tries to act like she is in love with her husband, she realizes that she is a lesbian and her and Marilyn start seeing each other in private. They go to a party, and even though Billie tells her she is married, Marilyn knows that Billie is sexually attracted to her, and there is one scene where the song “Crimson and Clover” is playing and Billie declines to dance with Marilyn, so Marilyn dances with a random guy at the club, but as she sits at the bar and sips her drink, she watches how Marilyn dances with him and she sees Marilyn peering into her eyes. Marilyn and Billie end up having sex in Billie’s hotel room, and Billie tries to keep it a secret, but her tennis rival, Margaret Court, sees Billie and Marilyn leaving their hotel room together when Gladys has the female soccer players check out of the hotel so they can continue their tour. Margaret sees them together but doesn’t say anything to them, but then tells her husband that Billie is a lesbian and that Marilyn is not just a friend but is actually her lover. When Larry, Billie’s husband, travels to assist Billie with preparing for her tennis tournament, he finds a bra that isn’t Billie’s in her room and realizes that Billie has been having an affair with Marilyn. Even though Larry feels betrayed and that Billie lied to him, he continues to support her. There is a really memorable scene when Larry confronts Marilyn one evening and tells her that she and Billie need to end their relationship, not just because he is Billie’s husband but because Billie is focused on her career as a tennis player and the affair would distract from her achieving her goals.

Even though I haven’t gone through the struggles Billie had gone through in her tennis career, I kind of related to the idea of focusing on your career instead of a relationship. I remember when I fell in love for the first time with this guy in India and I thought that love was supposed to be this intoxicating thing where it was just you and the other person together, and nothing else mattered. However, I realized that this relationship didn’t need to be the center of my life because I had so many hobbies and extracurricular activities (and, of course, graduating from college) to focus on. Even though I am glad that my boyfriend and I stayed in touch during my last semester, I think it was best for us to separate eventually because we had grown apart. Not having that physical intimacy was hard for both of us, and I was just too preoccupied with a lot of stuff in my personal life to focus solely on this relationship. Also, I was chanting a lot for his happiness and I’m sure he has found a relationship where his needs are fulfilled, and he can be truly happy. Recently I developed feelings for a close friend, but at some point, they found someone else. I was pretty heartbroken, to be honest, but after chanting about it, it made more sense to just focus on my professional and personal development. A lot of times, the fleeting crushes I’ve had on guys have been a form of escapism to distract me from whatever painful stuff I was dealing with in life. I guess I’m glad that those guys were in other relationships because I realized that I wanted to focus on my personal goals, like my blog and other stuff I’m striving towards. I may want a relationship in the future, but I want to be with someone who supports my goals and doesn’t want to make me the center of their life. I want us to have our own personal hobbies and interests outside of the relationship.

I really love Steve Carrell’s acting in Battle of the Sexes. I didn’t know anything about Bobby Riggs before watching the movie, but after seeing it, all I could think was, Man, this guy was a hustler. But Steve plays him so well. Bobby Riggs completely underestimated Billie’s potential to beat him in the tennis match, and he even admitted to it when she won the match against him. Bobby and the men in the movie make all sorts of degrading statements about the female tennis players, saying they should stay in the kitchen and not be on the tennis courts, or that they are biologically not fit to compete in tennis tournaments. While watching the movie, I kept groaning every time they made these kinds of gross sexist comments, but I also had to remember that this was the 1970s and before the #MeToo movement called all that out. Of course, even if it’s 2025 and there is more discussion about reproductive rights and dismantling sexism, we still have a long way to go in establishing policies that treat cisgender women and trans women with the respect they deserve and afford them basic human rights. That’s why I love watching historical movies, because we need to learn from the past not just so we don’t repeat it in the future, but so that we can see people like Billie Jean King who broke through gender barriers and think, Dang, if she can persevere through all this sexism and men putting her down, then I can achieve my goals too even if I deal with a lot of obstacles along the way.

When I watched another tennis movie called King Richard, I felt so empowered seeing how Venus and Serena Williams fought not only sexism, but also racism, to win all these championships, and how they still stayed down-to-earth even with all of their success. There was this part in Citizen that really stuck with me, and that was when Rankine is talking about a tennis match during which Serena’s rival, a Danish tennis player named Caroline Wozniacki, impersonated Serena Williams’s curvy figure by stuffing her shirt and skirt with tissue paper and prancing around the tennis court, flaunting her fake “curves” and imitating Serena. I checked the comments from 2011 when they posted a video of her doing the impression while in a tennis match with another player, and while I understand that for many people this was harmless and Caroline was just trying to be funny, after reading Claudia Rankine’s take on it, I can see why Caroline’s impersonation was racist to many other people. Sure, Caroline didn’t put cork on her face and paint her lips red, but still, when you look at it from the perspective of US History, it was just as bad as an 1890s minstrel show. Of course, I do not know Serena or Caroline personally, but I am guessing they are friends and that Serena didn’t take it the wrong way. However, after learning more about the history of Jim Crow and blackface in the U.S. while I was in college, I realized that for Caroline, a white woman from Denmark who didn’t know anything about the history of slavery and racism in the U.S., it seemed like harmless fun, but viewed from a U.S.-centric context, it was offensive. Before reading Citizen by Claudia Rankine, I didn’t know much about the racism that Serena and Venus had to deal with as Black tennis players in predominantly white male spaces, but reading Rankine’s book made me more aware of all of the shit they had to deal with as Black women in a space where people gave them the message that they did not belong there. Of course, they have proven the haters wrong so, so many times with Grand Slam championships and other awards. However, it’s important for me to remember all the blood, sweat, tears and discrimination that they dealt with during their long careers. However, I was so encouraged to see the Gen-Z-aged tennis player Naomi Osaka, who is half-Haitian and half-Japanese, competing in the Australian Open and winning the tournament. To be honest, I don’t watch many sports on television, but my orchestra teacher from college told me about the Australian Open because he loves tennis. With nothing to do and nowhere to go that day (it was 2021 and I was able to work from home during that time and didn’t have to go anywhere), I woke up at 2 am to watch Naomi play against Jennifer Brady. Watching the Australian Open was FIERCE.

Overall, I thought Battle of the Sexes was a great movie, and I recommend that you see it.

Battle of the Sexes. 2017. Directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. Genre: Sports/Comedy/Drama. Starring Emma Stone, Steve Carrell, Andrea Riseborough and Sarah Silverman. Rated PG-13 for some sexual content and partial nudity.

Movie Review: Memoir of a Snail

A few weeks ago, I watched a movie called Memoir of a Snail. It’s an Australian adult animated feature directed by an Australian director named Adam Elliot, and it stars Sarah Snook as the lead protagonist, Grace Pudel. I really loved Sarah Snook in the TV show Succession, in which she plays Siobhan “Shiv” Roy, who is part of a family that runs a multimillion-dollar media conglomerate called Waystar Royco. Logan Roy runs the media conglomerate, but he is getting on in years and needs to figure out which one of his kids is going to become the CEO of Waystar should he become incapacitated or pass away. Shiv is the only female sibling and competes with her three brothers, Kendall, Roman and Conner, to be the CEO. Shiv is an incredible actress (I did try to focus on Shiv’s character development throughout the show, but honestly while watching the show all I could focus on was how fashionable Shiv was. She was always wearing the best dresses and the best outfits throughout the show, and she is also an incredibly beautiful woman. And her ass is perfect. Just saying.) I would see HBO ads that showed the Succession poster, but I didn’t know much about the show. I just kept hearing about it all the time. Honestly, I started watching Succession because Sarah Snook got a bunch of awards for playing Shiv in the show, and when she won, I thought, Man, this gal must be an incredible actress. Also, I thought she was an American actress, but when she got her award and made her speech, I heard her accent and was like, What!! She’s Australian! That’s so cool! Before seeing Succession, I hadn’t seen Sarah Snook in any film or TV yet, but that’s because I haven’t seen a ton of Australian shows or movies. The one time I remember watching an Australian TV show was when I saw The Crocodile Hunter as a kid in the early 2000s. I want to see the movie Animal Kingdom, though, because I saw the trailer several years ago and it looked really good. I have seen Australian actors in movies before, but I hadn’t actually seen many movies that were funded and distributed from Australia. Memoir of a Snail is one of the few Australian films I’ve seen so far. In fact, I was so excited to be able to rent the movie on Google Play this week, because I checked the showtimes for my local Cinemark movie theater, but it wasn’t playing there. It was only playing in select theaters, and so I thought, Maybe I’ll go see the movie in theaters. But the showtimes either took place when I was at work, or the theater was too far away to drive to. I really loved the trailer, and it’s funny because when I first saw it, I thought it was going to be a children’s movie. But that’s because I saw the clean version of the trailer, the IFC teaser trailer. I found the Australian trailer that the production company Madman Films had put out, and it was uncensored. Halfway through the trailer, I saw a bully on the playground give Grace the middle finger, and I paused and was like, Woah, hold up…I thought this was a kid’s movie. Wait a minute…Is this a kid’s movie?!? Then the next scene showed an old lady dancing on a table and her hand accidentally hits the ceiling fan, and she loses her pinky finger. When that happened, girl, I immediately paused it and was like, What?!? We got kids giving middle fingers in the trailer and then a lady’s finger gets chopped off in graphic detail?!? Girl…what is the MPAA rating for this movie?!? This movie has got to be rated R. I have seen a few G to PG rated Claymation films, and not in one of them have I heard the term “dickhead” or seen limbs cut off (unless you’re watching the TV-MA-rated Robot Chicken, that is.) So, I looked up the rating and sure enough, I confirmed my findings. The film was, in fact, rated R, and, therefore, not a kids’ movie. Of course, I should have known, because when I watched the trailer again, I realized that those two Claymated guinea pigs that were sitting next to the couch were humping each other, and that’s how those little guinea pig babies multiplied. Sure, Rocky and Ginger fell in love in Chicken Run, but Pathe and Dreamworks were never going to show that Claymated British chicken and American rooster getting it on. They went straight to the “they hatched some kids and lived happily ever after” narrative because it was G for general audiences.

But MPAA ratings aside, this was seriously one of the best movies I have seen in my life so far. I knew it was going to be sad, but I thought when coming in, even after watching the trailer, oh, it will be this sweet happy story about a snail. Boy, I was WRONG. I cried throughout the movie. The minute they cued the Australian Chamber Orchestra in the opening credits, I was already an ugly-crying mess of tears and snot, and I didn’t have my tissues nearby, so I used my shirt collar. In the opening scene, Pinky, a dear friend of Grace, is dying, and she wakes up briefly to shout “THE POTATOES!” before passing away. Grace wonders, Wait, what does she mean by “the potatoes?” But Pinky is gone, and Grace is left to mourn the one friend who stuck with her through the wild ride of life that Grace is going to go through during the entire 1 hour and 35 minutes of the movie. Grace sits by Pinky’s Pity-Pit (Pinky’s gravestone) in Pinky’s garden, and she recounts to her snail friend, Sylvia, an account of her life (She named Sylvia the snail after the late American author Sylvia Plath.) Grace Pudel, grew up in 1970s Australia, and she has a twin brother named Gilbert, who always stands up for her and supports her through thick and thin. When Grace is bullied on the playground, Gilbert breaks the bully’s finger, and Gilbert, to Grace’s consternation, loves to play with pyrotechnics and fire. Like his dad, Gilbert wants to be an entertainer. Gilbert and Grace’s mom died shortly after giving birth to them, so they grew up with their dad, Percy, who had dreams of becoming a famous performer but had those dreams cut short when he got hit by a drunk driver. Percy was from France, and he attracted the attention of Grace and Gilbert’s mom, and they fell in love. After he became physically disabled, Percy became an alcoholic and also developed sleep apnea. But Gilbert and Grace did their best to support him. Percy loved knitting and jellybeans and had a jar full of them, and he and his kids loved to joke around, watch TV together, and sing songs in French. Gilbert and Grace bond over snails and watch in disgust as the snails get it on in their glass jar and produce lots of baby snails. Percy makes Grace a snail hat, and Grace takes on the identity of a snail.

However, he died in his sleep one evening, and Grace and Gilbert were left with no parents. A lady from child protection services took them away and sent them into separate foster homes, so they grew up apart. Grace spent her time being lonely and tried to make connections at school but was bullied and called a “rabbit face.” Even when she got older, she still dealt with loneliness. Grace was adopted by a couple named Ian and Narelle, who loved self-help books and positive thinking. They would shower Grace with praise and give her awards for being a good daughter, but all of their positive reinforcement did nothing to assuage Grace’s grief at being separated from her twin brother. Gilbert often writes letters to Grace about his foster family, Ruth and Owen, who run their own church and have Gilbert work on their apple orchard doing menial tasks. Ruth and Owen are hostile to Gilbert, and they make him eat meat even though he is a vegetarian. Gilbert promises to Grace that he will come and reunite with her, but as time goes on, Grace loses hope. However, while working at the Canberra Public Library, Grace meets a lady named Pinky, who keeps putting library books in the trash can, mistaking it for the library book chute. Pinky looks at Grace’s snail hat and asks her why she is dressed like an ant. Grace nervously tells her that she is a snail, but Pinky doesn’t make fun of her. Instead, she shares her own story about how she got the name “Pinky.” While she was dancing in Barcelona, she was dancing right under a ceiling fan, and her hand hit the ceiling fan, accidentally cutting off her pinky finger. Grace finds in Pinky someone who accepts her for who she is and doesn’t tell her she needs to change her identity to fit in, which is what Grace needs. Pinky is also willing to sit with Grace in her loneliness and just show up for her as a friend, rather than trying to find quick fixes for her loneliness like Ian and Narelle were trying to do. Pinky drives Grace around in a truck and also works as a school crossing guard (there’s a wild scene where a car rushes past Pinky and the kids, and Pinky shouts “Dickhead!” and then the other kids join her, putting up their middle fingers and shouting “Dickhead!” too.) She also takes Grace to get a perm, which looks like an Afro, to be perfectly honest (then again, it’s the 1970s, so Afros were probably all the rage in many places, not just in the United States of America.) While Grace and Pinky are sitting outside eating Chiko rolls, a guy drives past and teases Grace about her perm, and instead of flipping him off and calling him “dickhead” like Pinky would probably do, Grace is humiliated and cries. Pinky tells her to not pay attention to that dude and tells her that she and Grace look really cool with their perms.

Grace eventually finds love, in the form of a man named Ken. Ken seems sweet, and honestly, I had high hopes for Grace and Ken. Ken told her when they first met that he was a shallow person, though, and I thought, Hmmmm, okay? What does he mean by “shallow?” But, okay, I guess they’re happy together. Ken showers Grace with compliments and makes her feel loved, feeding her sausages and whipping her up milkshake after milkshake. Ken proposes to Grace after a month of dating, and she readily accepts. However, over time, Grace learns that Ken really is a shallow human being who only liked her for how he wanted her body image to be. He kept feeding her sausages and making her milkshakes to make her gain weight, and she doesn’t realize this until she finds one of the guinea pigs ruffling through the scrapbook on top of her shelf, and she finds a bunch of pictures that Ken has put of overweight or obese women and comments about their measurements and how much weight they needed to gain for him to find them sexy. Grace realizes that Ken only thought she was beautiful if she looked a certain way, and she throws him out of her house. On top of that, when they are about to get married, Grace receives a letter from Ruth telling her that Gilbert died in a fire. Ruth catches Gilbert kissing another boy and puts them both through this horrible electric conversion therapy, but Gilbert manages to escape and even sets free the pigs and birds that Ruth keeps in cages. Gilbert sets fire to the church building that Ruth and Owen run, and honestly, I cried buckets because I thought, Geez Louise, Grace and Gilbert have been through way too much. Do they have to go through more tragedy? Grace, thinking Gilbert is actually dead, starts hoarding more and more snail-themed stuff–snail statues, snail condoms, anything related to snails. It’s her way of dealing with grief. The house starts to pile with snail stuff, until finally Pinky comes to help out Grace in her time of need after Grace kicks Ken out. Pinky puts Grace on a diet to get her back to her normal weight and starts to get out more often. Unfortunately, Pinky develops dementia and passes away, leaving Grace to cope with her loneliness and despair alone. Pinky was the only person who Grace had left after her and Gilbert were separated, so now she feels like nothing will ever be the same. But Pinky motivated Grace to find what made her happy, and Grace realized that she really did want to become an animator and go to film school. She ends up making her own film and showing it at a film festival. Only a few people attend, and it seems like no one has questions during the Q and A part at the end of Grace’s movie, but then someone in the back raises their hand, and Grace recognizes that it’s Gilbert. I literally broke down sobbing so hard at this part, because I really thought Gilbert had died in the fire, but it turns out that he was able to escape the burning building and escape from Ruth and Owen’s farm. Grace ends up getting rid of all the snail trophies and stuff in her room, and she and Gilbert get to live together again. Even though they don’t have any other family, they have each other.

I could relate to this movie to some extent because I remember losing a dear friend of mine last year and grappling with the grief process. She was in her 70s and was so compassionate and energetic, and she always encouraged me to follow my passion of pursuing music, even when I wasn’t sure if I had what it took to make it as a musician. In 2023 I was depressed, I had quit my job the year before, and I was also feeling suicidal, like there was no point to living. However, I visited her in the hospital in the weeks leading up to her death, and she encouraged me through her life condition. Even though she was going through a much more serious life event than I was (i.e. she was going to die in a few weeks) getting to visit her gave me a different view on life and death. I was pretty careless with how I viewed my life. I often based my happiness on external achievements, like getting a boyfriend or getting admitted into a prestigious grad school or classical music program or leaving my job and making a six-figure income. However, as I continue to practice Buddhism, I am starting to see that while those things are fine to have, there are lots of people who go through heartbreak, rejection and many other life events that take them in a completely opposite direction than the one they envisioned for their lives. I took my life for granted so many times, and looking back, I can’t believe how selfish I was to think that my life was a waste of time and that I was better off not living. Because there were so many people around me who cared about me, including my dear friend. When Grace witnesses Pinky’s death at the beginning of the film and is crying, I cried along with her because it reminded me of when I lost my friend. When I attended my friend’s funeral, I wept and wept. I promised her I would not cry, but I failed to hold my tears in. I was in so much physical and emotional pain, and I just sat through the entire funeral weeping until my tear ducts were exhausted. Grief is a complex emotional experience, and no one chooses to grieve. People also grieve differently depending on their relationship with the person, but bottom line is that grief is a universal experience. I think that is why watching a movie like Memoir of a Snail was so cathartic

I really love how Grace and Pinky’s friendship develops through the course of the movie. Pinky reminds Grace to be her authentic self, and she is the only person Grace has left who she can truly trust. Pinky doesn’t judge Grace for being different because Pinky is true to herself and also has a lot of life experience, so when Grace feels like she cannot move forward in life because she is experiencing grief, separation from her brother, and loneliness, Pinky reminds her that life isn’t about looking backwards, but instead it’s about looking forwards. I have always loved befriending older people, especially in college because I didn’t feel like I fit in with everyone in my peer group. I didn’t have social media, and I was introverted, and somehow, I thought there was some perfect way I had to be throughout college in order to fit in with others. But in my junior year, I remember having a friend who was in her 60s. She had so much wisdom and life experience, and she, like me, was an introvert. I was feeling really depressed at the time and didn’t feel comfortable opening up to others about my depression. I felt so ashamed that I was going through it that I didn’t want to seek professional help for it, but somehow, I had developed trust in this older friend of mine. She listened to me and was able to sit with me and show up fully, even if I was sharing a vulnerable moment with her discussing my battles with depression. She helped me understand that I had a profound mission in my life and that I was going through this experience so that I could encourage others who were experiencing similar struggles. Befriending this woman was an incredible treasure I will cherish forever, and she encouraged me to be true to my authentic self, too, which is what I needed to hear because I often focused so much on being liked by everyone, but deep down I really didn’t like myself. I thought, Maybe, if I was more outgoing, people would like me more, but as I get older, I am starting to realize that not everyone is going to like me, but if that’s the case then it’s not the end of the world. That’s just life. I also love that, even though Grace decluttered her snail memorabilia, she still kept the snail hat that her late dad knitted her when she and Gilbert were kids. That was just such a beautiful and touching moment.

The movie also made me think of this concept in Buddhism called “cherry, plum, peach and damson,” which emphasizes that each person is unique, and that each person should be true to themselves. Grace spends a lot of her time alone, and even when she tries to be friendly with people and come out of her shell, people ignore her and bully her. Growing up, she was bullied a lot and her twin brother, Gilbert, often came to her rescue and beat up the bullies, but after they are separated, Grace has to navigate loneliness and being ostracized pretty much on her own. She ends up staying home a lot and collecting snail-related stuff because it reminds her of her dad and Gilbert, but she ends up feeling only lonelier because she feels disconnected from other people around her. That’s why her friendship with Pinky is so special. Pinky didn’t care what other people thought of her, even if people thought she was eccentric. She fully embraced Grace for who she was rather than doing what other people did and alienating her. As a kid, I really loved going to activities at my local SGI Buddhist center because I was accepted for who I was. I struggled with low self-esteem in middle school, but when I attended SGI meetings, I met other young people who were also struggling with the same things I was struggling with in middle school, fitting in, self-confidence, and loneliness being just a few of them. It was one of the few spaces where I felt I could be truly my introverted artistic self around people who were also encouraged to be their authentic selves. My mentor, Daisaku Ikeda (1928-2023), always encourages people, especially young people, to live true to themselves. The cherry, peach, plum and damson trees are each unique, and just as cherry trees can’t become peach trees, plum trees can’t become cherry trees. We all have different personalities, likes and dislikes, but we all have a unique path to pursue in life and need to follow our own paths in life.

To be honest, even at 31, I’m still figuring out my personality, my identity and my values as a human being. At first, I pressured myself to figure out who I was in such a short time, but as I get older, I realize that you can’t really rush that process of figuring out your own path in life and you can’t compare your path in life to anyone else’s. Of course, this is much easier said than done, but it’s true. I can’t compare my path in life to anyone else’s. I have to follow my own path and be true to myself, because I want to encourage other people, especially young people, to be true to themselves, too.

Movie Review: The Wife

Last week I watched this really good movie called The Wife. It was very powerful. I first heard of it actually while watching a skit on Saturday Night Live that was poking fun at Steve Harvey’s show Family Feud. It was an Oscar Nominees edition, and the contestants were divided between long time actors and new actors. One of the actors was Glenn Close (played by Kate McKinnon) for her performance in The Wife. I was curious about the movie after watching that sketch, and honestly this movie was deep. It was really deep. It’s about this married couple named Joan and Joe Castleman, and they live a seemingly quiet and comfortable life in New England. But one morning Joe gets a call from the Nobel Prize committee telling him he is invited to the Nobel Prize Ceremony in Sweden because he won the prize for literature. The couple are excited, as they should be, but through the course of the film it is clear that there is a less innocent backstory that comes with Joe’s success. We find out that Joan wrote a lot of Joe’s work for him because at the time he was struggling to publish his own work and was jealous of Joan for being a good writer, so he made her write his work for him and he took credit for it all. Joan wants to leave her past behind, but a reporter named Nathaniel Bone insists on writing her biography revealing the truth, that Joe was an imposter and that Joan was the actual writer for all of his work.

Honestly as a writer who struggles with self-worth, it was painful to see both of these people struggle to feel confident in themselves as writers, especially Joan. I was watching this movie with a friend and she told me this movie reminded her of the movie Big Eyes, which is the true story about the artist Margaret Keene and how her husband, Walter, made money off of her work and took credit for it. It was a frightening portrayal of how power can go to people’s heads and how honesty and integrity often get compromised when really good work goes commercial. Margaret valued honesty and integrity, while Walter valued profit and greed. Margaret spent long, long hours in the studio by herself in uncomfortable conditions, and when she needed to take breaks, Walter, driven by the pursuit for wealth and fame, only made her work harder so that he could play the salesman and pretend he was the one doing all the work even though he was a total fraud for taking credit for Margaret’s work. I think the flashbacks in The Wife sat with me, because at the time Margaret was a young undergraduate English student at Smith College in 1958. She thought her professor, Joe Castleman, genuinely liked her work but in honesty he just wanted to sleep with her even when he was already married and with kids. When he gets fired from Smith for sexual misconduct, he blames his failure on Joan and gets upset when she tells him that a draft of a novel he wrote needs improvement. The movie clearly shows how deep down Joe struggles with self-worth and to make himself feel better he takes his anger at falling short on Joan, lashing out at her when she tells him that the characters in his writing fall flat and threatening to divorce her unless she tells him he is a good writer. He says if he doesn’t make it as a writer, he is going to have to go back to teaching as a professor at a “second-rate” school and making the brisket.

At the time female writers were not respected, and Joan finds this truth out right from the get-go when she meets Elaine Mozell, a writer who visits Smith to talk to the English students in Joe’s class. When Joan meets Elaine and asks her about what it will take to have a literary career, Elaine crushes her dreams with a bitter smile, telling her to not become a writer because men don’t care about women writers and that her work won’t get published. Of course, because she didn’t have any mentors who could encourage her to weather the ups and downs of a literary career, and because the few writers she did meet gave her soul-crushing advice, Joan blurts aloud to Joe after her gets angry with her feedback that she will never become a writer and will never be as good as him. She does this because she doesn’t want Joe to leave her, so as the movie flashes back to the present, I saw how she stayed trapped in this really toxic marriage for many years and was silent about it because she wanted to protect her privacy. I don’t blame her, because talking about the abuse one has dealt with for years in a relationship is never easy and Joan wanted to keep her private life out of the public eye. But Nathaniel doesn’t see it that way. He meets with Joan for coffee and tells her that he did a lot of digging and found her writing in the Smith College archives and tells her that she is a much better writer than Joe and that she shouldn’t let him get credit for it. However, Joan stands her ground and refuses to let Nathaniel publish it. Even when he tries to butter her up and flirt with her, she doesn’t let him and tells Nathaniel to be respectful of her boundaries and not go through with this biography. Even after Joe dies of a heart attack, Nathaniel approaches Joan on the flight back from Stockholm and while he expresses his condolences, she knows he hasn’t forgotten about wanting to write that biography about Joe, so she tells Nathaniel that if he writes anything slanderous about Joe she will sue him. David is confused as to why his mom won’t tell the truth about what happened, but Joan tells him that instead of letting someone leak information about her private life and her marriage to Joe, violating her privacy, she is going to tell David and his sister everything that happened when they get home.

Of course, during the course of the movie Nathaniel doesn’t take no for an answer, and finds another opportunity to make the story known. In a later scene, David, who is Joan and Joe’s son and a writer himself, has Joe read a story he has been working on. Early in the movie, when they are celebrating Joe’s success, David approaches his dad to ask him for feedback about the story he is working on. David wants approval, but Joe continuously avoids the subject because he doesn’t want to hurt David’s feelings. When he is finally honest with David about what he thinks of his writing, David is hurt. Joe thinks that David’s writing has too many tropes, but I think he is unaware that David’s story is very much in line with the real-life dynamics between his parents. Joe gets up and leaves after he and David argue, and David remains in the bar feeling hurt and resentful. Nathaniel Bone approaches David and while we don’t see the full dialogue, it is implied that Nathaniel is dishing out the dirt on David’s dad and his mistreatment of Joan and dishonesty with his writing. In another scene, David is in the limo with his mom and dad and again, when David tries to bring up the story he wrote and his aspirations as a writer, Joe shuts him down. Joan thinks Joe should give David some approval and at least acknowledge his son’s dreams of becoming an author, and tells Joe that everyone wants approval, including him, but Joe doesn’t listen to her and says that he thinks David needs to learn to grow up and that he won’t make it in the writing field if he wants praise and approval from people. However, as a young man, Joe wanted that same approval from his wife. He couldn’t stand to be told his writing wasn’t good enough, and I think because he was such a distinguished professor at Smith, which at the time was an Ivy League school, he felt that prestige and title defined his worth, so he could treat people however they wanted. Because he craved that approval, he got upset when he didn’t get it in the ways he wanted.

Honestly, I can kind of relate because looking back, I often based my self-worth on my achievements, whether academic, music, or writing. And when I got praise and approval I felt pretty good about myself, but when I was alone dealing with my failures or when I got a rejection email back from the orchestra I auditioned for, or when I didn’t get the approval I wanted as a writer or musician I got really upset and started to think less of myself. I think that’s why I feel fortunate to have a religion or spiritual practice to help me ground my self-worth into something other than my external achievements. I’m not saying I am above awards or praise, but through practicing Buddhism I have realized that my self-worth comes from within me, and that whether I experience successes or failures along the path of this career I can remember that I am enough. It is a daily practice for me to awaken to that self-worth but it has been an immensely rewarding process and I have grown so much from learning how to bounce back from failure, write in my authentic voice and make efforts in my writing and music regardless of whether people are watching. I’m still getting over the fear of failure and rejection and not getting approval because I think like Joan said, wanting approval is human. And Brene Brown said in a documentary called The Call to Courage, which I watched on Netflix last year, said that even when people think “Oh, I don’t care what others think,” it is easier said than done because we are hardwired to care what others think of us.

When Joe gets the approval he wants from winning the Nobel Prize, before he receives the award, Joan tells him to please not mention her in his acceptance speech. Joe thinks she should be thanked, but Joan doesn’t agree. However, he doesn’t listen and ends up thanking her in his acceptance speech. Joan is upset and leaves the ceremony, and Joe chases after her, asking her why she is leaving. In the car, Joe asks Joan why she is upset with him, and Joan tells him the truth about their marriage, remembering how he took credit for her work for so many years, as well as his numerous affairs with other women and his mistreatment of their son David. He angrily throws the Nobel Prize at her, acting as if she needs it more than he does if she is so angry at him, but she refuses to take it, and so he throws it out the window. The prize is returned back to them, but that scene really showed me how all this pain and resentment and anger built up in Joan and Joe’s lives and exploded at this moment. Earlier, David comes into the room smelling of weed, and Joan and Joe find out that David had been talking with Nathaniel and that Nathaniel told him about Joe taking credit for Joan’s writing during their marriage. David tells his parents how angry he is that they kept these truths from him as a child, and there is a flashback to where Joan and Joe are in their home office and Joan is sitting at a desk and writing the novel that Joe would later take all the credit for. When David asks what they are doing and why he doesn’t get to spend time with his mom, Joe picks him up and takes him out of the room, David yelling and calling for his mom and Joan looking with a pained expression, knowing how much control Joe is exerting over her life to the point where she can’t hang out with her son because she is doing his dad’s dirty work of writing a well-written novel, in her own voice, that Joe will take credit for.