But I couldn't wait and I found the short story on the Internet in a RTF (Rich Text Format) file.
One of my favorite lines from a movie comes from Meryl Streep in
Postcards from the Edge:
"Instant gratification takes too long!"I read the short story online too, only after I saw the movie. I didn't really connect to the background noise about the movie until after I saw it. I knew I wanted to see it, but was spending January trying to angle a good time to catch the new
Harry Potter movie, a series I am quite fond of. Besides, I don't go into "I must know everything about this movie" until after I see it. If I had seen the forum activity before I saw the movie, I would have thought people were going
Star Trek-nutty analyzing every frame of film.
I read the story on January 7, 2006 and immediately started journaling about it to try and find WHY this story has hit me so hard. I have been in Psychotherapy since 1989 and I haven't cried this much since my mom died right in front of me in 1988. My illness restricts my ability to travel so I had to wait until January 23, 2006 to see the film for the first time in a theater that was close enough for me to travel to. I was glad that the theater was filled with just a few people, women mostly. I probably missed half of the visuals because I couldn't see the screen through my tears. Ultimately, I have seen the film 5 times. I can't go anymore because my attempts to stifle my crying have become audible enough to irritate anyone around me. I can't wait for the DVD to come out. I pre-ordered it as soon as I read Annie's story.
First, I cannot imagine what kind of challenges you have had to endure over these past years, and I send you as much strength as I can, and it's for folks like you that this place was created for. You are not alone. I want this to be a place you can count on coming to to share your feelings and finding a caring audience to do our best to help you through them.
Second, I think reactions like you have shared (in common with lots of people) just underlines and confirms my premise that it's not the film alone that is provoking this kind of response - it's the film's amazing efficiency at dragging all of the baggage we've stored away inside ourselves right to the surface and then just lays it bare. All that hard work trying to ignore the bad stuff in our lives, convincing ourselves we can deal with it later, is literally left exposed and we are all shocked by it. Many of us don't know why so we keep going back again and again looking for nuances, reasons, answers... ANYTHING to help us cope.
But as I've said many times here, the answers to a lot of this aren't on the screen, they're inside us. So now we have to identify them, prioritize them, and learn to first cope and then manage and resolve them, if we can. With me personally, once I realized this, and began to take charge, my emotional state improved a great deal. Now it's not Jack or Ennis who are so important to me -- it's all of you guys here. You are all very real people, and each of your movies are still in progress and there's plenty of time to write the endings each of us wants to write.
The only film that I have seen more is "The Wizard of Oz" which I fell in love with when I was a small child. I have a fondness for classic movies so I have seen Casablanca and the ilk many times - but NOTHING IN THE WORLD has affected me so much since my mom died. I rarely go to modern movies. I don't like all of the cursing. And most modern movies don't have plots like the classic movies did.
I have a fondness for classic films myself - lots of mysteries, film noir, and even comedies from a more innocent era. I am probably one of the youngest fans out there for Angela Lansbury and never missed a
Murder, She Wrote episode. Woman faces the death of her husband, becomes a writer, and writes a whole new chapter for her life. I think part of the appeal for me is her character's independence and success. A lot of current movies are just rehashes of the same old tired formulas and, especially lately, have been just awful, relying more on special effects than on plot.
As for violence, try to sit through
Sin City sometime. That movie makes
Scarface look like
The Sound of Music. I have no idea how they'll ever be able to adapt that for television. We have a lot of graphic novels/comics coming to life as movies these days, but none of them impact on me emotionally at all, except maybe when they try to push the envelope a little further with graphic violence.
WOW was I wrong. The film hit her own psychogical issues with her late mother and her husband. On the way back home she "critiqued" it in a way that just crushed me. I told her to stop but she couldn't or wouldn't. I finally told her to stop the car and let me walk back to my apartment (a few blocks). I have had no contact with her since then. She called 3 times and emailed me but I just ignored it. I guess I in a state of emotional high maintenance that only my psychotherapist can help me get through.
Each of us is bound to have a different emotional reaction to this movie. Some of us are going to cry a lot and feel utterly exposed by the film, in a state of fragility where even the most inane comment can be like a dagger to our feelings. Others react to emotional pain by lashing out angrily, attacking the film as a defense mechanism in a desperate effort to bottle those exposed feelings back up. I can imagine if a significant other pushed one's buttons so many times that you just couldn't take it anymore, one could just smack the other person down. Hell, we saw Jack do exactly that to Ennis on their last meeting when Ennis just lost it and reacted initially by trying to hit Jack before he collapsed in tears on the ground.
We have to respect the individual responses each of us has to the film. We have to avoid perceiving slights as some attack on our own feelings about the movie. I had that reaction myself when a friend of mine trashed the movie. I took it personally. But then I realized I was better than that person anyway.
Seriously, I just got over it and decided that it wasn't appropriate for me to take those views personally. You should probably be willing to do the same. She may be contacting you to let you know she feels bad about what happened. Life is too short to throw away a friendship based on something like this. Nothing she says diminishes the validity of your feelings and passion for this film.
As I have said in other forums, I am Ennis and so was my dad.
Actually, just recognizing you are Ennis is the first step of not being Ennis.
If you're not happy being Ennis-like, you've already taken the first step by recognizing the issue and considering a change. Now we just have to find ways to help people take the next step... and then the next... and then the next after that.
