Honestly I was ambivalent about watching this movie because I tend to get really squeamish about violence, and I was already watching a lot of images in the news with the Israel-Palestine conflict, so I thought about not seeing it. I spent the last few days looking at parent’s guides for info about any potential violence, language and sex. But to be honest, I am at that age where I know which movies I can tolerate and which I cannot. I will never sit through Five Nights at Freddy’s, but I was willing to watch this because I didn’t know much about the 1982 Lebanon War. I mean, I’m sure I studied about it in my geography and world history classes in high school, but that was a long time ago and because history is constantly repeating itself, I need to study it again and again to understand why the present is happening the way it is. But I think watching movies can also be a tool to understand historical issues from different perspectives, and while I am still processing the entirety of the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, watching this film showed me that war is horrific and traumatic for everyone involved.
To be honest, I am not a history expert. I only know about Israel and Palestine from high school and from reading the news, so I at first wasn’t sure if I was even qualified to write this movie review because I still have so much to learn about and I am not well researched about the 1982 Lebanon War. But I will do my best. I am still processing this film though because it was very intense and emotional. I think if I had watched this movie when I was younger I don’t know if I would have been able to handle it, to be honest. But for some reason I was okay with watching this movie at night even though I know deep down that I normally try not to watch upsetting content at night. But that’s the thing about movies. They are not always there to make me comfortable or entertain. Oftentimes movies challenge me to look at history from a different perspective. Also, I’m biased about Rotten Tomatoes reviews, and this film got a 97 percent so I thought, It must have been good. I remember watching the Oscars when I was in middle school, and this movie had been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.
The film was directed by Ari Folman, and the animation was what pretty much drew me to it in the first place. It is masterfully done, and it was a reminder of how animation can serve as powerful social commentary. It reminded me of when I watched the film and read the graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, which illustrates Marjane’s coming of age during the Iranian Revolution. Or the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman, which moved me on so many levels. Honestly this movie reminded me how so much is lost in war. It’s easy for me to soak up the air with my own problems and worries, and of course problems and worries make us human. But when I looked at the news and saw Gaza and so many Palestinian and Israeli citizens suffering, it was hard to look away but also I felt hopeless just looking at those images. When I watched this movie it reminded me that compared to war and bombings that take many people’s lives, my own petty problems are so small. It reminded me that I have to appreciate my life even if I’m not getting everything I want. Because war destroys people’s lives. The movie showed that while Ari created many friendships and connections with people while in the war, every day was a life or death battle for everyone in this war and no one was guaranteed an extra day because any time they were walking down the street someone could get killed. The movie shows how traumatic war is and how it can bring up a lot of painful feelings and experiences. In one scene there is a therapist who talks about disassociation as a defense mechanism, how when people are going through a traumatic experience they often detach themselves from the experience even though they are in the flesh living through a traumatic event. Trauma also impacts how people remember different experiences. One memorable one where he and two other naked men are wading in the water and before them they are watching a city being bombed. They walk towards the light and put their clothes on. They are in survival mode and like I said, when it comes to war it is a life or death battle where you don’t know whether you are guaranteed another day or not because someone could easily take away your life from you. The ending was pretty difficult to watch, especially because it was real imagery from the Lebanon war of actually murdered Palestinians during the massacre.
The movie reminded me of a quote from a book I am reading called The Human Revolution by an author named Daisaku Ikeda, and he recounts his experiences growing up during World War II and how during the aftermath of the war everyone in Japan was struggling to rebuild and regain hope because so many people lost their loved ones and possessions in the war. He opens the book with a short yet profound quote: “Nothing is more barbarous than war. Nothing is more cruel.” Honestly as I was watching Waltz with Bashir, that quote was at the forefront of my mind. It was also a quote I reflected on a lot while watching movies about war in the past, such as 1917. In 1917, these two men fighting in World War I endure harrowing events at pretty much every turn. They go through no man’s land and they are literally in a life or death battle. Even when they are walking through a beautiful field of flowers, they don’t have time to enjoy it because they are living through the trauma of war and the reality that they could get killed at any moment. There is one scene that stuck with me when the two soldiers are walking through an beautiful field of flowers, and they talk about receiving a medal for their service. They conclude that getting a medal would mean nothing because they faced so many cruel realities while in battle and it left them feeling disillusioned and hopeless.
I’m still emotionally processing Waltz with Bashir so I don’t know what else to say, but overall it was a really deep film.
Waltz with Bashir. 2008. Directed by Ari Folman. Rated R for some disturbing images of atrocities, strong violence, brief nudity and a scene of graphic sexual content.
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.
Here is a list of movies I have watched. Some I have laughed at, others cried at and others had me on the edge of my seat. Some had me feeling all sorts of complicated emotions. I may need to balance out my steady diet of R-rated films for some G or PG ones, since most of the films on this list are R.
Rent (PG-13)
Hairspray (PG)
Hamilton (PG-13)
West Side Story (original and remake)
Despicable Me (PG)
Shrek (PG)
Onward (PG)
Ella Enchanted (PG)
My Cousin Vinny (R)
Juno (PG-13)
Pitch Perfect (I only saw the first, haven’t seen the others) (PG-13)
Last week I rented The Woman King from the library. It was honestly one of the best movies I have seen. At an awards ceremony called the BAFTAs last year, there was an actress named Ariana DeBose (she was in the Steven Spielberg remake of West Side Story, and she was on fire!) who did a really cool medley of the song “Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves” by The Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin and Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” while dressed in a hot pink jumpsuit. She gave shout outs to many of the female directors and actors in the audience, including Dolly De Leon, Hong Chau, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis and Michelle Yeoh. One of the lyrics of her song was “Angela Bassett did the thing/ Viola Davis, my woman king” and I didn’t appreciate the significance of this until I saw Angela Bassett as Queen Ramonda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. I am still sad that she didn’t win the Best Supporting Actress role (of course Jamie Lee Curtis, who won the award, was great, too, in Everything Everywhere All At Once) but I still think she played her role so well. And then when I finally saw Viola Davis in The Woman King, I was like, “Oh yeah now I appreciate the song lyric “Viola Davis, my woman king.” Because after the movie, I thought, “Viola Davis is my woman king, too.” The whole film was just absolutely incredible and it was empowering to see so many Black women on the screen fighting against the patriarchy.
If you haven’t seen The Woman King, I will give a brief synopsis. It takes place in west Africa in the kingdom of Dahomey. There is an all-female unit called The Agojie who protect this kingdom and man, they don’t take prisoners. The movie literally opens with a fight scene from the get-go. A bunch of men from the rival army is sitting around a campfire, and then you see Viola Davis (rocking a mohawk) and the other Agojie women slowly creeping up upon the men from the tall fields and then they just wield their swords and weapons and fight them to the death. The women in the Agojie live in a community where they support one another, but there are rules: they cannot have sex and they cannot get married. Nanisca is the leader of the group, and she trains each and every one of the women in combat so they can be ready in battle to defend the country. Honestly, I thought it was just so dope how the king of Dahomey (played by Star Wars John Boyega) had an all-female army unit. And honestly I also just thought it was dope how there actually was an all-female army called The Agojie. There is a newcomer to the army named Nawi and she is fierce and also slightly overconfident. Nanisca trains her but also calls her out on this overconfidence and reminds her to be humble. Nanisca and Nawi’s relationship kind of reminded me of this scripture I read called The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, because a Buddhist reformer named Nichiren Daishonin had a disciple named Shijo Kingo who was a skilled doctor and also was skilled in martial arts. However, Shijo Kingo also got in trouble with the lord of his estate because he was always getting in fights and had a short temper. Nichiren always told him in his letters to maintain his composure and always be on his guard since Shijo was at risk of losing his estate for practicing the Daishonin’s Buddhism. There is a letter in particular that I really love called “The Eight Winds,” where Nichiren admonishes Kingo about losing his temper and at the end of the letter he tells him to not be moved by anger, greed or fame. Nanisca is strict with Nawi because she sees so much potential in her and she also sees her as a daughter (there is a twist but no spoilers here).
The movie also somehow made me think of the movie Women Talking. If you haven’t seen Women Talking, it is about an isolated Mennonite community of women who have suffered from sexual abuse at the hands of the men in the colony for decades and they are planning whether to fight, stay or leave the colony. They meet in secret, and each woman recounts the trauma she has suffered at the hands of these men, and the only man in the group, August, is truly an ally to these women because he had such a strong female role model who encouraged him to respect women. The women in the Agojie have also suffered trauma and pain, and in one scene Nanisca comes face to face with the king of the Oye army and she freezes because he assaulted her when she was younger, and so throughout the film I saw how Nanisca had to heal from this incredibly painful trauma and the painful process she went through to heal, and how she finally overcomes her fear and gets back her own power after the king took it from her.
If you ever get to rent the movie, I would check out the special features. They talk about the making of the movie, and I got to learn more about Gina Prince-Bythewood’s filmmaking process (she is the director of The Woman King). I got to also hear the actors’ take on the film and the process they went through to make the movie. Viola Davis has starred in so many great films. She stars in the film adaptation of playwright August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and she plays Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, who has a powerful voice and demands respect from the white music executives who are trying to exploit her music for profit. A lot of Black artists at the time didn’t get credit for their work or the pay they deserved, so Ma Rainey had to be assertive. Honestly I was just so fascinated hearing the actors talk about their acting process, and there is another feature where the actress who plays Nawi, Thuso Mbedu, is auditioning for the role of Nawi.
The trailer is also phenomenal. It made me want to see the movie. I also love the song “MY POWER” from Beyonce’s visual album Black is King.
The Woman King. 2022. Action/ Drama. 2 h 15 m. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, some disturbing material, thematic content, brief language and partial nudity.
I had been meaning to see this movie for a while. I saw the trailer a long time ago and thought it was really cool. If you haven’t seen Patti Cake$, it’s about a young white woman named Patricia Dombrowski, aka Patti, who lives in a small town in New Jersey but has big aspirations to become a famous rapper like her idol, O-Z. Even though she struggles to make it big, she and her friends Jheri, Bastard and her grandma Nana form a rap group called PBNJ together and Patti finds herself developing more confidence in herself as a rapper. I think that is why I love this movie, because it showed me that even if circumstances are hard, you can take steps towards accomplishing your dreams, but it requires a lot of serious dedication. Patti works two jobs and gets fired from one of them, and it puts a strain on the family finances. She gets frequent calls from debt collectors telling her that she is overdue on rent and other bills, and she also has to take care of her mom and grandma. But she spends time with Bastard and Jheri writing rhymes and recording in Bastard’s studio.
The relationship between Patti and her mom is really fraught at the beginning. Barb comes in while Patti is working at the bar and wants Patti to serve her alcohol, but Patti doesn’t want to. She does it though and after multiple shots of liquor she watches her mom sing on stage and then later vomit in the bathroom stall. Her mom is an excellent singer, but she gave up on her dreams when she had Patti and in fact, she blames a lot of her inability to follow her dreams on Patti. When Patti tells her about her rapping career, her mom laughs about it and makes fun of her for it, but it’s not until she actually sees Patti performing one night that she really starts to respect that girlfriend has bars.
It was also sweet seeing the romance between Patti and Bastard. When we first see Bastard he is at an open mic playing heavy metal on guitar and people are throwing stuff at him and teasing him. At first he doesn’t warm up to Danielle even when she tells him she liked his stuff but over time as he gets to know her he sees that she really likes his music and wants to collaborate with him, and they develop a beautiful friendship over the course of the movie. I also love love love the friendship between Jheri and Patti. I think that is why I gravitated towards the movie in the first place, because at the beginning of the trailer Jheri, who works at a pharmacy, is getting on the intercom when Patti walks into the pharmacy and gives her a grand ovation, introducing her as Killa P to an imaginary audience.
I also kind of related to one of the scenes in the movie, where Patti is interviewing for her second job at a catering company, because the man interviewing her asks where she would like to be in five years, and Patti at first imagines herself in a music video rapping in a hot tub with champagne and money around her, but then in reality she tells the manager that she envisions herself working for the catering company for the next five years. In 2016 I applied for several jobs after college to go towards paying off my student loans, and I landed an interview with a hotel as a front desk person. I was sweating how I was going to answer the interview questions and one of the questions, which is pretty common for job interviews, was “Where do you see yourself in the next five years?” Honestly I wanted to say “playing in a professional orchestra” because that is where I envisioned myself being after making enough financial resources and honing my craft. But I said, “I envision myself still working in the hospitality industry.” Part of me answered this way because I had this fear that if I answered that I wanted to have a different career path in the next five years, then they wouldn’t get me the job. (side note: I ended up being let go after four weeks. Probably for behavioral issues.) I’ve learned from watching this movie though that it really does help to have an income though so that you can still do what you love in your spare time. As much as I tried to quit my day jobs in the past, I realized that I really do like having stability sometimes. I think when I quit my job last year I was really anxious about finding another source of income, and when I played my music or did my writing I realized at some point that I didn’t need to quit my day job to do my passions on the side. I think I’m actually more determined than ever to use whatever time I have after work to practice my writing and work on my music.
This movie also showed me that it’s important to be true to yourself as an artist and not worry about what other people think of you. Even though she spits mad rhymes, Patti is a human being and at times struggles with self-confidence, especially because she faces a lot of bullying (the people in her neighborhood have always called her “Dumbo”). There is one scene where Patti falls in love with this guy named Danny who works at a pizza shop but during a rap battle he ends up insulting her and when she insults him back, he hits her. He does have a slight change of heart when he agrees to buy Patti’s CD, though. He was a jerk though to Patti. Patti also has a crucial moment when she meets her idol, O-Z. Throughout the film, Patti envisions following in O-Z’s footsteps and achieving his level of fame and fortune, but she gets a catering gig where she has to serve at O-Z’s mansion. When the manager asks who can make O-Z’s favorite drink, she makes it, and when she goes to his studio and finds him sitting on his fancy couch she envisions herself rapping for him. But instead she is extremely nervous and loses her confidence when she leaves a CD of her raps and O-Z puts down her dreams and stubs the CD with his cigarette and tells Patti to stick to catering and to give up on her dreams of becoming a rapper. The manager tells her she messed up and fires her, and Patti feels like she is failing at everything. She quits the group and then quits her job at the bar when one of the patrons finds her journal of lyrics and recites them in front of everyone without Patti’s permission, and she tells Jheri that she is giving up on her dreams. Before she meets O-Z, Patti tells Bastard that she wants to be like O-Z, but Bastard tells her to not be easily influenced by O-Z’s prestige and influence because it’s all just about appearances. Patti finally realizes that O-Z didn’t care about Patti’s dreams and was just a really terrible guy who looked down on people even though he was super successful. This reminds me of when I went to a professor’s house to audition for an advanced chamber music ensemble that he was coaching, and I thought very highly of this person, but to be honest at the time I really looked down on myself for working at Starbucks after graduating from this elite college. I thought that if I told my peers and professors from college that I worked at Starbucks, they would look down on me, so I often hesitated when telling them. When I met this professor, I was so nervous and wanted to impress him so badly, but it turns out that I didn’t end up getting into the group and to be honest, when I told him I worked at Starbucks, he told me he thought it was a shame that I graduated from a prestigious college and was working at Starbucks. I found myself losing my confidence and continued to make myself feel ashamed, but after a while, I realized that it doesn’t really matter what others think of your life journey in the long run, because as long as you are growing and maturing from the experiences you are always going to be on the best path for you. Of course, telling myself this everyday is much easier said than done because it’s a lot easier to look at someone else’s career path and think they have it easy, when you don’t even know their journey or what they struggle with every day to pursue that dream. I think what Bastard told Patti about not being swayed by O-Z’s success reminded me of this letter from The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin that I repeatedly turn to called “The Eight Winds.” Nichiren is telling one of his followers, Shijo Kingo, who is a skilled samurai that he shouldn’t let the promises of fame and praise sway his behavior. The four favorable winds are praise, pleasure, prosperity and honor, and the four adverse winds are decline, disgrace, censure and suffering. It’s easy to let other people’s validation or criticisms influence our decision-making or our life paths, and sometimes that praise or criticism comes from a good well-meaning place but other times it doesn’t, so I’ve realized as I’ve been pursuing these creative passions of mine is to not let these external influences prevent me from making art in the most authentic truest way. Bastard encourages Patti to keep being true to herself, regardless of whether people receive their music well or not, and DJ Tips, a famous emcee (played by MC Lyte) ends up playing Patti’s song “PBNJ” on her station one evening. DJ Tips also really loves Patti’s music even though she says it was “rough,” and when they meet at the bar mitzvah Patti is catering at, DJ Tips says to Patti that she can’t believe after 20 years as a DJ she gets a gig playing at someone’s bar mitzvah. This showed me that as musicians, you’re not always going to get that big glamorous gig you want and even after a lot of experience in the field you still may need to take gigs that may not be big and glamorous but are still really part of the job of being a musician. I kind of struggled with this at times because I expected that I would land an orchestra job right after college just because I’ve played for so many years and have all this playing experience in college, but that’s not how it worked. I would call the personnel manager asking if they needed me to sub for any gigs, but I didn’t get a reply and felt discouraged. I ended up playing quite a few gigs for free, and at someone’s Christmas party for some cash. But after talking with other classical musicians I have come to understand that is pretty normal. I had this grand idea that I would be this big name soloist who was going to collaborate with all of these famous artists, and when that dream didn’t come true I felt like I had failed or that this wasn’t the career for me anymore simply because I wasn’t making the progress I wanted. But what I have learned over time, and it’s still a life lesson I need to internalize, is that success is not a one-time thing, like you struggle and then bam, you just become successful after one hit or one CD or one gig. Sure it happens, but for the most part, artists have to keep producing and working on their craft to keep growing in their careers.
Overall, I really loved this movie. I kept jamming to the songs and it was a really encouraging movie for me to watch as a musician and writer who is still struggling to believe in myself and that I can achieve my dreams. Side note: Honestly, while watching this I kept thinking about Lady Sovereign, who is a white British female rapper. I grew up listening to a lot of her music in middle school and even today I found myself playing some of her old hits. Also there is a part in the movie where Patti and Jheri go to a recording studio and I thought the actor who played Swisha looked like Anthony Ramos, and sure enough when I watched the end credits I freaked out and was like, “Oh my gosh, Anthony Ramos from Hamilton was in this movie!!!” I loved watching Hamilton on Disney Plus and I loved Anthony in In the Heights, so seeing him in this movie had me going “Oh my gosh!” Ok, enough rambling. All that to say, if you haven’t seen Patti Cake$ yet I definitely recommend it.
Patti Cake$. 2017. Starring Danielle Macdonald, Siddharth Dhananjay, Bridget Everett, Mamoudou Athie and Cathy Moriarty. Directed by Geremy Jasper. Rated R for language throughout, crude sexual references, some drug use and a brief nude image.
Disclaimer: one of the topics of the film is rape, so I give some brief descriptions of rape allegations as depicted in the film.
Last week I watched an excellent movie called Atonement. It’s the film adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement. When I was in ninth grade I remember reading a lot of books and Ian McEwan’s Atonement was one of these books. I didn’t have a dictionary with me to help look up all the big vocabulary words so I had a pretty difficult time reading the book. I also learned this technique called long smooth underline when I was in a reading comprehension class, and when you do long smooth underline you put your hand under the words and move your hand across the pages to help with reading the sentences. But the thing about long smooth underline is that it is called long smooth underline for a reason; it takes time and it helps to slow down when you read so you can understand what you are reading. I was very impatient so I thought if I just speed-read Atonement I can finish it and be on my merry way. But as I’m writing this, I’ve told you nothing of the plot because I read it so fast that I don’t remember the plot and thus probably need to go back and reread the book. Not that there is anything wrong with that, because I really did enjoy the writing. I’m just ashamed I didn’t remember the plot of the book.
But anyway, these two young ladies in my Spanish class saw me racing through the book and one of them asked, “Are you really reading that fast?” And the other girl saw the book cover and said, “I love the movie!” I hadn’t seen the movie because I swore off R-rated films during that time. I thought, “I’m not 17 yet, so I can’t see this movie.” But after so many years and after finally watching the trailer and loving it, I decided, “Yep, it’s time for me to watch this movie.” So I rented it on Google Play and I must say, it was one of the best movies I have seen.
One thing I loved about this movie was the acting. I think when I was in middle school, I watched the Academy Awards and they showed a clip of Atonement, and the acting was just so brilliant. I have seen Saoirse Ronan in Lady Bird, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Little Women and absolutely love her acting, but I hadn’t seen her earlier work, so this was my first time seeing Saoirse Ronan when she was younger. She brought so much to her role as the young version of Briony Tallis, and her and Keira Knightley both played their roles really well. I also love James McAvoy; I haven’t seen too many films with him in it to be honest, but last year I watched a movie he was in called The Last King of Scotland, which, is the film adaptation of the novel The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden. Reading a book is definitely a different experience from watching the movie; I read the novel by Giles Foden the same year I read Atonement, but maybe I was just too young to understand the plot or I read the book too quickly. But watching the movie The Last King of Scotland, oh my gosh….it definitely is a film I am glad I saw because the acting was so excellent, but one of those films that shook me out of my skin to the point where I don’t think I need to see the film again because it’s so engrained in my mind. James McAvoy plays a doctor named Nicholas Garrigan, who goes to Uganda to be a doctor to dictator Idi Amin. My heart was beating out of my chest because the whole atmosphere of the film is so disturbing, but James McAvoy and Forest Whitaker both acted the hell out of their roles. To be honest, I know acting is a job for these people, but seriously after watching that movie I thought, How can you play these two characters and not go home at the end of the day feeling shook? Because as the viewer, I was just so mesmerized by the dedication they both brought to their roles. Nicholas lets it go to his head that he is the personal doctor of Idi Amin, and he gains access to all these influential people and parties, but it comes at a HUGE psychological, emotional, mental and (gruesome) physical cost. I saw as James McAvoy’s character went from being this seemingly innocent white guy who just wants to go to Uganda and help people to someone easily manipulated by power and influence and then brought quickly back to Earth by the terrifying reality that the guy he kissed up to is not the guy he thought he was, and the last half of the film left me on the edge of my seat (and also closing my eyes) because Nicholas really sees what kind of guy Amin is and that he can’t just pretend like he wasn’t somehow involved in these human rights abuses Amin committed because he becomes not just Idi Amin’s personal doctor but also his confidant, so whatever Nicholas spills about Amin’s corruption to others has severe (and very bloody) consequences. All that to say, James McAvoy is a very talented actor and in Atonement he was also amazing.
The movie delves into some pretty deep themes. One is the theme of forgiveness. Briony accuses Robbie for a crime he didn’t commit, and she has to carry that guilt with her for many years. Her sister, Cecilia, won’t talk to her anymore, and of course neither will Robbie because he went to prison for the allegations against him. Even when Briony comes to Robbie and Cecilia’s house to apologize, they can’t forgive her and just want her to leave them alone. I think what got me though was that the apology never got to happen because of some tragic events that precluded it . Robbie brought Cecilia happiness and love, and to see that taken away from her was devastating, and so she couldn’t forgive her sister for what she did. Another theme is perspective, because the movie shows the perspectives of the events that went down from Briony’s perspective but also I got to see another perspective of what actually happened. Briony finds out that another man raped her cousin, not Robbie, and that sends her into an even deeper spiral of guilt. Allegations are a serious thing, and these allegations left a serious scar on Cecilia and Briony’s relationship as sisters, and Cecilia lost all trust in Briony.
There was one important scene of the movie that takes place at Dunkirk. I had seen the movie Dunkirk a while ago, and absolutely loved it. Atonement doesn’t focus a lot on the Dunkirk evacuation, but so much happens on that beach in so short a time and the way the scene was shot was brilliant. It kind of reminded me of how 1917, another war drama, was shot in what looked like a single continuous take. The film really illustrated how horrifying World War I was and the risks and dangers that two men have to take to go through enemy lines and deliver the message they are assigned to deliver. As they travel long distances to deliver the message, they witness horrors that no one should ever have to witness (I think when they have to go through No Man’s Land it left a pretty indelible image on my memory) While watching the Dunkirk scene of Atonement, I wasn’t prepared to see the horses being shot to death but I think it just reminded me how hopeless everyone felt during this war and the Dunkirk evacuation seemed to be everyone’s last chance at finding hope and going home after the trauma and pain they suffered in World War II. Robbie and his comrades see people riding on an old merry go round set, singing, sitting by the beach, running around the beach naked and doing other activities. However, it’s tough for Robbie because he has to wait until he can go home since there are so many soldiers trying to get home, too, so he is forced to bear this suffering even further.
I really related to Briony’s dreams as a writer. Throughout the film, Briony is always writing. I also saw parallels between the characters Briony and Jo March in Little Women, both played by Saoirse Ronan, because both Briony and Jo love to write. Even when Briony gets older and works as a nurse during the war, she goes up into the attic and writes stories. The film shows how writing is such a vulnerable and personal thing, because Briony’s novel is based on her real-life experiences. She writes the novel because what happened in the novel wasn’t the full story in real life. In Briony’s novel she apologizes to Robbie and Cecilia, but when she is being interviewed as an adult she reveals that she never got to to go Cecilia’s and apologize because both Cecilia and Robbie died during the war. Her writing the novel was her way of helping Cecilia and Robbie find happiness since she still feels like she robbed them of their happiness in real life.
So it’s almost midnight and I am fading. But overall, this was an excellent movie worth watching. Since it’s a film about war there are some pretty heavy scenes (one especially when Briony is in the hospital and all the soldiers come in with pretty severe injuries and she treats one soldier with a serious injury) but it really is an excellent movie. And the film score was so beautiful. I haven’t seen Joe Wright’s other movies, but he definitely directed the hell out of this movie because it was good. It made me want to read the book Atonement again.
Atonement. 2007. Directed by Joe Wright. Rated R for disturbing war images, language and some sexuality.
A couple of weeks ago I watched a movie called The Assistant. It was definitely a powerful movie. I had not read much about the film but I heard it was really good. It’s not a long film but it packs in so much, and I normally take notes while I watch movies, but for this one because there wasn’t much dialogue I had to pay attention to the nonverbal communication in the movie. The Assistant stars Julia Garner, who I saw for the first time in the comedy-drama Grandma. In The Assistant she plays a young woman named Jane, an aspiring film producer who works as an assistant at her dream job, a film company. However, as the film progresses, it is clear that her dream job is not all it’s cut out to be and actually has a toxic work culture of abuse, gaslighting, and sexual harassment. At the beginning we see Jane going into the office early in the morning. It is clear that she hasn’t gotten much sleep and is being worked to the bone at this job. She eats Fruit Loops and then has to hurry back to her desk when she sees some of the executives walk past. Her coworkers are also intimidated by the boss, but they give into his bullying behavior and force her to deal with it, too. They don’t treat her with respect or value what she does every day. Every day Jane does stuff like make copies of spreadsheets, stock pills for her boss, distribute schedules to her coworkers, and take phone calls. Some of these calls she deals with people who respect her, but others, like the call from the boss’ wife, are very hard to deal with. In one scene, Jane’s coworker throws a crumpled ball of paper at her and tells her she needs to take a call from the boss’s wife. She gets on the phone with her, and the woman screams at Jane about how her husband cut off access to their credit cards and is with some other woman. When Jane asks her if she has her own credit cards, the woman gets angry with her and hangs up. Jane’s female coworkers also don’t treat her with respect. They ignore her and also make her feel invisible.
Tensions rise when a young beautiful woman named Sienna is hired on the team as an assistant. She is made to sign nondisclosure agreements and when Jane gets suspicious about this, no one says anything or encourages her to file a complaint because they know that the boss will intimidate them and probably fire them if they file a complaint. Jane goes to Wilcock in human resources and tells him that she finds it problematic that this young woman is being given this assistant job when she has very little prior experience. Even after Wilcock jots down what Jane tells him, he doesn’t take it seriously and laughs it off. He thinks that Jane is just jealous of this young woman and tells her that she will suffer serious consequences if she goes through with filing the complaint and asks if she wants to keep her job at the company. I think the part that was the worst was when he tells her before she leaves, “Don’t worry, you’re not his type.” I think watching this film a second time helped me understand why this kind of work culture is so toxic and problematic, and I think I came away from the film disturbed and deeply angered that this kind of work culture persisted for many years. When I first started learning about the Me Too movement, I wasn’t very sympathetic to the victims. I actually thought consent was as simple as saying “no” or speaking up, but what I had to understand is the ways in which power played a huge role in these Me Too cases, and the perpetrators of sexual harassment threatened to take away the victims’ livelihood and did what they could to keep these victims silent. When I found out about Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, I asked Why didn’t they just say no? And my friends had to remind me that these men used their influence and power to silence these women and threatened them with violence and harm if they didn’t remain silent about the abuse and assault. As I educated myself more about sexual violence, boundaries and consent I really started to understand how serious these allegations were.
The film left me feeling very upset and angered but also I had to understand that many of the real life cases of sexual assault and harassment in multiple industries, not just film, didn’t have happy endings. Many of these victims still carry trauma and pain. Around 2017, an article in The New York Times called “She Said” by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey came out (it is now a movie with Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan playing the aforementioned reporters) detailing the years of sexual abuse that Harvey Weinstein inflicted on actresses and so many other women. Harvey as many know ran these very successful film companies which produced films like Chicago, Good Will Hunting and many more, but when those allegations came out it was hard to stomach that someone would do something like that to all those women. In fact, I still get chills thinking about that article.
Throughout The Assistant, it is very clear that where Jane works enforces and perpetuates a culture of silence and bullying. No one talks to one another, even to just exchange small talk, and most people pass by without speaking to each other. Everyone is intimidated and stressed out by this boss, and what got me is that everyone knew that the boss was being predatory towards these women, putting them up in hotels and sexually harassing them. When Jane’s coworker asks Jane where she had Sienna go to, Jane reveals she had Sienna go to a nearby hotel, and it’s clear that everyone knows that the boss is doing this to multiple young women. When Jane goes downstairs she sees a young woman leaving the office, and gives her an earring that fell. The woman tries to explain but she hesitates and leaves without telling Jane probably because she is scared for her life and the boss probably threatened her if she didn’t remain silent about his inappropriate behavior. Jane going to HR and then HR not taking the allegations against the boss seriously isn’t an isolated event; many cases of sexual harassment have gone unreported because the victims weren’t taken seriously. And I have to remember that even though a lot of these allegations do in fact happen in the entertainment industry, sexual violence happens in many industries as well, particularly in the food service and retail industry. In these industries, many people, especially young women, face harassment and assault but are silenced into not reporting it. The Me Too movement really made me aware of how prevalent this culture of shame and silence has been for decades. At the end of the film, I found myself thinking, Couldn’t Jane just quit? But I reflected on it and thought that Jane probably couldn’t afford to quit the job because she had to pay her rent and bills. Also, her boss was a bully and I’m sure because he was so powerful and intimidating Jane felt she couldn’t leave. When she emails him an apology after he screams at her for the umpteenth time about how worthless and useless he thinks she is, he replies saying that he is trying to “make her great” and that is why he is so hard on her. However, I wondered, Yes, this is her dream job. She’s wanted to work at this company for the longest time. But after two months, is is worth it, after what she has witnessed? Wilcock tells Jane that she can’t dig at Sienna for not having much experience as an assistant because Jane has only been at the company for two months, but I wondered, If this job is taking a severe toll on your mental health and there is a toxic culture and you have a boss who is a sexual predator? Girl, get the fuck out of there. Then again, after educating myself on the Me Too movement I had to realize that for many people, it’s not as simple as just bouncing out. You still carry that trauma and pain with you long after you leave that toxic environment, and when people ask you to recall it it can be painful to relive that trauma over and over again. I’m sure people heal from the trauma but it’s not an easy process.
Overall, I highly recommend this movie. Julia Garner’s performance was excellent and it was a powerful film.
I watched this movie yesterday because again, it’s one of the Oscar nominees. I didn’t really know anything much about the movie other than watching the trailer, and it looked really interesting. This actress I really liked from this series called The Crown, Claire Foy, is one of the characters in the movie and so is Rooney Mara from another movie I loved called Carol. Honestly the movie left me shook. It was a deep movie with a story that left me up at night. It’s based on a novel about an isolated Mennonite community where several men drug the women with cow tranquilizer and rape them, and the women in the community meet in secret to discuss whether to leave the colony or fight against their attackers. It is based on a real story about an ultraconservative Mennonite community called Manitoba Colony in Bolivia where between 2005 and 2009 a group of colony men sedated 151 colony women and girls with animal anesthetic and raped them in their homes. The victims reported being bloodied and bruised but these reports were dismissed as false. Eventually, the men got put on trial and sentenced to prison, but with anything trauma-related, you can’t just move on because the body stores trauma.
It made me think of a book I read called Room by Emma Donoghue, which is about a young woman and her son who are held captive by a rapist and they are figuring out how to escape the room. It was similar to Women Talking because it grapples with how the abused navigate their trauma after they leave their circumstances. It takes Ma many years before she and her son escape from the abuser, but even after she finds freedom Ma battles severe distress and ends up overdosing because she is constantly reliving the trauma she dealt with being captive in that room. Honestly, when I read the book I broke down in tears because it haunted me like no other book ever did. I couldn’t imagine what Ma and Jack had to go through to get out of such a horrific situation. Both of them were surviving in this situation, and even with the childlike innocence of the book’s cover (the letters “Room” are written in crayon), it is anything but a children’s book. It literally has sat with me since the time I read it, and it scared me. But I understand that Ma’s experience isn’t an isolated incident and sexual assault and trauma is a painful reality for many women.
The film Women Talking doesn’t show the sexual assault, but rather the distress they feel when they recount how this violence against women has gone on for so many years under the guise of morals and religious obligations. In one scene, one of the women at the meeting, Mejal, is smoking a cigarette and suffers a sudden panic attack after the conversation triggers a flashback where she is remembering the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of the men in the colony. Mariche, played by Jessie Buckley, says that Mejal’s episode wasn’t that bad because they have all faced sexual trauma in the colony, not just her. However, Mariche also faces her own past trauma when she goes back to the house to retrieve her daughter when everyone plans to leave the colony. She and her daughter leave the house very badly bruised because her husband beat them. August is a teacher in the colony who takes the minutes during the women’s meetings is August, and he had a strong female role model in his life who spoke her mind and encouraged him to speak his mind, too.
The film also talks about religion and the role it plays in gender norms. The women still pray at the meeting and one of the women says that leaving the colony is an act of faith. It’s interesting because when I was growing up the only idea of fundamentalism was a magazine cover of an Iranian woman with her nose cut off by the Taliban, but this movie showed that religious fundamentalism can happen anywhere, even in a country like the United States of America where we talk about freedom of religion and freedom of speech. When I was watching this movie with my friends, they made a point during a scene in the film where a man rides around in a truck and calls out for the women to leave their homes because they are taking the 2010 U.S. census. I thought the men were actually taking the census but then someone I was watching the movie with interpreted the U.S. census truck as a setup by one of the men in the colony, and that when the two girls approached the man in the truck and told them their ages, they were being set up. When the older women hear the truck blasting “Daydream Believer” by The Monkees, they don’t open the doors and don’t go outside in order to protect themselves from potentially being attacked. Another issue they talk about is what would happen if the women fought back against their abusers. It reminded me of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. In the book Lisbeth Salander gets revenge on her rapist in the most violent way possible, and earlier in Women Talking Salome (played by Claire Foy) is shown getting revenge on one of the attackers. Salome stands by her decision to stay and fight, while others talk about forgiving the men and leaving the colony. The discussion leaves a lot of food for thought, like what would the movie had been like if the women stayed in the colony and fought against their attackers?
It was also pretty powerful because Salome has August keep the minutes he took during the meetings so that he could share them with his students, who are all boys. So that they can learn about the repeated trauma these women faced in this colony, and so that they can unlearn these toxic ideas of masculinity and how to treat women. It reminded me of a couple of PSAs I saw from the Ad Council. These commercials came out in the early 2000s but I think they are still relevant today. There was one I saw a while ago, in which a boy and his father are out eating at a diner with the boy’s friends and they are having fun at first, but then they hear the couple behind them arguing, and the man screams at his wife and starts beating her in the restaurant. The father finds himself conflicted in that moment about whether to intervene or do nothing, and sits in pained silence while the man beats his wife. The scene cuts to the son’s pained expression after witnessing what just happened, and the screen reads that now is the time for men to teach their sons that violence against women is wrong. Because if the men don’t teach their sons this, then the men may grow up to be like the man in the restaurant beating the woman. The commercial left me with chills. Another powerful ad showed young boys going up to grown men and asking the grown men if they could teach them how to respect women. The first boy approaches a mailman and tells him he needs clarification since he has been getting mixed messages about violence against women. The second boy asks his uncle how he can grow up to respect women if he has such lousy male role models who don’t teach him to respect women. The last boy approaches a middle-aged man on the basketball court and asks him if he can reshape his attitude towards women.
I reflected on these commercials because around the time the #MeToo movement was gaining more traction on social media, an ad by Gillette, a famous men’s shaving razor and personal care company, kicked off a campaign addressing toxic ideas around manhood that have been perpetuated in society for years, and how men can unlearn these ideas and take action to treat women with respect and teach their sons how to respect women. It was in response to multiple allegations of sexual harassment against influential male figures in the media, and how sexual harassment also happens in daily life as well, and how men can change the narrative of masculinity by unlearning traditional ideas of manhood. The ad, titled “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be,” opens with grown men each looking in the mirror as the voices of news reporters talk about bullying, the #Me Too movement and sexual harassment. The screen cuts to an older Gillette ad where the slogan was “The Best a Man Can Get” and suddenly it shows a group of boys breaking through the screen and chasing after another boy, and then a distressed mom is hugging her son as his texts blow up with demeaning messages from the bullies calling him “freak,” “loser” and other derogatory names, and as the other boys continue to chase the boy through their living room. The scene cuts to a group of boys watching shows where men catcall and sexually harass women, showing how these young men are getting mixed messages about sexual violence from the media they consume and may think it’s a joke for a man in a sitcom to grab a woman’s butt without her consent. The audience watching these sitcoms, many of them men, are laughing and thinking it’s funny to watch, and then it cuts to an executive at a corporation speaking over his female colleague and her hurt expression. Then it shows boys fighting each other at a barbeque and instead of breaking the boys up, the dads all keep grilling their meats and chuckling as they all say in unison “Boys will be boys.” Then the tone changes, when several reporters report on allegations of sexual harassment and abuse against women. The audience stops laughing and watches silently and then the ad shows men who take action to teach their friends how sexual harassment is wrong. It shows men preventing their male friends from catcalling women and real-life videos of men, young and old, learning respect and tolerance not just for women but for each other. A dad runs over with his young son when he sees the earlier mentioned boy running from school bullies, and intervenes, and one of the dads at the barbeque intervenes and breaks up the two boys fighting. The ad ends when the boy sees his dad asking the boy being bullied if he is ok, and then it shows different boys looking into the camera as the narrator says that the boys watching today will be the men of tomorrow. The ads ends with a caption saying that only when we challenge ourselves to do more that we can get closer to our best, meaning that when men hold each other accountable for perpetuating violence against women or outdated gender norms that keep women oppressed, society will get better. This ad was similar to the Ad Council ones because it showed that men need to teach their sons to respect and value women and others and unlearn a lot of their own biases against gender. It reminded me again of when I was watching the movie 42 and there is a scene where Jackie Robinson (played by the late Chadwick Boseman) is about to hit the ball and a white man is with his son, and he starts yelling racial epithets at Jackie from the bleachers. The son pauses and doesn’t know what to do but then because he sees his dad doing it, he thinks that he needs to shout the N-word at Jackie too, so he joins his dad in screaming racial epithets at Jackie. I had a very surface-level perception of the scene, which was that it was shocking, but then my professor explained that it wasn’t shocking because white children at the time were taught that racism and discrimination against Black people was okay, so it took work for white people to unlearn this racist ideology they grew up with. In short, they weren’t born racist, they were taught to be racist. Similarly, the boys in the Mennonite community could have learned from their fathers that inflicting sexual violence on the colony women was okay, but August took responsibility for his role as a man in the community and decided to teach his young male students about the importance of consent and respect for women. One of the issues the women debate about is whether to just take their daughters with them when they leave the colony or to take their sons as well. One thing I had to remember is that the boys in the colony also experienced severe psychological trauma from learning about the ongoing sexual violence against these women, and so I would be curious to know how they navigated this trauma in their later years, because what happened in the colony was horrific and traumatic and it left scars on pretty much everyone who lived in it.
This film definitely impacted me in so many ways, and it has stuck with me well after watching it. When Sarah Polley, the film’s director, won the Academy Award this year for Best Adapted Screenplay for Women Talking, my family and I celebrated because we thought the movie was so powerful. It would have been a shame if it didn’t go home with any awards because it is definitely worth a watch.
Women Talking. 2022. Directed by Sarah Polley. 1h 44 m. Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content including sexual assault, bloody images, and some strong language.
Last week I watched a movie called The Killing of a Sacred Deer. I had been meaning to watch it for a while and saw the trailer, and it looked really good. I also love A24 movies and this one is an A24 film. It reminded me of this previous movie I watched that was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos called The Lobster. For those who haven’t seen it yet, The Lobster is about a dystopian society where single people need to find a partner within a specific period of time or else be turned into an animal of their choice. It’s really bleak and sad but it made a really good social commentary about how society has stigmatized being single. In The Lobster, Colin Farrell stars as the main character, who needs to find a companion before he gets turned into an animal. I really wanted to watch The Killing of a Sacred Deer because a week ago I watched The Banshees of Inishirin, which stars the same actors Colin Farrell and Barry Keoghan, and I really loved their acting in The Banshees of Inishirin so I was excited to find out they were in a previous movie together.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer is disturbing, but the acting was incredible and I really loved the music score. The music score gives the movie its intensity. The movie is about a cardiologist named Steven who performs open-heart surgery at the beginning of the movie. Word of advice: if you are not squeamish, keep your eyes open. If you are, keep them closed for the first minute of the movie. To be honest, I closed my eyes at first but then somehow I opened them and was able to stomach watching the surgery. It was hard to watch, but then again, many people have had to get open heart surgery so this probably won’t be the last time I see a movie with an open-heart surgery scene or have to even witness an open-heart surgery myself in real life. Over the course of the movie, Steven gets to know a teenage boy named Martin, whose father died while Steven was performing heart surgery on him, but he realizes that Martin’s behavior towards him and the family is off and as the movie progresses it becomes clear that Martin is out to avenge his father’s death. At first he gives nice gifts to Steven’s children, Bob and Kim, and has casual conversations with them. He even invites Steven over to meet his mom, but soon Steven realizes that Martin and his mom lack boundaries. This is seen when Steven is at Martin and his mom’s house, and they are watching Groundhog Day. Even though Steven insists he needs to go home to his family because it is getting late, Martin and his mother insist on him staying to watch the movie with them. When Martin goes into his bedroom, Steven and Martin’s mother are alone, and Martin’s mother comments on how smooth and beautiful Steven’s hands look, and then she suddenly grabs his hands and starts touching them inappropriately. He leaves and even though Martin’s mother wants him to stay, Steven abruptly leaves because Martin’s mother crossed the line by initiating that kind of inappropriate contact.
Martin shows up unexpectedly to Steven’s office and tells Steven he has a pain in his heart, and that it’s the same heart pain that his father suffered with before he died during surgery. He is very upfront with Steven about his father’s death, that his father’s life could have been saved during the surgery because he was healthy, but that Steven didn’t save him. He says all this in a very calm collected tone, which I think is what makes the film so disturbing to watch. None of the characters in the film, except for Steven, who loses his shit rightfully so because his family is falling apart all because one kid is getting revenge on all of them, show much emotion. It’s like they are hypnotized to be numb and not show emotion. This is how viewing The Lobster felt for me. The characters show little to no emotion and they pretty much resign themselves to their fate and are really depressed and emotionally numb, even when the people around them are suffering. It was also pretty scary to watch Kim and Bob suffer the symptoms Martin told Steven they would suffer because Steven killed Martin’s dad in the surgery. Kim and Bob lose mobility in their legs, they lose their appetites and they bleed from their eyes. (I thought the bleeding was going to be gratuitous blood, but it wasn’t super scary. Then again, we all have different levels of comfort. I may not be able to stand supernatural horror film levels of blood but somehow I could stand this movie) When Anna, Steven’s wife, tries to give Bob something to eat (a donut) at the hospital, Bob refuses it and Steven, who is freaking out about what is happening to his son, tries to force Bob to eat the donut, but because Bob is experiencing the symptom of losing his appetite, he spits it out and complains he isn’t hungry. Because they lost mobility in their limbs, Kim and Bob have to crawl on their stomachs through the house on their elbows. At the hospital, when Steven tries to lift Bob and get him to stand up, Bob collapses again, and Steven threatens him and tells him to cut out all his nonsense, but Bob insists that he is not playing around and that he literally cannot stand up on his own because he is paralyzed in his limbs.
The music was pretty nerve-wracking because it sounded like a helicopter crashing overhead and it kept getting louder and softer, softer and louder, and each time it built my heart raced because it was building up to one disturbing scene after the next. I also thought about the theme of revenge and forgiveness. Martin had such a rough time after his father died, and so I can see why he found it incredibly hard to forgive Steven for what he did. But also Steven’s family suffered immensely and it’s like Martin was bringing up in the family all these deeply held insecurities that they wanted to keep hidden under their perfect suburban family life. When he meets with Steven, Martin tells him he needs to sacrifice one of his family members or else the kids will be cursed with the symptoms of paralysis, loss of appetite, eyes bleeding and death. He delivered it pretty quickly to Steven, and of course Steven is thinking, This kid is nuts, but as the movie continues it becomes clear how Martin is pretty dead serious about getting revenge on Steven’s family.
To be honest, this reached my threshold of scary. I don’t normally watch scary movies, and the only ones I have seen are Get Out and It Comes at Night, yet for some reason I could sit through this movie and not have to close my eyes multiple times. I closed my eyes during a few scenes but for the most part I felt more disturbed and depressed than jumpy and excited, which I would feel after watching a scary movie that involved things like killer clowns, possessed dolls/ children or exorcisms (which is why I steer clear of those films because I don’t want nightmares.) I don’t typically watch scary stuff because I don’t enjoy jump scares, but there weren’t any jump scares in this movie, just a slowly building suspense and disturbing story. I think that’s why it’s so scary and why it was so scary for me to watch. I had a rehearsal to go to after watching the movie, and it was a pretty heavy movie so it sat with me and I ended up not talking and just being quiet for the next thirty minutes while I drove to the rehearsal because I couldn’t stop thinking about how disturbing the movie was. But honestly, what I loved most was the visuals and the acting. The way the camera focuses in and out was somehow very masterful and unique. It was the same camera focus I saw in The Lobster and somehow it just really appealed to me as I was watching the film. Also I really loved Barry Keoghan and Colin Firth’s acting. It’s really cool that they starred in The Banshees of Inishirin together.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer. 2017. Rated R for disturbing violent and sexual content, some graphic nudity and language.
I heard so much about this movie, and as a classical cellist I really wanted to see this movie, especially because it is about a female conductor and I haven’t seen many movies like that. Cate Blanchett acted the hell out of her role, and I could not help but bob my head to all of the pieces that Lydia Tar conducted. I especially loved it when Olga played the Elgar Cello Concerto in E Minor since that is one of my favorite pieces, and loved it when Tar conducted “Adagietto” from Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler. I remember playing it in high school during my last year and it was really special to play that movement because it is so powerful and gives me goosebumps. It literally tugs at my heartstrings each time I hear it.
The film brings to light a lot of the issues in the classical music world. It takes place in the present day and writer Adam Gopnik is interviewing Lydia Tar, a well-renowned conductor of a major orchestra in Berlin. She has all these accomplishments and runs a tight ship, but things get messy when allegations come out against Lydia after Krista Taylor, one of the participants in the program she runs for aspiring female conductors, commits suicide. Lydia alternates between New York City and Germany, where she lives with her wife Sharon and their daughter, Petra. Tar is a perfectionist and sets these incredibly high standards for success and this drives her to alienate the people around her, most of all her wife. When a young cellist named Olga auditions for the orchestra, Tar is immediately entranced and finds herself feeling attracted to the cellist. This puts a strain on her relationship with Sharon because Sharon sees Lydia’s growing attraction to Olga, and with the growing allegations against Lydia, Sharon and Francesca distance themselves from her.
There is a scene in the movie where Tar is giving Olga a ride back to her place, and Olga shows her a small teddy bear that she keeps with her. It is adorable, and Olga accidentally leaves it in Tar’s car. Tar finds Olga forgot the bear and she goes through the entranceway, which is really just a maze of graffitied buildings, and looks all over for Olga but cannot find her. If I were her, I would be so freaked out to be in that isolated area all by myself, especially because there is a rather vicious looking dog that is staring straight at Tar and Tar keeps running through the series of buildings looking for Olga but cannot find her. Then she finally finds her way back to her car, but on the way out of the entrance she trips on the hard concrete steps and falls flat on her face, which leaves her with some pretty nasty cuts and bruises to her body. She comes to rehearsal the next day and everyone is quietly aghast, but no one wants to be that person who says aloud, “What happened to you?” Tar sees their horrified looks and chuckles to herself in her Tar way, and tells them with a frustrated expression what happened. She doesn’t mention she was trying to find Olga, and instead afterwards gives Olga her bear. Olga probably didn’t want Lydia to find where she lived.
Another key scene occurs earlier in the movie. Francesca doesn’t want Lydia to find out that she had been corresponding via email to Krista before Krista’s suicide, and so Lydia asks Francesca to fetch her a cup of matcha tea. Francesca reluctantly goes, and when she leaves the room, Lydia sneaks over to Francesca’s laptop and looks in her email inbox and finds that Francesca never deleted her correspondence with Krista, even though she was instructed to end correspondence with her and delete the emails. When Francesca comes back, Lydia doesn’t mention she was snooping in her email inbox and asks her about whether she got rid of the emails between her and Krista.
This film also touches on the growing awareness of how white classical music canon is, and how to navigate these spaces as people of color. During a master class at Julliard, Lydia talks about the genius of Bach and one of the students, Max, says as a pangender person of color they don’t see themselves represented in the music they are working on because all of the composers are white cis-gendered men. Lydia gets offended by this, and asks the student why they are even in the master class to begin with. She humiliates the student in front of their peers, and even though Max listens to her berate them, they finally gathers their things and leaves and cusses her out. She tells Max if they wants to dance the mask, they must service the composer and also sublimate their ego and their identity. On the one hand, I understand she was trying to get the student to understand that as a conductor they is going to be subject to a lot of criticism and critics won’t care that they wants more diversity of composers, and that even though the composers are white, they can still find expression in the music. In fact, she tells they that they needs to focus on the music rather than the lack of diversity of the composers whose music they are playing.
However, I can also see it from the student’s perspective. In 2020 with the killings of George Floyd and other Black people in America and around the world, and the global reckoning with centuries of systemic racism, genocide, and colonialism, the world of classical music came under fire for its racist past. When I had an Instagram account in 2020 I followed found a lot of posts detailing BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) classical musicians’ experiences with microaggressions and racist insults while working in the field of classical music. I can’t lump together everyone’s experiences with racism, but it’s fair to say that there have been quite a few instances of racism that people of color have faced in classical music. For example, historically operas have featured white singers in blackface and yellowface, and it wasn’t until I went on social media that I started hearing more people discuss how problematic this tradition has been for many years. While I saw Madame Butterfly in the tenth grade thinking it was okay that a white opera singer put on yellowface, I am more aware that this is not okay. I became especially more aware of this when I read a story in one of the newspapers about a famous European opera singer who put on blackface for her role in an opera called “Aida” and how she faced a ton of backlash because more people had become aware that blackface is not okay even if that’s how people have done the role for years. The movie doesn’t take a side in whether Max or Lydia was right in how they approached race and identity in classical music, but it did make me just think about the ongoing conversations around how orchestras are addressing diversity and race.
I’m also ambivalent about Tar’s statement that to serve the composer, one needs to sublimate their identity. On one hand, the music is there and people need to play it and go home, so there’s the job of conducting that needs to get done. But also, as the film continues, Lydia literally loses her sense of self when she achieves all this success as a conductor, and she gets to the point where her work and getting ahead of everyone else is the only thing that matters in life. She doesn’t sublimate her ego; instead, over the course of the movie, she manipulates people, puts people down and also suffers inside because she feels everyone is against her and she is also incredibly frustrated that no one is living up to her extreme expectations. As a perfectionist myself, I can relate in the sense that a lot of times when playing the music my ego would get so wrapped up in winning the audition or trying to prove the people around me wrong that I ended up suffering deeply as a result because I was so wrapped up in my own self that I couldn’t embrace anything less than failure. I think that’s why having a spiritual practice like Buddhism helped because it was a reminder that yes, working hard is important, but everyone is working hard, not just me, and that yes, I need to work hard for my dreams but I also need to appreciate the people in my life and not treat them like my personal servants to my art and ego. One time, in 2016, I auditioned for a professional orchestra. I was coming straight out of college and didn’t even have a music degree, but I thought, If I just practice, practice, practice, then I will win. But I became so focused on winning the audition that I burned out and started neglecting the things in my daily life I needed to take care of, like cleaning my room, doing dishes, vacuuming. I would practice for three hours straight and not take breaks, and I would get easily frustrated every time I made a mistake and use that as an excuse to beat myself up. So it’s no wonder that on the day of the audition, I had no energy to even get out of bed because I had just run myself ragged by cramming in so much music at one time. Wrapping up my ego in my dreams also affected how I viewed work in general. I felt that having a day job wasn’t like having a music dream job, and that if I just ran away to New York City to chase my dreams and perform with a prestigious orchestra and make lots of money I would finally be happy. But when I didn’t meet those expectations I set for myself, I literally lost it. I threw tantrums at work and at home, I got easily upset at the littlest things (I’m still working on changing that behavior to be honest), and if it didn’t have to do with my music career, I didn’t care. But I realized that in doing so, I was blocking out the people in my life who mattered, the people in my life who kept me down to earth. I had to understand over time, too, that even if I have a successful music career, in any field you work in, you have to work together with people, and some people you may get along with well, and others not so much. I can be successful but if I’m only focused on serving my own ego, I can’t expand my capacity as a musician because I have so much to learn from different perspectives. In reality, having a music career involves not just being talented at playing your instrument, but also being good at teamwork since I’m going to play music in many ensembles with people. I don’t know what it’s like for people who play in professional orchestras or conduct professionally, but it definitely seems that like anywhere else, you have to work well with other people and can’t just focus on yourself.
The Arts Are Life 