Tag: mental health

Movie Review: Causeway (in honor of Memorial Day)

I’m pretty late in writing this post since Memorial Day happened last week, but I wanted to squeeze in a movie about veterans to commemorate the day. I was figuring out what movies to watch for Memorial Day, but I have a weak stomach and probably couldn’t sit through Apocalypse Now or Saving Private Ryan, even if these are critically acclaimed movies. However, I remember trying to catch up on my Oscar-nominated movies last year, and I missed one of the nominees. It’s a movie called Causeway, and it stars Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry (I was almost going to type “Brian Austin Green” because I watched an episode of Abbott Elementary and Barbara Howard keeps mixing up Black celebrities’ names and White celebrities’ names. She says she loves Brian Austin Green, but she meant another actor, Brian Tyree Henry.) I saw the trailer, and I love A24 movies, so I was pretty excited from the beginning to see this movie. I am forever thankful I have access to Apple TV, because Causeway is an Apple TV movie.

Causeway is about a young woman named Lynsey, who returns from fighting in Afghanistan to her hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana, after suffering a traumatic brain injury. The beginning of the film shows how she goes through rehabilitation and has to learn how to speak and walk again after the injury. She also has to take several medications and suffers severe PTSD. She leaves the rehabilitation center even though the person taking care of her doesn’t think she is ready to leave, and she moves back home to her mother’s house. She gets a job cleaning pools, but while she is driving the truck, she has a panic attack and cannot steer the truck and ends up crashing it while driving through a busy intersection. She takes the damaged truck to a mechanic named James (Brian Tyree Henry) and has him get it fixed. He tells her that he will call her when it is fixed, and she says she doesn’t know her phone number. At first, he thinks she is kidding, but she tells him she is actually serious that she doesn’t remember her number. He develops a deep understanding towards her, and they develop an incredible friendship.

This movie reminded me of another film I watched called Mudbound. In the film, a white couple named Henry and Laura McAllen move near a Black family named the Jacksons in 1940s Mississippi, and they have to navigate racial tension. Ronsel Jackson and Jamie McAllen both serve in the war. Even though they fought in different units, they come back feeling disillusioned and lost after the war. The rest of the family can’t see eye-to-eye, but Ronsel and Jamie develop a meaningful friendship and share with each other their experiences fighting in the war. Jamie experiences PTSD and has serious flashbacks to when his fellow pilot got killed in battle. Ronsel comes back to a world of Jim Crow racism where he can’t go through the front door of a shop like white people do just because he is Black, and where he gets called “boy” and the N-word. Both Jamie and Ronsel struggle to readjust to life back at home, and even though they live in a segregated community, they treat each other like brothers and friends. In Causeway, James empathizes with Lynsey because he was in a traumatic car accident and he lost his leg and his nephew, Antoine, who died in the accident. Both James and Lynsey dealt with the worst kind of suffering imaginable, and due to their shared experiences, they develop a very deep connection of trust and respect. There is one scene where James takes Lynsey out to eat and a guy hits on Lynsey when she is trying to enjoy her time with James in peace. Lynsey lies and tells the guy she has a boyfriend, and James tells the guy to back off. After the guy leaves, Lynsey tells James that she doesn’t have a boyfriend and while they are leaving the diner she tells him that she is actually a lesbian. But James is respectful of that, and they end up smoking weed and drinking beer on a bench in a basketball court. Lynsey opens up about her brain injury, her brother’s drug addiction and how her mom was the only one left in their house, and James tells her about the car accident he was in. I think what their interactions showed me is that vulnerability takes courage and it’s not easy to open up to people we don’t know, but once we do it can open the doors to a beautiful connection.

Even though I don’t have PTSD, I felt I could kind of relate to Lynsey’s struggle with mental health. She goes to the doctor, and he goes over her medications, and she tells him that she wants to stop taking the medications. He tells her that getting off the medications could cause depression, seizures and other side effects, and that she is probably functioning precisely because she is taking the medication. He then has her tell him in more detail about the brain injury she suffered, and she discusses it in more detail, reliving the nightmare that she lived through. She later tells the doctor she wants to redeploy, but he tells her she might not want to do that because she suffered a traumatic injury, so she needs significant time to recover from the injury, especially since the injury impacted her mental health. But she tells him that she wants to redeploy because serving in the war made her feel like she had a purpose, while back home in New Orleans she doesn’t feel like she has a purpose. She tells her mom that she wants to redeploy, and her mother tells her to not go back. Her mom tells her that a friend of hers is hiring in an office she works at and encourages Lynsey to take the job, but Lynsey says that she is already employed cleaning pools. Her mother is disappointed that she is cleaning pools instead of working a comfortable office job, but Lynsey tells her that she can’t work in an office at the moment while she is trying to recover from the injury, especially since she is still just getting back to life at home. I remember when I was in my junior year of college and I suffered a serious depressive episode, and I came home for winter break and my parents found out I was depressed and they sent me to a therapist, who referred me to a psychiatrist. However, I didn’t think I needed to get on antidepressants, so I decided not to go. I also begged my parents to let me go back to school and my parents asked, “Are you sure?” because they were (reasonably) worried after what happened, but I told them I would be fine, and that I just wanted to graduate. However, I came back for the second semester, and it was even harder, especially because I still wasn’t seeking professional treatment for the depression and kept it hidden from so many people. I felt deeply alone, and I had no friends in the new dormitory I was in, so I couldn’t really talk to anyone about what I was going through because I didn’t think anyone would understand.

However, I remember there was a young woman who lived two doors down from me and somehow, she saw deep down that I was depressed, and so she showed me one day that she made a WordPress blog page for me with a message saying, “It’s important to SHARE.” I can’t remember what each letter stood for, unfortunately, but she made it for me because she saw I was really going through a lot of sadness, and she wanted to be there for me. The first week of college, she asked me for directions to a building on campus and we ended up having a really great conversation as we walked. I didn’t know that even just an interaction with someone could save my life, but looking back I have so much appreciation for this person because I really was suffering and felt I had no one to talk to, and she was the only one who could see I was going through something even though I hadn’t opened up to her about my depression. I think watching Causeway showed me that it’s important to ask for help, especially when it comes to struggling with mental illness. The film shows that asking for help isn’t easy, and it often comes with feelings of shame. Lynsey wants to live her life normally again after the brain injury, but she needs to spend a lot of time in recovery. She cannot do a lot of stuff on her own and has to have someone help her. She ends up moving back home, which she doesn’t want to do because she doesn’t feel like she has a purpose living at home anymore. There is one scene where James opens up about the car accident that he was in that killed his nephew. James’s fiancée was in the car accident, and after her son died, she left James, so now James lives by himself. He offers to let Lynsey stay with him because he is lonely and wants to have companionship, but she politely declines and decides to continue living with her mother. However, Lynsey realizes that her mother isn’t looking out for her daughter’s best interest. In one scene, they are in a pool in their backyard just spending time with each other, but then Lynsey’s mother gets a call from someone and leaves Lynsey sitting by herself. Lynsey decides that her mother doesn’t actually care about her life, and she decides to eventually go live with James. I kind of related to Lynsey’s struggle because at first when I moved home, I just needed a place to crash, but I was also incredibly depressed. I hadn’t finished addressing the mental health issues I dealt with in college, so I needed time to address them after college. I remember spending days lying in bed as I searched for jobs, getting rejection after rejection. Most of my friends lived in other parts of the country, and I didn’t see them as much, so I got really lonely. I think having my Buddhist community around was so important during that time because the people in the community supported me and encouraged me not to give up. Even though I didn’t get the symphony job I wanted, I got a job at Starbucks and looking back, that was the job I needed because I needed to gain some basic work experience. In retrospect, I think at the time, I needed to take care of my mental health and focus on paying off my student loans rather than trying to get the job at the symphony. In Causeway, even though Lynsey’s mom tells her she needs a better job than cleaning pools, Lynsey likes the work she does with the pools and it’s where she and James hang out a lot.

Honestly, even within the first ten minutes of Causeway I was crying a lot. Even though I don’t have PTSD, just seeing how Lynsey really struggles through recovery and with her mental health made me think about my own recovery from my depressive episodes. I wanted to just go back to being busy all the time and running around on high energy 24/7, but my depression was a wake-up call for me to slow down and take care of my health. Having depression made it hard for me to do a lot of things I took for granted, and there have been many times it sapped my will to live, but now that I am recovering, I am taking everything a day at a time. I also began to appreciate the little things that I take for granted, such as waking up and brushing my teeth, eating food, and getting sleep. I think also the film score in Causeway was really beautiful and so I think that is why I cried. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind seeing this movie again. It was a really powerful and heartfelt film. Also, the acting was incredible! I remember seeing Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook, and she was a really good actress in that movie. And Brian Tyree Henry was in another movie I saw called Widows, which was also really good (I saw it three times because it was THAT good.)

Causeway. 2022. Directed by Lila Neugebauer. Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Brian Tyree Henry and Linda Emond. Rated R for some language, sexual references ad drug use.

Movie Review: Amour

A few days ago, I watched a movie with my family called Amour. I had checked it out at the library a few months ago, but never got around to watching it. I finally decided I wanted to watch the movie. The movie took a while to get into, to be honest, and I had to get up and take multiple bathroom breaks (mostly because I woke up at an early hour and didn’t get much sleep) but I think by the end it became pretty suspenseful and I got more into it. If you haven’t seen the movie, it is about an elderly music teacher named Anne who suffers from a stroke and her husband, Georges, has to take care of her. Over the course of the time Georges is taking care of her, Anne’s declining health takes a toll on both her and Georges, to the point where Anne doesn’t have the will to go on living and Georges doesn’t want her to suffer anymore. It’s easy for me to think that I’m young and that illness and death are far away, but watching this film reminded me that illness and death is a reality for everyone, and it is painful to watch loved ones go through suffering. I think studying about life and death from a Buddhist perspective helped me have a deeper appreciation for life than I did before. At first, I just thought life was a waste and wondered what the point of my existence was, especially because at the time I had fallen in love with someone, and they were with someone else. I remember falling into deep despair at that time and wondering if I could go on with life if I could never be in a relationship with this person. But I remember reading a book called The Wisdom for Creating Happiness and Peace by the late Buddhist philosopher and author, Daisaku Ikeda, and he has a chapter called “Facing Illness.” He talks about the four sufferings in Buddhism: birth, aging, sickness and death, and how, through Buddhist practice, we can create meaning from these sufferings. He says that we should take practical measures to take care of our health, but he also says that health is not solely limited to the absence of illness. It’s really about how we can create value in our lives. He also says that even if someone has illness, their life is still worthy of respect. In a society that tends to shy away from talking about illness and death, this for me was a new perspective through which I could examine illness and death, because while we celebrate life and youth, illness and death are seen as things to be feared. Of course, it is incredibly painful when a loved one gets ill and dies, and going through the process of grief feels like a living hell most times. But as a young person, I think studying about life and death has been a huge benefit of my Buddhist practice because I have started to reflect on how I want to live my life. I was very jaded and cynical about life after experiencing heartbreak these past few years, but after practicing Buddhism I think that my perspective on life has changed. I want to appreciate every moment that I am alive, because I realize that life is precious, and I shouldn’t take it for granted.

Seeing Anne suffer from illness was pretty painful, and it was also painful for Georges. Him smothering her to death with a pillow was incredibly disturbing, but it just showed me that he also was starting to experience a lot of despair because his wife was in so much pain that she didn’t want to go on living. She had spent so much of her life as a pianist, but now that she is paralyzed on one side of her body, she can’t play it much anymore. So, when her student visits the house and leaves her a note expressing his sympathy to her, she feels sad because he gets to continue his art while she cannot continue to play. It reminded me of this movie I saw called Me Before You, because it’s about a young man named Will who becomes a quadriplegic after a seriously traumatic accident. When he becomes paralyzed, he loses his joy for life and starts to think about ending his life. He remembers that before he was quadriplegic, he could do all sorts of fun things with his life, especially traveling around the world. But he can’t do those things anymore, so he loses hope. And it’s painful for the young woman who is taking care of him, because she has this zest for life and to see this young man feeling hopeless and losing the will to live is painful for her. It is also hard for their grown-up daughter to see her mother suffering. When their daughter, Eva, tries to see her mom, Georges closes the door and prevents her from seeing Anne. When Eva finally sees Anne’s condition, she is in a lot of emotional pain. She tries to convince Georges to send Anne to a hospital, but Georges refuses because Anne doesn’t want to go to a hospital. This reminded me of this book I read called Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. My mother had recommended the book to me a couple of years ago. I read it and it was quite eye-opening to read about how we treat aging and death in American society. I had been learning about illness and death from a religious perspective, but I didn’t know much about how the elderly are actually treated in society. It addresses end-of-life care and how doctors can provide more support for patients approaching death. At first, it was an emotional challenge to read the book, because I have tried to avoid the topic of death for so long. But after so many of my close acquaintances and loved ones passed away from aging and illness, I began to want to learn more about illness and death and how to prepare for them. I don’t know if anything will ever fully prepare me for losing a loved one. I will still go through those stages of grief just like everyone else, but by having a deeper understanding of death, I have learned to embrace the process of grieving and understand that grief is not just something I cry about one day and get over the next. After my mentor, Daisaku Ikeda, passed away at 95, I was very, very sad and so was the rest of my Buddhist community. I still miss him so much, but I still read his writings because they give me courage, especially his book Discussions on Youth. I remember last year when a dear friend of mine passed away, I experienced tremendous grief. She was elderly, but she had such a vibrant spirit, and she always encouraged me to never give up. Experiencing grief reminds me of my own mortality and how I can better spend my time on this earth. Watching Amour presented an honest and real look at aging and dying and how challenging it can be for people to navigate these stages of life. It took me patience to get into the film, but I am still glad that I saw the film because it helped me understand that even though I am young, I need to appreciate the elderly people in my life before they pass away.

Amour. 2012. 127 minutes. Rated PG-13.

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.

TV Show Review: Shrinking, episodes 1-2

I just started watching the Apple TV show Shrinking, and it is really good so far. I think one of my relatives recommended it to me, and I was excited that Brett Goldstein, who starred as Roy Kent in Ted Lasso, was a writer on Shrinking, so I partly wanted to watch the show because of that.

The show is about a therapist named Jimmy (played by Jason Segel) who is grieving the death of his wife and a strained relationship with his daughter, Alice. He is trying his best as a therapist, but he is experiencing serious burnout, and it seems like his advice doesn’t get through to them, so he decides to tell them honestly what he thinks they should do. He himself is struggling with his mental health, and in the first episode we see him drinking and his neighbor has to check on him to make sure he is alright. Alice doesn’t want to talk to him, and Jimmy doesn’t know how to have a better relationship with her. His colleagues, Paul and Gaby, are doing their best to support him but also, they are tired of him bringing his personal problems to his professional life, and Paul tells him he needs to stop bringing up his own problems because that is not what he is supposed to do as a therapist. Jimmy often gives out advice that seems promising at first but gets him in a lot of trouble. One of his patients, Grace, constantly talks about how her boyfriend talks down to her but thinks her breasts are great, and Jimmy finally gets fed up and tells Grace that her boyfriend is emotionally abusive, and she needs to leave him. Grace is taken aback but she accepts his advice, and she leaves her boyfriend and moves in with her sister. At first, I thought that was the end of it, but then when at Alice’s soccer game, Grace’s ex-boyfriend approaches Jimmy and attempts to beat him up for telling his girlfriend to leave him. Sean, who is one of Jimmy’s patients, ends up beating the shit out of Grace’s ex-boyfriend, but then the police arrest him, and he ends up in jail.

I thought Sean and Jimmy’s patient-therapist relationship was interesting. Sean has gotten in a lot of trouble over many years for getting into fights and beating people up badly. The first few visits don’t go well. Jimmy has to take a phone call during the session, and Sean ends up leaving. But then Jimmy takes Sean to a boxing club so that Sean can work out his anger there, and Sean ends up being pummeled badly by the other boxers. However, Sean had a moment where he did overcome his anger. While walking down the street, someone bumped into him and threatened him, and Sean didn’t actually beat him up. He just imagined beating him up and then he walked away from the guy. However, he ends up beating up Grace’s ex-boyfriend to defend Jimmy. This reminded me that therapy isn’t a one-and-done thing. It’s a process and it requires a lot of honest self-reflection. I remember going to therapy for the first time in my junior year of college, and it wasn’t a great experience, so I gave up on going to therapy. What that experience taught me, though, is that you can’t give up. Even if the therapist isn’t a good fit, keep searching. When I got back to my second semester of that year, I really thought I could tough it out and just keep the depression and anxiety to myself, but it was really, really hard and I ended up suffering in silence. I’m glad I had chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo during that time because man, I was about to lose it. After moving back home, I finally got therapy after dealing with a pretty awful depressive episode, and it really helped. It wasn’t an overnight thing where I changed my behavior and thinking patterns in one go; it has taken a long time, and it is still an ongoing process. Seeing therapy helped me learn how to deal with stressful situations at work. When I left my job in June 2022, seeing a therapist helped me deal with the stress of finding a new job. Seeing a therapist now is really helping. Again, it’s not an overnight magic cure, but I have found therapy a helpful tool to help me work through these personal issues that I had been dealing with. It’s easy for me to walk around and pretend like I’m okay, and to keep my problems to myself, but it’s helpful to have a professional to talk to so that I don’t just have to keep these problems to myself. There were periods where I felt, Oh, I’m better, I don’t need therapy, but then some stressful thing would happen, and I would find myself not being able to navigate it, so contacting a therapist has been helpful.

I really appreciate the scene where Alice goes over to Paul’s instead of going out drinking with the girls at school. During gym class, Alice’s classmate invites her over for drinks under the bridge, where a bunch of teenage girls get drunk under a bridge. Alice doesn’t want to go, but she doesn’t know what else to do, especially because she can’t really relate to the girls at school. At first, Jimmy wants to eat dinner with Alice, but she says she has plans that evening, and he feels hurt. But then his friend asks him out to pickleball that evening and so Jimmy accepts his invitation. Alice picks up chicken sandwiches and goes home to eat dinner with Jimmy, but Jimmy tells her he is going out to play pickleball. At first, I thought Alice was going to decide to go to drinks under the bridge because she wasn’t going to get to spend time with her dad, but then she ends up going to Paul’s and they eat the sandwiches and watch TV together. This scene reminded me this movie I saw called The Edge of Seventeen because in the movie, Nadine doesn’t relate to kids her age and like Alice, she is grieving the death of a parent (Nadine’s father died of a heart attack when she was 13) and also doesn’t have any true genuine friends, so she often eats lunch with her history teacher, Mr. Bruner. Nadine has depression and often feels alone, but Mr. Bruner ends up being someone she can trust. He doesn’t tell her to cheer up or get over her depression, but instead gives her a space where she can talk about what she is going through. He also refuses to bullshit her and often gives her honest advice, even if it’s not the advice she wants to hear. Like when she is telling him she is an “old soul” and doesn’t relate to her peers, who seem to be focused on social media and acting silly, Mr. Bruner tells her that maybe no one likes her. Growing up I found myself relating to Nadine a lot because I usually gravitated towards older people because I struggled to relate to my peers, but I also began to realize that I wasn’t the only 20-something dealing with insecurities. Once I opened up to people about what I was going through, I found a lot of other young people who were struggling with depression, anxiety, insecurities, loneliness and other issues. It is so easy for me to think I’m the only one going through problems and to be honest, it’s still hard for me to open up about what I am going through with people because I feel a lot of shame and guilt and worry people are going to judge me, but I’ve learned that problems are just a part of life and that sometimes talking them out with a trusted friend helps. It may not take lots and lots of friends to form a genuine connection with someone. Sometimes you just need that one person in your life who you can trust and lean on.

my thoughts on loneliness, technology and the COVID-19 pandemic

It’s ironic that I’m writing this online but I had lately been thinking about my relationship with my smartphone and the Internet, and the ways in which I use it. Yesterday I finished a really good book called How to Break Up With Your Phone by Catherine Price, and in the book she talks about the impact of smartphone use on our brains and our mental and physical health. While the statistics of phone use were disturbing, it was refreshing to read a book about how I could get my smartphone use under control. She provides a 30-day plan for spending less time on our phones and being more intentional with our phone use. I read another book by another author named Cal Newport called Digital Minimalism, but reading Catherine Price’s book was a good reminder about how, while technology has its benefits, it’s also a good idea to be aware of how much time we spend on our electronic devices. I have definitely noticed since I left my job last year to take care of my mental health, my phone use has gone up. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us spent time in isolation during quarantine, while many others had to work on the frontlines to deliver groceries and take care of patients dying of COVID-19, and as I reflected on my own challenges with loneliness I realized that human beings are wired for connection. Which is why quarantine was so challenging for a lot of people, even though in reality I can’t actually speak for everyone. As an introvert, going into quarantine at first seemed like no big deal since I usually recharge by spending time alone or with a few people. But I also realized that it was hard not being able to visit my family and friends in other parts of the country and the world, and that even though I was safely ensconced in my house with my books and computer and phone, people around the world were dying at rapid unprecedented rates and I found myself anxiously checking the statistics for how many people were being hospitalized and how many people were dying. All this doom-scrolling had a serious impact on my mental and emotional health, because when I came back into the office for work after having the unexpected fortune of working remotely for over a year, I viewed everything and everyone in my environment from the lens of my own fear and anxiety.

When the rates went down at one point during 2021 I tentatively walked around without my mask on, thinking, “I guess we’re safe since we’re not wearing masks anymore and the vaccines are coming out and rates are going down.” Then the numbers shot back up again with delta and omicron and once again, I found myself in a serious panic mode. Every day at work, I don’t know if I can honestly diagnose myself as having anxiety or panic attacks because I’m not a doctor but it felt like every day I sat in my cubicle I felt a deep tightness in my whole body and my thoughts were racing and even just little stuff set me off. I guess you could say I was having a serious nervous breakdown while trying my best to keep it all together. But then someone did something I didn’t like, a small thing that was really no big deal, they told me to take a breath and calm down, and I exploded at them. I ended up taking a day off, but I still continued to wrestle with my own little mental health crisis. I struggled with loneliness early on as someone with depression, but I didn’t give it much thought until my music teacher and I had a conversation about the pandemic and he mentioned how so many people suffered from loneliness during the pandemic. I found myself isolating from my coworkers during lunchtime often and while I normally love my alone time, I felt so disconnected from everything and everyone in my life. I think that’s what I realized about loneliness; it’s not the same thing as solitude, because there are many people who enjoy solitude, but loneliness is a painful experience and it made me feel disconnected from everyone and everything. It reminded me of when I was in college; I had met a lot of people and connected with a lot of people, but I got burned out within the first few months of my first year of college and started isolating myself from people, eating alone because I didn’t feel genuinely connected to the other people I interacted with. Even when some of my peers encouraged me to join their group for meals, I would ignore their text messages and sit alone by myself. While I need to move on from the past, as I’m grappling with loneliness in 2023 it brought up a lot of past memories and events in which I also struggled with loneliness. Being lonely has brought up some really destructive and unproductive and potentially toxic behaviors, but it has also given me a chance to think about my purpose in life and what I am bringing to my connections with other people.

Checking my smartphone all the time has been one of those unhealthy coping mechanisms, and I’m pretty relieved that I read the book about breaking up with your phone because it reminded me that checking our phones is something people often do when they are bored, lonely, anxious or dealing with other uncomfortable emotions and they want to self-soothe. When I was in the depths of depression a couple of years ago, I would stress-eat as a coping mechanism. I couldn’t be bored, I couldn’t be alone with my thoughts. I couldn’t be uncomfortable, so I ate and ate and ate to numb this discomfort. I went to the break room for snacks as many times as I spent checking Gmail, YouTube and text messages on my phone (which is a lot of times.) I wasn’t even eating because the food tasted good; I was eating because I didn’t know how to deal with my stress in a healthy way, so self-soothing with food became my way of handling stress. I nibbled on vegan Hippeas cheese puffs, MadeGood granola bars, fruit, kettle-cooked chips, pretzels, vegan rice-krispy treats, anything that had salt and sugar. I normally don’t drink a lot of Starbucks, but I was running off to get Frappuccinos and lattes every week. I wasn’t even drinking it for the taste; I was just drinking it because I felt stressed. I wasn’t even appreciating the taste of the food; again, because I was using it as a coping mechanism to get through the day, I was numbing myself, so I didn’t even appreciate the taste of the food because I had accustomed myself to eating this kind of food in serious moments of stress. Thankfully I had a meditation practice of chanting that helped me stay afloat even in my darkest moments, even when I didn’t want to get out of bed, even when I felt hopeless. I also was part of a great Buddhist community and continued to participate in Zoom meetings with them as we gradually began to open our community centers back up again. I am still thankfully part of this community and while I am still grappling with loneliness, I am reminded that I don’t have to grapple with it alone.

I think what this experience of loneliness has taught me is the value of asking for help. In 2016, I was reluctant to seek help but then it got to the point where I actually needed to see a professional about my mental health. It ended up being one of the best decisions I have made in my life. But then time passed, I got busy, and stopped going for a couple of years when things went smoothly. Then the pandemic hit, and I gradually without knowing or understanding it, grew overwhelmed with everything but I still wasn’t seeking professional help because I thought I felt fine. But gradually as I started getting lonelier and this loneliness and depression started to affect my daily functioning, it became clear that asking for help wasn’t weak but was rather the best thing I could do to take care of myself. Even though I didn’t see my therapist every week, when I did see her I felt better. She really helped me make sense of my emotions and how to manage them better, and seeing therapy was a reminder that working on my emotional health, showing up for myself, and asking for help is a daily effort. I think that’s why reading Brene Brown’s books during these past few years has helped me a lot because I didn’t understand why I felt this huge range of emotions and also the root cause of why I felt anxious, sad, lonely, and confused but also grateful and happy.

*I know a lot of articles on mental health I read about typically put this in at the end of the article, but if you or a loved one needs help this is the new Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org

On Trichotillomania (content warning: mental illness)

Pluck, pluck, pluck. My fingers dry as can be, cracked shriveled skin. They move towards my eyes. My eyelashes, rough and short because I plucked so many of them out and they are not growing back the way I want them to. Damn it, I think, they are so short. I can’t pluck them. When I pluck, I feel tension, like someone is tugging at my eyelashes and then when the hair separates from the follicle in one fell swoop, I fell a weird release of tension, the same kind of tension one night release when they take a breath of fresh air. It is painful and my eyelashes are so short but I can’t stop no matter how hard I try. I pluck when I do anything: sitting, watching, television, eating Fritos, writing a blog post, catching zzzzs and failing. I wish there was some magic trich fairy that could make trichotillomania disappear.

My mom knocks on my door.

“Come in,” I yell as P!nk blasts through my stereos.

She walks in.

“Are you coming for dinner?”

I stare at the computer. The red beanie cap covers my newly plucked scalp. I mutter a laconic “mmmm-hmmm” and keep staring at the computer. Please don’t ask me about this dumb trich, I plead to God, Buddha, the Universe, or whoever is listening up there.

“Why are you wearing a hat?” she asks.

I quickly shake my head.

“Nothing.”

“No, it’s not nothing, Miranda.”

She walks closer. Then she removes my cap and gasps when she sees the plethora of hairs I have pulled from my scalp over the past couple of months.

“Dr. Steinberg told you to not pull for at least a few months!”

“I know, I know…” I mutter. “But…”

“But what?”

“I can’t stop, Mom, okay? It’s just something that I have, ok? I cannot get rid of it, I have done everything.”

“So the Zoloft didn’t work wonders for you, eh?”

“No, the Zoloft was fine, Mom, I’m not saying that. It’s just…it will take me a while to recover from this habit, that’s all.”

She rolls her eyes towards the ceiling.

“Dear God, we have been through this so many times,” she mutters, her eyes closed.

She is clearly exasperated with me and I am starting to become exasperated with her. Unconsciously, my index finger and thumb make their way to my eyelashes…

My mom slaps my hand away from my eyes.

“Mom!”

She pauses.

“I’m sorry, but this has been going on for too long.” She sighs and shakes her head. Before she leaves my room, she calls, “Wash your hands for dinner.”

I pause, then take a shaky breath. It’s ok, don’t take it personally. You will overcome this, I think. I know I will. Just get me through these dumb stressful teenage years and it will just go away.

Tears form in my eyes and my bottom lip trembles. I cover my tear-stained face with my right hand and lower my head to my desk my body heaving each time I break down. I gasp for breath and choke out sobs. I feel like a total failure. Mom and Dad sent me to a therapist and the therapist gave me medication, and it worked, so why the hell am I still plucking?

The next day I go to school wearing the same beanie. A skinny young woman wearing a red flannel long-sleeved shirt, a black skirt and clunky Doc Martens walks down the hall, only something catches my eye. She is wearing a beanie, too, except it’s a navy blue one. And it looks like her eyelashes and eyebrows might have bald spots, too… I realize then: I’m not the only one with this problem.

The girl pauses to take a drink at the fountain. Madison Hart and her friends turn and look at the girl wearing the blue beanie and start giggling.

“Why is she wearing a hat inside?”

“Maybe she has lice.”

“Maybe she is bald.”

They all gasp and giggle at each other’s jokes. I am really sad that this girl is being teased. She continues to walk down the hall, quicker this time, and out of the corner of her eye I see a tear fall. I hope I get to see this girl at some point during the day. I wonder if she has friends.

Lunchtime comes, and I stand in the cafeteria line. The hot piping smell of fresh calzones and steamed broccoli wafts up to my nostrils. I hear the sizzling of canola oil as the greasy smell of French fries tantalizes my taste buds. I feel a tingle, then a twitch, then that impulse to pull gnaws at me as I anxiously look at the fifteen other students in line. I am too embarrassed and shy to speak to anyone. I close my eyes against the cacophony of high school freshmen chattering and someone at the table nearest the lunch line blasting Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen” from their iPhone. I take a deep breath. Please don’t pull, please don’t pull….

Unfortunately it doesn’t work. Within milliseconds my fingers are fondling my eyelashes. Ugh, they are so ugly, I just need to pull them out so that when I look in the mirror I don’t have to look at how ugly these short eyelashes are. I don’t want to do this now, not with people watching. People are going to laugh at me if I do this.

My stomach lets out an impatient growl. Hurry up already, it screams. But the urge to get rid of this super-short eyelash is screaming even louder, drowning out the cries of my hunger. I make my way out of the lunch line, losing my place within 5 minutes of approaching the mecca of food. The cacophony glides behind me and then falls from a crescendo into a muddled whisper as I am now in the quiet of the girls’ bathroom stall. I dig out my compact mirror from my purse and wipe off the smudges on the surface. I take a good hard look at my eyes, putting the mirror closer to my eyelids so I could know which hairs needed to go. I found my right hand fumble towards my chin. Ugh, there is hair on that, too. There are bald spots where I pulled the hairs out from last week. They look dry, scaly and frankly unattractive. Long rivers of tears fall down my cheek and kiss each of these bald spots. I don’t want to pull that curly one, I know it will hurt, but it’s so damned crooked and it stands out. I sigh. I am losing this painful battle and it hurts to admit that I have done everything I could and am still doing this to myself. Don’t I want to be pretty? Don’t I want to have beautiful long curling eyelashes softer than the softest pillow? I give in to temptation, and tug at the lonely short crooked hair that belonged on my chin. It doesn’t give at first but I keep tugging it. Fuck it, I just want some release, just want to release the tension in my fingers, in my body, in my life.

The hair comes loose and I rub it around with my fingers and let it rest on my tongue. Then I don’t feel good about swallowing hair so I just flick it off my fingers and let it fall to the linoleum floor and land somewhere it can find peace.

I unlock the bathroom stall, feeling relieved, anxious, ashamed and alone. But my breath catches when I see no one other than the blue-beanie girl peering in the big long mirror plucking away at her eyebrows using nothing other than her long fingers. I stop dead in my tracks. She continues to pull, a lonely expression on her face.

“Hey…” I shyly say.

She doesn’t reply. She just continues to look in the mirror silently and with a pained expression on her face. She gathers her brown leather messenger bag and before leaving, give me a blank indifferent look and leaves the restroom, the cold metal red door slamming behind her. The dim lights flicker and a cockroach crawls from under the sink. It darts towards a crack in the wall and disappears. I stand all alone.

Movie Review: In A Star is Born, the Music Industry Culture of Fame Takes a Dark Toll on Its Artists’ Mental Health (CW: substance abuse, mental illness, suicide and spoilers)

April 4, 2019

Categories: movies

8/5/21: as I rewrote this review, I realized how many generalizations I may have made at the expense of a lot of musicians who actually work in the recording industry. A movie cannot speak for the entire industry, and as someone who has not worked in the pop music industry I can’t speak from personal experience, so a lot of what you read here take with a grain of salt.

At first I didn’t think I could watch A Star is Born in the evening, because for me, watching gut-wrenching drama films at night before I go to bed is like having me watch Paranormal Activity at two o’clock in the morning (not that I would have the confidence to go see something that scary, let alone that late at night, or let alone at all. I am squeamish to a T.) But alas, here I am writing this review, and no tear duct has been shed from my orbs.

I wanted to cry. I really did. However, I was so busy digesting all the tough-love lessons of the film that I really couldn’t elicit any emotion other than a sense of unfairness that I feel about how the music industry treats women and especially people with mental health issues. I could no longer just sit and cry because I knew my tears would do nothing to address the real issue that the film portrays: mental illness and the stigma associated with getting help. So I took to writing this review to raise awareness of the issue, to do my part for the community. Like I mentioned earlier, I was deeply curious about how the music community was addressing mental health issues, and especially in the classical music community because the business of being an orchestra musician can feel like a total nightmare when you struggle with any kind of mental health issue. When you prepare for an audition, you are literally shaking in your boots, but it’s more than just mere nervousness. It feels like that dark cloud over your mind is going to swallow you up and prevent you from performing your best, let alone living your life. So after taking a hiatus from any heavy performing or auditioning, I decided to take matters into my own hands and do my own research on the topic of mental health and musicians, because Lady Gaga, at the Grammys this year when she won for her song “Shallow” from the movie, told it like it was: a lot of artists deal with mental health issues and we need to not only support each other through our mental health issues, but also seek out help for our mental health issues as well.

I completely agree, so it’s no wonder that, when I Googled “mental health and musicians” today I came across so many stories about how singer Justin Bieber had to take a break from touring so he could spend more time with his wife Hailey Baldwin and also take care of himself, or that rapper Big Sean had to cancel touring last year to get help for his anxiety and depression. Honestly, it’s weird as a fellow musician who also struggled with mental health issues to say this, but it goes to show how the entertainment industry still has a ways to go in how it churns out musicians and then spits them out to struggle through their issues alone. Somehow this seems dangerously toxic to me, and it’s why I am glad I am not yet a professional musician. I spent the longest time trying to figure out what my mission as a musician was, and I think, more than ever, I need to use my music to address the problem of mental health stigma. Yes, more people are becoming aware of the psychological toll of fame and celebrity, but still, films such as A Star is Born clearly show that there is a long, long way to go.

The film opens with a performance by Jackson Maine, a country rock singer who has had a long career on the road. We see him pop some pills before he gets onstage, and while he gives an electrifying performance, seeing those pills presents just the beginning of a very disturbing, grim and realistic portrait of the life of an artist struggling with depression and addiction. Jackson, throughout the film, is constantly drinking, smoking and, later on, snorting cocaine. Ally, on the other hand, is a struggling singer who works as a server at a high-maintenance restaurant. When I first saw this scene, I immediately thought about the film La La Land, where we see Mia working as a barista and dealing with a boss who could care less about her dreams of becoming an actress. When her boss schedules her on a day she has an audition, Mia tries to tell her she has an audition and can’t work, but her boss tells her she doesn’t care and to skip the audition so she can cover her shifts. Jackson goes into a drag bar and watches Ally perform “La Vie En Rose.” He is so moved by the performance that he goes to her dressing room to meet her and they immediately hit it off. When they go to a bar afterwards to hang out, he shares a very important message about what it takes to be a true artist. Ally tells him she doesn’t think she will make it because everyone keeps telling her she isn’t pretty enough to be famous, and that men constantly tell her she is a good singer but that she doesn’t have the looks of a singer. This shows how women in the music industry are pressured to look a certain way and further suggests why it’s so important for young women to embrace their beauty as it is so that other people don’t try and tell them differently. But Jack tells her that she looks beautiful and even says that he struggles with tinnitus but still made it as a musician. He says a quote that really stuck with me throughout the film, and that is that “talent comes everywhere. Everybody’s talented…but having something to say, and the way to say it so that people listen to it, that’s a whole other bag. Unless you try and go out there and do it, you’ll never know.” (A Star is Born) It made me think about how, in any career, women typically wait until they have all of the qualifications before applying for a job (I’m one of those ladies) and suffer from imposter syndrome. Ally thinks she cannot be successful, but Jack thinks she can.

Update from the next day…(aka I have had more time to digest this film after pondering it day and night. It literally kept me up.)

The movie also raised some very important thoughts for me, and I’m going to just list them in bullet points because frankly, I am choking up now thinking of the film even though I wasn’t before, and I need to get these out here before I get stressed. After researching mental health and musicians more today, I decided to just take a break from research and just write my thoughts. It has been cathartic to do so, and it’s really going to keep me from thinking about how good but also how stressful this movie was:

  • What is the meaning of pop music? In the film a famous recording producer, Rez Gavron, who offers Ally several opportunities after seeing her perform. But then he has her go from doing country rock music to dancing hip-hop. While I can see why Ally would keep an open mind and go for these opportunities, it feels as if she lost a huge part of herself being on such a big label such as Interscope Records. And this is a problem, because she used to know herself pretty well enough to keep her day job while she did music, but when she went big she tried to tell Rez to not mess up her sense of self and make her something she isn’t, but Rez wants her to stick with his vision and not her own, so he tells her to dye her hair and has her live in this super extravagant living space. Which is nice at the beginning, but then Jackson loses faith in Ally and goes further into himself, telling her that all this pop fame isn’t her. Then again, the orange hair and hip-hop electronic dance moves are classic Lady Gaga.
  • Can two artists coexist? In the film La La Land, Mia is an actress and Sebastian is a jazz musician. They try to make it work, and Mia quits her job at the coffee shop to write her own plays (which is a risky move, as the film shows, because no one comes to the play she directed and she gives up.) But then Sebastian gets an opportunity to play with his friend, who tells him he needs to play other genres besides jazz because he can barely afford to pay his rent by playing jazz gigs alone. Sebastian tells Mia he’s going on tour, but then Mia tells him she wants to stay and pursue her acting career. The movie shows that if Mia and Sebastian got married, it would be really hard. And in A Star is Born, this idea is taken a step further because Jack and Ally do get married, but then as Ally becomes more famous and mainstream, Jack loses popularity and Bobby even replaces him with a younger musician at his performance. Jack soon loses faith in himself and becomes more involved with substances. When Ally wins a Grammy for Best New Artist, Jack drunkenly comes on stage and accidentally urinates on himself while she’s giving her speech. It is then that he is sent to treatment and Rez tells him to stay away from Ally because his marriage to her nearly ruined her career.
  • Women are held at very stressful standards in the pop music industry. Ariana Grande said that sporadically releasing music has proven to be more helpful for her mental health than following the incredibly structured high pressure plan that record labels expect female pop artists to adhere to. Ally, in the film, gets all these opportunities to be a star, but she never really gets to express herself anymore. At first she was very down-to-earth, but all it took was some egotistical micromanagey guy (aka Rez) to control her image for her. In one scene, Ally is recording a demo and the producers behind the screen keep telling her to start over because she is nervous, but then Jack has them bring out a piano and she just naturally becomes comfortable playing it with him. I still think it is interesting that Ally needs a man to boost her self-worth though; what if Ally had a female mentor? Would it have been a different relationship or the same? I’m not saying I hated the dynamic between Jack and Ally at all; I thought it was sweet. Also, Bradley Cooper directed this film and him and Lady Gaga wrote the songs, so I ain’t mad. 🙂 I am just thinking of other theoretical possibilities for the story line. I thought about the film Cadillac Records, and how in the film Leonard Chess controlled much of Etta James’s career, when in reality Etta James held her own in an industry that was macho. Leonard treats Etta as if she was irrational and angry all the time, and she tries to push back against all the pressure that the industry puts on her. So did she really need Leonard to make her feel accomplished? This is just a parallel I made watching A Star is Born.
  • Is suicide really the fault of musicians? Or does the overall industry play a part in it, too? At the end Jack commits suicide after breaking his sobriety and finding his old bottle of pills (this was the part that was extremely difficult to watch), and Ally is crying and Bobby tells her that it was Jack’s fault, not her or Bobby’s fault, that he committed suicide. Was it solely his fault, though? Sometimes I think people who have never gone through mental health issues assume that it’s the musician’s fault when they hurt themselves, but a huge part of me told me that the culture of the music industry, not merely Jack’s personal history with drug abuse and depression, played a more-than-significant role in his suicide. We need to stop perpetuating this idea that “oh we couldn’t control it, it just happened.” The music industry is incredibly competitive and even encourages people to party hard, do drugs and drink when they are stressed. The constant pressure of celebrity is what drove Avicii, Mac Miller, Amy Winehouse to their deaths. I’m not saying a glass of wine or two is bad. However, substance abuse is a whole nother animal, and throughout the film I couldn’t help but be pissed when Ally, Bobby, Rez and everyone else told Jack he needed to “clean up his act.” I know it’s hard to support folks when they struggle with something so subjective and deeply rooted in their personal life, but there needs to be better measures for how to address mental health issues in the music community. I just found this part incredibly frustrating as a musician who struggled with mental health issues before.
  • Hearing loss is huge in the music industry. Bobby has Jack put on a pair of earphones for this tinnitus, and Jack, under the influence of hard drugs, tells him he can go stick them somewhere else. I idealized the idea of playing at loud concerts, but because I have sensitive ears, I think I will pass on not wearing some kind of protection for my ears.
  • Being a tortured artist isn’t cute or funny. Nico Muhly talks about this in an interview he did about classical musicians and mental health, and how we need to stop perpetuating this romanticized idea of the tortured composer or musician or artist in general. While a lot of artists suffer from mental health issues, we cannot let our mental health issues try to define who we are as artists because it can lead to our self-destruction and potentially deaths. A Star is Born clearly shows how destructive it is to perpetuate the tortured artist myth.
  • Is fame worth it? I know in real life, Lady Gaga has achieved so many things, but she still gets idolized. I used to idolize all these famous people, but I realize that they are human, and this film shows how dangerous it is to deify regular human beings who just happened to pursue their passion for years and earned money from it. In one poignant scene, a heckler interrupts Ally and Jack’s conversation to tell him how he thinks Jack looks like someone he really hates, and pressures Jack to take a photo with him so he can show his ex-wife. Ally then beats the heckler up, and they escape to a grocery store so Jack can get some peas for Ally’s smashed hand. The store clerk, while checking out the peas, stealthily takes a photo of Jack and Ally while they are talking, but the lady’s not quick enough and they catch her in the act. While Jack treats it as if it was just a part of being famous for so long, Ally is, rightfully, not okay with it. This really taught me that if I meet anyone famous, such as Bradley Cooper or Lady Gaga, in any common public place, it would be more than stupid to chase them down for an autograph or take a photo of them without their consent. It would be just a straight-up invasion of privacy. Most, if not all, celebs aren’t thinking, ” Well if more people took my photo while I was out with my kids, I would feel better than I already feel.” Most, if not all, “celebs” are just human beings who love what they do and treat their music-making and film-making as a job like any other, and it is a job because it’s their profession that takes up most of their time. So it’s a waste of their creative space to ask them for autographs–they just want to live their lives. So again, I will try and be mindful of this now that I have seen this film.

As I am now emotionally exhausted from writing this review, I leave you with two clips, one of Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper playing “Shallow” and another of her performing it at the Grammys. Both are performances which I will have to take a hiatus from listening to because even just thinking about them is making me quite tearful now that I have seen this incredibly tearful movie. I cried watching both of these performances when they came out and haven’t stopped crying. They put so much soul into it that it’s hard to not appreciate their hard work.

Overall, excellent film and one that will stick with me for a very, very long time. Gosh, I’m already tearing up just thinking about it. It seriously deserved all the awards that it received this year. This review, no matter how long, can never convey how amazing and heartfelt and deep this film was for me. Thank you Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga. I know I should see the original versions, I was just too impatient to see this film.

A Star is Born. 2 hr 14 min. Rated R for language throughout, some sexuality/ nudity and substance abuse.

Movie Review: Silent Voice; The Movie (content warning: mental health, bullying, ableism, suicide)

July 10, 2019

Categories: movies

This past week I watched the film A Silent Voice, a Japanese language film that came out in 2016. And I must say, I don’t remember crying at a movie like this since Babel (although I am by nature a cryer, so I’ve cried at a lot of films.) The film opens with a young man named Shoya who is about to commit suicide, but then it flashes back to how he became depressed. Shoya is popular in school, but then a new student named Shoko Nishiyima arrives to the school and she tells her classmates she is hearing impaired and communicates through writing in a notebook. However, because kids are mean, Shoya and some of the other kids bully Shoko, stealing her notebook and ripping her hearing aids out of her ears and throwing them out the window. Shoko later transfers to another school and the teacher calls out Shoya for being behind the bullying. When Shoya tries to divert the blame from himself by calling out the other students who bullied Shoko, his classmates all turn on him and Shoya finds himself with no friends.

Fast forward to high school, and Shoya is depressed and suicidal. He blocks out people’s faces, not looking people in the eye because he thinks no one wants to be his friend anymore, except for another outcast whose bicycle is almost stolen had it not been for Shoya unintentionally sticking up for him. Shoya runs into Shoko and tries to apologize to her, but she finds it hard to be around him or anyone after dealing with so much bullying early on. Shoya meets Shoko’s sister and mother, and of course because he bullied Shoko, they are less than happy to see him show up at their house to hang out with Shoko. However, as the two loners realize they are outcasts to their classmates, Shoya and Shoko become closer, and Shoya, like a few of his other classmates, even has learned sign language to communicate with Shoko. However, the film gets darker when one of Shoya’s classmates, Naoka, continues to bully Shoko, telling her on a Ferris wheel ride that she hates her and even hits Shoko. Shoko always apologizes even though her tormentors should be the ones apologizing, and at first I wondered why this young woman was apologizing when all she did was be her normal self (and even going out of her way to do nice things for her classmates, such as erasing hateful messages that Shoya’s classmates wrote on his desk.) But then later in the film I found out that Shoko thinks she is the cause of everyone’s problems, that if she weren’t hearing impaired or even alive, then everyone would be better off without her (in reality, I think this is some B.S. because her classmates’ insecurities were the real reason they bullied her in the first place. What a bunch of cowards.)

I didn’t know how I was going to like this film. A friend of mine insisted we watch it, and so I did, and by the end I had to watch yet another episode of Brooklyn 99 because my eyes were puffy from a little over two hours of crying. This film hits a lot of topics: bullying, suicide, depression, loneliness and what it means to be a good friend. It takes place in the modern era where we have cell phones and social media, and examines how technology can connect us and yet make us feel lonely. When Shoya truly connects to Shoko and apologizes for bullying her, when he actually looks into her face and sees her crying, he realizes that Shoko’s compassion is what truly helps him keep living. This part is what brought me to tears (also seeing Shoya’s friend cry and hug him when he comes back to school after being injured from the fall.) I also cried because Shoya, after meeting with Shoko and sharing this beautiful heart-to-heart dialogue with her, breaks down into tears when the X’s on his classmates’ faces (because his depression is so deep, he can’t look them in the eye) disappear and he finally experiences life and sees its beauty.

This film also shows the severe impact that bullying can have on people. Shoko tries to commit suicide while at a festival, and Shoya saves her, nearly falling to his death himself. Shoko tries to kill herself because her classmates have made her feel, for the longest time, like she was worthless. It serves as a reminder of all the youth lost to suicide from bullying, such as Tyler Clementi, a student at Rutgers University who committed suicide after his roommate recorded Clementi kissing another man and posted it online, or Brandy Vela, who killed herself after her peers tormented her online. These are not the only suicides that have happened, which really shows that while yes, these suicides are sad, they can be prevented by having more effective anti-bullying legislation in place. More people are talking about how to prevent bullying and suicides, but we need to keep talking about it, because if we don’t, the problem’s not actually going to get fixed.

The Japanese humanist educator, Daisaku Ikeda, once said that differences among people are a given. This is what makes each person unique and our world such a richly diverse place, resembling a garden in which many kinds of flowers bloom in profusion. That is why we must not only recognize that people are different, but also respect and learn from one another. That should be our basic perspective. Accordingly, regardless of creed, we must always respect others as human beings first.” (The New Human Revolution: Volume 21, page 99, Daisaku Ikeda) Just because Shoko had a disability didn’t mean something was wrong with her, but because her classmates hadn’t met anyone else who was hearing impaired and were so used to conforming with each other, they viewed Shoko’s disability as a flaw rather than as something that was simply just different from their able-bodied selves. However, Shoko has boundless compassion for her classmates even when they are mean to her, and as Shoya grows older and has come to terms with his own experiences of being an outcast, Shoya starts to appreciate what he didn’t appreciate before: Shoko’s compassion. Because she was bullied, Shoko made it her mission to feel for Shoya’s pain, and later on, he makes it up to her by saving her from committing suicide and having the guts to apologize (because his other classmates couldn’t muster the courage to do so.) Embracing differences, not necessarily pretending they don’t exist, is key to being a good ally, and sometimes all a good ally needs to do is just show up for someone and listen to them. Shoya wasn’t an ally before because he made fun of Shoko’s disability, but he later becomes an ally and fosters a bond of trust with her.

I definitely would watch this movie. Even though it was stressful to watch because I myself went through painful mental health issues, and watching this film triggered memories of my worst depressive episodes, I had to watch it so I could understand what my mission was as someone who had gone through that. I needed to understand that I’m not alone in my experiences with depression, and that seeking help is so important.

Speaking of which… 1-800-273-8255 is the Suicide Prevention Hotline. Not doing this to be cheesy or because every article I read about mental health has it at the end, seriously. If you or a loved one is considering suicide, call this number. Seriously, there’s a reason Logic has a song about it.