A few weeks ago, I came home from work craving a movie. I hadn’t been to a movie theater since the start of the pandemic, and I was wondering when I would ever feel comfortable enough to go back into a crowded theater. Normally I wait until the movie is streaming and no longer in theaters to watch it, but for some reason I was just really wanting to go to see a movie in the theaters. because I hadn’t gone in a long time and really missed going. Of course, I wanted to be safe and wear an N95 mask to the theater since I assumed it was going to be crowded. I figured I would go by myself, but then I told my parents, and we ended up seeing a film together. It was a huge benefit because we went to the 4:20 showing of this movie called My Old Ass, and the theater wasn’t crowded at all. There were only two other people who showed up for My Old Ass, so we pretty much had the theater to ourselves. I was kind of nervous since my family is still observing COVID-19 protocols, but it worked out fine and we still made sure to wear our face masks.
The minute I walked into the theater, I realized I had forgotten my earplugs, which was a bummer because I forgot how loud the surround sound is in the movie theater. The Gladiator II trailer was playing, and it was LOUD. I had to cover my ears during the trailer. But at the same time, I forgot how happy I was going to a theater to see a movie. It took a few years before I was comfortable enough to go back into a movie theater because I wasn’t sure about the transmission of COVID-19, but again, it was a huge benefit that there was almost no one in the theater except for a few other people. Some other trailers that showed were Conclave, which stars Stanley Tucci and Ralph Fiennes, Wicked with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, and A Real Pain which stars Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin (I love comedy-drama movies, so I really want to see it. Also, I love Jesse and Kieran’s acting, and I loved Kieran’s acting in the show Succession. The trailer also looked really good.)
If you haven’t seen My Old Ass, it’s a science-fiction comedy drama starring Canadian actress Maisy Stella as Elliott, an 18-year-old girl who plans to move out of her boring hometown and go to university in Toronto. At the beginning, we see her celebrating her 18th birthday with her friends Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks). They ride a boat on water, with Elliott steering the boat wrong and bumping into stuff most of the time. Elliott gets off the boat and goes into a bakery where this cute girl named Chelsea works, and even though Elliott is nervous to talk to Chelsea, Ruthie and Ro encourage her to do so since Elliott might not see this girl again when she goes to college. Also, it’s her 18th birthday, so hooking up with this cute girl is the best present ever. Meanwhile, Elliott’s parents and two brothers are sitting at the kitchen table while the birthday cake they made for Elliott sits lonely at the center of the table with an 18th birthday candle in the middle. Elliott continues to hang out with her friends, and in the evening, they go on a camping trip and try a mixture of psychedelic mushrooms. Ruthie and Ro start tripping out and dancing around the forest, and Elliott thinks she is tripping out, too, when a 39-year-old version of future Elliott (played by Aubrey Plaza) appears. However, the older version of Elliott (known henceforth by Elliott as My Old Ass) is really there. Elliott has all sorts of questions for My Old Ass, and even asks the hilarious question, “Can I touch My Old Ass? What does it feel like?” However, My Old Ass has gone through some serious life experiences, and she isn’t about to bullshit Elliott about what to do with her life. Elliott thinks that in her 30s, she’ll still be partying and having fun, but My Old Ass looks back with regret at a lot of things she did in her youth, and she’s come back to Elliott in hopes that Elliott will get to change and not make decisions or do things she regrets.
A couple of things My Old Ass tells Elliott to do is 1. to spend more time with her family before she leaves for Toronto and 2. to avoid a guy named Chad. When I first saw the trailer, I didn’t know what to expect. Who was Chad? Was he a bad guy? I came in cold not knowing who Chad was. Elliott promises to obey My Old Ass, and she doesn’t think she will fall in love with anyone else because she successfully asked Chelsea out and they are in a relationship with each other. However, Elliott goes to swim in the lake one day and encounters a young guy named Chad. Chad seems friendly enough, but Elliott remembers that My Old Ass told her to avoid Chad. Elliott tries to dodge Chad, but she can’t seem to avoid him, and she finds herself falling in love with him. Elliott remains conflicted: should she avoid Chad or disobey My Old Ass and have sex with him? Chad is a nice and respectful young man, and honestly, at first, I wondered why My Old Ass told Elliott to not fall in love with him. Was he a cheater? Was he a jerk? These were all questions I asked myself as the film went on. Elliott gradually falls more and more in love with Chad, and even though she is in love at first with Chelsea, she starts hanging out with Chad more often. Elliott also starts to spend more time with her family even though she doesn’t want to at first. Elliott gets a rude awakening when she finds out that her family’s farm is being sold and no one told her about it. Elliott asks her parents and siblings why no one told her, and they tell her that they didn’t think she would care about the farm getting sold because she was always talking about how she wanted to leave her hometown. However, Elliott has many childhood memories of the farm and doesn’t want it to be sold. She starts to confide her problems and worries to Chad, and he listens and supports her. Elliott later tells him that she is bisexual, but Chad accepts her for who she is, and they end up having sex. Elliott tries to contact My Old Ass for a while, but My Old Ass doesn’t reappear much during the middle of the movie. Elliott isn’t able to get ahold of her, but then later on My Old Ass finds out that Elliott had sex with Chad, and she is very upset. Elliott asks her why she didn’t want her to sleep with Chad, but My Old Ass doesn’t want to tell her why. But Elliott persists in knowing what happened to Chad, and finally My Old Ass tells her that she didn’t want Elliott to fall in love with Chad because Chad in the future ended up getting killed in a car crash. My Old Ass is still recovering from the grief of losing Chad, and she doesn’t want 18-year-old Elliott to go through the same thing. Chad is able to see My Old Ass and meets her, and instead of continuing to tell Elliott to avoid Chad so that she wouldn’t risk losing him, My Old Ass tells Elliott to do what she wants and to enjoy her time with Chad because she sees that Elliott is truly happy to be with Chad. By the time the movie was over, I was crying and blowing my nose in several tissuesI think I resonated with this movie so much because I saw myself in Elliott in some ways. I resonated with her wanting to leave her hometown to go to college somewhere else because when I was in high school, I was so determined to leave my hometown and go out of state for college. I thought I was going to be happier leaving the South for the East Coast, and whenever someone at school or at home annoyed me, I just smugly said, “Well, in [x] months, I’ll be out of here!” But during my first year, I realized how hard it was to live so far away from home without the constant presence of my family. I took my parents’ presence for granted, and when I left for college, I cried pretty much every day because I missed them. At the end of the school year, I was so relieved to come back home for the summer because I was going to spend it with my family. I know this sounds corny, but it’s true: you don’t appreciate what you have until it’s gone. Also, after reflecting on the movie, I realized that it was teaching me an important lesson: you cannot change the past, but you can focus on the present and the future. Even though future Elliott wanted to change her past, she couldn’t. 18-year-old Elliott was going to make mistakes and do stuff that 39-year-old Elliott was going to regret, and she had to accept that. Even though 39-year-old Elliott told 18-year-old Elliott to avoid Chad, she could not. She wanted to try and shield 18-year-old Elliott from the pain of losing a loved one, but she couldn’t undo what she did in the past or make Chad live forever. She had to let 18-year-old Elliott be 18-year-old Elliott. However, through the course of the movie, 18-year-old Elliott learns that she can’t take her family or the people in her life for granted. As I’ve been reading a lot about life and death in Buddhism, it’s made me appreciate the fact that my parents gave me life. Without my parents, I would not be here, and that’s just a fact that I eventually had to come to. And it’s scary to realize, but the reality is that I want to enjoy being with them now because at some point, like me and everyone else, they will pass away. Going through grief is going to hurt like a motherfucker, but I am going to have to go through it like everyone else, so I want to cherish these people in my life while I have them.
The Arts Are Life 