Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: Meh on August 29, 2009, 01:25:26 PM
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What film moves you?
Which scenes impact you the most?
How does it make you feel when you watch it?
Why is it a significant movie to you?
It was suggested by Phoenix that a movie list be started. Here we go.
So far these are the movies:
Gran Torino
Pan's Labyrinth
Carrie
Old Yeller
August Rush
Ami also stated that fairytales and kid's movies do it for her.
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I'm adding "Under the Tuscan Sun", yes it is a saccharin and fake happy ending movie but it has it's moments.
Within the director's comments were some interesting statements including the fact that she made the character motherless because in Myths and FairyTales motherlessness is a precondition for becoming a heroine.
This movie does not really have anything to do with voicelessness. What I do like is that the director says she is always looking for ways to beat up her characters. The director calls it "extended cruelty". Despite all the character's efforts she still feels alone. This I can relate to.
The movie was about broken hearts and not necessarily between a man and woman, one was between a woman and woman.
It was romantically related though. It did have this character of an excentric woman who did not seem to be in love, she was dating a younger man, so she may be an example of a different version of a non-romantic broken heart.
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"Boogie Nights"
This movie took place in the town where I grew up, during the time I was in high school, so there was much for me to relate to. No, I never worked in the porn industry, but the family dynamic that forced the lead character to leave home and go into that business really hit home.
The part that really affected me, was in the beginning, before the Mark Whalberg character runs away from home. There was a scene where the mother is beating up on him relentlessly over breakfast, and the father just sits there at the breakfast table, reading the paper, as if nothing is happening. I can't tell you how many times that exact scene played out in my house.
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I don't know about movies, but I can contribute some books ... L.M. Montgomery hit narcissism on the head in several of her books! To be honest, until I started reading people's biographical stories on this message board, I thought Montgomery was exaggerating her characters. If you have never read her books, the ones I am particularly talking about are: Jane of Lantern Hill (the maternal grandmother in the story is a narcissistic tyrant, the paternal aunt is a narcissistic sneak); The Blue Castle (about an ACON kept under the thumb of an entire narcissistic clan until ... until ... well, I won't spoil the story in case somebody really gets interested and goes out to get it). In both of these books the female protagonist is voiceless (until she acquires a voice, that is!).
In Emily of New Moon, there are a couple of minor characters that are narcissistic, and one of the main characters, Aunt Elizabeth, is an ACON that became very rigid and cold due to her father's narcissism. However, if you read the whole story, you realize she is NOT narcissistic but just has an impaired ability to connect with Emily due to her own childhood. L.M. Montgomery had to have either experienced narcissism in her own family or at least to have observed it very close up.
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Charlotte's Web:
For it's loneliness, sadness, weakness, abandonment and loss of innocence.
Wilbur's only friend is a little spider, he is a runt, he may be turned into sausage at any moment. This is really scary for a pig and kids!
All the odds are against him and the only thing that saves his life is an impossible miracle that would never happen in the real world.
Wilbur's best friend in the whole wide world dies.
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Oh my gosh, How did I miss thinking of Harry Potter??????????? He was voiceless until he discovered he was magic!
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I love Charlottes Web! Ami
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"Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood" with Sandra Bullock and Ellen Burstyn = excellent example of watchable (narcissitic) storyline, good acting, and (rare) happy ending.
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A few of my favorites.
Garden State
Harold & Maude
I [Heart] Huckabees
Being There
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Oh my gosh, How did I miss thinking of Harry Potter??????????? He was voiceless until he discovered he was magic!
Oh yes! That's a good one. And Harry also had to live with a Golden Child, that wicked cousin who was spoiled rotten.
I also think about the family dynamic in Saturday Night Fever. The John Travolta character (Tony?) was always put down by his parents - he was a loser and a failure in their eyes. The golden child was his brother, the one who was a priest. Tony was voiceless until he hit the dance floor. Dancing was his escape. The family scene at the dinner table, where they're all arguing (yet still doting on the Golden Child), is an absolute classic.
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The Power of One Movie based on the book by Bryce Courtenay
The character (Peekay) is orphaned, is a misfit in his school, as a kid his only and best friend is a ROOSTER! He is bullied. He randomly meets a rag-tag group of imperfect adults who help him develop some skills in life (they teach him how to FIGHT). His personal story is set against apartheid Africa. The movie is about personal power and social power. I haven't seen this movie for years and years…now I want to see it again.
This movie made me feel hopefull because it has an underdog that I want to cheer for, it feels so good to see him succeed against the odds. I liked the humanness of the characters, even though the adults themselves are suffering and are "losers" in a way, they still are able to contribute something important to the main character's own growth. I also like that he learns to fight and stand-up for himself, that is something that I relate to personally.
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How about Magnolia? From pain to knowing to more pain...
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Steel Magnolia's - specifically the Mother/Daughter relationship in that one
Terms of Endearment
Foxes
Ordinary People - Mary Tyler Moore makes my Nm look like a warm person
Prince of Tides - price of family secrets
Stepmom - not a great movie, but the Sarandon character vascillates between N and warmth
Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood
How to make an American Quilt
...hmmm this gets me thinking ....
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Gran Torino
I just saw this movie a couple nights ago, and I'm compelled to write a little blurb. This movie showed the futility of violence and disfunction, the way that someone inevitably has to suffer and lose dignity. Also losing the feeling of safety. It shows how whole families are impacted by it, and then even the people nearby. Violence and disfunction has a pond ripple effect.
It also shows how pathetically empty the lives of predators seem to be.
That is one factual thing I can relate to the Nar-people in my life. The Nar-people I have known do not have hobbies or passions in life, they are boring. They don't make an attempt to find their own life expression in a positive way. They join packs of losers.
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Moonstruck: Cher was brilliant as the unmarried woman living at home under the old Italian regime of her parents and also, her aging grandfather. Cher finds love in the most uneasy of circumstances: her fiance's brother who is such a momma's boy, by which his own mother is an N and controlls his life from her deathbed. Cher's entire family is so dysfunctional they cant' get at of their own way, but they knew how to love, deeply love one another!! I thought this movie was hilarious and touching.
When Harry Met Sally: Just my all time favorite of movies.
Terms of Endearment Beautifully written
Anchorman: I love to laugh!!
Bruce Almighty: I love this movie because Jim Carrey's character, Bruce, feels ignored by God and believes that God has sort of abandoned him, or even punished him, during the pivotal times in his life. Bruce challenges God and God answers!! I admit, I have felt as Bruce has many, many times in my life. My favorite line is when he crashes his car into the river and yells up to the sky at God, "C'mon God, bring it on me....smite me you almighty smiter!" That's when God has had enough of Bruce....
I love Charlotte's Web too!
Finding Nemo: About protecting your children then having to let them go....
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Madagascar: Did the lemur King Julius XIII seem like a Narcissist? He seemed that way to me. One scene he ordered that the comments of one of his subjects be "stricken from the record" because it disagreed with "the king".
This other scene was more telling:
Alex the Lion: "I can't take your crown!"
King Julius XIII: "That's OK! I gave myself a BIGGER one!"
Bones
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Throw Momma from The Train
Though not for the reason you would think (though I would have loved to have thrown my momma from a train).
There's a moment in that film that brought me to tears. The Danny DeVito character has lost his father, and has only the domineering mother left. At one point, he wants to show the Billy Crystal character his valuable coin collection. He pulls out these coins, and spreads them out, and says "this was the quarter that my dad gave me at Coney Island, and this was the nickel I got in change when my dad bought be an ice cream," and so on. That scene just broke my heart. I, too, have worthless little items that I cling to . . . things that were given to me by people who loved me. Even though that movie was side splitting hysterical, that scene just melted my heart.
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I love that coin scene JustKathy, true treasure. Little like the Tom Hanks movie (can't remember the name) where he's stuck in the airport with a coffee can filled with signatures that his father got, keeping and reminding himself of his father's love.
Glenn Close' charactor in Dangerous Liasons. She sets traps and landmines, thereby preventing people from telling her truth when they discover her. What did she say was her favorite weakness - was it pride?
Edit: no, it was vanity. I'll need to think about that one.
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I am right now in the middle of HBO's version of Grey Gardens. Oh my, oh my, oh my...OMG I see NM everywhere. :o
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Post Cards From the Edge....I think I posted this elsewhere. When Shirley McLaine's character goes to the rehab center where her daughter is recovering from addiction, she makes herself the center of attention. It reminded me of that all the times I should have been the focus of something, even my first gallery exhibition and my mother managed to show up and try to take the attention away from me.
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So... pondering just what happens that allow movies to touch us...
I for one, "go into the movie" and experience the characters' emotions... and if that criss-crosses something I've experienced first-hand, well then my eyes start to leak... or I roll on the floor laughing. It's like I allow myself to "feel" more in the movie... than in my own life (well, that's changing now)... as if because it's a movie, whatever defends, protects, or controls those emotions gets "turned off" or disabled... and I'm "allowed" to just FEEL, because it's a movie. If it's scary or a thriller... hubby reminds me: it's just a movie... and we pause it often so that I can take a break... and re-ground myself. And there are some movies I simply CAN'T watch because it feels like I'm abusing myself...
more for the list:
Back Cat Moan - deals with rape but also love; central character confronts her mother on this... who denies doing a thing wrong. Happy ending, too... though sad.
Twister - I have a morbid fascination with tornados, having grown up in the midwest... but I liked the way the love relationship helped the main character resolve her motivations for chasing storms... get to her "essential self".
The Outlaw Josey Wales - this is a great story about morality... about what matters...and whether violence is ever justified... or if it's just a fact of life. Lots of viewpoints presented, too.
The last two, I watch & rewatch... along with The House of Flying Daggers... an adventure-love story, sort of... but also a tale of how we defeat our own selves...
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Has anyone seen Gilmore Girls, a Fox TV show, I think? I rented it from Net Flix so not sure. That M was a true N. Ami
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Has anyone read (or seen) The Ninth Life of Louis Drax ? I read it, haven't seen it. The mother is very interesting. I carry some 'pictures' from the book in my head now (I read it about 2 years ago).
There is a line in the book about a creature existing only for it's own survival...I can't remember it exactly, but it struck me hard at the time.
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Bumping in hope
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Jane Austin book club
It's a chick-flick romance, pretty saccharin again.
The actress Emily Blunt plays this character named Prudie. I LOVE this character. Prudie is perfectly super uptight, she is a french teacher but has never been to Paris and desperately wants to go. She wants to be cultured. Her mother is a flaky, druggie type.
A couple scenes in the movie show Prudie having these emotional breakdown outbursts. One is when her mother dies and at the funeral her husband talks to her enemy with big boobs. The other breakdown is at dinner with the book club friends and she is talking about her husband in front of her friends. She is also verging on having an affair with one of her students.
Prudie is so stiff, tries to hold it together, hold it inside.
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The movie March of the Penguins really moved me. Nature at its core is so fundamental. Nurture + Protection from elements + proper bonding = Survival.
The movie Stuart Saves His Family is by far the best portrayal of a dysfunctional family. Father is such an N and the sister is a food-aholic, mom is subservient, brother is an N and then there's Stuart, who is "good enough, smart enough and doggone it, people like him." I love the part when Stuart Smalley, played by Al Franken, loses his slot on a cable show and become jobless and then is found by his friends laying in his bed binging on Twinkies and Fig Newtons and he won't get out of bed.
Another part I liked is when he has a flash back of his childhood when his N alcoholic father takes them to the Hollywood sign in California when he's drunk...he tries to take their picture in front of the sign on a busy road and they almost get hit by cars roaring down the hill...kids are screaming in fear, etc., it's so funny!!!
Another part that's the best is when Stuart's Aunt Rita (I think that's her name) dies and it's the only person in the family that Stuart ever felt real love from, well they all have to go home to attend her funeral....I won't spoil what happens but it's hilarious!! The whole family ends up in therapy...oh I have to see this movie again!!
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I like this so "bump"
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I was watching the DVD of the first Shrek movie last night. It finally HIT me as I'm seeing all of the "images" of Lord Farquaad EVERYWHERE in Duloc....the HUGE HEAD and the STAINED GLASS WINDOWS!!!!! :shock: Farquaad is a NARCISSIST!!!!!!
Bones
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Gran Torino
I saw it for the first time this past weekend. Eastwood's character reminded me so much of my father-in-law, may he rest in peace. The old man could be so acerbic, but underneath it was the softness he dare not express.
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I agree Ami
Emily, they mother/grandmother is a perfect full blown N.
Watched the whole series with my daughter.
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When I was little I saw this movie (don't know the name) that I could really relate to as certain things from the movie happened to me later in life.
There is this mother that was obsessed with keeping her husband's love and realised that the daughter was a threat. The daughter leaves at some point and a pimp takes her in. Father is out looking for the daughter and that brings him closer to wife. The daughter wants out of the whole prostitution scenario. So she calls the mother and says 'I want to come home'. It's mother and father in the room, so when mother picks up the phone and realises that it's the daughter, and the daughter is crying 'mommy I wanna come home', mother says 'ever since you're gone things are great between me and your father, the answer is no', the daughter cries and sweet mother hangs up the phone.
I don't know how but this scene from the movie is 'burned' to my brain. When NM got married for the second time and I was 17 she asked me to move out and rent a flat because 'I wouldn't want her around if I was newlymarried'.
Oh God, I have forgotten about this...
P.
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I know the movie that you're speaking of, and also remember this scene very clearly. For some reason, I'm also blanking out on the name, but I remember seeing the movie.