Category: Uncategorized

Episode Synopsis: Downton Abbey, Season 1 episode 4

The episode opens up with Mr. Bates, Anna and Gwen walking through the fairgrounds at Downton, and talking about the upcoming fair. Anna sees Mary and asks her how she is doing, and Mary tells her she is still grappling with the death of Mr. Pamuk. Anna tries to tell her it is going to be okay, but Mary is still grieving over his death and doesn’t think she will ever move on. Cora, Mary’s mother, is having tea with Violet Crawley, her mother-in-law, and they are talking about Mary inheriting the estate. They talk about how Mary is grieving over Mr. Pamuk’s death, and Violet tells Cora that the real issue is Mary getting married to Matthew because she is the firstborn so there is more pressure on her to get married. However, Mary doesn’t want to marry Matthew because he comes to Downton thinking he doesn’t need to live the family’s aristocratic lifestyle and takes pride in being middle-class. Meanwhile, Lord Grantham meets Tom Branson, the new chauffer, who is from Ireland. He compliments Lord Grantham’s library and Lord Grantham tells Tom he is welcome to borrow any of the books, and asks Tom what books he likes. Tom says he loves history and politics, and Lord Grantham is quietly suspicious of this because he hasn’t met anyone on the staff who has explicitly expressed their interest in politics. Mr. Molesley is serving Isobel and Matthew tea, when Isobel finds that Mr. Molesley’s hands have a really bad rash all over them. She examines them and determines it is a skin condition called erysipelas, and insists that she take him to the doctor to get his hands checked out. Matthew is embarrassed and insists Molesley’s case isn’t that extreme, but Isobel is happy because she gets to put all of her extensive training as a doctor to use, so she insists that she treat Molesley’s condition.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Anna is coughing and sneezing and Mrs. Patmore, who is running a tight ship, tells her she needs to get out of the kitchen. Anna asks if they can go to the fair tonight and suggests Daisy needs to especially go because she has been thinking a lot about the death of Mr. Pamuk. Daisy can’t tell anyone that she saw Anna, Mary, and Cora carry Mr. Pamuk’s body down the corridor, though. The Dowager Countess visits Matthew to ask about him inheriting the estate, and it’s funny because she is not used to swivel chairs and she is startled when she finds out she is sitting down in a swivel chair. Mrs. Hughes tells O’Brien she needs to stay behind and watch the other girls because Anna, the head lady’s maid, has a cold, but Mrs. O’Brien complains and tells Mrs. Hughes she is not a slave and refuses to do so. Mr. Bates, Thomas Barrow, and William are all in the dining quarters downstairs talking about the fair, and William talks about how he is going to ask Daisy out to the fair, and Thomas snidely puts him down and tells him he doesn’t have a chance. Mr. Bates tells him to leave William alone, but when Daisy comes by and William is about to ask her if she wants to come to the fair that evening, Thomas interrupts him and asks Daisy to the fair, sabotaging William’s chance at asking Daisy out. William is crushed, and Mr. Bates calls Thomas out on what he did. Thomas acts like he is indifferent and continues to smoke his cigarette. Tom drives Cora, Sybil and Edith around, and overhears them talking about dresses. Sybil says she really likes the new fashions for women (this is around the time of the suffragette movement.) Because Tom is interested in women’s rights he takes an interest in Sybil for being interested in politics. He tells her that he overheard their conversation and hands her some pamphlets about women’s rights, telling her that he is a socialist and is going to quit his job as chauffer one day because he is interested in politics.

In the evening everyone goes to the fair (except for Carson) and Mrs. Hughes reunites with Joe Burns, who she fell in love with a long time ago. They catch up on life, and he tells her that he married someone but she died three years earlier and his kids are grown up. They play a game at the fair and when he wins, he gives her a toy he won so she can have something to remember him by. He asks her about her life and she tells him she is planning on staying at Downton Abbey even when she retires. He asks her what will happen if the estate is sold, and she tells him that there are a number of other catastrophes that could happen to the estate (a plague, a war, etc. After watching the entire series and seeing how Downton went through World War II and the 1918 flu epidemic, I just thought, Wow yeah everything she said happened and Downton was still intact.) Joe proposes to her and tells her to think carefully about her decision so that she doesn’t make the wrong decision in a hurry. When Mrs. Hughes comes back everyone sees her smiling and they speculate about her finding a new man, and Thomas makes some snide comment about it and Daisy, who is in love with Thomas, follows along with his joking. Mr. Bates tells Daisy that she shouldn’t make that kind of joke just because Thomas is making the joke because she’s usually a nice person and doesn’t gossip or backstab people like Thomas and Mrs. O’Brien do. Earlier, Mrs. O’Brien is complaining because she has to stay behind and work while everyone else gets to go to the fair, and because she is so bitter, she tells Tom Branson that the chauffers have their own place to eat on the estate and that he shouldn’t eat with them, and Mr. Bates tells her to lay off Tom since he’s a new employee and is still getting used to everything. Tom asks Mr. Bates what he is doing, and Mr. Bates tells him he is sorting Lord Grantham’s collars. Tom jokes that he should be doing something less time-wasting than sorting collars, and Mr. Bates, who has a good sense of humor, laughs it off and Mrs. O’Brien, who is always up to something, frowns suspiciously at him, like, “You shouldn’t trust this guy too much. He’s a troublemaker.” Mr. Bates asks where Anna is, and Mrs. O’Brien tells him she has a cold and is upstairs in her room. He goes upstairs and brings Anna dinner (earlier, when he got fired from his job and was alone crying in his room, Anna brought him dinner) and they are deeply in love with each other at that moment.

William is playing the piano alone in the staff dining room, and Mrs. Hughes finds him playing by himself because he is still sad about Daisy rejecting him for Thomas. She tells him she wants to hear him play, but he says it’s fine, and that he is going back to work. Mrs. Hughes saw earlier that Thomas was picking on William for having his buttons undone on his vest and Daisy didn’t stick up for William, so she tells William to not let Thomas get to him because Thomas is jealous that everyone likes William more than they like him, but William tells Mrs. Hughes that not everyone likes him, implying Daisy. Mrs. Hughes knows who he is talking about and tells him that in that case, Daisy is a foolish girl who doesn’t deserve William. Later on, in the kitchen, Daisy is telling Mrs. Patmore how cute Thomas is. Earlier, she told him she had a crush on Thomas and Mrs. Patmore is surprised that Daisy is interested in him. She tells Daisy that Thomas is not the guy for her, and when Daisy asks her why she tries to tell her that Thomas isn’t actually interested in women and was just pretending to be interested in Daisy so he could make William feel like a loser. Earlier, Mr. Bates went over to William’s room to check in on him, and William, without turning to see who it was, tells Mr. Bates to leave him alone. Mr. Bates closes his door and finds Thomas coming out into the hall having overheard what happened, and tells Mr. Bates that William never stood a chance. Mr. Bates grabs him by the collar and tells him to keep away from Daisy and to stop bullying William, but Thomas just smirks and says Mr. Bates’s threat doesn’t scare him.

When Mrs. O’Brien is doing Sybil’s hair, Gwen comes in to ask her about something, and Sybil sends Mrs. O’Brien away (Mrs. O’Brien loves to eavesdrop on people’s conversations so she can gossip with Thomas, so she is not pleased with this request but leaves.) Gwen shows her that she got an offer for an interview; the previous episode Gwen told everyone she was taking typewriting classes to become a secretary and leave the service industry, and Sybil and Anna were the only ones who supported her decision to leave. Sybil helped her apply for the job and sent in a letter of reference for Gwen, and Gwen is super overjoyed about this, but later on, when she is alone in the kitchen Gwen gets another letter and is downcast when she finds out they cancelled her interview and went with someone else. Sybil is so excited for Gwen’s interview and has her look at interview outfits, but Gwen cries and tells her about the cancellation and insists she is never going to become a secretary. Sybil, however, never gives up on Gwen and tells her that she just needs to keep going after her dream and to not get discouraged just because she didn’t make it the first time.

Mary is talking with her father, Lord Grantham, about inheriting the estate. He tells her that he is a custodian so he cannot actually buy the estate himself; he is just taking care of it for the sake of the people before him who lived at Downton. And he can’t take Cora’s money out of the state or else Lord Grantham would have to sell Downton Abbey, and that wouldn’t be fair for Matthew because he even though he would be the heir in title, he wouldn’t have any money to pay for Downton. Mary tells her father she isn’t going to marry Matthew because she is stubborn and won’t marry a man just because her family picked him for her. Meanwhile, Isobel picks up some tinctures for Mr. Molesley’s erysipelas and gets him to take them. At first the nurse is insistent that Isobel shouldn’t just pick out these remedies herself and that Molesley should see Dr. Clarkson about it, she refuses.When they go to Dr. Clarkson and the Dowager Countess, Isobel insists that Mr. Molesley’s erysipelas cleared up thanks to the tinctures she picked out for him. However, the Dowager Countess looks at Mr. Molesley’s hands and asks him how his dad is doing, and Mr. Molesley tells her he has been helping his dad out in the garden and has been trimming his rue hedge. The Dowager Countess explains that Mr. Molesley’s rash was a rue allergy, not erysipelas, and tells Isobel that while they appreciate her services, that she should leave it to the professionals (aka Dr. Clarkson and the Dowager Countess) to figure out stuff like this, and she smugly smiles to herself as she gets up to leave before Isobel can say anything.

Mary finds out that they are going to let Matthew inherit the title to the estate because he is the heir and she leaves the drawing room, and goes to her bedroom because she is angry. Cora comes to her room and finds Mary crying alone in her room, and asks what is wrong. Mary tells her that all everyone ever talks about it Matthew inheriting the estate, and she doesn’t get a say in it. Cora tells her that she wouldn’t have been able to stand up for Mary because of the estate rules, and Mary tells her that Cora doesn’t care about her feelings, and that everything is ruined and that after her affair with Pamuk her reputation is ruined. Mary is still trying to deal with the death of Mr. Pamuk, who she loved very much, and is overwhelmed because her family doesn’t seem to care about her decisions or think she can make her own decisions about the estate. Earlier, when they are walking on the fairgrounds, Matthew and Mary are talking, and Mary apologizes to Matthew for criticizing him being middle-class, and he asks her more about what she does. She tells him that she envies him having a regular 9-5 job because mostly her and her sisters help out with charities and other events but mostly spend their time at home until they find a husband, and she finds this life quite dull.

Mr. Hughes is in her office, thinking about Mr. Burns’ marriage proposal. Carson comes in and she has him sit down so she can tell him what happened. She tells Carson that before coming to Downton, she had fallen in love with Mr. Burns because he was a farmer and she was a farmer’s daughter from Argyll, so they had a deep connection. But after that they never saw each other, and he married someone but she died three years earlier, and they found each other at the fair and he proposed, but she turned down the proposal. Carson listens and then Anna comes in telling Mrs. Hughes to come because there is chaos in the kitchen and Mrs. Patmore needs Mrs. Hughes’s help. Before leaving, Carson asks Mrs. Hughes if she is considering leaving Downton, and she jokes “where would I find the time?”

The episode ends with Edith, Mary, the Dowager Countess, Lord Grantham and Cora in the drawing room. Sybil is trying on her new outfit and Anna is helping her try it on. When she finally goes into the drawing room, she is wearing a fashionable headband and these beautiful blue bloomers. Her family is aghast, particularly Lord Grantham because they normally wear dresses, but Tom Branson is looking through the window at her and is smitten. Earlier in one of the sisters’ rooms, Edith and Sybil are talking and Sybil says how confining corsets are and that she wishes women wouldn’t need to wear them all the time. I remember the first time I heard about bloomers was when I read a book as a kid called You Forgot Your Skirt, Amelia Bloomer!, which illustrates how Amelia Bloomer reformed dresses with the invention of bloomers. The closest thing I had to bloomers growing up was skorts, which was a combination of shorts and a skirt. I guess if you were worried about the guys seeing your panties during gym class, you could wear skorts and not worry because there were shorts underneath the skirt.

Sleeping in Class

I admit it: in college I slept during my classes. A lot. Like, pretty much every day. One time it almost cost me a scholarship. It was my sophomore year and I had started drinking tea in the mornings, specifically the Sweet Dreams tea from Bigelow. I was quite anxious and this was of course before I knew that you need to see a counselor for anxiety, but to calm my nerves without medication I decided to drink this tea, not knowing that there was a reason this particular flavor of tea was called Sweet Dreams. Why? Because it was sleep inducing of course! I found myself walking happily into my music history class, saying good morning to the professor and my hips bumping against the desk as I jauntily sat down, ready to learn about some Western composers. I started off giddily taking notes. I am SUCH a good student, I thought, so accomplished and smart. Look at me taking these notes. Now I have something to study when I get home. Midway through I felt my hand get heavy, then the professor’s words started sounding a little more muffled, and before I knew it I was knocked out. The last time I was this knocked out was when I got my wisdom teeth taken out and they gave me anesthetic and I woke up looking like a chipmunk with gauze stuffed in my mouth (that was a good day, though, because I got to miss school and eat soy pudding and read Oliver Twist all day.) When I woke up, I saw the professor walking around, and he had papers in his hand. I saw the paper fly towards me through the air and it landed at my feet. When I blearily opened my eyes, he was handing everyone else their paper. Okaayyyy, I thought. This kept happening though. I would drink the tea for breakfast with my Grape Nuts, then head to class, take notes, fall asleep in the middle, then the professor would throw the worksheet at me. I kept thinking that he hated me because I was Black, but as I chanted about it and reflected, I realized it was because I was sleeping in his class and that was very rude. Sleeping in class sent the message, “I know all this shit. Don’t lecture me, man. Your lecture really isn’t that important to me.” But back then, I felt so justified in sleeping. Like, I can’t help it! Right….. Not surprisingly, when I emailed the professor later on about writing me a recommendation letter for a grant I was applying for, he said that while he was happy to write the recommendation he wasn’t happy I was sleeping in class. He offered some helpful suggestions for staying awake, but I have a hard time listening to people because my huge old 20 year old ego kept rearing its ugly old head and telling me, “It’s not your fault!” However, this was my responsibility. Thankfully I got over it and started paying more attention in class, but that sleeping in class moment kind of scarred me for life. I’m pretty sure I stopped drinking sleepy time tea after that.

This didn’t just happen in this one class though; it happened in a lot of my classes. The main culprit besides the damn tea, however, was just that I got really shit sleep. I would study until the wee hours, and somehow expect myself to magically be a chipper person in the morning. What started with a tank full of gas ended up being a car running on past empty. I would take copious notes and somehow expect to stay awake, but because I was sleep deprived I also started to eat a lot more out of stress. I would pile on these big portions of food (the vegan hot dogs were my favorite) and eat as much as I could, then toss the rest in the compost pails (thankfully they composted all this food waste.) Then I would take notes, and because I was so sleepy from all that food (I looked it up. It is called post-prandial somnolence) I would nod off while my classmates would alternate between listening to the lecture attentively and poking me awake (or giggling, if they were so inclined. It was quite humorous though looking back, because I was the only one who was stupid enough to sleep in class.) Most of my professors didn’t say anything, but one of the professors told me I needed coffee. It was weird though, because I was one big ball of energy in these classes. I always raised my hand to contribute because I felt I just needed to get all my thoughts out, so why not blurt them out while the rest of the students shyly raised their hands to get a word in edge-wise? Then I would furiously take notes, then because I got burned out, I would fall asleep, then the professor started talking louder, probably to wake me up, and then I would sleepily wake up and realize the class was over.

I am glad I stopped sleeping during the classes by junior year because honestly, I missed out on a lot of cool discussions when I slept in class. And when material was going to be covered on an exam, well, guess what? I missed that material and important information because I was asleep. It’s no wonder that I would get so upset in those classes when I would give presentations and people would sleep through them. I think as I chanted, I reflected on my own sleeping in class behavior and later realized I didn’t want to continue this habit come junior year. Also a lot of other crazy shit happened in junior year, like mental illness, so I ended up cutting out the sleeping-in-class nonsense by that time. And thankfully, I enjoyed my class discussions more when I was awake and had started taking better care of myself. That’s the other thing. I was burned out. I wasn’t really taking care of my emotional or mental health at the time, or even really my physical health at the time. Self-care felt like an erratic thing I did when I was on holiday breaks or had long stretches of time when I was doing nothing. My Buddhist practice was my form of self-care at the time thankfully, and it helped me get through a lot of this stressful stuff during my first two years of undergrad. Honestly I think this is partly why I was so fearful about going to graduate school because I was worried I would repeat the same patterns of not taking care of myself, sleeping in class, not getting rest. Honestly, I learned a lot from my first year roommate. She went to bed early, and I wound up staying up until 2 am in the morning reading an essay by Hume and breaking down and crying because of my perfectionistic habit of striving for success and hard work at the very real cost of my mental health. I mean, I can’t complain. I ended up with good grades in my classes, and that was a decade ago, so why worry about the past? But I love to write, and wanted a story to share that was somehow light-hearted and goofy, and this story always makes me laugh because sleeping in class because I was exhausted felt so justified at the time, but looking back it was silly and I can look back on that and laugh about it, while when I was going through the actual sleeping in class I suffered.

Anyway, thank you for reading and have a safe holiday season.

Movie Review: The Iron Lady

In season 4 of The Crown, Queen Elizabeth II (played by Olivia Colman) gets a new prime minister. At first she is excited because the new prime minister is a woman, but the new PM, Margaret Thatcher (played by Gillian Anderson) ends up being one of the toughest PMs Elizabeth has had to work with. She starts a war in the Falkland Islands and doesn’t do much to address the high unemployment rates around England. She also fires her entire cabinet of men even after she told Elizabeth she preferred men in Parliament because she thought women were weak. In one episode of the season, an unemployed man breaks into Buckingham Palace because he tries to contact Queen Elizabeth about badly people are suffering from joblessness during the costly war that Margaret had everyone enter into, but with little success. Queen Elizabeth is terrified when he breaks in, but he tells her he just wants to tell her how fucked up the situation is under Margaret Thatcher. Earlier in the episode, he is standing in a long line of unemployed citizens and is struggling to pay his bills, and not only that but his wife leaves him for another man and takes the kids with her. He has a lot to be pissed off about, and he tries to contact the government to see if they can do anything about it, but with little success. When Queen Elizabeth gets to know him more, she realizes that the unemployment situation really is bad but because she spends a lot of time in Buckingham Palace she isn’t really out with the public and so she can’t really know what goes on unless she reads the newspaper or watches the news on TV. Before the police take him out of Buckingham Palace, he tells Elizabeth that Margaret Thatcher is coming for her job next if she isn’t careful. As the season goes on, it is clear that Queen Elizabeth and Margaret don’t see eye-to-eye on many issues, namely the Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom and sanctions against South Africa during apartheid. However, when Margaret resigns, Queen Elizabeth, after much thought, gives her a medal for her long years of service as prime minister. I studied about Margaret Thatcher in world history class but of course, after a while I forgot all my history knowledge, so it was helpful to watch The Crown because even though it’s a fictionalized account of the monarchy it still gives some good insight.

I had been meaning to see The Iron Lady for a while, mainly because I loved Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada (if you haven’t seen it she plays a demanding fashion magazine editor named Miranda Priestly who makes the life of her assistant a living hell). The Crown episodes with Margaret Thatcher mainly cover her work with the Queen, but not so much about her childhood or her past experiences. In The Iron Lady, we see Margaret Thatcher before she became prime minister. Before she married Denis Thatcher, she was Margaret Roberts, a young woman who was bullied in school for not being wealthy like the other girls but falls in love with conservatism. She meets Denis, an intellectual young man with and and they fall in love. The film mainly shows how she grapples with Denis’s death after she is no longer prime minister. One thing that interested me about this movie was that they show how Margaret Thatcher’s inflection changed when she became prime minister. Her representatives practiced with her how she was supposed to speak to the public, and she had to learn how to enunciate things more aggressively. They also show how she got her hairstyle. In the movie, she is reflecting on her past time as prime minister and what she learned along the way. She experiences hallucinations in which Denis appears to her as the voice of conscience. It’s interesting because in The Crown, Olivia Colman plays the Queen but in The Iron Lady she played Thatcher’s daughter Carol. Also Phoebe Waller-Bridge is in the movie as well (she is from a show I love called Fleabag.)

Episodes Synopsis: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

This week I re-watched a series I really enjoy called The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. If you haven’t seen the show yet it takes place in New York City in the 1950s and it’s about a young Jewish woman named Miriam “Midge” Maisel who seems to have the perfect typical American middle-class life. She has two kids, Ethan and Esther, and a loving husband named Joel. She goes to his comedy club night because he is doing stand-up but his jokes end up falling flat. She initially just came to support and bring her prized brisket in its Pyrex container, and tries to initiate conversation with Susie Myerson, the manager of the Gaslight coffee house where Joel does standup, but Susie isn’t interested. Unfortunately, Midge finds out on the night of Yom Kippur that Joel cheated on her with his secretary, Penny Pann, and she gets drunk and goes to the coffee house and does a standup bit about Joel’s affair. Susie is impressed with Midge and it changes her impression of her because she at first thinks Midge is just this annoying chatty housewife who brought a brisket. She becomes Midge’s manager and helps her navigate a career in comedy. Midge gets a day job at a department store called B. Altman to support her comedy career and at the same time is trying to please her family and move on from Joel after his affair, and she is also keeping her comedy career a secret from her family because she knows they wouldn’t approve of her doing a career in stand-up.

In Season 2, Miriam and her family go on vacation to Steiner Mountain Resort in the Catskills. Susie goes with Miriam and fits in with the camp volunteers, carrying a plunger she has named Pamela and touring the Catskills grounds. Meanwhile, Joel is still thinking of Midge but his dad, Moishe, encourages him to look for other girls during their time in the Catskills but he doesn’t seem to find any girl that could really top Midge. He meets a girl at the bowling alley who has a smart wit like him, and they connect. Miriam gets a call from B. Altman asking if she can come in to work a shift because someone called in sick and another quit, so while at the beauty salon in the Catskills she tells Rose, her mother, she needs to go back to work but doesn’t have a ride. One of the women getting her hair done tells Miriam that her son, Benjamin Ettenberg, can give her a ride back since he is planning on returning back to New York City for work (he is a doctor) and also doesn’t enjoy his trip to the Catskills much. Miriam gets a ride from Benjamin, and at first there is no evident chemistry, and compared to Miriam, Benjamin seems introverted. Earlier on in the episode, Miriam and her friends are participating in a game of Simon Says and then linger near the table of refreshments and gossip. Benjamin walks past them and the girls check him out, wondering why he just walked past them instead of flirting with them. When Miriam and Benjamin are driving in the car on the way back to the city Benjamin turns on the news and Miriam is bored, but when he turns it off she starts improvising a comedic take on the news and he can’t help but crack a smile. When they make it back he asks her out and they go on a date and afterwards they go to the diner where Susie and Midge regularly meet to discuss standup gigs and other career-related matters. Benjamin doesn’t know anyone at the diner but Midge knows everyone since her and Susie go there frequently, and it’s where they network with a lot of professionals who work in show business. Midge is extremely nervous at first to tell him she is a comic, but then she tells him and he doesn’t mind.

Midge gets a call from Susie telling her that she got a gig at the Concord, which is a venue at the Steiner Resort. When Susie introduces Midge to the venue manager, he is angry because Midge doesn’t look like the girl that Susie had sent him a picture of and told about, and he refuses to let Midge take the stage. Midge goes on anyway, and ends up talking about a lot of sexual stuff in her standup, but she ends up finding her dad, Abe, sitting in the audience, looking appalled. Midge gets nervous, and when she gets nervous she doesn’t end her set, she keeps going and talks about her parents’ sex life. Everyone else laughs, but Abe is clearly embarrassed. When she goes backstage, Midge is shaken and feels horrible about what she did, even when she gets all this applause and Susie and the venue manager praise Midge for her standup. Abe finds her backstage and tells her she is coming with him and they are going home.

Abe also has another problem to deal with as well. He gets a call from Bell Labs at Columbia University, where he teaches as a professor, that he is going to embark on a research project that he really wanted to work on. He brings his son Noah with him, and all of the faculty meet Noah and talk about how they have heard a lot about him, but then he meets one of the faculty members and the faculty member tells him Abe can no longer be part of the project. Abe asks him why and the member takes him and Noah into a secret surveillance room, and the faculty tell Abe he is suspended from the team because Noah is involved in a top-secret project with the U.S. government. When he asks Noah about the project, Noah says he cannot share information about the project. Abe is of course quite frustrated: he finds out his son works for the CIA and he finds out his daughter does standup as a career. After the night at the Concord, Abe tells Miriam that she cannot tell Rose, her mother, about her standup career until he says she can. He also feels like he no longer recognizes the little girl Midge used to be when they went to the Catskills as a family together. But Midge assures him that everything she shared that night at the Concord was all hers, all authentically hers.

In the episode “Look She Made a Hat” Miriam and her family are back in New York City and are observing Yom Kippur. Susie calls Midge and tells her she booked a gig for her on the same evening as her family’s Yom Kippur dinner. Susie tells Midge she needs to come for the gig, no excuses, and so Midge has to figure out how to break it to her family that evening that she is a comic and has a gig that evening. Earlier, when they were in the Catskills, she told Joel about Abe coming to her standup at the Concord and he listened empathetically to her and was supportive, but after seeing her with Benjamin while everyone was out on the lawn stargazing, he becomes jealous. During the Yom Kippur service at their synagogue, Miriam’s parents (Abe and Rose) struggle to keep the peace with Joel’s parents (Moishe and Shirley) because neither of them get along well with each other, and during the service they argue back and forth with each other. While this is going on Astrid, Noah’s wife, is getting absorbed in the service and passionately singing along with the rabbi. Astrid converted to Judaism when she married Noah and makes earnest efforts to learn about Judaism. In season 1, her and Noah come back from Israel and she brings back gefilte fish and a mezuzah and Rose, while pretending to love the fish, has Zelda secretly throw it in the trash, and when Midge sees the mezuzah and is impressed by its size, Astrid thinks she got the wrong size. Astrid is worried that Noah will leave her but Midge assures her Noah loves her just as she is. When they are at Steiner Resort, Astrid is fasting because she observes Tisha B’Av, an annual Jewish day of mourning, and doesn’t eat anything at breakfast. Moishe, Shirley, Abe, Rose, Midge, Noah and Joel all come to the table where Astrid is with big plates of food in hand and they ask Astrid why she wasn’t at Polynesian night the night before. Astrid becomes more and more agitated with the family because she is the only one out of all of them observing Tisha B’Av and no one else seems to care about this day. After Rose finds out about Noah’s secret activity with the government, she tries to get some details about it from Astrid. She finds Astrid reading from scripture with the rabbi in a little quiet room, and Astrid is super excited that Rose is joining her to study scripture with her, but Rose pretends to read the scripture while asking Astrid about Noah’s work with the government.

During the Yom Kippur dinner, which also marks one year since Joel and Midge separated, chaos ensues as Midge tries to tell her family she is a comic. Earlier in the day, Rose is at the meat market picking up meat cuts for the Yom Kippur dinner and Midge meets her there and Rose tells her they got Rabbi Krinsky to come to the dinner, and they are so excited. Zelda, the Weissman’s housekeeper, goes through all the trouble to prepare a huge dinner for them and giving strict orders to the other housekeepers in the kitchen. Ethan complains he had too much chocolate during the Yom Kippur service and isn’t hungry, and Zelda tells her how growing up in Poland, kids worked, they didn’t get to eat all this food she is preparing for them. Midge tells Zelda and the other housekeepers to hold off on bringing the food in, and so they repeatedly have to bring out the food and they bring it back to the kitchen. Everyone at the table complains that they are hungry and want to eat, but Midge keeps talking and beating around the bush and the family is distracted with other things before they finally tell her to just say what she needs to say, and she tells them she is a comic. Rabbi Krinsky comes to the Weissmans’ house but after hearing the family argue about Midge’s comedy career for the next five minutes, he says he has another commitment and then leaves. I was thinking, Dang, and they were so excited about getting the rabbi to come. But by this time, the family is so focused on grilling Midge about her comedy career (and her relationship with Benjamin) that they aren’t even thinking of the rabbi. After the chaos dies down, Astrid announces she is pregnant.

Benjamin and Midge go to an art show because Benjamin loves collecting art. Midge goes into a little room where there are a few paintings on the wall that haven’t been sold yet because no one cared enough about them, and there is a woman at the desk in the room knitting. Midge asks her about the paintings and the woman tells her no one has sold them yet, so she is free to take one. Midge takes the painting and her and Benjamin go to a bar to hang out. They meet Declan Howell, a reclusive artist who refuses to sell any of his paintings. Benjamin fangirls because he is a huge fan of Declan Howell. He is super intoxicated on the night they meet him and when the bartender cuts him off at six drinks because he is intoxicated, Declan stands up and recites a Shakespearean sonnet, fumbling through the lines (when I first saw this episode, I thought he was going to vomit so that’s why I closed my eyes. But he doesn’t.) Everyone applauds and Midge and Benjamin go up to Declan. Midge introduces Benjamin to Declan, but Declan doesn’t really care and is only focused on how hot Midge is and the painting she found at the art gallery. They talk and Declan opens up and lets Benjamin come to his studio only if he brings Midge. Benjamin is very reluctant to have Midge go because he is worried Declan might sexually harass her, but Midge tells him she has dealt with a lot of sexual harassment working as a comic. She lets him go with her anyway and they share a sweet kiss before he lets her up to his apartment. They go to Declan Howell’s studio, and they find his studio is a mess and there are bottles of alcohol everywhere. Declan comes out to see them and he has bloody cuts and bruises on his body, and when Benjamin tells him he can treat the cuts because he is a doctor, Declan refuses to let him. When Benjamin asks if he can buy any of his paintings, Declan refuses to sell any of them to him. Midge suggests that she can get Declan to let Benjamin buy his paintings and that she will take care of it, but he refuses to let her be alone with Declan, especially because Declan is intoxicated and has been also checking out Midge. Midge silently reminds him that she has dealt with men harassing her before and that she can handle this. Benjamin gives in and lets Midge talk with Declan. After talking with him, Declan lets Midge into the back of his studio to see his best painting. I was sad to not see the actual work, but realized it would have defeated the purpose of the plot because Declan didn’t want anyone to look at his work. Midge is in awe of this painting and can’t move because she is mesmerized by its beauty. Declan tells her he used to have a family but gave all that up to dedicate himself to his artwork, and his pain and suffering went into this work.

I am not sure when season 5 is coming out so I have been watching the reruns. After finishing The Crown, I was emotionally exhausted, so I needed some comic relief (Mrs. Maisel is a show about a comedian. Pun totally intended.)

Movie Review: Biutiful

A few days ago I watched this incredible film called Biutiful. It came out in 2010 and was directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. I had seen some of his other films, like Birdman and Babel, so I was sort of familiar with his style of directing. But I hadn’t watched his movies in a long time, so seeing Biutiful felt like a new cinematic experience for me. Also I loved the trailers (I rented the DVD from the library and the films were all from Lionsgate Films, such as Rabbit Hole and Winter’s Bone, which I want to see. I really love drama films and these are drama films. There was also a movie starring Will Ferrell called Everything Must Go that I want to watch at some point.)

Honestly this film was a tough one to watch, mainly because of how it deals with the reality of death. The film takes place in Barcelona, Spain, and the main character, Uxbal (played by Javier Bardem) is struggling to survive financially and with the separation from his wife, Marambra, he has to provide for his two kids. However, he also has to face the fact that he is dying of cancer and doesn’t have long to live. The movie shows how his cancer diagnosis affects him psychologically, mentally, physically and emotionally. The movie opens with a scene where Uxbal is talking with a young woman while they sleep about the story of his wedding ring and the young woman asks if she can try it on. Then we find Uxbal in the snowy woods and there is a dead owl in the snow. A young man smoking a cigarette comes up to Uxbal and they start talking. The scene ends and Uxbal is back to reality, in the doctor’s office, when he finds out that he has been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and doesn’t have many months to live.

This film was quite powerful. It reminded me a lot of Babel, one of Inarritu’s other films. If you haven’t seen Babel, it takes place in four different narratives. It follows the lives of different individuals whose lives are deeply interconnected in some way. In Morocco, an American couple named Richard and Susan are riding on a caravan and two young boys shoot a rifle and accidentally hit Susan, injuring her in the shoulder. While this is going on, Susan and Ricard’s nanny, Amelia, is taking care of their kids, Debbie and Mike, but also doesn’t want to miss her son’s wedding, which is being held in Mexico. Amelia asks Richard if she can go, but he tells her she needs to stay with the kids while he takes care of Susan after her injury. Santiago, a relation of Amelia, takes her and the kids to Mexico anyway, and they go to the wedding and have a great time, but then Santiago decides to drive them back to the States while he is intoxicated, even when people tell him that might not be the safest thing. He refuses to listen, and drives them back across the U.S.-Mexico border. Unfortunately, the border guards stop them and ask for identification, but they don’t have any, and when Santiago tries to reason with them, the guards gets aggressive and Santiago drives off but leaves Amelia, Debbie and Mike alone in the desert to fend for themselves. After spending a scary amount of time surviving in the heat of the desert, they finally get help but then Amelia is taken to U.S. customs and they tell her because she is undocumented she will be deported. Another story in Babel takes place in Japan, where a young woman named Chieko struggles with her adolescence. Chieko is deaf and struggles to get people to empathize with her situation, and her mother passed away and she is dealing with the trauma of loss. She wants to have a boyfriend but doesn’t get the validation she wants from the men she meets, and it causes her a lot of deep suffering. Throughout the film, I saw the different ways in which each character’s suffering was interconnected, which kind of resonated with the Buddhist term dependent origination because dependent origination believes that nothing exists in isolation, and everything is connected.

There is a particularly poignant and disturbing scene in Biutiful. When Uxbal goes into a night club/strip club he sees a few dancers who, instead of having human faces, have breasts for heads (I wasn’t sure if the dancers were actually wearing papier-mache breast heads or if Uxbal was actually hallucinating that there heads were breasts.) Uxbal goes to the club and ends up hanging out with Tito and his friends, and they snort cocaine together. One of the women asks Uxbal what is going on with him, and he tells her he is dying of cancer. At first she ponders this but because she just wants to have a good time she goes back to partying. I think this scene showed me that Uxbal is just trying to make the most of his remaining years of life because he doesn’t have long to live, and even when what he does is harmful (e.g. snorting cocaine) he has lost hope for living since his illness is terminal. I read this chapter in a book called The Wisdom for Creating Happiness and Peace by Daisaku Ikeda called “Facing Illness” and he talks about how illness is a manifestation of the devil king of the sixth heaven because it saps our will to live, or our life force. However, when we chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, we can regain our life force and use the suffering from illness as an opportunity to deepen our faith and Buddhist practice. We can also use our experiences dealing with illness as a chance to encourage others dealing with illness and other sufferings. And even when people die from illness, we can still chant for the deceased person’s absolute happiness. In Buddhism, while we of course need to take care of our health, we also view illness as one of the four sufferings, which are birth, aging, sickness and death. Even if one is successful or wealthy, no one can escape these sufferings. However, when we chant, we can have the life condition of Buddhahood to transform these sufferings into a chance to develop an even deeper state of life and appreciation for life.

I’m still processing the film but overall it was very deep and Javier Bardem and the other actors gave powerful performances.

Biutiful. 2010. In Spanish with English subtitles. Rated R for disturbing images, language, some sexual content, nudity and drug use.

Book Review: Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

A few days ago I finished a book called Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson. A friend recommended it to me and it is one of the most interesting books I have read (in a good way of course). It is about a young woman named Lillian who does a favor for someone who she reconnects with from high school, only this favor she does for her is pretty major. Lillian flashes back to when she was in high school; she didn’t fit in with the other students because she doesn’t come from financial means, while everyone else does. She befriends a young woman at the school named Madison, who, while she is rich like the other girls, doesn’t ostracize Lillian like they do. She is honest and upfront about her privilege and Lillian’s lack of privilege, but they remain on good terms. One night, Lillian’s family meets with Madison’s family over dinner, and Madison’s dad tells Lillian he and Madison need a huge favor from her. Madison did something that would have gotten her suspended from school, but they want Lillian to take the blame for what Madison did so that Madison can stay in school. Lillian is flabbergasted, but because she doesn’t want to damage her friendship with Madison, she goes along with it and gets suspended. At first, I was thinking, Welp, I guess that’s the end of that friendship. But, no, it’s not over. The book just got started after that.

Madison calls Lillian over to visit her home out of the blue, and even though they reconnect and catch up, that’s not all Madison called her over to do. Madison tells her that her husband’s first wife died of cancer and left him and Madison her two kids, who have a secret no one can know about: they catch on fire. Literally. At first, Lillian isn’t sure whether to go with this or not, and honestly when I first read this, I was like, Oh, no, girl you need to get out of there as fast as you can. But again, because Lillian doesn’t want to damage her friendship with Madison, she goes along with it and lets Madison give her the twins to take care of. When she first meets the twins, one of them severely injures Lillian on the eye (I can’t get into the description of the injuries here because they were pretty horrifying to read about) and pushes her into the pool. Carl, the chauffer, clearly knows that these twins are troublesome, but probably he is so used to Madison not taking responsibility for these kiddos and leaving it to him and Mary (the chef) to take care of them, he basically tells Lillian she needs to get it together, especially because she doesn’t have much experience caring for kids.

Madison does everything in her power and prestige to keep Lillian in her place, like “I am doing you a favor putting you in this toxic situation and I expect you to feel grateful for me, even though I don’t feel like I need to be grateful to you, even if you, not me, took care of these fire-catching kids.” However, as I learned more about the backstory of the kids, I felt a tinge of sympathy for them. Even though Madison tells Lillian their mother died of cancer, the twins one day find Lillian and Carl writing a list of things they can give the twins to keep them under control and not catch fire, and one of the things listed was sleeping pills. One of the twins finds out about the sleeping pills, and tells Carl and Lillian to not give her and her brother pills. She later tells Lillian that their mom committed suicide by taking sleeping pills and forced the twins to commit suicide by taking the pills, too. Lillian can empathize with the twins even though she doesn’t set on fire like they do, because she didn’t have an easy childhood either, and she understands what it’s like to not fit in or be accepted by others after her experience going to the prestigious school and not fitting in with the other students. The twins come to trust her when they realize she isn’t trying to change them, but is just genuinely trying to support them.

Movie Review: There Will Be Blood

I had found out first about this movie from watching the Academy Awards in 2007. Daniel Day-Lewis was nominated for the movie and the clip I saw him acting in was so powerful. And it’s funny because Paul Dano has such a cherubic face yet he plays this deep haunting role. I saw him in a couple of other movies. He played a writer in Ruby Sparks and a sadistic slave overseer named John Tibeats in 12 Years a Slave. In There Will Be Blood, Paul Dano plays Paul Sunday and Eli Sunday, who are brothers. Eli is a preacher at the local church and his role as the preacher was so powerful. I also love how the film uses nuances of silences and dialogues. And it also talks about the power of communication because H.W., Daniel’s son, is blown away when the oil rig explodes and loses his hearing in the blast. Daniel is pained that his son can no longer hear, and Daniel finds him a sign language teacher. H.W. ends up marrying Mary Sunday and she learns sign language and communicates with him in sign language when they get married. When H.W. meets with his dad, he brings his sign language interpreter. He tells Daniel he and Mary are moving to Mexico so that H.W. can start his own oil company. Instead of supporting him, Daniel sees this as a betrayal on H.W.’s part and calls him all sorts of names and derides his hearing loss. He disowns his son because he now feels that he has no one else to support him. H.W. supported his dad in his oil business pursuits when he was younger but when he lost his hearing it traumatized both him and his dad. Another powerful scene is when Daniel meets his long-lost brother, Henry, but then finds out that the guy who posed as Henry isn’t actually Henry, but Henry’s friend. Henry actually died of tuberculosis. When he hears this news that this guy isn’t actually his brother, Daniel is disillusioned and shoots this guy dead.

Eli Sunday’s character is also quite interesting. At the beginning of the film he seems innocent and sweet when Daniel first meets him, but then we actually see him in action as a preacher and that is a whole nother story. His first person whom he saves is an elderly woman who supposedly has the devil inside of her. Eli clutches the woman’s face and at first he whispers to get the ghosts out of her, and then he is breaking down and screaming bloody murder at the ghosts. It is a haunting scene but one that shows how Paul Dano really gave this role his all. In another scene, Eli runs into Daniel in the oil field and Daniel is angry at him so he runs Eli into the ground and smears his body and face with oil and slaps him repeatedly down. Later on, when Mr. William Bandy, the guy whose property Daniel wants to construct an oil pipeline through, and Daniel attend Eli’s church service, Daniel volunteers to go up there and Eli ends up doing the same thing Daniel did to him: slapping him across the face and screaming at him. He screams at Daniel to say that he is a sinner over and over again, and this performance was so haunting it gave me goosebumps. Eli has the guy helping with the service pour the holy water over Daniel, and Daniel feels a sort of spiritual release. Yet in the end he ends up telling Eli to say that he is a fake preacher and that God is a superstition. This goes against everything Eli taught people about faith and religion, and he says this over and over with Daniel goading him on to keep saying this.

It was interesting seeing the work that goes into producing oil. I take it for granted that I can just go to the gas station and fill up on gasoline, not knowing what kind of process goes into it. I learned about the big monopolies like Standard Oil in my U.S. history class, but it wasn’t until I saw this movie that I could really understand the process that goes into extracting the oil from the ground and also the potential injuries that could occur on the job (of course, there were probably no workers compensation suits back then). The music is pretty amazing, and I also like the lettering for the end credits. It gives the film its dark and serious drama nature. The film reminded me a little of The Lighthouse, a film from A24 starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. I don’t know how to describe it, but just the dynamic between Robert’s character and Willem’s character reminded me of the dynamic between Eli Sunday and Daniel Plainview. The Lighthouse, if you haven’t seen it, is about two lighthouse keepers stranded on an isolated island in New England and they both drive each other up the wall. Like There Will Be Blood, it is also quite intense.

Towards the end, in a very chilling scene, Eli tells Daniel he wants some of the land Daniel has acquired for oil drilling so he can make money because he is financially strained. However, Daniel tells him that all the oil in that land has been used up and that he can’t give Eli that land that he badly wants. He and Daniel are constantly competing for these resources. The music really added to the suspense. There is one scene where the music has a col legno sound (col legno is when you put the bow stick on the string of the instrument and hit the string with the bow stick) mixed with strings and some sort of percussive beat. It didn’t have a set key signature and the way the rhythms responded to each other conveyed the suspense of the scene, sort of like the famous score for Psycho. It is where the oil rig burns down. In another scene, H.W. sets fire to Henry and Daniel’s lodging after going into his father’s bag and reading his journal with all his notes. H.W. doesn’t get away though because his dad catches him.

I sort of thought about “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” while watching this movie. The music video for that song features children working in a diamond mine mining diamonds and it shows them in the trenches doing this kind of grueling work, and we see one of the children holding a diamond and a white person picking up the diamond from above the ground. Again, I take it for granted I don’t have to think about where oil comes from. Now that I think about it, I’m now thinking about the OPEC crisis and all of our issues with coal, oil and natural gas, and gasoline shortages at gas stations. It makes me think we take so much of our natural resources for granted. I just jump in my car and don’t think about the environmental impact.

Also I had wanted to see the film for a rather irreverent reason: the famous “I drink your milkshake” scene at the end of the film. I kept seeing clips on YouTube where people mashed the scene with Kelis’s song “Milkshake.” One time I watched an interview with Paul Dano where he talked about how people started ordering him milkshakes after the success of There Will Be Blood, but that he could never drink them because he was lactose-intolerant.

Review: Darkest Hour

Last night I finally finished watching Darkest Hour, a 2017 film from Focus Features starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill. Honestly I am glad I watched the TV show The Crown before seeing this film because Seasons 1 and 2 of The Crown give an extensive portrayal of Winston Churchill’s time as prime minister. Also, John Lithgow is an amazing actor. I remember as a kid watching him play the voice of Lord Farquaad in Shrek, and in The Crown he plays Churchill really well. Watching these biopics always reminds me how much work goes into playing the part of someone famous. And usually a lot of these biopics require the actors to wear prosthetics while playing the people they are portraying, so I have mad respect for everyone who works in the prosthetics and makeup departments for these kinds of movies. Also I was really happy because Lily James is in the movie (she plays Winston’s secretary) and I really loved her in Downton Abbey. In Downton Abbey she plays Rose, who is one of my favorite characters in the show. I also really loved Gary Oldman’s portrayal of Churchill in this movie. I don’t know much about Churchill other than what I read in World History class, so that’s why I really loved watching this movie. Even though of course, I have to keep in mind that while many of the events in biopics tend to be factual, the film is still a fictionalized portrayal of the person. I was never there when Churchill was alive; I can only know who he was from reading history books about him and watching this movie. Gary Oldman is such a great actor though; the few films I saw with him in it were Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (if you haven’t seen the movies, he plays a character named Sirius Black) and Mank, which is a film on Netflix about Herman Mankiewicz. I think I would have gained a deeper understanding of Mank, though, if I had seen Citizen Kane. I came into the film kind of cold and I wasn’t really following much of the plot because I hadn’t seen the movie Citizen Kane, and the film is about Herman Mankiewicz working on Citizen Kane. I understand Citizen Kane is a classic film, though, so that’s something I need to catch up on.

If you haven’t seen Darkest Hour, it takes place during World War II, specifically in the year 1940. Neville Chamberlain is being kicked out of his role as prime minister, and Parliament needs a replacement. Churchill ends up becoming the prime minister but people don’t really trust him at first to be good at what he does. He is stubborn, blunt and often blows up at his Cabinet members and in particular his staff. His wife thinks he is being too cantankerous sometimes, but Winston is determined to do what he can so that Britain won’t surrender to Germany in the war. He keeps sending more men, but the officials working with him think he is prolonging the war too long by sending more men and think he needs to cool out because too many men are getting killed in the war. However, Winston is still determined not to give in to surrender, and continues to lead the country through the war.

I really loved the way this movie was directed. First I really loved how the movie uses light and dark colors. Most of the colors throughout the film are dark or neutral colors, and I think this conveys the overall somber tone of the film. 1940 is a crucial time for Winston, and for England as well (and the rest of the world, too, but the movie focuses on how the war is impacting people in England). I really love the use of red whenever Winston gives an address to the nation about the state of the war because it gives the scene this ominous feel to it, and because I think of red as an emergency color (e.g. Red Cross, ambulance and fire truck sirens) it showed me how crucial each speech Winston made was. The scenes in the chambers of Parliament had interesting lighting. It was a dark room but the bright light was shining on the person talking. And the beginning scene I think that the fact that the room was so darkened heightened the serious nature of Chamberlain’s removal from office. At the beginning, most people are booing Chamberlain and shouting at him because they think he is an incompetent leader. I am sure I would have felt the same intensity had the room been well-lit but for some reason I liked that they kept the room dark while directing the lighting on certain people in the room because it showed how intense this moment was for people in that room, and especially it showed how intense and nerve-wracking it was for Chamberlain because he’s basically in the hot seat at this point and he doesn’t know how to respond to all the criticisms people in the house are throwing his way.

There are two particularly moving scenes at the beginning and toward the end of the film, where Winston is riding in his car through the city. At the beginning he sees people walking around on a sunny day, as everyday people heading to work, selling things on the street, and doing other every day things. He comments to his driver that he has never rode on the train. Later he sees, while riding in the safety of his car, some people trying to stay dry in the pouring rain with their umbrellas, other people not carrying umbrellas at all getting soaked. It is a pretty miserable-looking scene to Churchill because he sees how much the citizens are trying to survive during this time of anxiety and uncertainty. World War II affected people’s livelihoods in so many ways. It affected the economy, how people lived lives, and while there was great pride in these people going to war to serve their country, many were also killed and their loved ones often didn’t know whether they would come out alive. Seeing people walking in the rain while he rides comfortably in his car prompts him to jump out of the car and take the London Underground to Westminster. On the train everyone freaks out when they see Churchill, and all they can do is stare and then when he gets up, stand as a sign of respect. He doesn’t care about formalities though; he just wants to be with regular citizens and it’s his first time riding the tube. He asks them whether they think Britain should enter into a peace deal with Germany and everyone on the train responds with a hearty “No!” When he addresses Parliament he tells them that the people want to keep fighting Germany rather than surrender, and everyone breaks out in applause because they are so moved by his speech.

In another powerful scene, Ms. Layton (Churchill’s secretary) is typing up a message by Churchill, along the lines of “we’re not going to pull out of this war,” and Ms. Layton starts quietly crying and asks to be excused. Winston tells her that no, she cannot, and she expresses how pained she is that so many young men are being sent to die in this war and most people don’t know when these men will ever come back alive. At this point most of the British troops are about to be wiped out in battle. At first Winston doesn’t understand where she is coming from, but then she shows him a photo of her brother and tells him that he was killed during the war. It’s a moment where he reflects and realizes how it’s not just about military strategy, but also recognizing the trauma and grief that many civilians faced during this war because they lost their loved ones.

The music was also incredible! I think watching the TV show The Crown helped me appreciate the music because the score for Darkest Hour sounded like the score for The Crown. The score seems to use very serious somber keys like D minor. Honestly while watching the film I couldn’t help but move my body while the score was playing because the rhythms of the music are so vibrant and powerful. They convey the intensity of each scene because overall the movie is intense. The music also fits with the scenes because each day that passes is a moment of urgency for Churchill. He cannot relax, he cannot kick back and pretend like this time in his life isn’t crucial. The issue of whether to have peace talks with Germany, the issue of sending in more troops and withdrawing troops…all of it is enough to keep him awake until the late hours.

There are a few funny and tender moments though. Of course, the film was totally serious, but there is one scene where these reporters are approaching Churchill for questions, and he holds up his index and middle finger in a “V shape.” At first the newspapers think it means “victory,” so they put on the headline, next to the photo of Winston giving the “V” sign, “V for Victory.” However, we then see Ms. Layton and another secretary giggling hysterically while reading the paper. When Winston sees them giggling he asks them what is so funny, and Ms. Layton politely pulls him aside and tells him that the way he turned his hands to make the V-sign means something vulgar. He gave the sign with the back of his hand facing toward the recipient rather than with the palm of the hand facing outwards, the latter which actually does mean “victory” or a peace sign. Instead the way Winston signed “V” actually means “up your bum,” not “victory.” Winston then breaks out into laughter when he finds out that is what the sign he was making with his hands really means. I wouldn’t have known the difference between the “up your bum” V-sign and “victory” V-sign. In America I don’t know if we have an “up-your-bum” V-sign. We mostly just raise our middle finger if we want to say “F*ck you” to someone.

This is the trailer for Darkest Hour:

Darkest Hour. 2017. 2 hr 4 min. Rated PG-13 for thematic material

The Suitcase

I boarded the flight on Friday morning. When my parents dropped me off, the airport was bustling. People were milling about, checking their luggage, flights were taking off and flight attendants were calling the numbers for departures. Mom and Dad and I went outside to get my luggage checked. The guy checking the luggage was a tall white guy with glasses and a buzzcut hairstyle. He placed my large 100-pound suitcase on the weight machine and frowned. “This will cost you an extra $50.” I looked upset. “Why?” “Because it’s too heavy.” I panicked. I only had fifteen minutes to make it through to my gate. My body gave off a fight-or-flight response and my heart started racing. Adrenaline pumped through my body. I begrudgingly took the suitcase and rolled it back to the parking lot, which was about ten minutes away walking distance. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “It’s okay, sweetie,” Dad said, tousling my chestnut-colored curly hair. “We can find another flight for you.” I sulked.

“I feel so disappointed in myself,” I muttered.

“Don’t be. It is what it is,” my mom said with a stony expression. She had put up with my whining and complaining long enough.

So I went over to the car when we reached it and one by one took all my belongings out of my suitcase. About fifty pairs of clothes: twenty pairs of pants, ten T-shirts, ten bras in different colors and ten pairs of high heels. Oh, and a pair of walking shoes. My mom, Kendra, and my dad, Alex, looked at me aghast.

“What the fuck, Lily?” my mom snapped.

Alex turned sharply to her. “Hey, don’t swear in front of our daughter.”

“I can swear any damn time I please,” she huffed.

I hurriedly took out stuff.

“You are only going for a week, dear, not a whole year. This is not study abroad.” “I know, I know.”

In fact, 28 year old me is writing this and wondering, Yo, like why the fuck would you bring that much shit with you? You are only going for seven fucking days, Lily. Are you going abroad? No.

I begrudgingly took out all the stuff from my suitcase and chose which ones I wanted to bring on the trip.

“Same goes for books,” my mom said as they just looked at me.

I rolled my eyes. Parents. They say the right stuff but at the same time it’s annoying how right they are sometimes. I had in fact packed a shit-ton of books. In fact, that’s why I got made fun of so much while in school because I was reading so much. It didn’t matter where I was. Café, cafeteria, library, hallway, even my classes. I was always reading. One day I was reading while Ms. Bruce was giving one of her super boring lectures. Bridget was doodling, Andrew was making disgusting spitballs and I, well, I was reading.

“Lily, what are you doing?”

I looked up, aghast. Why did she call on me and not on the other dumb kids in the class who fuck around and act goofy? Why me? I haven’t done anything wrong in Ms. Bruce’s class.

She motioned her hands to signal for me to give her the book. I begrudgingly gave her the book and she put it in her desk. The other kids started snickering. I scowled. You guys are no better than me, with your doodling, your gross spitballs. We’re all just immature seventh graders whose brains are not fully developed yet.

So yeah, I had about ten books I was going to pack. Most of them were Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events.

“Just think, you are going to be talking with other kids on the trip,” my mom said.

I took the one book. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. That should occupy me for the entire trip. Then I put a few shirts in the suitcase and a couple of pairs of pants. A pair of faded Gap jeans and a pair of nice black slack pants. A few T-shirts from Gap as well. Funny enough, I saw my math teacher the other day and she works at Gap now. Her name was Mrs. Doyle and she had wavy blonde hair and glasses.

“Ok, that should do it,” Dad said. “I am so proud of you, hon. That must have been a pain in the butt, but I am glad you did it.”

He gave me a hug. Mom impatiently looked at her watch.

“Well you missed your flight, kiddo,” she tapped her high-heeled foot impatiently.

“It’s okay, honey, we can find another flight…”

“Well, then let’s get a move-on. We don’t have all morning.”

We walked speedily through the traffic parked outside the airport, the cacophony of honking car horns and people alternately saying “I love you” and “Get out of the way” echoing through my ears. We hurried past the 38-year old woman carting two suitcases and a stroller with a four year old in it and revisited the buzzcut hairstyle guy again.

“Okay, we took stuff out.”

“Can I see your driver’s license?” he said, indifferent to our obvious plight.

Dad fishes out his wallet from his back pocket and shows Buzzcut Man his driver’s license. Buzzcut Man looks at it hurriedly and tells me I am all set to go.

“Have a nice day,” he says.

“You too,” Dad smiles, and we make our way to the terminal. But first we have to stop at the customer service desk because I missed my flight.

“I’m sorry, we don’t have anymore flights going out to Washington, D.C.,” the customer service agent says, not looking up from her computer.

“But I have to leave today, otherwise I am going to miss the orientation!” I squeal.

“Can we get another flight for her? Please?” my mom begs the agent.

The agent looks at us with a sharp glance, but then she sighs and says, “I will see what I can do. But it will take thirty minutes, I have other customers to attend to.”

“That’s fine; we can wait,” Dad said.

“Now let’s go get you a chocolate cream donut from Dunkin Donuts to celebrate you being so brave about unpacking that big heavy suitcase,” Mom giggles and we head over to Dunkin Donuts.