I agree this film was beautiful. Like you said, for the pace, the sound, the acting, the minimalism... What was most powerful to me was its insistence on flipping the script on dis/ability. In general, if we are not a part of it directly or by extension, we have so little exposure to deafness and deaf culture. The ways that the pandemic has forced a lot more accessibility and exposure to access needs in our day to day has been important, but it's rare that people are thinking that an ASL interpreter is there for hearing folks (because we're the one's who don't know the language), you know? Part of the reason that deafness is such a rich culture is because of how much we've isolated deaf people, and I think about how so many who live long lives experience partial if not total deafness (it runs in my family, and my mother has profound hearing loss) but they don't get to benefit from that rich culture, their families don't adjust the way they communicate (or they just yell), and probably ASL rarely if ever comes into the picture. It is profoundly isolating for older adults when this happens. My mother has a Baja implant which is similar to a cochlear one, and this film helped me understand how distorted sounds must be for her, and how painful it is to be in large groups with background noise. There's so much to digest and think about re how we can better relate to deafness as a society. Thank you for highlighting it, Courtney!
I loved this remarkable film. It did such a good job conveying something of what it must feel like to lose your hearing, and Riz Ahmed's performance was superb.
As I child, I spent a lot of time with a deaf great-aunt. She lost her hearing in the influenza epidemic of 1918 when she was about a year old, so she never learned to speak. Her younger sisters and brothers all learned sign language and could communicate readily with her, but my grandmother, her eldest sister and guardian after their parents died, never learned to sign. Everyone in my immediate family communicated with Aunt Hazel in writing. We filled pages and pages of legal pads. The early scenes of the movie brought back those inadequate and frustrating efforts to communicate by writing everything out.
In her 60s, Hazel lost her eyesight due to glaucoma (this was the 1960s and 1970s when treatments for glaucoma were not terribly effective). At that point, she became truly isolated. She could cup her hand around the hand of a person who was finger-spelling and get the gist of a statement. She would also have you take her index finger and move it over the page as if it were a pen, and she would reply in writing that became increasingly impossible to read because she could not see the page. In these ways, she could carry on rudimentary conversations, but little with depth or nuance. She had a marvelous sense-of-humor, even in late life, but she also had a huge temper. I realize now the temper was the product of her constant frustration and anger, and she battled depression, also elements explored in the film.
She lived on her own with help from family and from a caregiver who came three times a week to clean, shop, and do some cooking, and she managed to function quite well day-to-day, but I realize now that she had to be terribly lonely and isolated. My grandmother made sure she learned to read Braille when her sight began to fail, and her only real entertainment/pastime at that point was reading Braille books. I don't know if you've ever seen them: each Braille edition is usually multi-volume and is embossed on big 11 x 17 pages. It's an ordeal just to hold the book.
You've made me think: did Hazel experience acceptance or resignation? Did this shift for her when she lost her sight? What did it mean to be almost completely locked inside her own head?
Yes, I loved it! Now I'm trying to think of other movies about acceptance because I'm with you -- it's big, heavy and necessary work. (I'm a therapist and 9 times out of 10 so much of our pain comes from trying so hard to avoid acceptance and the accompanying grief.) Racking my brain, I'd say Inside Out?
I watched it and I loved it. I couldn't put my finger on what felt hopeful about it, but I think it was that I felt relief in such a powerful way in that last scene. When he took out his implants and stopped striving to "fix" himself.
Movies about acceptance always disappointed me as a kid, I guess I had been sufficiently programmed to prefer a heroes journey. :) I had to think about this a lot, but I have a couple of suggestions!
1. Landline - firstly, this movie has an AMAZING cast. I watch anything involving Jenny Slate or either Duplass brother. The acceptance shown here is of one's family, the fact that your parents are just people who also fuck up, and of one's partner - that oftentimes, when you are with someone for a while, they no longer seem terribly exciting or overtly sexy.
2. Blue Jay - screenplay by Mark Duplass, starring Mark Duplass and Sarah Paulson (swoooon) (see above re: the Brother's Duplass). A very dialogue heavy movie taking place over 1 day, a la the Before trilogy. It's been a while since I watched this movie, but I remember it perfectly captured the feeling of reconnecting with "the one that got away," while reckoning with the realities of your current life that are making nostalgia for said person particularly compelling. Eventually, it's about accepting the life you have, rather than constantly thinking "what if?"
3. As I am writing this and thinking about Mark Duplass, I am also going to tack Paddleton on at the end of this rec. As a disclaimer, I have still not seen it, but the I know the premise and I won't be giving anything away (that you won't see from simply watching the trailer) by saying it's about acceptance - of death, or a loved one's end of life wishes, depending on which character's perspective is being adopted.
Sorry to be so long-winded. Let me know if you have already seen any of the above and what you thought if so! :)
I loved this film. Andrew Solomon's incredible book, Far From the Tree about parenting children who are different than we expected, is a 1000 page ode to acceptance.
I never realized how many books I read and movies I watched about people with disabilities. For the most part, they are all about letting go of preconceived notions and ultimately acceptance. I have see Sound of Metal, which was gritty and powerful. I would recommend watching Life Animated also. There are many, many others too.
Great thoughts. I wanted to add that I loved how this movie connected addiction and relapse to an inability to sit in the SUCK and just be there. That's what the scene with Joe (Paul Raci) was about for me right before he goes to Paris, where Joe says, "you're acting like an addict." Riz Ahmed is just also an incredible actor. The intensity!
I think in stories that are really good acceptance can be a form of transcendence. The story that came to mind just because I read it recently was "Master and Man" by Tolstoy. That climax is about transcendence perhaps through (?) acceptance of what is.
"This Beautiful Fantastic" is the movie that I wish to share with you and your readers. Tom Wilkinson and Andrew Scott are, as ever, perfect as two men miserably stuck in each other's lives. Jessica Brown Findlay is lovely as the one who brings out the very best in these two men who in turn, bring out the best in her. Acceptance and growth transpire in a garden. I will carry this movie in my heart and thoughts for quite some time.
I agree this film was beautiful. Like you said, for the pace, the sound, the acting, the minimalism... What was most powerful to me was its insistence on flipping the script on dis/ability. In general, if we are not a part of it directly or by extension, we have so little exposure to deafness and deaf culture. The ways that the pandemic has forced a lot more accessibility and exposure to access needs in our day to day has been important, but it's rare that people are thinking that an ASL interpreter is there for hearing folks (because we're the one's who don't know the language), you know? Part of the reason that deafness is such a rich culture is because of how much we've isolated deaf people, and I think about how so many who live long lives experience partial if not total deafness (it runs in my family, and my mother has profound hearing loss) but they don't get to benefit from that rich culture, their families don't adjust the way they communicate (or they just yell), and probably ASL rarely if ever comes into the picture. It is profoundly isolating for older adults when this happens. My mother has a Baja implant which is similar to a cochlear one, and this film helped me understand how distorted sounds must be for her, and how painful it is to be in large groups with background noise. There's so much to digest and think about re how we can better relate to deafness as a society. Thank you for highlighting it, Courtney!
I loved this remarkable film. It did such a good job conveying something of what it must feel like to lose your hearing, and Riz Ahmed's performance was superb.
As I child, I spent a lot of time with a deaf great-aunt. She lost her hearing in the influenza epidemic of 1918 when she was about a year old, so she never learned to speak. Her younger sisters and brothers all learned sign language and could communicate readily with her, but my grandmother, her eldest sister and guardian after their parents died, never learned to sign. Everyone in my immediate family communicated with Aunt Hazel in writing. We filled pages and pages of legal pads. The early scenes of the movie brought back those inadequate and frustrating efforts to communicate by writing everything out.
In her 60s, Hazel lost her eyesight due to glaucoma (this was the 1960s and 1970s when treatments for glaucoma were not terribly effective). At that point, she became truly isolated. She could cup her hand around the hand of a person who was finger-spelling and get the gist of a statement. She would also have you take her index finger and move it over the page as if it were a pen, and she would reply in writing that became increasingly impossible to read because she could not see the page. In these ways, she could carry on rudimentary conversations, but little with depth or nuance. She had a marvelous sense-of-humor, even in late life, but she also had a huge temper. I realize now the temper was the product of her constant frustration and anger, and she battled depression, also elements explored in the film.
She lived on her own with help from family and from a caregiver who came three times a week to clean, shop, and do some cooking, and she managed to function quite well day-to-day, but I realize now that she had to be terribly lonely and isolated. My grandmother made sure she learned to read Braille when her sight began to fail, and her only real entertainment/pastime at that point was reading Braille books. I don't know if you've ever seen them: each Braille edition is usually multi-volume and is embossed on big 11 x 17 pages. It's an ordeal just to hold the book.
You've made me think: did Hazel experience acceptance or resignation? Did this shift for her when she lost her sight? What did it mean to be almost completely locked inside her own head?
Yes, I loved it! Now I'm trying to think of other movies about acceptance because I'm with you -- it's big, heavy and necessary work. (I'm a therapist and 9 times out of 10 so much of our pain comes from trying so hard to avoid acceptance and the accompanying grief.) Racking my brain, I'd say Inside Out?
I watched it and I loved it. I couldn't put my finger on what felt hopeful about it, but I think it was that I felt relief in such a powerful way in that last scene. When he took out his implants and stopped striving to "fix" himself.
Movies about acceptance always disappointed me as a kid, I guess I had been sufficiently programmed to prefer a heroes journey. :) I had to think about this a lot, but I have a couple of suggestions!
1. Landline - firstly, this movie has an AMAZING cast. I watch anything involving Jenny Slate or either Duplass brother. The acceptance shown here is of one's family, the fact that your parents are just people who also fuck up, and of one's partner - that oftentimes, when you are with someone for a while, they no longer seem terribly exciting or overtly sexy.
2. Blue Jay - screenplay by Mark Duplass, starring Mark Duplass and Sarah Paulson (swoooon) (see above re: the Brother's Duplass). A very dialogue heavy movie taking place over 1 day, a la the Before trilogy. It's been a while since I watched this movie, but I remember it perfectly captured the feeling of reconnecting with "the one that got away," while reckoning with the realities of your current life that are making nostalgia for said person particularly compelling. Eventually, it's about accepting the life you have, rather than constantly thinking "what if?"
3. As I am writing this and thinking about Mark Duplass, I am also going to tack Paddleton on at the end of this rec. As a disclaimer, I have still not seen it, but the I know the premise and I won't be giving anything away (that you won't see from simply watching the trailer) by saying it's about acceptance - of death, or a loved one's end of life wishes, depending on which character's perspective is being adopted.
Sorry to be so long-winded. Let me know if you have already seen any of the above and what you thought if so! :)
I loved this film. Andrew Solomon's incredible book, Far From the Tree about parenting children who are different than we expected, is a 1000 page ode to acceptance.
I never realized how many books I read and movies I watched about people with disabilities. For the most part, they are all about letting go of preconceived notions and ultimately acceptance. I have see Sound of Metal, which was gritty and powerful. I would recommend watching Life Animated also. There are many, many others too.
Great thoughts. I wanted to add that I loved how this movie connected addiction and relapse to an inability to sit in the SUCK and just be there. That's what the scene with Joe (Paul Raci) was about for me right before he goes to Paris, where Joe says, "you're acting like an addict." Riz Ahmed is just also an incredible actor. The intensity!
I think in stories that are really good acceptance can be a form of transcendence. The story that came to mind just because I read it recently was "Master and Man" by Tolstoy. That climax is about transcendence perhaps through (?) acceptance of what is.
"This Beautiful Fantastic" is the movie that I wish to share with you and your readers. Tom Wilkinson and Andrew Scott are, as ever, perfect as two men miserably stuck in each other's lives. Jessica Brown Findlay is lovely as the one who brings out the very best in these two men who in turn, bring out the best in her. Acceptance and growth transpire in a garden. I will carry this movie in my heart and thoughts for quite some time.