🧵Thursday Thread: Quick, quick! Name a film (or two) that left a deep impression on you recently, and why?

Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams. It's a language made of image." ~Frederico Fellini

Happenings & Other Stuff

Friends! Visceral Self: Writing Through the Body starts next week, and we have a few dates to note if you are a founding member or plan to become one (you can manage/upgrade your membership here). Also, for all paid members, we’ll be hosting some impromptu silent group writes on Zoom (times tbd week of ).

Meanwhile, mark your calendars; we’re excited to gather & write with you!

🗓️ Wednesday April 3, 8 - 8:30 PM Central Time, Live Candlelight Yoga Nidra Meditation on Zoom for Founding Members (Zoom link sent via email an hour ahead)

🗓️ 🕯️Wednesday May 1, 8 PM CT, Live Candlelight Meditation on Zoom (Zoom link sent via email an hour ahead)

🗓️ 🕯️Wednesday June 12, 8 PM CT, Candlelight Meditation on Zoom (Zoom link sent via email an hour ahead)

🗓️ 🕯️Friday June 21, 1 PM CT, Celebratory Live Solstice Salon on Zoom (Zoom link sent via email an hour ahead)

Movies—”moving pictures”—have so much to teach us about storytelling.

And while I don’t see as many movies as I wish I did, there were two films I watched while at the Gulf this year that really stuck with me.

One, Past Lives, made both

Billie Oh

and me cry so much that we are still talking about it on and off, weeks later. Such a gorgeous meditation on the path not taken, on love that briefly was, that could have been, but that never fully became. It was about country and culture and identity and past selves, but also about what it means to love the whole of someone in the present moment, the parts of ourselves that can never be known, and what it can mean when the person we’re with needs to comfort us over the person we cannot be with. It was so tender and beautiful. Sure, on the surface it was about a childhood sweetheart coming back around. But it was about so much more than that.

Another, Anatomy of a Fall, was, in a word, breathtaking. As Pam Houston, a writer I greatly admire, said on Facebook yesterday, “[T]he film that made the biggest impression on me by far this year was Anatomy of a Fall. I have maybe never seen a more deftly rendered example of what it means to be a successful female artist, the compromises, the diffidence, the resolve. Sure there is the murder mystery, which takes care of the plot, and makes room for all the subtlety. I can’t stop thinking about Sandra Hüller’s performance. And if we are talking about the quality of the writing…it’s thrillingly precise. This film actually did what so many people said Barbie did, or what so many people wanted Barbie to have done. It was actually deeply and thoroughly about a smart and talented woman.” I would add to Pam’s account that Anatomy of a Fall also takes an unflinching look at the implosion of a marriage. Again, breathtaking.

Also, the dog! The dog in Anatomy of a Fall could not have been a more integral and emotive element of the storytelling. That dog teaches us to always make the details count, to never let a detail be “frosting.” So, so good. When that dog lies down in the snow in grief, it is such a powerful example of showing emotion five degrees to the left so that we can feel the feeling rather than turn away from it, and a perfect study of deft cliche avoidance. It’s a moment that’s earned, because we’ve already come to see and know the dog in his family and with his boy.

From both Past Lives and Anatomy of a Fall, I learned so much about storytelling and writing. I loved these films, and I grew from them as a human and artist.I could name a few hyped films that did not move me, but that’s for another conversation. Instead, I’ll say that there are two films still on my must-watch list—Killers of the Flower Moon and The Zone of Interest.

In this light, this week’s Thread: which moving pictures moved you lately, and why? The movie does not need to be recent, by the way. It can be an old movie that you recently watched. (This is the first year in a long, long time that I had seen a good number of the films nominated for Oscars, mainly because they let us buy them to stream. That’s a nice option these days.)

Anyway, let’s make a big, beautiful robust list of recommendations, just like in our books thread—and, later, Billie and I will add these recs lists to our archive.

Love,
Jeannine

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