EVERYBODY HURTS
Saw the Life Before Her Eyes yesterday and felt as though I'd been served a snack rather than a meal. Last week I saw the first 35 minutes and had to leave, but I was so compelled I went back when I actually had to PAY. I wish I had waited for the DVD release. After about the first 45 minutes the movie repeats itself and at the end we found ourselves asking "what happened?" "Whose life was it?" "Who died?" "How much is actual memory and how much is supposition?" "What did the flowers, the water, the child etc actually symbolize?"
I won't give away the ending, but is not like Psycho in which Tony Perkins is his own mother or The Sixth Sense in which Bruce Willis is already dead. It is much fuzzier than that, and I don't just mean the photography. I got the feeling "school shootings are bad." Ironically, two people were shot in a DC school this week. Neither of the robberies I experienced firsthand were nearly as bad as what was shown in the film, but it has brought some uncomfortable memories to the surface. Some critics compare the film to Sophie's Choice, which I found extremely overrated -- Sophie couldn't HELP her first major choice, the one which fucked up her life forever, and I thought her second major choice was stupidly made. But I digress. Neither Evan Rachel Wood nor Eva Amurri really seem to have much of a choice, the final scene in the bathroom seems to more a matter of bad luck than conscious decision.
Unfortutnately, the movie is also a celebration of victimhood. Fifteen, count 'em fifteen years have passed and there is a plastic banner with the victims' names printed on it over the school door. Unfortunately, you can't read them, so you can't see who exactly died and you never find out what happened to the shooter. There is a statue of a boy and girl and a flame similar to the one at President Kennedy's grave, musicians ready to play and special seating the for survivors -- you almost get the feeling you're at a class reunion, or a homecoming or something like that. You wonder whether people's time, money and energy might have been better spent in 1) comforting the survivors, including victims' families and 2) Ensuring that such a thing never happens again.
The ending is rather bleak -- a present-day student asks Uma Thurman if she is a survivor, and Uma answers "no." Does that mean there WERE no survivors, even among the living? That like nuclear war, the survivors would envy the dead? Kind of like the nurse at NIH who told me I wasn't "damaged" enough to take part in a PTSD clinical trial. Everyone's a victim, but I am able to hold a job, am able to maintain something resembling a social life and haven't tried to take my own life. Or anyone else's. Which is a good thing.
I won't give away the ending, but is not like Psycho in which Tony Perkins is his own mother or The Sixth Sense in which Bruce Willis is already dead. It is much fuzzier than that, and I don't just mean the photography. I got the feeling "school shootings are bad." Ironically, two people were shot in a DC school this week. Neither of the robberies I experienced firsthand were nearly as bad as what was shown in the film, but it has brought some uncomfortable memories to the surface. Some critics compare the film to Sophie's Choice, which I found extremely overrated -- Sophie couldn't HELP her first major choice, the one which fucked up her life forever, and I thought her second major choice was stupidly made. But I digress. Neither Evan Rachel Wood nor Eva Amurri really seem to have much of a choice, the final scene in the bathroom seems to more a matter of bad luck than conscious decision.
Unfortutnately, the movie is also a celebration of victimhood. Fifteen, count 'em fifteen years have passed and there is a plastic banner with the victims' names printed on it over the school door. Unfortunately, you can't read them, so you can't see who exactly died and you never find out what happened to the shooter. There is a statue of a boy and girl and a flame similar to the one at President Kennedy's grave, musicians ready to play and special seating the for survivors -- you almost get the feeling you're at a class reunion, or a homecoming or something like that. You wonder whether people's time, money and energy might have been better spent in 1) comforting the survivors, including victims' families and 2) Ensuring that such a thing never happens again.
The ending is rather bleak -- a present-day student asks Uma Thurman if she is a survivor, and Uma answers "no." Does that mean there WERE no survivors, even among the living? That like nuclear war, the survivors would envy the dead? Kind of like the nurse at NIH who told me I wasn't "damaged" enough to take part in a PTSD clinical trial. Everyone's a victim, but I am able to hold a job, am able to maintain something resembling a social life and haven't tried to take my own life. Or anyone else's. Which is a good thing.
posted by Numerologist at 11:58 PM
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