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FlickrReviews: Where the Wild Things Are; Me and You and Everyone We Know; and Myself
Actually reviewing these movies cannot do them justice. Both of them are bizarre and heart-rending and quirky and sweet and painful, and display a mastery of directing emotion and just plain showing humanity as it is that I am not sure I have ever seen anywhere else. See them; you will absolutely not regret.
This post is more about the things I and these movies have in common: Quirks; emotions; and a sense of rawness and the desire to close the distance.
Both the aforementioned movies are highly emotion-driven movies. Max and the Wild Things are emotions gone out of control, an intensity of feeling that both viewed and viewer have difficulty processing it's so bright and sharp. The characters of Me and You and Everyone We Know are having difficulty processing, but it's difficulty processing life: processing our little failures, our day-to-days, our lack of control over some things and the basic happinesses and sadnesses that codify existence. The characters all in their own ways speak of waiting for a world that's fantastic, of being ready to be amazed and confused, and do not know how to deal, except in the heat of the moment, with how amazing life really can be. And I think it's both those things—the extremes and the wonders of the day-to-day—that I've lately been letting myself miss.
I fight not to be this guy; the person who is spoken to by a movie, who reinvents himself via cinematic quotes and who swears on directors or authors the way others swear on the Bible. And yet, how much have I judged that because of media's capacity to sway my mood?
I won't give you the massive essay I was penning here for a little bit; it's long and it's maybe even a little too private. But the bottom line is that these movies spoke to the things in life I was letting myself miss—to the strangeness of reality, to the little beauties all around us, to the simple power of innocence and the basic bizarre loving insanity of human nature. You can call it Oedipal if you want, Lacanian, an effort to get back to the prelingual. You can drape the bones of it in whatever meat you want, put a little coat on it, make it dance around. The crux of it is the same: these movies have deeply moved me and made me consider things that I think, honestly, it was high time I considered.
I love the way these movies show emotion; what I need to do is let myself show it in my own work. I am good at emotion, but I could be better; and the same goes for weird. It's too easy, when writing about Fairyland and vampires, to forget that it's believable and enjoyable for your characters to eat ketchup on plain rice or to post little love notes to themselves on the fronts of their cabinets. I claim to write fantasy about humans; it's time I really focused on what I think humans are about.
But there's some stuff in there for my personal life, as well. Someone I read regularly on the Internet recently announced a major change to the way they live their lives, and I felt inspired. I don't have the room to mix it up the way she did, but I can build toward the life I want to lead, and I think that doing that more—fulfilling my New Year's resolution and then a few more steps after that—would be good for me. I style myself an artist, but I don't always feel like it; so it's time to do the things that do feel that way. I want to connect with the world around me; so it's time I decided to connect. I want adventure; it's time to put on the fedora.
It's time to Get Excited and Make Things again. It's time to wear clothes that make me feel comfortable and inspired, and to break out the trusty if damaged Palm Treo so I can try the Flickr 365 idea that I hear is going around. It's time to leave myself little notes around the house and to treat my work like a game I get to win every day at 6. It's time to eat healthy, to move, to study and to practice. It's time to base the triumphs of my life on a more expansive checklist than "ate today and didn't get fired and maybe wrote".
This is probably raw, and overly navel-gazing, and most likely in bad need of some editing; but now that it's done, post-movie post-thinking, I feel like putting it out in the Internet is exactly the right way to go. It's time to embrace life again and see if it sticks this time; it's time to set sail for adventure, and see if I can bang a coin on a lamppost enough to make the sun come up.
This post is more about the things I and these movies have in common: Quirks; emotions; and a sense of rawness and the desire to close the distance.
Both the aforementioned movies are highly emotion-driven movies. Max and the Wild Things are emotions gone out of control, an intensity of feeling that both viewed and viewer have difficulty processing it's so bright and sharp. The characters of Me and You and Everyone We Know are having difficulty processing, but it's difficulty processing life: processing our little failures, our day-to-days, our lack of control over some things and the basic happinesses and sadnesses that codify existence. The characters all in their own ways speak of waiting for a world that's fantastic, of being ready to be amazed and confused, and do not know how to deal, except in the heat of the moment, with how amazing life really can be. And I think it's both those things—the extremes and the wonders of the day-to-day—that I've lately been letting myself miss.
I fight not to be this guy; the person who is spoken to by a movie, who reinvents himself via cinematic quotes and who swears on directors or authors the way others swear on the Bible. And yet, how much have I judged that because of media's capacity to sway my mood?
I won't give you the massive essay I was penning here for a little bit; it's long and it's maybe even a little too private. But the bottom line is that these movies spoke to the things in life I was letting myself miss—to the strangeness of reality, to the little beauties all around us, to the simple power of innocence and the basic bizarre loving insanity of human nature. You can call it Oedipal if you want, Lacanian, an effort to get back to the prelingual. You can drape the bones of it in whatever meat you want, put a little coat on it, make it dance around. The crux of it is the same: these movies have deeply moved me and made me consider things that I think, honestly, it was high time I considered.
I love the way these movies show emotion; what I need to do is let myself show it in my own work. I am good at emotion, but I could be better; and the same goes for weird. It's too easy, when writing about Fairyland and vampires, to forget that it's believable and enjoyable for your characters to eat ketchup on plain rice or to post little love notes to themselves on the fronts of their cabinets. I claim to write fantasy about humans; it's time I really focused on what I think humans are about.
But there's some stuff in there for my personal life, as well. Someone I read regularly on the Internet recently announced a major change to the way they live their lives, and I felt inspired. I don't have the room to mix it up the way she did, but I can build toward the life I want to lead, and I think that doing that more—fulfilling my New Year's resolution and then a few more steps after that—would be good for me. I style myself an artist, but I don't always feel like it; so it's time to do the things that do feel that way. I want to connect with the world around me; so it's time I decided to connect. I want adventure; it's time to put on the fedora.
It's time to Get Excited and Make Things again. It's time to wear clothes that make me feel comfortable and inspired, and to break out the trusty if damaged Palm Treo so I can try the Flickr 365 idea that I hear is going around. It's time to leave myself little notes around the house and to treat my work like a game I get to win every day at 6. It's time to eat healthy, to move, to study and to practice. It's time to base the triumphs of my life on a more expansive checklist than "ate today and didn't get fired and maybe wrote".
This is probably raw, and overly navel-gazing, and most likely in bad need of some editing; but now that it's done, post-movie post-thinking, I feel like putting it out in the Internet is exactly the right way to go. It's time to embrace life again and see if it sticks this time; it's time to set sail for adventure, and see if I can bang a coin on a lamppost enough to make the sun come up.
posted by Tyler at
11:33 PM
1 Comments:
Wow. You go, Tyler. Yes, indeed. May the wind be always at your back....
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