Film Review 2011 #04

"We thought we'd watch a film while you were away. Jennifer Aniston is my most favourite actress and we liked this film when we saw it on the plane.

"Actually we stopped watching it before the end and went to bed early. OhmyGOD that dog took a long time to die! We just got bored waiting".

Defining Features

  

To what extent do we define ourselves by the things that other people tell us? If we hear the same stories about ourselves often enough, they sound so familiar they start to have a ring of truth. And when they come from a voice of authority, they arrive even the first time we hear them with the stamp of firm fact rather the fluff of opinion to be taken or brushed aside.

Of these tales we hear, what do we decide and take on board and what do we ignore? Do some of them strike an immediate chord, so we allow them to strike home and set up residence in our definitions of ourselves? Or are they insidious, creeping under the carpets, fingering their way through the patches of soft mortar in our self-protection, winding their way in to our minds like poison ivy?

When you know a little bit about people, the truths they tell you about themselves don’t always seem to be quite right. It makes me wonder.

“I’m unlucky in love”, he frowned. Doomed to be unrequited and never get the girl I wanted. Did he believe his own story so much that he married a girl who wasn’t The Very Thing, having convinced himself that what he wanted was out of range? Did he meet the right girl, but still feel dissatisfied because if he had managed to snare her, she must by definition, be wrong?

“I’m never satisfied”, he said. And it became a self-fulfilling prophesy, as what he had never felt like it was enough, because he couldn’t recognise contentment when it wrapped its warm blanket around his soul.

“I’ve never really loved anyone, never been in love”, he confessed. He gave it lots of other words: infatuation, fondness, friendship, affection, respect, lust. Madness, even. A rose by any other name never smells quite as sweet, after all.

“I don’t love my stepson as if he were my own blood-child”, he told me. He didn’t expect to, because he was told he wouldn’t. Love only blossoms in your heart when you give it permission to grow, after all, when you acknowledge it and welcome it and nourish it.

“I’m hard to love”. Accepting this as fact, she has formed relationships with a series of men over her life who are (pick one or more from this list):

• Too logical and scientific to fall in love with anyone
•  Too much in love with themselves to give any of it away
•  Too convinced they can’t fall in love to consider the possibility
•  Too careful to run the risk of opening themselves up to a complicated love-affair
•  Too in love with someone else
•  Too shy to talk about their feelings

Is it possible to write new stories for oneself? I’m a writer, after all, how good would I have to be to convince myself? I know I have the power to convince other people to believe new stories about themselves – but only because these stories are true anyway.

Tell a man he’s fantastic in bed, and it makes him hard. Tell him he’s hard, and feel him get harder. Tell a man he’s interesting and he will open up and fascinate you with things he’s never talked about to anyone before. Tell a man he’s funny and he’ll relax and make you laugh.

Tell yourself you’re easy to love, though, and it’s still subject to supporting evidence. Isn’t it. No-one will fall in love with a darky, rusty, undersea machine. Better never to find out.

Isn’t it surprising the lengths that people will go to, to fit into their own story? Well, me at least.

Top Billing

I told the counsellor it was becoming ever more frustrating to me that I seem to play a bit-part in the Great Biopic Of Him, when I really should have my own movie. I think every woman should have the chance to be her own leading lady (I'm sure I've blogged about this before, there's a cheesy line about this in that cheesiest of girl-films, The Holiday).

I then realised. Oh god. "I think I have become Miss Melanie, when I always wanted to be Scarlett".

"Why is that a bad thing?" she asked.

"Melanie is soppy. She gets walked all over, she thinks the best of everyone and they let her down, and she's all mumsy".

"I think you're wrong", said the counsellor, thoughtfully. "Melanie is strong. She's calm and kind. She loves her family fiercely and she is loyal to her friends. She recognises that everyone is different and she allows them to be who they are. She is happy."

I am still pondering this. On the plus side, Scarlett has adventures and some horny sex with Rhett. She is fearless and beautiful. But she is troubled and flawed, always convinced that the next thing will give her what she wants. And she ends up lonely.

Maybe I should be Rhett Butler? Rich, sexy and able to make money regardless of the economic climate.

Barrier Method

It's about protection. I can't get hurt in here. It's lonely, frolicking around in a submarine all by yourself  - but it's very safe.

I'm a an optimistic, smiley person. Look, can you see me smiling? No, of course you can't. Not with the visor down.  I'm passionate, I'm sensitive.  Can you tell? Of course not.  I'm warm and friendly. Take me by my steely hand and listen to the mechanical tick-tick-tick of my artificial hand-grenade heart.

Blogging is one way of opening up, I suppose.

Although the tiny handful of people who can match the girl with the kitten are the ones who have managed to get close anyway. Its a tough job, getting to know me.  And in any case, why bother? I doubt I would merit that amount of endeavour. Inside the submarine, it's mostly hollow rattling around, and sitting by the window watching other people fearlessly forging meaningful connections, and appearing to survive the process.

I am trying to be honest, to be authentic, to be myself. It's hard though. And I'm worried that I'm actually just developing ever more sophisticated techniques to avoid making connections. Better safe than sorry?

In Between Days

If you know the songs, you know the girl.

Some people just get it. Some people just don't. I'm complicated  -  but so are all the interesting people. There's always a soundtrack running in my head. Sometimes I'm singing the songs, sometimes they're singing to me.

Utopiate

How likely is it, at our age, at this stage of life, that the best is yet to come?

Doesn't seem all that likely, does it. Although perhaps I am basing that on a bad combination of ageism and hunch.  Maybe we should interview some really old people, and see what they reckon.

But if the best has been and gone, is it worth bothering? Chasing dreams and following rainbows, wanting love and laughter, passion and adventure, is that crazy? Aren't we all supposed to be mellowing out by now, settling down with pipe and slippers and beginning in earnest the slow alcohol-blurred slide towards hazy blandness?

Well, I have news. I am still kicking.

It may be the final death-throes of my high spirit, but I am making an attempt to do some new stuff and refresh things. Because one thing I'm certain of is that the best of my life as it currently stands has been and gone. So I'd better go stand somewhere different.

How does this manifest itself? Well, the running, for a start. I'm up to 28 minutes a session now. Ponderously slow, but I can speed up as I get better.  I've signed up for an erotic fiction workshop, got another reading coming up and a poem coming out in an anthology next month. 

I am working with the Pet Poet on a new set of material which will include singing, dressing up and burlesque (yes, we're signing up to learn that too...) Boggling. I know. Our plan is a simple one: to develop a set of material to sell to festivals, then spend next summer lolling in tents and hobnobbing in the backstage areas of various muddy places.

I am thinking of signing up for some advanced driving lessons, and have two night-time sponsored walks coming up in the next two weeks. After that, walking plans include the Grand Union Canal, the Pilgrim's Way (with the Poet and a new set of Canterbury Tales written on the way), and then why not the Via Compostela, or the Appian Way?

Rage, rage against the dying of the light...