dramas – The Arts Are Life

Movie Review: Mona Lisa Smile

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the library to check out more DVDs because I wanted to watch some more movies. I had seen clips of the movie Mona Lisa Smile, which came out when I was young, but I cannot remember if I had watched the entire movie before. I love Julia Roberts and Kirsten Dunst, so I was really excited when I first saw the trailer as a kid. However, I didn’t actually watch the full movie until last night. It was truly a beautiful film, and I really love the acting in the movie.

The movie takes place in the 1950s at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Wellesley is one of the Seven Sisters colleges, a group of seven historically women’s colleges in the United States. Katherine Watson moves from California to become a professor of art history at Wellesley, and she thinks that the students know nothing about art and are going to be learning something new each day. However, when she puts up the images of paintings on her overhead, the students know the name of every painting that she puts up because they read the entire art history textbook already. Katherine is flabbergasted and has no idea what to do because these students made her look stupid, and she wonders if she is cut out for this job at Wellesley because clearly her students know everything, so why do they need a professor to educate them on stuff they already know? The administration at Wellesley doubt that Katherine has what it takes to be a professor at the college, but over time, Katherine starts to find creative ways to engage her students and gets to know them more. Even though she has a boyfriend back in California, she falls in love with a charming professor named Bill Dunbar, who is rumored to be sleeping with his students, one of them being Giselle Levy, who is in Katherine’s art class and has untraditional attitudes towards marriage and womanhood. Elizabeth “Betty” Warren, another student in Ms. Watson’s class, challenges Ms. Watson and acts like she is superior to her because while Ms. Watson is a single unmarried older woman, Betty is a firm believer in being a proper wife dedicated to the household and her husband. Betty writes a column for the Wellesley school newsletter reprimanding anyone on the staff who espouses unconventional attitudes about femininity and doesn’t uphold conservative ideas of marriage and family. Betty constantly makes disparaging comments about the other girls, and even gets the school nurse, Amanda Armstrong, fired for offering contraception to the student body by writing about it in the newsletter. Even though Betty is mean, we actually find out later on in the movie that her mother is controlling and restricts Betty from living her life the way she wants to.

Connie is another student in Ms. Watson’s art class, and I loved her character because like me, she plays the cello. Betty tells Connie that she will never find a husband or anyone to fall in love with her, but Betty meets a young man named Charlie, who loves her for who she is. However, while they are at the pool, Betty tells Connie that Charlie is getting engaged to another woman and doesn’t actually love Connie. When Charlie finds Connie at another dance later in the movie, he tries to run after her and explain himself, but Connie doesn’t want to hear any of it. Betty tries to cheer up Connie and tell her that Charlie wasn’t meant for her, but Connie sees through Betty’s lies and tells Betty that she lied to her. Betty realizes that she isn’t going to have the happy fairytale marriage she envisioned having with Spencer, because one evening Giselle spies Spencer kissing another woman and I’m guessing Betty soon has to find out that her fiancé was cheating on her. What really bugged me was when Betty’s mom tells her that she can make it work and that Spencer will somehow feel sorry for what he did and stay committed to Betty, but that got me thinking, Well, this may not be the last time he cheats on her.

I think that is why I am kind of glad I watched this show called The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel a few years before watching Mona Lisa Smile, because in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the protagonist finds her own path in life and bucks traditional conventions for married women. In the first episode of the show, Miriam Maisel is a typical 1950s housewife who lives with her parents and takes care of her husband, Joel, and their two kids, Ethan and Esther. While Miriam is cooking the brisket, Joel is telling the same dull jokes and recycling the same boring standup routines about Abraham Lincoln at a comedy club called The Gaslight in Greenwich Village. However, everything changes on the evening of Yom Kippur when Miriam finds out that Joel was having an affair with his secretary, Penny. They separate and Miriam drinks an entire bottle of kosher red wine and delivers an impromptu, foul-mouthed monologue that evening at the Gaslight, skewering her now ex-husband for cheating on her and flashing her breasts to the audience, prompting the police to arrest her. Susie Myerson, who runs the Gaslight club, at first doesn’t see any potential in Miriam when she first meets her, but after seeing Miriam perform, she sees that Miriam is actually pretty funny (and, frankly, much funnier than her ex-husband). Miriam sneaks off after putting her kids to sleep to perform at the Gaslight under the pseudonym Amanda Gleason and even gets a day job at a department store called B. Altman to support herself financially. Her parents, Rose and Abe, are confused as to why she seems so different, so much more independent than before, and later on in the show she confesses to them (and Joel’s parents) that she is a comedian. Rose is disappointed that Miriam won’t just be a good wife who stays at home and takes care of the kids and is upset when she finds out that Miriam was sneaking off behind her back telling foul-mouthed jokes at a comedy club when she should have been making the brisket and changing her kids’ diapers. Even though she doesn’t like the person Miriam is becoming, Miriam realizes that at some point she has to live the life she wants to, otherwise she is going to go her entire life seeking approval from her parents and other people who don’t actually want her to live life as an independent young woman. Even though she gives up a life of domesticity for stand-up comedy, Midge learns to become her own person and that even though she has to deal with a lot of sexism and misogyny in the male-dominated world of comedy, she is pursuing a dream she could have never envisioned for herself and that is true happiness for her. Of course, she still loves Joel, and he sticks up for her through thick and thin, but even he realizes that she is happy pursuing her own life outside of being married to him.

In Mona Lisa Smile, Katherine is frustrated that the women who go to Wellesley are getting this well-rounded and elite education so that they can get married and have children (which of course isn’t a bad thing. Maybe I want to get married and have kids one day even though I’m currently not sure if I want to or not.) One of her students, Joan Brandwyn, wants to go to Yale for law school, but she is conflicted about whether she can do that and be a wife at the same time. Even though Katherine tells her that she can do both, Joan believes that isn’t a possibility. Katherine slips Joan an application to apply to Yale during class and Joan feels encouraged, but when she tells Betty that she is going to Yale, instead of celebrating Joan’s accomplishment, Betty chastises her and tells her that she will be getting married, NOT going to law school, because if, God forbid, Joan gets a law degree and becomes this kick-ass lawyer, then she will absolutely RUIN her chances at finding a husband and will just spend her life being a strong, independent “childless cat lady” (J.D. Vance’s words, not Betty’s). However, after Betty finds out that Spencer cheated on her, she realizes that she doesn’t want to live her life married to a scumbag, and she ends up moving into an apartment with Giselle and leaving her mother’s house because her mother doesn’t actually care about her daughter’s happiness.

I did have to reflect on my attitude towards domesticity at some point in the movie, though, and maybe I was being too judgmental towards Joan. When they are at a dance, Katherine meets Joan’s husband, and he tells her that he got into Penn State. When she asks if Joan is still going to Yale, Joan’s husband tells her that Joan won’t be going to Yale and will instead get married and move to Philadelphia to be with him while he gets his degree and she comes home every day to have dinner on the table for him by 5 o’clock. When Katherine approaches Joan about this, Joan assures her that just because she wants to get married and have a family doesn’t mean she is any less smart or accomplished. Even though this was hard for me to hear, too, it made me think, Hey, yeah, maybe I am being too judgmental about Joan deciding to get married instead of going to law school. Not going to law school didn’t make her any less smart or capable, and maybe she was happier getting married and having a family. It reminded me of the 2019 remake of Little Women (directed by Greta Gerwig) because Jo (Saoirse Ronan) is this fierce, independent young woman who wants to become an author and doesn’t want to get married. Her sisters, however, are growing up and do want to get married and have a family. Jo is frustrated and sad that her sisters are all moving out and having families and marriages, and even her friend, Laurie (Timothee Chalamet), gets married to Jo’s sister Amy (Florence Pugh) and has children with her. However, Jo realizes that she has her own path in life and that if she spends her life comparing her life to her sisters, she is going to be unfulfilled and unhappy, so she pursues her writing career and even meets a man who encourages her to pursue her dreams. I’m actually glad she didn’t end up with Laurie, because I don’t think Laurie would have supported her career or her desire to be an independent young woman. In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Miriam’s ex-husband, Joel, falls in love with a Chinese American woman named Mei, and after they have sex, she finds out that she is pregnant with his child. At first, Joel is worried that his parents, who are white American Jews, will get angry with him for having an interracial relationship with an Asian American woman, but Joel’s father tells him that it’s not the fact that she is Chinese that they don’t approve of, it’s that she is not Jewish, and he tells her that in order for her and Joel to get married, she has to convert to Judaism. However, Mei ends up bailing out of this whole situation by dumping Joel and getting an abortion, telling him that she wants to go to medical school to become a doctor and she can’t do that and be married to Joel at the same time. Honestly, I was happy that Mei left to become a doctor and not settle down with Joel, because I’m sure she would have regretted not following her dream of becoming a doctor. And that is Katherine tries to tell Joan, that she will regret it for the rest of her life if she gets married instead of pursuing her law degree at Yale. But Joan reminds Katherine that she told Joan that she could do anything she wanted with her degree and her life, and getting married and having a family is something that Joan truly wants. And honestly, I don’t say all this to shit on women who are raising kids whether or not they are employed or unemployed. I REALLY don’t want to do that. Raising kids and being a mom is a fucking full-time JOB for a lot of women. So that’s why I am glad I have been watching different things, reading different things, to get people’s perspectives on motherhood and womanhood in general. Because the last thing I want to do is make any women (and people) with children feel like utter shit for doing what they do, and they have all the respect from me.

Now that I am older, this movie hits a lot harder because I am at the age when my peers are getting married and having families with each other, and I am still a childless “cat lady” with no cats (even though I want to have one, I don’t want my mom sneezing around the house if I suddenly get a heart and bring home a stray abandoned tabby named Muffin that I found in the alley. I definitely couldn’t bring Muffin home if she was preggo with kittens, either, because that would be double the allergies. Maybe I will be an actual cat lady in my next lifetime, just not this one.) I recently watched a TED Talk by this woman named Bella DePaulo, who writes about the joys of singlehood and the stigma that single people have to deal with every day. It was very reassuring and reminded my young ass that even if my old ass remains single and unmarried, I can still live a happy fulfilling life. I also just finished reading her book, Single at Heart, which talks about the stigma that single unmarried people deal with from society and how single people like me can live their best lives. Like I said, I might find someone who is so sexy and fine that I want to say, “Damn, I want to jump your bones AND get married to you.” But for now, little old possibly asexual me hasn’t found that person yet. And frankly, even though I have a crush on someone, I probably should just focus on taking care of myself rather than worrying too much about finding a date. Not that dating is bad. As someone with minimal dating experience, I am sure it is fun to go on dates with people. But right now, my mental health isn’t great, and I am really trying to take care of myself both physically and mentally.

Movie Review: Anora

Contains spoilers

I cannot believe it, but next week is officially the Academy Awards, and I have been doing my best to watch as many movies as I can before next Sunday comes around. Some of the movies I won’t be able to stomach, like The Substance and Gladiator II, because I am not a fan of body horror and I saw the first Gladiator and the film score was incredibly beautiful and blew me away, but unfortunately I have a weak stomach and often flinched and closed my eyes during all of the battle scenes (being a wimp about movies with lots of blood and gore kind of ruined my experience watching the movie because well, it’s a movie about gladiators and killing people and buckets of blood was the form of entertainment back in that time, so I probably should have just listened to the soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and called it a day instead of forcing myself to watch it because it was a cinema classic. Even though Russell Crowe, Connie Nielsen and Joaquin Phoenix’s acting was fierce A.F., after the first battle scene in the arena, I wanted to throw up as I watched folks get decapitated, cut in half and killed in other bloody unpleasant ways. But alas, I digress.)

So, I won’t be able to watch some of the movies, but I have already seen a few of the nominees: A Real Pain, starring Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg (who also directed the movie), The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones and directed by Brady Corbet, and just five minutes ago, I finished streaming Anora, which was directed by Sean Baker and stars Mikey Madison and Mark Eydelshteyn as the main characters. I had heard about Anora many times in the past few months and saw the trailer, which looked really good. However, I am squeamish about vomit scenes and pretty much all of the films I have seen that are directed by Sean Baker have a pretty gross vomit scene in them. In one of his movies, Tangerine, which is about trans sex workers, an Armenian cab driver (played by actor Karren Karagulian) is driving around Los Angeles on a normal day, and two drunk guys vomit in his cab. I know it sounds silly, but I have emetophobia, which is a weird and irrational fear of vomit. I don’t know how I ended up getting emetophobia in the first place, but it has haunted my life for 31 years and it’s the reason why I had to keep getting up and going to the restroom whenever my health class teachers showed the class Super-Size Me, because there is a really gross vomit scene, and it freaked me out and I almost got a panic attack. So long story short, I have to look up the parent’s guides on IMDB and go on Doesthedogdie.com to often look up whether movies that I watch have vomit scenes in them so I can be prepared to close my eyes (and sometimes ears) in case they do. Sure, I would be reading spoilers, but honestly, I would rather read a few important plot points than go into a panic attack when someone surprise-vomits in a movie scene. So, I did the same for his other movies, Red Rocket and Anora.

But honestly, my fear of vomit is not the most important part of this blog post, of course. It’s what I thought about the actual movie, Anora. As I write this, I am catching my breath (in a good way) because MY GOLLY GOSH, MIKEY MADISON CAN ACTTTTTTT. Seriously, I had chills while watching her performance. She is not a damsel in distress, even though she is a very dangerous situation. She is a tough-as-nails Brooklynite who takes no nonsense and swears like a sailor (I was going to say, “she swears like a born-and-bred-New Yorker”, but I am not from New York City and don’t want to offend those native New Yorkers who don’t cuss a lot.) I could tell she really worked very hard to prepare for her role as the title character, Anora, who goes by Ani. Ani is a sex worker living in Brooklyn who is struggling to make ends meet, and she works at a strip club called HQ Kony Gentlemen’s Club. Her life changes, however, when her boss assigns her to a young male client who speaks Russian. Because Ani speaks Russian, she is able to communicate with this young man, who she finds out is named Vanya (or Ivan). At first, she is just treating him like any old client, but he woos her and then wows her when she finds out that he is the son of this wealthy Russian oligarch. They end up developing an intense infatuation with one another. Ani at first doesn’t think he is serious about wanting to be with her, and when they spend the night together at his super lavish pad (which he doesn’t actually own. His parents do) she wakes up the next day and tells him she has to go back to work. However, he tells her that he will pay her a ridiculous amount of money for her to be his girlfriend for a week. He takes her to these lavish parties, showing her off as his girlfriend and making her feel like most important person in his life. He has maids that clean up the floor while he plays video games all day, and she does her work and dances for him. He is entertained and she thinks, “Well, I need to go back to work and my regular life,” but Vanya tells her that he is sad that he will have to go back to Russia to work for his father, and that the only way to get out of having to go back to Russia is to marry an American woman so that he can stay in New York City. Ani doesn’t think Vanya is serious, but when he actually proposes to her, she does so, and they get married in a chapel in Las Vegas.

Ani is living the dream, but the next day, her romantic fantasy is quickly crushed when some guys who work for Vanya’s father come barging into Vanya’s penthouse suite when they find out that Vanya married Ani in Las Vegas. Igor and Garnik, two henchmen who work for Vanya’s dad, come in and demand to see the marriage papers so that they can annul Vanya and Ani’s marriage. When Vanya and Ani don’t comply, Ani is tied up while Vanya escapes from the house. Ani screams bloody murder and attacks Igor and Garnik, while Toros, who works for Vanya’s dad, too, has to leave a baptism at an Armenian church because he has to now get involved with annulling Vanya’s marriage to Ani. Igor assaults and restrains Ani while she screams for them to let her go, and Toros finally arrives and tries to calm Ani down, but she continues to yell at them to let her go. Igor gags her and Toros calls Vanya on Ani’s phone, but Vanya doesn’t pick up. So Garnick, Igor, Ani and Toros have to drive all around New York City to find Vanya. After they spend hours looking for him, they find him at the HQ Kony Gentlemen’s Club in a private room where Diamond, Ani’s red-haired jealous competition, dances for Vanya while he cheerfully stuffs dollar bills in her thong, with Iggy Azalea’s banger hit “Sally Walker” thumping on the soundtrack, not knowing how much heartbreak and suffering he caused for Ani, Garnik, Igor, Toros and his parents in Russia. While he is intoxicated, Ani tries to convince him that she and him are going to stay married and get away from all this drama in their life, but Vanya laughs it off and doesn’t care. Ani and Diamond have a brutal fight with each other, which gets the attention of everyone at the gentlemen’s club, and Garnik, Igor and Toros grab Vanya and get him out of the club into the van so that they can take him over to the courthouse and get Vanya and Ani’s marriage annulled (and get them prepared for a serious vodka-infused ass-whooping from his parents, Nikolai and Galina, who DO NOT PLAY.) Ani tries to convince Vanya to take this entire matter seriously and tells him how worried sick she was when he escaped, but he acts like it was no big deal. They go to the courthouse and Ani, pissed as fuck, cusses out the judge and Toros and everyone who made her life a fucking nightmare (including the once-dreamy-Prince Charming-now-scumbag-Vanya), and the crazy part? The judge says they have to go to Las Vegas to sign the annulment papers because that is where Ani and Vanya got married. They can’t annul the marriage in New York. So, Vanya’s parents fly from Russia to the U.S., and even when Ani tries to gain Galina’s approval, Galina refuses to shake her hand and tells her coldly that Ani will never be part of Vanya’s family because of her reputation as a sex worker. At first, Ani refuses to get on the plane, but Galina tells her with an icy smile that if Ani refuses to fly with them to Las Vegas to get the annulment papers signed, she will lose everything. Ani finally gets on the plane, and they go to Las Vegas to sign the papers. Vanya and his parents go back to Russia, even after he tries to reason with them that what he did was no big deal, and Ani comes back to New York City with Igor, shattered, destroyed and heartbroken. Even though Igor violently restrained Ani at the beginning of the film, he ends up being the one to bring her some much-needed consolation in the end and seems to be the only one who is willing to sit with Ani in her pain and suffering. When the credits rolled, I was speechless. All I could think was, When they announce the nominations next Sunday evening, this movie HAS to win at least one Oscar. Seriously. It was another reason why Sean Baker is one of my favorite directors.

What I really appreciate about Sean Baker is that he presents a very realistic portrayal of what life is like for sex workers in his movies. And I appreciate that Hollywood is gradually starting to portray sex workers as these human beings with regular lives rather than as these objects of men’s desires who don’t have a voice or a narrative of their own. Even when watching the 2005 film Hustle and Flow, because I had seen the film Zola, which is told from the perspective of a Black female sex worker, I couldn’t help but notice that the female characters in the movie don’t have much of a voice of their own. They are just supporting characters in helping a man further his hip-hop career. Don’t get me wrong, Taryn Manning and Taraji P. Henson were absolutely incredible in the movie, but I am glad I watched a movie like Zola that doesn’t exploit sex workers in the movie and gives them agency and a voice of their own. In Zola, Zola is a young Black woman who meets a white girl named Stefani while they are stripping in Detroit, Michigan. They become fast friends, until Stefani coerces Zola to go with her on what she thinks is going to be a fun trip to Florida where they get more clients but instead is actually a dangerous sex trafficking operation that Zola finds herself unable to get out of. Even though Colman Domingo’s character, a pimp named X, and Nicholas Braun’s character, Derrek (Stefani’s boyfriend) are key characters in the film, they are supporting characters in the movie. The film focuses on Stefani and Zola’s complicated friendship. Even though they bonded over being sex workers, at the end of the day, Stefani didn’t respect Zola and was just taking advantage of her, and the two of them fight throughout the film and are no longer having fun as friends. I watched the movie twice because it was so good, and the acting was incredible. I didn’t know anything about the original Twitter thread that Zola had published, but when I watched the movie, I started to read more about it and became more interested in the story because I am not a sex worker and don’t have much knowledge about sex work.

Anora was a really powerful movie, and even though it is a romance movie, it definitely defies the typical fairytale romance storyline. Today, I did a study presentation at my Buddhist center for a morning chanting session, and the study I did my PowerPoint on was from an article in the February 7, 2025 World Tribune (our weekly Buddhist newspaper) called “We Create Our Own Happiness.” In the article, the late Buddhist educator Daisaku Ikeda shares a quote by the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, and the quote, to paraphrase, is that while wealth and property can be inherited, happiness cannot. People can possess lots of money and status and power, but those things bring a temporary form of happiness and doesn’t get rid of people’s problems. Of course, there are plenty of examples of people who use their wealth for good causes, to help other people and fund various charities and nonprofit organizations. However, what Buddhism has taught me is that happiness is a matter of what we feel inside, our inner state of life. Even though Ani married this young man who came from money and thought he could give her true love, he was actually just using her and didn’t truly love her at all. He inherited all this money and took her on all these lavish trips and parties, but he was still empty and miserable and so was she. Even though his parents let him stay in this luxurious penthouse suite, he does not have a very warm loving relationship with his parents at all. They are controlling, and even when Ani tells Vanya that he doesn’t have to listen to his parents, he can’t just leave his life because then that would mean giving up this lavish lifestyle that he has simply by virtue of being the son of a wealthy Russia oligarch. His parents, however, could never hand him happiness on a silver platter. They didn’t even care about his happiness. Even when Ani tried to make it work with her and Vanya, she could not. Their marriage was transactional, not real love. That is what Toros was trying to tell Ani even when she kept convincing him that her marriage to Vanya was true love and was going to make her happy. Toros told her over and over again that Vanya really didn’t love her and that she was not legally married to him, and that this fairytale idea of her and Vanya getting married was just that, a fairytale, not reality. Vanya was always going to treat Ani like she was disposable and was only going to see her as a prostitute who was just there in his life to give him a short-lived thrill before he moved on to someone else. Seriously, the final scene of the film where she cries after having sex with (and slapping) Igor as he cradles her in his arms really broke my heart. It made me think of when I fell in love with this guy and had all these delusional daydreams about us ending up married with children, living a blissful carefree life well into retirement. I fell in love with him because he thought I was attractive, and as a girl with terrible self-worth at the time, I assumed that the way he felt about me in college was the same way he felt about me at 27 when we reconnected. But by then, I quickly realized that he had moved on, he had changed, and he was in a happy soon-to-be marriage with someone else. It took years of therapy, Buddhist practice and self-care to finally get to a place where I could confront the reality that me and this guy were never going to be together, even though it was painful. My crush was my escape from the humdrum reality of my 9 to 5 office job. However, I think chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and studying The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin and Daisaku Ikeda’s writings reminded me that I had profound self-worth even if I wasn’t in a relationship with this guy. I also realized that this guy couldn’t ever give me the happiness that I wanted. I had to be responsible for my own happiness because I have my own problems to deal with, and he has his. It took a lot of deep digging and human revolution, but I have developed so much profound love for myself in the process and have developed what Buddhists call “absolute happiness,” which is a kind of happiness that can’t be destroyed by changing external circumstances because it is within our own lives, and we cultivate that happiness through our practice of Nichiren Buddhism. I really love looking at movies through the lens of Buddhism because it helps me understand both the good and dark sides of human nature.

I am sure that this what Ani went through is not just something that happens in fiction only. A lot of young women deal with heartbreak, and I am sure there are women who are coerced into these unhealthy marriages where they never find true happiness and are just being treated like a transaction instead of a flesh-and-blood human being with thoughts, feelings, needs, and wants. Sean Baker’s films have really opened my eyes to the tough reality and stigma that a lot of female sex workers (including trans sex workers of color) face on a daily basis. Of course, as someone who doesn’t work in the sex work industry, I don’t know if the film speaks for the reality of all sex workers, and I am sure plenty of sex workers have good and bad things to say about the movie just like they have various opinions about the movie Hustlers. But it was definitely empowering to see a young woman who works in sex work playing the main role as this bold protagonist who doesn’t take nonsense from anyone. I think after watching his other movie Red Rocket, which is about a washed-up 30-something male adult film star who falls in love with a 17-year-old cashier at a donut shop and tries to get her into the adult entertainment industry, watching a movie like Anora was a different experience. Red Rocket was a black/dark comedy that really left me disturbed and unsettled because of its subject matter. Simon Rex’s character, Mikey, wasn’t supposed to be likeable. He was a creepy middle-aged white guy who flirted with a teenager (even though in the movie he justifies that in Texas, he can flirt with her because she is 17 and that is the legal age of consent) and also took advantage of his ex-wife and her mother, as well as the people in his community.

I need to head to sleep, but I am just glad that I got all my thoughts about the movie out so that I can sleep at night.

Anora. 2024. 139 minutes. Distributed by Neon. Directed by Sean Baker. Rated R for strong sexual content throughout, graphic nudity, pervasive language and drug use.

Movie Review: 20th Century Women

Content warning: I do briefly discuss menstruation at one point in the review, so if you get easily grossed out, it’s totally okay to skip this review. Also, it’s a long post, so thank you for reading it.

A few years ago, on Halloween night, I was staying indoors instead of going out trick-or-treating. I didn’t really feel like going out, and the way I tend to wind down after a long day is to watch a movie, so I decided to rent a film called 20th Century Women, a film directed by Mike Mills that stars Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning and Billy Crudup. When I first watched the film a few years ago, I unfortunately didn’t get past the first ten minutes because something else came up and I decided to do that instead of finishing the movie. I decided to pick it up again this time because I wanted to know what happened later in the film, and I’m glad I finished the movie because it was really good. I saw another film directed by Mike Mills last year called C’Mon C’Mon, a film starring Joaquin Phoenix as a man who involves his nephew in a film project he is doing. It was a really touching film, and it was really cool how it was shot in black and white even though it takes place in the modern day. Somehow, I am attracted to films that were directed in the 21st century that use black and white coloring during the film, such as Frances Ha, Roma, Mank and Belfast. There is just something aesthetically interesting about using black and white. Even though Frances Ha takes place in the modern day, when I saw that the film was black and white, it gave it this sort of mellowed down feel. I also love seeing Elle Fanning all grown up; I remember seeing her in this one movie called Phoebe in Wonderland several years ago, and she was so young, so it’s really awesome to see how she and her sister, Dakota Fanning, have grown in their acting careers. I also loved Billy Crudup in Big Fish.

If you haven’t seen 20th Century Women, it is a coming-of-age movie that takes place in Santa Barbara, California in 1979, and Dorothea is a divorced single mother in her 50s raising her 15-year-old son, Jamie, while also living with tenants Abbie Porter and Julie Hamlin. The film opens with Dorothea and Jamie shopping at a grocery store and then finding their old car, the one that Dorothea’s ex-husband owned, up in flames. Abbie is a photographer recovering from cervical cancer and Julie is friends with Jamie. Abbie is in love with William, who works on the house that they live in, and they have a sexual encounter. Even though Jamie and Julie sleep in the same bed, Julie wants them to stay friends so that it doesn’t ruin their friendship, but Jamie wants to be with her. Also, she is sleeping with other guys, so he doesn’t have much of a chance with her. Dorothea is worried about her son, especially because he hangs around a lot of kids who are bad influences. He hangs out with a lot of kids who skateboard, and they invite him to Los Angeles to go to a party. He comes home drunk, and Dorothea becomes worried. She enlists Abbie and Julie to support him as he navigates adolescence, and Abbie has Jamie read a bunch of books on feminism and introduces him to the punk rock scene. Through his friendship with Abbie and Julie, Jamie learns a lot about himself and gets educated on a topic that most guys his age probably wouldn’t bother exploring.

One key theme throughout the movie is feminism. Abbie has Jamie read several works by feminist authors and these works fascinate him, such as The Politics of Orgasm by Susan Lydon. However, the other guys he hangs around think he is less of a man for wanting to learn about feminism. While hanging out at the skateboarding park in one scene, a teenage guy is talking about his sexual encounter with a young woman and how he penetrated her, but then Jamie talks about female orgasms. The guy calls him a homophobic slur for being interested in learning more about the female body and beats him up. I didn’t know this, but apparently the punk rock world was pretty divisive, so in the film there is a clash between bands like Black Flag and The Talking Heads. After Jamie gets beaten up, Dorothea goes out to find her car spray painted with “Art [homophobic slur]” and the other side with “Black Flag.” (I don’t listen to much punk rock, to be honest, but I guess the clash between punk rock groups was the 1970s version of modern-day feuds between hip-hop artists such as Drake and Kendrick Lamar.) In another scene, Jamie reads aloud a passage from a feminist book to Dorothea, and she turns around and asks him why he read it to her. Jamie is confused as to why she doesn’t encourage him to read it, and he says he is interested in the topic, but Dorothea tells him that he doesn’t need to explain feminism or the female body to her because she knows about it already. Dorothea confronts Abbie about teaching Jamie about feminism and tells her that learning about feminism is too much for Jamie and to stop teaching him about feminism. Later, when they are at the dinner table with friends, Dorothea finds Abbie sleeping at the table. He has Jamie wake her up, but Abbie says she is tired because she is menstruating. Dorothea is embarrassed and tells Abbie to not mention that at the table, but Abbie continues to explain that talking about periods shouldn’t be taboo, and even has everyone at the table say the word “menstruation” so that it becomes less taboo. Dorothea tries to end the topic, but then Julie brings up that she had sex with a guy while on her period and goes into graphic detail about the encounter. Dorothea is upset and has everyone go home after seeing how uncomfortable everyone is talking about menstruation and sex.

Honestly, though, I appreciate Jamie for making the effort to educate himself on feminism and female sexuality. It reminds me of this sketch I watched from Key and Peele called “Menstruation Orientation,” in which Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele are two men named Shaboots Michaels and T-Ray Tombstone speaking to an audience of men during a Ted Talk (it’s called FAS- For All Species- as a parody of the TED Talks logo) about what to do when their female partners are on their periods. They emphasize to the men in the audience that even if they are uncomfortable with learning about menstruation and don’t want to attend the lecture, they aren’t the ones that have to deal with having a period every month, so they need to learn and get educated on what their wives and girlfriends have to go through. (Note: I am continuing to learn about and get educated on gender and sexuality, and I understand that the experience of menstruation is not limited to cisgendered women like me, but also encompasses people who are trans and nonbinary.)

Warning: contains strong language

When I first saw it, I busted up laughing but as I thought more about it, I really appreciated that Key and Peele did this sketch because growing up, I didn’t know many guys who were comfortable talking about menstruation or willing to educate themselves about it. During health class it was a topic that elicited giggles and inappropriate comments from 8th grade boys (to be fair, I did giggle when my health teacher started talking about the reproductive system, so I was part of that group of immature kids who laughed.) Menstruation always felt like this thing I felt embarrassed about or that I could only talk about with other women, but watching this sketch gave me hope that if I was with a guy I didn’t have to feel embarrassed about mentioning whenever I was on my period or had mood swings. Even still, I sometimes feel embarrassed to talk about my menstrual cycle around people and even feel awkward when getting sanitary pads from the pharmacy and self-conscious while wearing them. But watching how Abbie in 20th Century Women felt openly comfortable talking about her period around men and women, especially during the 1970s, was, well, I don’t have the right word to describe it, but “empowering” sounds about right. I do appreciate how we are working to take the stigma out of talking about menstruation more often. There is a sweet commercial that Hello Flo where a girl called The Camp Gyno goes around giving her fellow campers tampons and giving them “menstruation demonstrations” with a Dora the Explorer doll (spoiler: her program fails miserably because all the girls are getting Hello Flo period starter kits in the mail, so they don’t need her to be Camp Gyno anymore.)

Somehow this movie reminded me of other movies I have seen. Julie and Jamie’s friendship reminded me of When Harry Met Sally, because there is one scene in the movie where Harry tells Sally she is attractive even though he is dating her friend, Amanda, and Sally is offended. Harry thinks it’s ridiculous that he can’t tell her she is attractive without it sounding like he is coming onto her, and when she firmly tells him that they are just going to be friends, he tells her that they could never become friends as a straight male and a straight woman because “the sex part always gets in the way.” Harry argues that a man can’t be friends with a woman he is attracted to because he will always want to have sex with her. Even though Sally remains firm about remaining friends, Harry continues to find her attractive. Even though Julie wants to remain friends with Jamie, he has romantic and sexual feelings for her. Jamie educates himself on female orgasm because he wants to know how to pleasure a woman, but Dorothea is uncomfortable that Jamie is learning so much about the female body at a young age. It’s interesting how their relationship has unfolded over the years, because when he was younger, Dorothea advocated for him to have his own bank account, and even let him skip school when he didn’t feel like going (she even was impressed that he forged her signature when signing absence permission slips.) However, as he gets older, they struggle to have a good relationship together because he is becoming a teenager and is becoming more distant from him. Dorothea loves keeping track of stocks, and has Jamie calculate the stocks with her, but he isn’t interested in doing that anymore. Even though Dorothea asked Abbie and Julie to help her have a deeper relationship with Jamie, Dorothea still wanted to keep Jamie sheltered from a culture of drugs, parties and punk rock.

Also, it’s wild to say this, but it boggled my mind while watching 20th Century Women that there was a time period when people lived without smartphones. They had to entertain themselves and be bored, they couldn’t just watch YouTube or TikTok. There is a scene where Jamie has Julie take a pregnancy test, and they have to wait two hours for the results, so they go outside and learn how to smoke. They didn’t have cell phones at the time, so they had to be bored and find creative ways to have fun. Julie tries to teach Jamie how to smoke like a cool guy, and not look unsure of himself while he does it. But then Jamie decides to stop because he learned that smoking wouldn’t be good for his health. I can only speak for myself, but whenever I feel bored now or stressed or anxious, I want to distract myself from those uncomfortable emotions that are coming up. I distract myself nowadays by going on my phone and scrolling through YouTube. Even though deep down I know my brain is overloaded by all the data and information it is taking in as I spend time scrolling on my smartphone, I still do it because my brain gets a temporary rush of dopamine every time that I check my phone. However, that’s why I have to keep checking my phone so I can have those repeated rushes of this pleasure chemical, dopamine. But before I know it, I have passed time and haven’t done much other than scrolled through YouTube videos on my video feed. I scroll through my phone to avoid being bored, but I end up not feeling great after my phone use. When I finally got bored of YouTube, I decided to pick up a book and read. After I dove into a few pages of the book, I remembered how much fun reading was. While my phone is helpful in many ways, I have also noticed that I tend to be on it a lot, and that I could benefit from cutting back on the time I spend on it. Jamie and Julie would probably live a very different life if they had smartphones in 1979.

Annette Bening is amazing (she is the actress who plays Dorothea, Jamie’s mother). She was in a movie I saw several years ago called The Kids Are All Right, which stars her and Julianne Moore as a lesbian couple who meet the man who was their sperm donor when they conceived their two kids. She was also in a really good movie called Nyad, which is a true story about a swimmer named Diana Nyad who came out of retirement and swam from Florida to Cuba in her 60s. That movie was truly about never giving up, because she had to overcome serious obstacles: panic attacks, killer jellyfish, and saltwater. Not to mention she had to start over several times. But she never gave up, even when her team told her that she could potentially die if she continued chasing this risky dream. It was a great film, and Annette Bening and Jodie Foster made a really good on-screen duo. I also love seeing Greta Gerwig with red hair; for some reason, her character, Abbie, looked like someone I knew in college. Also, I love Greta Gerwig’s other films, which she directed: Lady Bird, Little Women and Barbie. Each of these films spoke to me personally in some way, and the stories for each of them were really touching. In 20th Century Women, I really love how it spans from past, present and future. We get to know each character’s backstory and how their lives unfolded in the future. In all, I’m glad I finally got around to watching the entire movie because it ended up being a really touching and powerful movie.

20th Century Women. Directed by Mike Mills. 2016. Rated R for sexual material, language, some nudity and brief drug use. 118 minutes.

Movie Review: Close and a General Discussion Around Boyhood and Manhood

Disclaimer: This movie review does talk about suicide. If you or someone is in crisis, please call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

A few months ago, I watched the trailer for a Belgian film called Close. It was so touching and powerful that I wanted to watch the movie, so I decided to watch it last night. As you know, I love movies distributed by the film distribution company, A24, and honestly, after watching this movie, all I could think was, Man A24 you got me with these tearjerker movies! It was a very powerful story, and the acting was incredible. It is a powerful story about friendship, grief and love. The film score was also breathtaking, and by the end credits, my tear-ducts were exhausted, and I had a huge wad of tissues at my side.

If you haven’t seen the film yet, it takes place in rural Belgium and it’s about two thirteen-year-old boys named Leo and Remi who have a close friendship with each other. They ride their bicycles through the countryside on the way to school, they have inside jokes that they share with each other, and their bond is just so pure and authentic. There was one scene where they are eating together, and Leo jokingly slurps up his spaghetti noodle while placing his hands behind his ears, and Remi follows suit, prompting them and their parents to crack up. Remi is also an oboist in the school music group, and Leo and him crack jokes while Remi rehearses for his oboe recital. Leo also comes to Remi’s recital, which means a lot to Remi because he and Leo have such a special friendship. When Remi played his oboe solo, I broke down crying. It was just such a beautiful piece, and seeing the special connection that Leo and Remi share during that moment Remi is playing showed me how incredibly deep and beautiful their friendship is.

Seeing Leo and Remi share these incredibly natural moments together was so beautiful, which made the rest of the movie very devastating to watch. Leo and Remi’s friendship changes over time as the bullying at school continues and people start to make homophobic and unkind comments about Leo and Remi’s friendship. In one scene, a group of girls ask Leo and Remi if they are a couple, and Leo tells them that they are not. Remi wonders why Leo finds it so problematic that they have this kind of close platonic bond, and he tries to not let it affect his friendship with Leo. But Leo has changed. He has started letting the bullying get to him, so he tries to distance himself from Remi so that people will stop teasing them. However, Remi becomes hurt when he sees Leo is purposely trying to ignore him and distance himself from him, and he attempts to make new friends, but he has such a close bond of trust with Leo that it’s hard for him to feel comfortable making new friends. He even goes to visit Leo when he is playing ice hockey, and Leo tries to ignore him, but Remi wants to continue to support his friend. However, as Leo continues to distance himself, Remi becomes lonely and soon he stops coming to school. One day, on a field trip, the teacher is doing rolecall, and he finds Remi isn’t on the bus. While on the field trip everyone seems to be having a smooth and fun time, but then the chaperones have to get everyone back to the school since there has been an emergency. They head back to the school, and several parents are lined up to meet with their kids. Everyone gets off the bus, but Leo stays on. His mom comes to pick him up, and when Leo asks her to tell him what is going on, she tells him she will tell him when he is off the bus. But Leo insists on knowing what happened, so his mom hesitates then tells him that Remi died. Leo then has to navigate the intense painful grieving process that comes after finding out about Remi’s death.

The scene where Leo meets with Remi’s mother, Sophie, was powerful. Sophie works at a hospital in the neonatal unit, and one day Leo goes to work to visit her because he is carrying a huge feeling of guilt. He feels that he was responsible for Remi’s death, and he wants to let Sophie know that he feels that way. When she approaches him, he tries to tell her this, but he hesitates because he doesn’t know how she will react to his apology. Sophie tells him that she is at work and that he needs to come back another time, but she ends up giving him a ride home after finding out he took the bus to see her. While she is driving him, Leo confesses that he feels responsible for Remi’s suicide. Sophie gets quiet and then starts crying, and then she tells Leo to get out of the car. Leo gets out and runs through the forest. Sophie realizes that Leo might endanger himself because he feels so horrible about what happened, so she runs into the forest to get him back, and she finds him standing in the forest, holding up a large stick to defend himself. He is sobbing and is racked with so much grief and pain, because he regrets ostracizing himself from Remi and he realizes that no amount of guilt is going to get Remi back. Sophie understands this because she is also racked with grief at losing her son, and she embraces Leo in a huge hug.

There was another really sad scene where Sophie and Peter are eating dinner with Leo and his family, and Leo’s brother, Charlie, is talking about his plans to travel with his girlfriend. Peter suddenly starts crying because he is remembering his son, Remi, and Sophie gets up and goes outside because she is grieving, too. It just reminded me that suicide has an impact on loved ones, and even when you think no one will need you when you are around, it’s not true at all and when someone takes their own life, it really hurts their family, friends and people who knew them. It’s why, when Leo is in a group of his classmates and they are remembering Remi, he realizes that these people didn’t really know Remi like he (Leo) did because they were never that close with him. One of them talks about how Remi seemed like a happy person all of the time, but Leo knows about how Remi being ostracized was impacting his mental health, and so he questions the student, like “How do you know Remi was always happy?” And he finally leaves when the other students are sharing their thoughts on Remi because they all feel to Leo like very shallow remembrances. It reminded me of this book I read called The Reading List, and the protagonist has a brother who takes his own life. When she looks on social media, she finds people have written all of these shallow comments about her brother’s mental health and she realizes that these people aren’t offering genuine condolences because they rarely knew how deep his depression was or how hard it was for him to ask for help.

This movie also reminded me of the harm that homophobia has on kids, because I just feel like if the kids were more accepting of Leo and Remi’s friendship, then Leo wouldn’t have felt the need to ostracize himself from Remi. It would easy for me to tell Leo, Oh, haters are gonna hate. Just do you. But kids are still growing and forming their identities in a very cruel world that tells them that they can’t be themselves unless they hide who they are. Also, being ostracized hurts like hell, so it was understandable that Remi was feeling incredibly isolated because his one true friend no longer wants to hang out with him. It was painful to see Leo and Remi being called homophobic slurs and being disrespected. It also showed me though how ideas of manhood can influence kids and have a huge impact on how they view themselves. I used to use the term “toxic masculinity” but as I am learning more about it, I am coming to understand that masculinity isn’t in and of itself toxic. It’s cultural standards about how men should express their masculinity that can be a real problem. Gillette called this out in a commercial that featured boys bullying another boy, boys fighting and their fathers shaking their heads, laughing and joking “Boys will be boys,” and then these grown men catcalling women and engaging in sexual harassment. It then shows what happens when we have these tough conversations around outdated gender norms, and help these boys develop healthy self-esteem. They show these young men intervening when their fellow men try to catcall women and remind them how uncool that is, they show a father encouraging his daughter to affirm she is strong, and one of the dads at the barbeque breaking up a fight between two boys. I understand that the ad got a lot of mixed responses, and Saturday Night Live even parodied the commercial.

However, the first time I saw it, I got goosebumps and thought that Gillette did send a pretty important message about how, when men are forced to conform to stereotypes about what it means to be a man, they face a lot of stress to keep up with these unrealistic expectations, and it can lead to increased physical and mental health issues. It’s why I appreciate shows like Ted Lasso because they allow men to be vulnerable and also show what happens when men have spent years of their life not being allowed to be vulnerable, and how being vulnerable takes courage. Ted is trying to help these young men be the best versions of themselves, and he even starts a group where he and a few other men on the AFC Richmond team talk about their feelings with each other in an honest, judgement-free way. Ted also learns how it’s okay for him to ask for help, too, and that he doesn’t have to handle his panic attacks on his own. At first, Ted thinks it’s no big deal and that he doesn’t need therapy, unlike the young men he coaches on the team. However, when he has a severe panic attack, he realizes that he can’t deal with his panic attacks on his own and that he needs Dr. Fieldstone’s help. At first, it is hard for Ted to open up about his mental health, but when he goes through the intense process and opens up about his childhood and his life, he develops a close bond with Dr. Fieldstone and learns to trust her. Ted struggled to be vulnerable because he didn’t want to seem like he was letting anyone down, but what this show taught me is that it takes courage to admit you are struggling and need help.

The film Close reminded me of the power of friendship, but also of close male friendships. As a woman, I don’t have much insight into male friendships, but seeing these kinds of movies has helped me understand that male friendships can be just as complex and intimate as female friendships. Remi and Leo sleep in the same bed, they ride their bikes together, and they enjoy each other’s company. They just let themselves exist in each other’s company without a hidden agenda. Which is why it was painful to see Leo pushing Remi away. Leo starts doing stuff to distance himself from Remi, like kicking Remi out of his bed and forcing Remi to sleep in his own bed. It’s like the kids at school weren’t allowing Leo and Remi to define friendship in their own unique way. To fit in, Leo had to adhere to a certain idea of what it means to create friendships as a man, and Remi felt like he was losing Leo when Leo started acting differently towards him. It reminded me of this movie I saw called Moonlight, because there are two young men, Chiron and Kevin, who form a close bond with each other. Both of them admit to liking each other, and they kiss on the beach under the moonlight. Kevin is tight with Chiron and stands up for him, but then the school bully is picking on Chiron, and he wants Kevin to participate in the bullying. Kevin doesn’t want to betray Chiron’s trust, but he also doesn’t want the bully to beat him up, so he decides to participate in a cruel game where he has to pick out a young man in a circle to beat up, and he picks Chiron and beats him bloody. The bully gets off scot-free (I think) and Chiron ends up going into class and hitting him over the head with a desk, and Chiron gets arrested. Later on, when he is an adult, Chiron has adopted a tough-guy persona and is buff and has a set of grills, and he deals drugs. He has put on emotional armor so that he doesn’t get bullied like he did when he was younger. However, what breaks him emotionally is when he finally goes to visit his mother at a rehabilitation center where she is recovering from addiction. She admits she treated him poorly and loves him a lot, and they both break down in tears. When Chiron meets up with Kevin, they share a beautiful embrace and a really tender moment. This movie illuminated the beauty of men just being authentic and vulnerable with each other.

Close. Directed by Lukas Dhont. 104 minutes. Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving suicide, and brief language.

Movie Review: The Humans

I just finished watching a movie called The Humans. I love films from the distribution company A24, and The Humans is an A24 film. I didn’t know much about the movie, but I saw the trailer a while ago and it looked interesting. I read some reviews saying it was a horror movie but without jump scares. I’m not a big fan of horror, and as a child I was always stressed going into movie theaters and Blockbuster during Halloween because they always had these big advertisements for scary movies, and I got nightmares. And not just Halloween, but summer as well. I was around eight or ten years old and there was a poster for a film in the Chucky franchise, and the minute I turned to look at it, I almost screamed. So, I thought it was really interesting when I looked at the genre for The Humans and saw that people were calling it a horror film. I remember seeing a movie called Lamb (another A24) film and it was categorized as horror, but it didn’t have any jump-scares. It just had a lot of disturbing scenes. There are some jump scares in The Humans, but it’s not like anything supernatural is jumping out at you. It’s just the sounds and the overall atmosphere of the movie that makes it extremely unsettling.

If you haven’t seen the movie, it takes place in New York City, and the family is meeting together for Thanksgiving. Erik and Deidre have two daughters, Aimee and Brigid, and their mom, Momo, has dementia. They all go to visit Brigid and her boyfriend, Richard, for the Thanksgiving holiday, and at first things start off really chill, but as the film goes on, the interactions get more stressful and there is a lot of tension in the family. The apartment Brigid and Richard live in is pretty creepy, and they always hear suspenseful noises coming from upstairs or stuff is coming out of the walls. I think the most stressful part of this film was the conversation that Brigid has with Erik and Deidre. Brigid is a musician, but she keeps getting rejected for opportunities. She has her parents and sister listen to a piece of music she composed, and they like it, but she said she didn’t get the grant for the music, and she feels dejected. Erik doesn’t provide any consoling advice, and instead tells her that she should find a real job instead of chasing her passion. Brigid is upset that her dad doesn’t support her dreams, and Richard tries to reason with her, but Brigid is sick of feeling like no one supports her dreams. Erik is in a lot of hot water himself; he tells his daughters that he and Deidre had to sell their lake house because Erik lost his job at the school that he worked at for having an affair with one of the teachers, so he is working at Walmart to pay the bills. Even though he assures Brigid and Aimee that he and Deidre are working it out, Brigid and Aimee wonder why he did what he did and whether he has anything saved up, and they start to worry about his financial situation. Aimee is also dealing with a lot of stuff; her partner, Carol, broke up with her and is seeing someone else, she lost her job, and she has health issues. In between these stressful moments, Erik is hearing strange noises from the house and honestly, the ending of the film gave me the creeps. I really thought some ghost was going to pop out, but it was just more of a suspenseful moment, the feeling of being in this dark room when everyone else has gone. Honestly, I felt for Erik at that moment because as a kid I remember hating dark spaces. We went on a tour to this big cavern when I was younger, and it was pitch black and I’m pretty sure I almost got a panic attack. There was another time when I was in fifth grade and we had to learn about slavery and the conditions on the slave ships, and the teachers had us go in this classroom and we had to lay down next to each other and they turned off the lights. We had to imagine that we were slaves on these ships with no ventilation, no lighting, all cramped together in chains. The minute they turned off the lights, my heart started racing, my breathing shortened, and I started to hyperventilate. I did not want to be in the pitch-black room anymore, and I almost screamed and started crying. The kids around me had to convince that it wasn’t real, that I was going to be ok, but honestly that did very little to assuage the intense panic I felt at that moment in that pitch dark room. I remember my parents saying I used to not be afraid of the dark as a kid, but honestly, I can’t remember that time anymore because as I got older, I started hating being in rooms where it was pitch black and I couldn’t see anything. Maybe this is why I fear death because it’s going to feel so weird losing my consciousness, losing my breath, losing my hearing, my taste, my tactile senses. While Erik was in the dark by himself, I felt like I was in that dark room, wondering how you are ever going to get out. Erik starts panicking and he rushes downstairs and recites a Biblical verse over and over again while crying. Brigid tells him his cab is ready to take him and Deidre home, but it takes him a while to recover from the scare he had until he finally musters the courage and strength to leave the house.

I also related to the theme of family tension, especially when Brigid was talking to her family about her dreams as a musician, because there were many times I would talk to my family about wanting to move to a big city like New York or Los Angeles to follow my dreams as a musician, and they would tell me, “It’s too expensive to live there” and I would always get so defensive and upset, to the point where I would be passive-aggressive during meal times or throw tantrums because my dreams weren’t working out the way that I wanted them to. It’s something I still struggle with, to be honest, and sometimes I wonder if something is wrong with me, because there will be times during family meals where I will be totally quiet and thinking about some stressful event, and I will just be reluctant to talk about it with my family because I worry about them judging me. I also related to Richard’s past struggles with depression, because I have struggled with depression. It’s not easy to talk about one’s mental health, especially because there is a lot of stigma attached to talking about it. There is a scene where Richard talks about how he was depressed, and Brigid tells him he doesn’t have to bring it up with her family because she doesn’t want him to feel pressured to talk about it, but he tells them he was depressed at one point. Erik then tells him that in their family, they don’t believe in depression or taking medications and going to therapy. Instead, Erik believes that religion is the best antidepressant, and he wonders why his daughters aren’t religious anymore. I’m a religious person, too, but I realized after a certain point that the purpose of my prayer was to give me the wisdom to seek proper treatment for my depression. I was just praying for it to go away, but I realized that it was neither realistic nor safe to wish a serious medical condition like depression away, and that I needed to get help for it right away. As much as I loved my friends and family and people in my religious community, I found seeing someone who is trained in dealing with mental health issues to be immensely helpful and therapy gave me tools so that I could continue to do the work on myself to manage my depression. I also realized that a lot of people struggle with depression, so I could use my experiences with mental illness to encourage someone going through it. It’s easy to think there is something inherently flawed about you when you go through a depressive episode, but getting the right treatment helped me learn how to manage it better and that instead of beating myself up for being depressed, I needed to have more self-compassion and understand that recovering from depression takes patience and effort, and that I needed to take it one day at a time. It definitely wasn’t an overnight one-time event, and for many years I struggled with moments where I felt ok and where I felt like, I’m not feeling great, I need to go see someone about this.

One part of this film that I really loved was the dialogue. It was just incredibly brilliant. When I first saw the trailer, I thought it was going to have supernatural creatures because the characters at one point talk about these scary stories and scary dreams that they have, but there are no supernatural entities that jump out during the film. It’s just the overall suspense that leaves your heart racing during this film. It’s not a fast-paced movie at all; in fact, it reminded me of my experience watching this film called The Zone of Interest (which is another A24 movie. Like seriously, A24 is killing it with these incredible dramas. I don’t know how they do it.) At the beginning, it was slow and starts off with a pitch-black screen and ominous choral music at the beginning, but as the film builds it just gets more and more disturbing and by the end I was like, Wow, that was…something. I like films that don’t feature a lot of frenetic action or stylized violence. Sometimes the films that get me are movies that start off slow but build with suspense until my skin is crawling. Also, I saw June Squibb (the actress who plays Mo-Mo) in another movie called Nebraska. I haven’t finished the film yet, but she was a really great actress in the movie. I also really love Beanie Feldstein, who plays Brigid, in Booksmart, which is a funny movie about two high school straight-A students who decide to party and not take themselves seriously during their senior year. I also love Amy Schumer, who plays Aimee, in her sketch show Inside Amy Schumer. I watched that show a lot when I was in college and going through a rough time. I haven’t seen a lot of work by Steven Yeun but I saw a movie he was in called Sorry to Bother You. It was about a Black man named Cassius living in an alternate reality who becomes successful as a telemarketer when he starts to sound like a white person, and the film shows the dark side of capitalism. Steven Yeun plays one of Cassius’s friends who rejects capitalism and ends up dating Cassius’s girlfriend, Detroit, when Cassius becomes a sellout. Another Steven Yeun movie I love is Minari (another A24 film), which is about a family from Korea who moves to the American countryside and learns to adjust to their new life in America. I really want to see his Netflix series with Ali Wong called Beef because I watched a lot of awards shows this year, and Beef won quite a few awards. I saw Richard Jenkins in this movie a long time ago called The Visitor. It’s about a middle-aged man living in New York who meets a couple who is undocumented, and he lets them stay with him. It was a very moving film, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it again. Richard Jenkins was also in another film I love called Kajillionaire, which is about a family of con artists living in Los Angeles who encounter a mysterious woman who goes on a heist with them and falls in love with the couple’s daughter, Old Dolio. Richard plays Old Dolio’s dad, who doesn’t have any real love for his daughter and is just stringing her along so that they can scam people out of their money. Even though it was a depressing film, I loved the acting in that movie.

I didn’t know this movie was based on a play until I saw the opening credits. I’ve seen a few films that were originally plays, and it’s interesting to see how they bring the play to the big screen. There was a film I saw called The Whale that was originally a play. The movies Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom were originally plays by August Wilson, and the movie Doubt was a stage play. Watching these movies makes me want to see the original stage plays.

The Humans. 2021. Rated R.

Movie Review: Perfect Days

Last week, I watched a really good movie called Perfect Days. I didn’t know much about it, but my mom told me about it and so we watched it as a family. It’s a really touching film, and after watching a very intense film like Killers of the Flower Moon (great film, just couldn’t sleep for a few days after watching it) I needed a film that could let me go to sleep at night without getting nightmares. This film is about Hirayama, a man in Japan who cleans public toilets and gets great satisfaction from his work, even though few people are praising him for it. The film shows Hirayama waking up and spraying his plants with water, looking up at the sky with appreciation, getting his can of cold coffee from the vending machine, and driving to his job as a public toilet cleaner. We don’t know a lot about his personal life, like his past relationships, but seeing him go about his daily life reminded me why I need to continue having a morning routine. I loved Hirayama’s choice of music. Throughout the film, he puts on cassettes and listens to old hits like “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals, “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding, “Feeling Good” by Nina Simone and “Redondo Beach” by Patti Smith (I am not too familiar with Patti Smith’s music so listening to “Redondo Beach” was my first Patti Smith song.) He finds peace in his daily routine, and he takes his work seriously, regardless of whether people thank him or not. This film reminded me that there is intrinsic satisfaction in doing your best at work, even though it may not get a lot of praise, and it made me want to appreciate people who do these kinds of unseen jobs, such as in maintenance, retail and food service. Hirayama works with Takashi, a young man who doesn’t take his job seriously and is always goofing off with his friend or opening up about his girl problems to Hirayama. But Hirayama continues to take his work seriously. Honestly, I love the way that these public toilets operate, because the doors changed colors to show whether they were vacant or occupied. It was just kind of retro, speaking as someone who hasn’t been into a bathroom stall that changes colors.

I was really worried that Hirayama was going to have to sell his cassettes. As a 90s kid I remember listening to cassettes while my mom drove me to school, but ever since getting an iPod in middle school and then streaming music on YouTube, I had forgotten the lost art of listening to cassettes. And that there is a very specific way you have to take care of them so that the tape in the cassette doesn’t get tangled. Hirayama has a very specific way that he organizes his tapes, and he makes sure they are wound properly. He is also a voracious reader, and he is seen reading a book by William Faulkner. For some reason, I thought about Haruki Murakami’s writings because he sometimes references a lot of American literature and music in his books. I really like the scene where Aya, Takashi’s girlfriend, takes interest in one of Hirayama’s cassettes, a recording of Patti Smith’s “Redondo Beach.” One day, Takashi ends up driving Hirayama’s van to drop off Aya somewhere because his motorcycle is not working, and they listen to “Redondo Beach.” Aya falls in love with the song, and when Hirayama isn’t looking, takes the cassette with her. Later on, she returns it, but she doesn’t want to let it go because she really resonates with the song, so Hirayama lets her listen to it one last time. She probably didn’t grow up with cassettes and the kind of music that Hirayama listens to, and the song probably resonated with something personal in her life. I still listen to old hits from when I was a child because it brings back memories for me. There is just something about music that I cannot express in words to people; it allows me to express and feel emotions that I otherwise wouldn’t express in daily life.

This movie for some reason made me think of a movie I watched called Paterson. Paterson is a movie starring Adam Driver as a bus driver named Paterson, who lives in a city called Paterson in New Jersey. He works as a bus driver and is content with the work that he does, and in his spare time he writes poetry and spends time with his wife. Paterson doesn’t have a cell phone because he doesn’t feel he needs one, but there is a scene where his bus breaks down and he has to call for help, but he doesn’t have a cell phone, so he has to borrow someone’s cell phone to make the call. I remember throughout middle and high school I didn’t have a cell phone, so I would always call my parents using my teachers’ landline phones. One time in high school (this was ninth grade. I finally got a flip phone in sophomore year) there was inclement weather, and everyone had to go home, but I didn’t have a cell phone so that I could call my dad and have him pick me up, so I used my friend’s phone to call him. At the time I didn’t think I needed a cell phone, but nowadays it would be hard to not have a cell phone because I am in contact with so many people 24/7. I do look back on my flip phone days with fond memories, and now that I have used my smartphone for the past seven years I think I would need to go back to having more patience when using a flip phone because on a flip phone I had to take my time pushing the buttons while texting, because unlike a smartphone, where I can let my fingers fly across the keyboard and send a text message within six seconds, with the flip phone the numbers and letters would appear on the screen at a more leisurely pace, so I had to be patient and it would take a little longer to send that text message. Perfect Days reminded me of Paterson because both Hirayama and Paterson enjoy the seemingly ordinary and boring aspects of life and they have gratitude for each day. They are both introverted people who do jobs that the public takes for granted; for Hirayama, it is cleaning toilets, and for Paterson it is driving a bus. Both of them also love spending time in nature. Hirayama frequents a park where he eats his lunch; he doesn’t look at his cell phone, but instead enjoys the present moment. He uses an old-fashioned camera to take photos of the trees and he organizes the photos when he gets home. Paterson also likes to spend time in nature, and I think because he isn’t constantly checking his phone, he gets to be fully present in his interactions with people and while spending time in nature. While I appreciate having a smartphone, I am taking steps to be more mindful about how I use it. Anytime I face a stressful situation, the first thing I reach for is my phone and I end up scrolling on YouTube and the news because I want to distract myself from the stress that I feel. I don’t want to sit with my feelings; I want to run away from them, but the more I run away from them, the worse I feel. I think I need to be more like Hirayama and Paterson and live in the present moment.

Perfect Days also reminded me of another movie I saw called The Intern, which stars Robert de Niro and Anne Hathaway. Robert de Niro plays Ben, a widower who has hobbies but is looking for greater purpose in life after his wife’s death. While walking down the street, he finds an advertisement from a fashion company calling for applicants ages 60 and older to join their internship program. Ben is hired, but even though people are excited to see him the first day, when he meets his boss, Jules, she doesn’t give him any work to do. Jules isn’t great at working with older people, and most of the people working at the company are Millennials. However, rather than waiting for Jules to give him work, Ben decides to take initiative and starts finding creative ways to help around the office, like helping employees with carrying things or cleaning off a really cluttered area of the office that no one had time to clean. People at the office recognize Ben’s hard work and praise him, and he appreciates the praise, but he is also humble about it because he has been in the workforce for many years, so he knows it’s important to work hard whether you get recognition or not. At a crucial moment, Jules realizes that Ben is indispensable at the company. Ben looks out the window and finds that Jules’ driver is drinking, and so he approaches the driver and encourages him to call in sick. The driver takes Ben’s advice and tells Jules he can’t drive, which means Ben ends up driving her. Jules develops trust in Ben because he has shown that he can take initiative at work with minimal supervision, and he genuinely cares about creating value at the company, especially because several years ago, he started working in the same office that Jules is running her business in. The work he did was different, but he still has a fondness for the office. After watching The Intern and Perfect Days, it made me reflect on my attitude at work. When I first started working at my current company, I was training under a supervisor and I didn’t have any work coming in after finishing my assignments quickly, so I would often read my book. Some of the managers approached me and asked if I needed something to do, and finally after a few weeks, one of them gently told me, “You might not want to be reading, because it looks bad around here” and then she gave me work to do. However, at some point, I had to realize that I needed to learn to take responsibility on my own and not always wait for them to give me stuff to do, especially because they were busy with their own tasks and assignments. Sometimes I would think, Does this work matter even if I’m not receiving recognition for it all the time? But I think that is why chanting and studying the writings of my mentor, the late philosopher Daisaku Ikeda, helped because his writings encourage me to do my best every day. His mentor, Josei Toda, always used to say, “In faith[ our Buddhist practice] do the work of one. At your job, do the work of three.” There is also a quote from a letter in The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin where Nichiren, a Buddhist reformer, is telling a follower “Regard your service to your lord as the practice of Lotus Sutra,” (“Reply to a Believer,” The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, p. 905), which means that we express actual proof of our Buddhist practice through working hard at our jobs. It can be hard to gain a sense of intrinsic motivation for doing something, especially since most of my life has revolved around receiving external praise, but over time I gained an intrinsic satisfaction whenever I did something at work and realized that my workplace is a place where I can do my absolute best. Of course, I still have challenges and there are definitely days when I lose motivation or don’t know what to do, but I chant the phrase Nam-myoho-renge-kyo every day to do my best. And I am becoming more serious about my writing and my cello playing, because that is what I love to do in my spare time, so even when the work I do seems tedious, I appreciate that I have a stable day job so that I can do what I love in my spare time.

Honestly, this film reminded me to have appreciation for each day. It’s easy for me to be impatient and think, Gosh, why don’t I have the apartment I want? Why don’t I have a boyfriend yet? Why am I so miserable? I tend to be really impatient, and it’s often easy for me to think I will be sad and miserable forever when things don’t go my way. But it’s easy to forget that I am still alive, and that life goes fast, and that I need to enjoy each moment of it so that I don’t lie on my death bed wondering, Geez LOUISE. Where did the time go? It is easy to forget sometimes because I get so caught up in the stress of daily life that I often forget to have gratitude, but I’ve been lately writing down on Post It notes small things that I am grateful for, even if it just being alive. I want to know when I die that I lived the best life possible. Watching a film like Perfect Days reminded me that it’s important to enjoy the ordinary things in life that I often take for granted.

Perfect Days. 2023. Directed by Wim Wenders. Running time: 2 hours and 4 minutes. Rated PG for some language, partial nudity and smoking.

Succession, season 4, episodes 2-3

Contains spoilers.

Honestly this has been the most emotional season of the show so far. I think when I first started watching this show, I didn’t know if I was going to want to finish because everyone was really mean to each other, but somehow, I think just the acting and dialogue is what kept me hooked on this show. It’s been emotional because a major character passes away unexpectedly and the characters who supported this person are spending the rest of the season dealing with intense grief.

In episode 2, “Rehearsal,” Connor is rehearsing his wedding with his fiancée, Willa, and it’s not going easily. Kendall, Roman and Shiv are also still figuring out whether they should go through with the GoJo deal with Lukas Mattson. Logan Roy is also doing more supervising of the ATN news team, and Greg and Tom find him walking around the office in sunglasses while people scurry nervously around Logan doing their work. He gets up in front of the news crew and tells them they need to knuckle down and that he is determined to get ATN back to being a powerful media outlet. Kerry, Logan’s assistant and mistress, auditions to become a news anchor for ATN and she ends up becoming a huge laughingstock when people, including the Roy siblings, watch her audition because they think it is really bad. There is one scene where Gerri and Hugo are watching Kerry’s appearance on the ATN news network and they are laughing at how she says things and the smile that she forces, and they immediately shut down the laptop when Logan walks in. But then Logan tells Hugo to open his laptop, and Hugo is reluctant but does so, and Logan briefly finds they had been laughing about Kerry’s audition tape. Tom tells Logan that Kerry wouldn’t be a good fit as an anchor for ATN, and he has Greg deliver the bad news, which doesn’t go so well and prompts Kerry to storm out. Things are not going so well for Willa or Connor during their wedding rehearsal, and when Shiv, Roman and Kendall finally arrive late, they find Willa and ask her how the rehearsal went. She is still not happy in her engagement to Connor and isn’t sure she wants to marry him, but she doesn’t let them know this, she just tells them she is in a rush and needs to go home. Connor then tells them that Willa is uncertain about marrying Connor. The four siblings meet at a bar to discuss the future deal with GoJo, and Connor is trying to locate where Willa is.

Season 4, episode 3, “Connor’s Wedding,” is probably the most emotional episode so far. It is the day of Connor and Willa’s wedding, and everyone is focused on making sure Connor is ready for his big day. Guests are milling around and talking, and everything seems fine. It seemed Logan was doing perfectly fine early on, and he was on a plane with his crew (Frank, Tom, Karl, and Karolina) to go to Sweden to negotiate with Matsson. At the beginning of the episode, Logan calls Roman and tells him to fire Gerri, and Roman at first isn’t having it, but because he is scared of his dad and wants his approval, he ends up telling Gerri at Connor’s wedding that Logan wanted her fire. Of course, she is deeply hurt by this and refuses to speak to Roman again. However, everything changes when Kendall and Roman get a call from Tom that Logan has passed out on the plane, and they are doing chest compressions to try and revive him, and they don’t know if he will make it or not. Logan ends up dying, and within minutes the siblings have to make a statement to reporters and navigate the very complicated and painful process of grief, which is filled with shock, denial, pain, anger, anxiety, sadness and so many other feelings. Honestly, as terrible a person as Logan was, at the end of the day, it is painful losing a loved one. I think that is why watching this episode was so emotionally difficult because grief is a really painful process, and you can’t just cry and then call it a day. And on a day when Connor was going to celebrate his marriage to Willa, he faces this really shocking news. I’m sure it was hard for Logan’s PR team, too, because even though Tom remained calm on the phone with the siblings during this traumatic event, even he had to go into a private room and when talking with Greg, broke down and admitted he wasn’t okay. Even though Frank and Karolina and others on the team had to remain calm, I’m sure it was a scary moment for them, too, because no one knew that was going to happen to him. In episode 1 of season 1, Logan suffers a stroke and has to go to the hospital, and it is sudden and scary for everyone, but then he wakes up and everyone goes back to normal. However, throughout the course of the show, Logan deals with serious health challenges, and so throughout the show they have to figure out who will take over if he is incapacitated or passes away. However, even with all the preparation and talk about who will be the next successor, death is still a shocking and painful experience, so no amount of wealth or prestige could soften the blow of how painful it was for the Roy family to lose their dad.

Logan’s death hit everyone hard, and episode 4 shows how complicated their relationship with him actually was, especially when they find that Logan had drafted a will with specific instructions about who got what. I didn’t suspect Kerry of anything until this season. I just thought she just hid in the background, being Logan’s innocent assistant. But things got ugly between her and Marcia when Kerry shows up at the house to grab her belongings that she left upstairs in Logan’s room. Marcia hasn’t been to see Logan after she heard about him sleeping with other women, but she came back with a lot of pain and resentment, and so when Kerry comes and tries to go upstairs, and she is in a puddle of tears, Marcia tells her she is not allowed upstairs and that the guards give her the belongings she left. Roman tries to help her out, while Greg, who at this point has become a pretty twisted character, makes fun of Kerry and jokes, “Oh, here come the waterworks.” Kerry ends up dropping her stuff on the ground and telling Roman that she and Logan were going to get engaged, and Marcia tells her to get her shit and leave the premises. Roman thinks Marcia was being too hard on Kerry and asks if it was really necessary to kick Kerry out like that, but Marcia just says with cold indifference that she booked a cab for Kerry to go back to her own apartment. The other characters, with Logan no longer around, debate about who is going to take over, and they issue some pretty nasty insults towards each other (the insults they hurled at the beginning of the show were bad enough, but season 4 these insults seemed to cut even deeper, especially from people like Karl and Gerri.) Roman and Kendall find out that they would take over the company, but that Shiv would be excluded. Shiv has repeatedly fought the family over this, and in I think season 1, Shiv met with her dad to talk about how unfair it was that he would let Roman take over as chief operating officer and wouldn’t let her step up in her position at the company. Logan said it’s because she lacked experience, but Shiv told him he was excluding her because she is a woman. This really hurts Shiv because at some point she thought her dad had changed his mind and was going to let her take over, but it turned out he was just manipulating his children. He had the power all along and wanted everyone to go along with his long and drawn-out game. Roman and Kendall go into their dad’s office, and it hits them that their dad is no longer alive, and that they have this huge responsibility now to take over for him. It reminded me a little of season 1 of The Crown, because in season 1 Elizabeth’s father is failing in his health, and while she is in Africa on a tour with her husband, Prince Phillip, she gets a call that her father passed away. It was painful because they show her writing a letter to her father, and they show she is about to send it off, but she never gets to send the letter because by the time she does, she gets the news that he has died. She has to take the throne immediately, and it’s a difficult process because she is still grieving, but she has this incredibly huge responsibility to serve the public, and now that she is in the public eye, she cannot afford to show any weakness. It completely changes her relationship with her family, because she can no longer treat her sister, Margaret, like her sister. Her sister, her mother, and her grandmother all have to bow in deference to Elizabeth once she becomes the queen, and it also forever changes the relationship dynamic between Elizabeth and her sister. Margaret wants to get married to a man named Peter Townsend, but Elizabeth tells her she has to wait until a certain age before she can get married. She waits and waits, but still doesn’t get her sister’s approval. Even though Elizabeth tells Margaret she can try and help her, she can’t do any special favors for her sister because she is a public figure and anything she does that goes against the rules could put her reputation in jeopardy, so she ends up not letting Margaret do what she wants most of the time. This really sours their relationship.

Movie Review: Volver

When I was in middle school, a movie called Volver came out. I was really intrigued by the poster of Penelope Cruz surrounded by these very colorful red flowers, with this troubled expression on her face as she looks to the side of her. It just seemed like such a mature movie to me, but I don’t think I would have been able to appreciate the film if I had seen it back then because it does have a lot of mature themes. I am glad I finally saw it now after so many years of wanting to see it because it really was an excellent film. I had seen Pedro Almodóvar’s other movie Julieta, which came out a decade after Volver did. That movie was really good, too.

The movie Volver takes place in Spain, and it opens with several women cleaning off the caskets of deceased loved ones. Penelope Cruz plays Raimunda, a woman who is grappling with the loss of her parents. Her sister is named Sole (Lola Duenas) and Raimunda also has a daughter named Paula (Yohana Cobo). They go over to their aunt Paula’s house, where Aunt Paula takes care of herself. Sole finds her mother’s old bicycle in Paula’s attic and starts to wonder more about her mother. Meanwhile, Raimunda has to deal with another issue: her husband, Paco, lost his job. We also find out Paco is a shady dude because Raimunda’s daughter is sitting on the couch, Paco looks at her crotch. He also walks past her room and finds her naked and starts looking at her in a creepy way. Raimunda is stressed because Paco isn’t doing anything to find a new job; he is just sitting and drinking beer and watching sports, while she has to take on several jobs to make ends meet. When Paco wants to have sex, Raimunda refuses and he masturbates instead. When Raimunda gets off the bus to walk home, she finds her daughter waiting for her at the bus stop. When she asks where Dad is, Paula says he is at home and she also looks very shaken. They arrive home to find Paco dead with a knife in his body and blood pooling around him. Paula tells her mom that Paco tried to rape her and so she stabbed him to death with a kitchen knife. Raimunda, shaken that Paco would do such a thing, cleans up the blood and plans to dispose of Paco’s body. She also takes the blame for what Paula did and decides to not tell anyone about what happened to Paco. Emilio comes to the house and tells Raimunda that he is going out of town and needs someone to run his restaurant in his absence, and he gives her the keys to the restaurant. The next day, Raimunda takes Paco’s body and puts it in the freezer in the back storage room. The person in charge of a film crew comes to the restaurant and tells her they want to eat at the restaurant while they are shooting a movie. At first, Raimunda is reluctant to do so, but he offers to pay her well, so she lets him and the crew eat at the restaurant. Aunt Paula passes away and Sole and Agustina are grieving her death. Raimunda continues to run the restaurant and asks some women around the neighborhood, including Regina and Ines, if they could lend her some food (pork and cookies) to the restaurant for her to prepare for the film crew. They help her out and honestly seeing the menu of what she was serving in that restaurant sounded delicious even though I’m a vegan. I have never tried meat from Spain but I bet it’s delicious. Meanwhile, Soledad is driving and she parks her car outside her house, and she hears a woman whisper her name. When she opens the trunk she finds the woman is none other than her mother, Irene, the lady she thought was dead for years. Sole lets her mother stay with her, and her mother reveals that her husband cheated on her when they were married. Sole is divorced and doesn’t live with anyone, so her mother says they can live together. However, Sole decides to hide her mother from Raimunda so that Raimunda doesn’t know that her mother is alive, and Sole has a bunch of women come to her home so she can do their hair, and she has Irene pretend to be from Russia and not understand Spanish so they don’t know it’s her. When she is at the restaurant, Paula (Raimunda’s daughter) goes into the freezer and gets suspicious about what Raimunda is hiding in there, and when she asks about it, Raimunda tells her that no one is to look in that freezer, not even Paula. When Paula asks if Paco is her real dad, Raimunda tells her that Paco is not her biological dad and that her biological dad passed away a long time ago. The film crew has their final celebration at the restaurant and Raimunda finds a group of guitarists playing, and she decides to go out and sing for everyone. Soledad pulls up to outside the restaurant with Irene hiding in the car and Irene overhears Raimunda singing this beautiful song that her grandmother sung to her a long time ago called “Volver” by Carlos Gardel (which I finally realized is the significance of the movie’s title), and she is moved to tears. The next day Raimunda calls to rent a van to put Paco’s corpse in, and Emilio calls her to asks about how the restaurant is going and Raimunda confesses that she has taken over the restaurant. Emilio is disappointed because no one told him about this, but Raimunda has another big problem to deal with, not only how to get rid of her ex-husband’s dead body in a very discreet way but also her neighbor, Agustina, has cancer and is dying, so Raimunda has to go to the hospital to see her. Agustina has a request for Raimunda before she dies: that Raimunda inform her whether her mother is dead or alive. She also says that there is a friend who requested her to be on a TV show and wants to interview them about their mother’s death and the fire that she died in, and Raimunda, who already has a lot on her plate, refuses to do so. Her daughter, Paula, ends up staying with Sole many times because Raimunda is trying to visit Agustina and also take care of getting rid of her husband’s body. Raimunda gets her friends, Ines and Regina, to help her get the fridge with Paco’s corpse into the van and then they dig a ditch and throw his body in there. While Raimunda is working at the restaurant, Agustina comes to see her and reminds her that she promised to tell her whether her mother is dead or alive. Apparently Raimunda got the story about her mother all wrong because Agustina tells her that the death of Raimunda’s parents in the fire in the village and her mother’s disappearance may be connected in some way, and tells Raimunda that it’s possible that Agustina’s mom was having a secret affair with Raimunda’s dad, and that is why Agustina went to live with her grandmother. Raimunda didn’t know that part of the story, and she thinks Agustina’s lying, but Agustina insists that the death of Raimunda’s parents and her mother’s disappearance are deeply connected. Back at Sole’s house, Irene is hiding under the bed and Paula is there with her, and she overhears the TV playing in the room. The women who are having their hair done by Irene are wondering why she disappeared when she was supposed to be doing their hair, but Sole can’t tell them what is really going on. Sole, Raimunda and the woman getting her hair done go into the room to watch this show called Donde Quiera Que Estes (Wherever You Are). Agustina appears on the show, and the interviewer asks her to divulge details about her mother’s disappearance and if there was another woman involved in the fire in Agustina’s village. Agustina feels uncomfortable and refuses to talk about the details of the fire, and her sister expresses anger and disappointment when she does. It gets even more awkward when the interviewer announces Agustina has cancer, and so Agustina walks off the show. While preparing flan, Raimunda tells Sole that Agustina approached her asking for details about her mother’s appearance and that Agustina said that her mother was having an affair with Raimunda and Sole’s dad. It also turns out that there was more to this story than Raimunda thought, because Sole tells her that Irene has been around all this time, and that she stayed with Aunt Paula and took care of her and even helped out with Aunt Paula’s funeral, so she was very much alive and contrary to what Raimunda and Sole thought, Aunt Paula was never alone because Irene was taking care of her. Sole takes her to her bedroom and Raimunda finds Irene very much alive and well, and she leaves with her daughter, Paula, shocked and in tears to find that no one told her that her mother was alive and that she didn’t die in that fire in the village. Paula encourages Raimunda to go back to the house to talk with Irene and Irene later that evening while they are on a walk tells Raimunda everything that happened. She explains that she left Raimunda’s father because he cheated on her with Agustina’s mother. Not only that but Raimunda’s father sexually abused Raimunda and she got pregnant and then had her daughter, Paula. He moved to Venezuela because he felt ashamed of what he did, and Irene felt angry that she didn’t know that her husband was not only cheating on her with Agustina’s mom but was also raping her daughter. And that is why she understood why Raimunda didn’t talk to her for many years because she was still grappling with this painful trauma. Irene found her husband and Agustina’s mother having sex in a hut and she set fire to it, killing them both. Before she went into hiding, she went to visit Aunt Paula, who lived alone, and decided to take care of her until her death. She went into hiding after setting fire to the hut and killing her husband and Agustina’s mother because she didn’t want to get caught, but even while in hiding, she suffered a lot and felt a lot of shame and pain for what happened. Irene visits Agustina when she is unwell and promises to take care of her because she feels bad about what she did to Agustina’s mom, and Raimunda is about to tell her what happened to Paco but Irene insists she can tell her later. I thought the end credits were very interesting, because they are very colorful and flowery and yet this was such a dark movie. I did love how they made the designs, though, and also the music throughout the movie was really beautiful.

Honestly I think the part about this movie I loved the most was the acting and the dialogue. Penelope brought so much to her role as Raimunda and shows the psychological and emotional toll that grief took on her, and how she is was grappling with a lot of shame and trauma in her marriage to Paco and when her mother reveals what happened to her as a young woman. Grief is a central theme in this movie, but the movie also shows how it is also messy and complicated, especially when you find out that the person you thought was dead was actually alive the whole time. When Raimunda finds out her mother is actually alive, she feels pained because everyone kept this a secret from her and Sole and Paula didn’t tell her that they had been hiding Irene in Sole’s house while Raimunda continued to think that Irene was dead. I haven’t seen any other films by the actresses who played the other characters, to be honest, and I haven’t watched many other movies with Penelope Cruz. But after watching this and his 2016 drama, Julieta, I definitely want to check out more of Pedro Almodóvar’s movies, especially his 2013 film I’m So Excited! and his most recent one, Parallel Mothers, which also stars Penelope Cruz and is on my watchlist.

Volver. 2006. 2 h 1 m. Directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Rated R for some sexual content and language.

TV Series Review: The English Game

written during Thanksgiving break

So last evening my family and I finished the first part of season 6 of The Crown. And I was just craving another period drama, and I remembered after finishing Ted Lasso, I looked up shows that were similar to it, and there was a list of shows and one of them was The English Game. This is one of the few TV shows or movies that I walked into without knowing anything about the plot or characters. I just remembered that Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, created this show and I was all for it, because Downton Abbey is one of my favorite shows.

The English Game takes place in the 19th century in London, and a team of football players named The Etonians are upper class and members of the Football Association. They have credentials, influence and, above all, money. However, there are a group of paper mill workers in the working class community of Darwen who also play football, and two players from Scotland, Fergus and Jimmy, arrive in England ready to play because the cotton mill owner, James, recruits them to play so the team can win the FA Cup. However, the Old Etonians are unwilling to let these people play because they are poor and the Etonians want only rich people to play. Arthur is the leader of the Etonians and he comes face to face with Fergus, who just wants a shot at accomplishing his dreams of being a footballer. One of the messages I learned about this miniseries is that perseverance is key if you want to follow your dreams, and if you really want to follow your dreams you have to push past the rejection, the humiliation, and the criticisms from others. Fergus learns how to not give up on himself even when the going gets rough, especially in one crucial scene where James and the Cotton Club members propose wage cuts for all the workers at the cotton mills. It also puts a strain on Fergus’s teammates when they find out that Fergus and Jimmy are the only footballers on the Darwen team who are being paid to play.

The show in some ways reminded me a lot of Ted Lasso. In a later season of Ted Lasso, one of the star players on the AFC Richmond team, Sam Obisanya, is almost recruited by Edwin Akufo, who is a multimillionaire who wants Sam to play on Nigeria’s team. He bribes Sam with all sorts of material wealthy things. He even has authentic Nigerian food catered to Sam. He wants to make money off of Sam, but Sam is loyal to AFC Richmond, so he turns down the offer. Edwin gets really upset and tears Sam down, but Sam is confident in himself so he isn’t swayed by Edwin’s insults. It reminded me of The English Game a little because Fergus needs to make a tough decision whether to join John Cartwright’s team, Blackburn, or stay with the Darwen team. Even though Cartwright promises him better benefits if he goes to their team, it puts a strain on his relationships with his Darwen teammates because not only are Jimmy and Fergus getting paid to play (they weren’t supposed to get paid to play football as a rule) but they go to the rival team. When Fergus and Jimmy go to the pub to hang out, their teammates get upset and tell them to leave since they betrayed them. But after Jimmy gets injured (just a warning, the scene where you see Jimmy’s injury is pretty graphic. I didn’t see it coming though because I didn’t read much about the show before watching it) his teammates began to have more sympathy for him, and gradually Fergus regains trust with his Darwen teammates when they realize that he wasn’t going to put on airs just because he went on the Blackburn team. It also reminded me of another moment in Ted Lasso, when Nathan Shelly, who was the kit-boy on AFC Richmond’s team, was recruited by Rebecca’s ex-husband, Rupert Mannion, to join the Manchester team. After a lot of self-actualization and realizing that Rupert is not a great guy to work with, he begs the AFC Richmond team to let him back on the team again. They let him back on, but they also let him know how egotistical he acted. I think Nathan realized that he really did love AFC Richmond and felt more at home there than he did on the Manchester team.

I love the romance between Fergus and Martha Almond, as well as the romance between Jimmy and Doris. When Fergus meets Martha she doesn’t warm up to him at first because she also has a young daughter she needs to protect and she doesn’t trust anyone to help her. However, as Fergus and Martha get to know each other, they develop a deep love for one another. Jimmy and Doris hit it off really well, and they get married. Fergus tells Jimmy to focus on football, but he is so overjoyed at getting married and Fergus realizes he wants Jimmy to be happy. Fergus also realizes he really loves Martha and wants to be more than friends, but we find out that Martha was in a relationship with Mr. Cartwright, the owner of the Blackburn team that Fergus is joining, and her daughter is technically Mr. Cartwright’s kid. Mr. Cartwright wants Martha to forgive him and still wants her to love him, but that also puts a strain on his marriage. Martha encourages Fergus to persevere and not give up on himself, and they develop an incredible bond together.

I also found a lot of similarities between the show and other stuff I have watched and read. There is a character named Alma, and she is married to Arthur, who runs the Etonian football team and is on the football association board. Alma suffers a miscarriage and it seems like she has nothing left to live for because she was really looking forward to becoming a mother, but then she goes to a women’s refuge called Brockshall, and she finds herself helping out Betsy, a young woman who works with Martha but got fired from her job. Betsy has her baby, but Mrs. Cartwright, who runs the refuge, gives the baby away to an adoption agency. Alma digs at her for this information, and after a lot of teeth pulling, Mrs. Cartwright finally gives her the book with the list of children given away for adoption. Alma does everything in her power to get Betsy’s baby back, and she goes to the adoption agency herself and takes the baby away. The woman at the agency fights her, but Alma’s husband, Arthur, stops the woman and lets Alma leave with Betsy’s baby so she can give her back to Betsy. It reminded me of this movie I watched a while ago called True Mothers, a Japanese language film about a couple who adopt a child after being unable to conceive, and their later confrontation with the young mother who wants her son back from the couple. Like in The English Game, the women whose babies are taken to the agency are mostly born out of wedlock or from unwanted pregnancies, and during the 19th century there was a lot of shame and judgment associated with a woman being pregnant if she was unmarried. It reminded me, too, of the judgment Ethel encountered in the show Downton Abbey. Ethel meets a soldier named Charles Bryant when he is staying at Downton during the war, and she becomes pregnant with his child. She faces a lot of shame and stigma for having a child out of wedlock and she has to give up the child to Charles’ parents, who do not respect her.

What this movie showed me was the spirit to persevere is so important. Fergus faced a lot of challenges when competing against Arthur and the other Etonians. He and his team didn’t have as much status or wealth as they did, and they also faced financial challenges and unemployment. However, Fergus had to overcome his own self-doubt and fears in order to help lead the team to victory. He also learned that it’s okay to accept help from others, and that even though he faced a lot of painful moments in his past (his father is an alcoholic who abuses his mom and sisters) he overcame each hurdle after another. Arthur also realized that he wanted to make football accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy. I think helping Alma get Betsy her baby back may have given him a sense of purpose outside of his work or what his father expected of him. Arthur’s dad set a lot of expectations for his son, and became disappointed when he didn’t meet those expectations, but Arthur realized through working together with Fergus that football really did bring him happiness and wasn’t just something he did just to make himself look good for others.

This was overall a really good show. And the music was absolutely amazing. I found myself listening to the Downton Abbey soundtrack quite a lot these past few weeks. It just has so much incredible music and it is absolutely beautiful. Just like Downton Abbey, The English Game has amazing music as well. The music kind of reminded me of The Crown‘s music score because it sounded intense and had a somber tone, which I think was appropriate considering it was a drama. I didn’t know most of the actors in The English Game, I only knew a couple of the actors, and one was Daniel Ings because he played Prince Philip’s secretary Mike in seasons 1 and 2 of The Crown. At first it was hard to recognize him because Mike doesn’t wear a beard in The Crown, but he does when he plays the role of Francis Marindin, who was on the football board and on the Eton team in The English Game. Another actor I recognized was Kate Phillips, the actress who played Venetia Scott, Winston Churchill’s secretary, in season 1 of The Crown. She played Laura Lyttelton, the wife of one of Arthur’s close friends, and she is also Alma’s friend.

Movie Review: Till (content warning: disturbing descriptions of racism)

I just finished the movie Till. To be honest I am still processing it since it was a very hard film to watch but I am going to do my best to write as much as I can about the movie. I got it from the library because I heard it got a lot of great reviews and Ariana DeBose, the actress from West Side Story, gave a shoutout to Danielle Deadwyler while singing a medley of “Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves” and “We Are Family” at the BAFTA awards. (Side note: Danielle’s face when Ariana gave the shoutout was priceless.)

So now on to the movie. The film opens up in the 1950s in Chicago, Illinois, and Mamie Till-Mobley and her 14-year old son, Emmett, are driving through the city listening to the radio and singing. However, within a few moments of seeing them singing, Mamie’s face suddenly gets serious and the radio music is overshadowed by suspenseful music and if you know about what happened to Emmett Till, you know she has a sense that something bad is going to happen to her son. In fact, leading up to Emmett’s brutal lynching, the camera forces you to sit with Mamie’s deepening anxiety about her son going to visit his cousins in Mississippi. She warns Emmett that he needs to be careful because the South is known for lynching Black people and his life as a young Black man is basically in jeopardy if he goes down there. But he doesn’t take her seriously and says that he knows he needs to be careful. He goes down to see his cousins and they have to work in the cotton fields as sharecroppers. When Emmett makes jokes and goofs off while they are working, his cousins get upset with him and tell him that he is going to get them in trouble with the white people that they work for, but Emmett doesn’t take them seriously. Unfortunately, Emmett sees the ugly side of this Deep South racism when he goes to a corner store for some candy with his cousins. He browses the store and then goes up to the counter and sees a white lady named Carolyn Bryant working at the counter. He grabs some candy out of the jar and he then tells the lady that she looks like a movie star and pulls out a photo of a white lady and shows her. Emmett’s cousins realize that none of them are watching Emmett, so one of them goes into the store and sees him talking to the white woman, and he’s thinking, I need to get Emmett out of here because he is not supposed to be doing that in this part of town, so he The white lady is offended and then when she comes out of the store, before leaving, Emmett smiles and whistles at her. She grabs a pistol and runs after them, and Emmett and his cousins race into their truck and run off as she stands with the pistol pointing at them. When they get home, his cousins’ parents are up late worried about what happened to them, but then they arrive home and Emmett is laughing and talking about how much fun he had. The dad tells him to be careful and Emmett tells him he knows, and then one of the cousins, while on another night out on the town, is angry at Emmett and tells him that he can’t get off from that incident scot-free and that the white folks are going to go after him and them. Emmett tells them it was just one time and that he would be careful next time.

Meanwhile, while all this is going on, Mamie is worried about her son and has a feeling that something dangerous is going to happen to him. And she has every reason to worry, not just because she is Emmett’s mom but because he is a young Black man in 1950s Mississippi and so his life is pretty much at risk simply because of how white people treated Black people down there. She tells her partner, Gene, that she needs to have a night out with the ladies to get her worries about her son off of her mind, and he agrees, so she takes time away to spend time with her friends, playing cards with them and smoking and chit-chatting. However, her sense of calm quickly disappears and she finds herself once again worrying about Emmett and sensing there is something not okay with him. Unfortunately, she is right. Things are not going great during Emmett’s trip, and the husband of the white lady Emmett was talking with at the corner store comes to Uncle Mose’s house and searches the house for Emmett and the white men take away Emmett. When Uncle Mose tells the men to leave Emmett alone, they threaten to shoot him. While we don’t see the actual brutal lynching of Emmett, we see several men, including some Black men who work for the Bryants, drag Emmett into the truck and we hear Emmett’s screams as the men brutally murder him.

The movie in general was hard to watch, but I think the hardest part was seeing the scene where Mamie goes to see her son’s mutilated body after it was found dumped in the river. The camera does it to where we don’t see the body immediately, but it goes up from under the table to where we can see the body during the autopsy . And man, it is brutal to watch this scene. I had studied about Emmett Till in my U.S. history classes, but when I actually saw Emmett’s mutilated bloated face and entire body on the screen it showed me how brutal his lynching really was and also how fucked up Jim Crow and the legacy of racism was and still is. It reminded me of when George Zimmerman, a police officer, shot and killed a young Black man named Trayvon Martin, who was just going into the store and living his life. Young Black men don’t get to live and enjoy their lives because white America is constantly policing their bodies, and that is how it has been for centuries, even dating back to enslavement. There is a scene in the film where Mamie tells Emmett that when he is down in Mississippi he needs to “be small,” meaning that he has to act servile towards white people and can’t be his confident joyful self because white people just can’t stand seeing a young confident Black man being himself. When Black people resisted the policing of their bodies and experienced freedom and joy, it threatened the idea of safety for many white people and the system of injustice and so instead of letting Black men experience Black joy they did everything in their power to squash that Black joy, including robbing them of life. In the wake of Trayvon being killed, I remember doing a class video project and one of my classmates make a joke about Trayvon Martin and I remember being pretty upset but I was also a coward at the time and was too afraid to say anything because I didn’t want to be pegged as this angry Black woman. I really wish I had spoken up though because Travyon’s murder was not something to joke about. I have become much more hyperaware of how ugly this racism is especially after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and countless other Black people in America. In the film, Mamie wants everyone to see Emmett’s body in the open casket because she knows that no one will take his lynching seriously if they don’t see the damage that these men did to his body. Seeing Mamie crying over her son’s body on the autopsy table gave me chills, but I had to see this because many times when I was watching historical movies like The Butler and they briefly showed Emmett Till’s body, I would look away or not want to see it. But they portray it for what it was in this movie, and there was no way they could sugarcoat how fucked up the lynching of Emmett Till was, so I had to see it for what it was. I remember when George Floyd got murdered and Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, sat on his neck for about eight minutes. A young woman outside the store videotaped the entire lynching on her phone, and it circled across the internet. Many people, including white people, were shocked and disgusted, and as a Black person, it wasn’t new for me because I had seen countless news articles by this point about people who look like me being brutally murdered at the hands of police. But for many people, they had not seen or learned about police brutality, so for them it was painful to see a human being devalue the life of another human being simply because he was Black. And sure, some people argue that oh, Those Black kids were just walking the wrong way or They were talking too loudly. But that doesn’t mean what Derek Chauvin did was in any way right. He literally took someone else’s life when he didn’t have to. I think had the young woman not videotaped the murder on her phone, I don’t think anyone would have seen how painful and traumatic George Floyd’s murder was. At Emmett’s funeral, the attendees walk past Emmett’s corpse and are deeply pained but they see how brutally he was lynched.

I thought about stopping the film shortly after that, but I had to keep going because the acting was just so damn good. The rest of the movie shows how Mamie works with the NAACP to investigate the lynching of Emmett and the pain and trauma she has to grapple with throughout the trial. Gene doesn’t want her to go to Mississippi alone, but she insists that she needs to go because she needs to bring justice to her son and make J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, the two white men who lynched Emmett, pay for what they did. As predicted, Milam and Bryant got off scot-free and so did Roy’s wife, Carolyn. Carolyn lied while giving her testimony. She says that Emmett raped her behind the store and that he had been with white girls before, but Mamie clearly sees through this white woman’s bullshit, and so she leaves the courthouse and says she is going home to Chicago because she knows that these white people are going to get off scot-free and that the verdict is going to be that these white men were not guilty of killing Emmett. She speaks at an NAACP rally in Harlem about how the U.S. government and the Mississippi court stood idly by and did nothing to prosecute the white men who killed her son. She returns home though and remembers the life of her son, and when the movie ended I didn’t cry but I was just filled with a deep sense of anger that these men got to go off scot-free while Mamie had to deal with the grief of losing her son to a brutal lynching for the rest of her life. I had to remember though that what happened to Emmett was not an isolated incident. In my intro to Black culture class, we had an unit on the lynching of Black people in the United States, and we had to read an excerpt from a book (I cannot remember the title and frankly the excerpt is still seared into my memory, so I don’t know if I have the stomach to revisit it again) where they detailed the lynchings of Black people in graphic detail. I don’t think I slept well that night of course because all I could think about was that reading. But the reading showed me once again how dehumanizing this system of racism was to Black people and how we need to learn about it because unfortunately, the U.S.’s history was founded on ideals of freedom and justice, but in reality that freedom and justice was not granted to all people, namely Black and Indigenous peoples.

After watching this film I thought about this book I read called The New Human Revolution. In the book Daisaku Ikeda is traveling to the United States in the 1960s and he sees a young Black boy watching a group of white boys playing a game in the park and they exclude this boy because he is Black. When one of the children loses, the Black boy starts cheering and laughing. There is an older white gentleman watching the game and he cheers on the white boys, but when the Black boy started cheering, he runs up to him and started yelling at him. The boy ran away feeling rightfully angry and hurt, and Daisaku Ikeda makes a promise in his heart to the Black boy that he will build a world where this boy feels respected and loved for who he is and not looked down upon for the color of his skin. This scene really moved me because it reminded me that while the U.S. and many parts of the world have an ugly legacy of racism, I can’t give up hope. That doesn’t mean I need to be overly optimistic or simply wish away centuries of slavery, bloodshed and genocide, but I can look at reality but also envision a more hopeful future where people can respect the inherent dignity of each person’s life, and in particular the lives of the marginalized.

Even though this movie wasn’t easy to sit through, the acting is absolutely incredible. Danielle Deadwyler played Mamie Till-Mobley so well, and you can just see Mamie’s raw pain and emotion that just reverberates through her entire being when she loses her son and how she grapples with her loss and also a fucked up system of dehumanizing Black people’s lives. I got goosebumps during the end credits because they feature this powerful song by Jazmine Sullivan called “Stand Up.” I didn’t get out of my chair. I just had to sit there and process the entire experience of watching such a powerful film.

Till. 2022. 2 hr 10 min. Rated PG-13 for thematic content involving racism, strong disturbing images and racial slurs.

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