Monday, 15 June 2009
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By Blind Melon
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Phenom. Art by Derek Albeck.
This weekend, among all the wonderful events/exhaustion/swings, I managed to watch two movies. I've Loved You so Long and Milk. I recommend both highly and they are both additions to (along with Rachel Getting Married & Seven Pounds) my nebulous, but strict, top movies list. Heads and shoulders above the norm. You may not like them or want to watch them - one is in French, and is "slow" & I totally get not wanting to read subtitles. The other is about assassinated gay activist/politician Harvey Milk - I acknowledge that for some people this is enough of a reason to walk by it. Not in their (the movie's) defense - they need none - but mine, I suppose, was that they told stories worth telling (which is surprisingly rare) with both delicacy and strength. They were brilliantly acted/directed. I will carry them with me, I will watch them again.
The story of I've Loved You So Long is centered on two sisters, Lea and Juliette. Juliette has been in prison for 15 years, she was dispatched when her sister Lea was still very young. There was no contact between the two until shortly before her release. They have both changed immensely and separately in that time. A location that is repeated in the film is the two sisters swimming, speaking, floating in an indoor pool, the same pool (a club/center that Lea holds membership to) and as one day Lea speaks about her life - how her academic career has changed since adopting Il Petit Lys and Emelia, comments on her colleagues and notes Mr. Lucien's (a fellow pool goer) new young lady friend, Juliette bows her head and responds, You'd forgotten about me. What? questions Lea. I said, You'd forgotten about me all of those years. They swim out of the picture and the next shot is of Lea's hands opening a box filled with journals, or what we see in the next moment are her day planners. Go on, take on at random, Lea says. Open it at any page. As Juliette does so, we see a that picture of her smiling is tucked in to the first one and then on every page as she flips through years - Juliette 429. Juliette 430. Juliette 431. The first thing I did every morning was to write your name and the number of days you'd been away. You might say it only took a few seconds, that it was just letters and numbers. But I thought so much of you in those moments. Every day. Like being reunited.
Note: Derek Albeck does not just do political work. He also has done work for Vans, drawings of shaker faces and comments on the state of humanity in a clever and technically astounding way.
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