Tag: New York

LEARNING TO DRIVE (2015) movie review

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cq5dam.web.620.398Always begin with the seatbelt.

Cheated on, accused, stolen from, betrayed.  This far too common grief story gives a new spin on surviving the traumas caused by adultery. Then, in a parallel grief story, played beautifully by Ben Kingsley, an Indian immigrant faces difficulties living in New York in a post 9/11 world. Spit on, screamed at, forced out, wounded.maxresdefaultTwo broken people find themselves together behind the wheel as driving lessons parallel life on the road to healing. The process takes time. Each lesson trains the two to take risks but to watch carefully as they build an unlikely friendship. He forces her to continue on while her bravery in that forward movement shows him how to live. It is mutual though not at first. Brilliant, very real writing. Art and life can be a sad story, but perhaps this one will help someone who is going through similar traumas see through to cross the bridge of grief.LTDPatricia Clarkson is an incredible actress, one who can tell a story by showing not telling. Characters usually lie first. How are you? I’m fine. The truth is in the eyes. Her character is trying to piece her life back together while constantly starting over. Well meaning people ask with that tone if she’s going to be all right. The fact that they know to ask when she hasn’t told them anything is a new punishment. Each day a new ordeal. Each day forced to face another side of herself.635646439787237020-XXX-LEARNING-DRIVE-MOV-JY-5578-72328298Kingsley’s character, the gentleman protector, still runs from his past but lives out the prison-like punishment of loneliness and sorrow. He fears re-entering a world that daily rejects him.1280x720-LG8Rated R for language and sex, this film shows honestly the miserable struggle of ending a 30 year marriage. It also does not glaze over the hideous truths about racial discrimination still going on in America. This film refuses to accuse or blame. Instead, it show how our main characters have the potential within themselves to commit the same crimes of unfaithfulness and of prejudice committed against them. The potential is within all of us. We are all also capable of forgiveness and redemption. So, doing the hard work of choosing what is good and right despite temptation sets heroes apart from the villains in the end.learning

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE (2012) movie review

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EXTREME  stream of consciousness:

thrust, pain, 9 – 11, wander, wonder, fall and falling, alone to wander, never swing, sell, consume, buy, drink, speak! scream, play, sell, cry, dust, play, spell, chart, graph, organize, know, hear, listen, speak, spell, sell, know, known, No.

LOUD  contrasts:

I stop in NYC on a busy street and hear a buzz of voices, traffic, horns, businesses, etc. There is no real quiet in the city. It’s the price you pay for city life. Some love it.

The blunt contrast is my Uncle’s farm on the prairie in Minnesota. Stop and stand there in the tall grass of that dark earthy place and stay long enough, you’ll hear the wind moving the grass, crickets, and perhaps the distant freeway.

I think this film is about Asperger’s syndrome. It could have coincided with any tragedy in a boy’s life, but in this case, 9 – 11 in New York offers setting, a mere marker on a map to anchor the boy’s quest for illumination.

INCREDIBLE performances:

I’m shocked that the boy, Thomas Horn, (winner of the 2012 Kids Week on Jeopardy) wasn’t recognized by the academy for this genius performance. He shows the inner struggle perfectly – the irony of the why in grief. Responses to grief are as unique in execution as speech: individualistic in  dialects, accents, cultural biases, colloquial norms.  We do not have answers for questions like why people die and why it hurts. We cannot explain it to adults, let alone children. We are all learning how to help one another. And young Oskar Schell, despite the unique way that he sees the world, carrying his tambourine into the living rooms of strangers, will not find answers either.

CLOSE-ups:

This film plays like a hymn. Four or five verses with a similar melody, without choruses to break up the consistency. It perhaps needed a chorus or two. The consistency of tension and grief in this film is exhausting. I suppose it enforces a new empathy for a syndrome that requires monotony, routine, pattern, and sameness. I do love the scenes with Max von Sydow. He is precious, beloved.

My favorite verse in this hymn is a scene that sums up the whole film.  The boy visits Viola Davis, asks for iced coffee, and throws out elephant facts as she cries. He takes her picture even after she says no.

I love parallel moments in film, and when he finally breaks and asks a stranger for forgiveness, I am broken too. This film does have the power to move people, to help us see strangers as people of stories and loss and hope, like us. It helps us relate to those we cannot hope to understand. It give us hope to see and swing and laugh and live another day.