[A Lifetime of Regret & "What Ifs'

Anyone who is everyone familiar with relationships, companionships, matehood, togetherness, whatever it may be labeled, have fallen into the fear of committing, mostly due to two causes:

The first, a damp and solid truth one only sees when it is pulled out of the orgy of excuses at the ready; It is not our fear of loving someone, it is the fear that the one you love may not love you back

The second, almost exclusively cornered on the market by perpetual half-steppers and scattered brained impetuous sprinters; The fear of loving resulting from an adjoining, festering thought, of the grass being greener on the other side, convincing yourself that you are settling and by settling, you are removal yourself from a market which may offer something more robust.

All of these lessons flooded and overwhelmed all at once when first I saw the film [The Bridges of Madison County]. It is a film that cruises at a perfect pace, developing sound and unmistakably, as if ensuring that you caught sight of a glimpse meant to be missed or dismissed as a rogue reflection bouncing off a plasma screen.

It is not a story of a man and a woman who falls in love, no, that is incidental, it is the story of a woman, resigned to a housewife and a mother to two growing children, who, as the film advances, one could safely surmise her marriage to this ordinary yet dependable man wasn’t in fact sealed by love but rather her finding an opportunity to escape the rubbles and lingering dangers still roaming every region of post-war Italy. Settling to a man she didn’t love or loved in a way for his tending to his role as a fat her to her children, was the exacted cost she paid, dispensing with all those dreamy and sonnets written, published and circulated for hundreds of years, a great love

Complacent in her settled life as frontier mother, in the rural expanse of Iowa, in parts even unknown by people who may have spent their entire life in the state, she is caught in a rude waylay, proving once more, as it usually does, that blind side hits are much harder because you never see them coming.

A man pulls up not too long after her husband and children depart for an affair that will keep them absent for an entire weekend. A long time homemaker use to the vigors of caring for a man and two children makes it difficult for her when there was suddenly nothing to be done. With endeavor, she begins to wind herself down, take advantage of the seldom silence in the house, without numerous chores to be done, having to build up the energy after long days of hustling to lie on her back while with her husband on top of her, always thinking “When will it be over?”

It is safe to say she is the epitome of what many stay-at-home mothers endure, today as then, a drastic loss of self, the unspoken surrender of ambitions they once held dear to accomplish, arriving at the conclusion that if there is any energy to be found to rebel against such servitude, it is best given to the effort it’ll take to care for her family; she can’t run the risk of a battle that may prove to be too lengthy for her to sustain. Francesca  resigned long ago to no longer be the young vibrant independent striver, selflessly factoring in that she was no longer the only one to be of concern, her children would bare witness to what would soon become an unstable, unhappy home, and it would be her cross to bare if they were to grow into adults themselves, still without the belief of a happy family, lost in childhood.

The daylight was still alert so while she basked in the sun, a truck was coming towards her house on the driveway. Robert Kincaid emerge, lost, seeking directions and Francesca, troubled by the joy of having unfamiliar company with an outsider, rarely seen in those parts, invited him in for a drink and refreshments. What would ensure would be the result of Francesca’s curiosity coupled with an aloneness well aged, indulging in a conversation with Robert, a photographer for a major magazine, a worldly, educated, mysterious artist who had come to the area to photographer the covered bridges, a group of a few last remaining in the country.

Here is this man who has come to a place in the middle of nowhere and spun gold around bridges Francesca has seen time and again for years, never before aware of how significant they were, how they were aging relics of a practice of architecture whose innovators had long been placed in the ground.

Robert invites Francesca along on his shoot and still in awe after he had actually been to the town she was born in back in Italy, she found she couldn’t tear herself aware from him, more vulnerable than she ever believed, again, reiterating the strong hypothesis of her having settled for comfort and to escape Italy.

Perhaps women who are married would quickly despise Francesca’s behavior and dismiss any attempt of explanations given to ease the scorch of judgement, but when it comes to love, especially newly formed love, which is by far the time love is at its strongest and most determined, consumes all, temporarily erasing all else surviving factors, or in the case of Francesca, after having gone to be with is the most interesting, gentle, calm and adventurous man she’s ever met, the question of whereabouts arise and the possibilities are exhumed, deep from beneath the oppression of self sacrifice, still in tact as the day they were buried so long ago.

What follows their night of passion and infidelity is the proposal of Francesca leaving Madison county, where taking a chance of being happy would be so close to her grasp. Entertaining the idea of leaving her family behind, Francesca falls into being torn apart, to stay for the sake of her family or to leave with a man she knew she loved more than she ever may ever love her husband.

In the end, Francesca decides she would remain home, with a family she felt obligated to take care of, letting Robert leave, regretting for the rest of her life having been cornered by her decision, and her would never see Robert Kincaid for the rest of her life, still declaring that she had never loved a man as much as she did Robert

By Dontrell Lovet’t

[Depicting the Diversity of Chaos]

The Most Diverse Film Which Offers Capacity

Who in the writing or reading community is not familiar with the American novelist Bret Easton Ellis. While [American Psycho], starred by Christian Bale may be named his most noted and well-known mainstream success, it is his cinematic collage [The Rules of Attraction] which offers many perspectives over many different circumstances, all orbiting a campus life which holds all of the various lives colliding and merely brushing one another, if only for mere seconds.

While the films dedicates plenty of scenes and various views and point-of-views of the hand full of central characters with a soundtrack represented by a funky, dark, hip and alternative, it too is a representation of the film itself, which pulls the viewer into first moments of gut aching humor then suddenly shifts you into a life ending, returns you back to idle college confusion and sexuality, more short spurts of humor and finally capture you in a waylay, stepping into a snare trap Easton-Ellis composes so cunningly, to not feel what may be felt by one who suffers something they’ve dedicated so much to continues to unravel, comes apart and nothing, not a single thing, can be conjured or concocted to prevent the disintegration.

If there is to be a chosen main character, it can be said to be either Sean or Laura, who have links between them long before they met. 

Sean, perhaps to build additional income, begins to peddle drugs around the campus, but he is not a drug dealer with clout or season, everyone owes him and refuses to pay him, leaving him in debt and facing sure physical harm from his supplier, Rupert, a coke-headed former military unpredictable and uncontrollable spastic exacerbated by his heavy coke use.

If one has the gift to being very observant or rewinds or watches this film enough, throughout every scene where the screen of a switched on television is displayed, you’ll notice they are all muted. This is classic Easton-Ellis, developing something trapped and near hidden inside a scene to give the scene a whole existence, refusing to offer anything in small doses.

University is indivisible with experimentation, a place almost always depicted as the very place, the perfect atmosphere, diverse and vast, in which students are able and are obliged to step outside of the many various sorts of insularity they may have become of age in, a time to discover the other side of the moon and to even perhaps ask such questions as to why the darkside of that dead thing never wishes to look down into such a vibrant planet swarming with life forms represented by hundreds of thousands of both discovered and waiting to be discovered species. University is the very epitome where the world at large which exist is to be represented and presented to all those familiar and unfamiliar, where the Christian learns of Islam and the followers of Judaism discovers something relatable in Buddism.

If Easton-Ellis aimed to find an atmosphere in which to build diversity, then tear it down to its bare essential, he does so in [The Rules of Attraction] in the mood of Ayn Rand, proclaiming our sameness beneath the flesh and more than willing to skin all of mankind alive to prove such a notion so long ignored.

Sean the terrible drug dealer, Laura the naive virgin still struck with a clingy romance, Paul, the gay metrosexual who pursues a crush who could care less for his adoration and/or his existence, Laura’s roommate Lorna, who squeezes Laura dry of her personal preferences only to beat her to the punch and exploit those pursuits for herself, sex being the tool she’s able to effectively utilize, as Laura’s inexperience and a naivety, so apparent when she’s reeling over Victor, a rich kid who’d fuck any and everything in motion, one of those things in motion,  her roommate Lorna, who sleeps with Victor upon his arrival, even gives Laura a wave as she jumps in Victor’s bed, wearing naughy lingerie. 

What else adds to the timing and intrigue of [The Rules of Attraction] is while drama, death, humor, love and the futile and idle mesh together in no particular chronological manner, heartbreak trickle down through the focal characters, giving us the only sense of order in a film composed and filmed to depict the reality of chaos alive on possibly every campus in the US. Sean loses the interest of Laura, in turn reveals to Paul he doesn’t care for him in the way he wants, and Laura, who idolize and nurture an infatuation to a point so grandiose, its almost insufferable to witness that very admired man to not remember her whatsoever, then dismisses her to sleep with her roommate, the “friend” who was well aware of her feelings for Victor.

Career film critics and viewers both may come to ask, “What was Easton-Ellis after?” “What statement was he attempting to make with and throughout the collage of scenes?”

by Dontrell Lovet't

The answer lies in the perspective of the viewer and because while some personalities hold optimism, others harbor pessimism, and others bring to the table ambivalence and absolute indifference. [The Rules of Attraction] was an abstract masterpiece placed in the hands of those whose curiosity wouldn’t allow them rest nor respite, the fatigued needing some distraction, some source of entertainment worthy of more than an hour, stories broken into fragments, difficult to follow, leading more and more of cinematic wanderings beyond the few minutes the average person attention span is said to last before it expires and lead to an entire surrender, blind to what is the most pretentious and most apparent established in the very first scene and maintained throughout the last; chaos was the aim, inciting it, then depicting the aftermath, exacerbate the line separating art from the counter-revolutionary

A Film Which Influences

One of the Most Influential Films in My Life

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Stemming from the story originally written by the great American writer Mark Twain and revised by another great American novelist, F. Scott Fitzerald, directed by the world renown filmographer David Fincher, the depiction of a child born old and ages down immediately brings to the profound and curious mind the question of what life would become or can become and or if our perspective of the old and young as we know it would differ from our current one which may or may not be influenced by modern society’s current and seemingly fixed standards.

Benjamin, who was born old on the day World War I was ended with the signing of the Armistice. Immediately, upon seeing the result of a strenuous birth which would eventually cost his mother, Caroline, her life, his father Thomas Button, stricken with the grief of watching his wife gradually fade away, then shortly after becoming stunned by the vision of what he believes to be a malformed newborn infant, seizes him wrapped in a swaddle, runs to the river with the intentions of discarding him, only to be interrupted by a police officer, causing him to flee away into the night until he comes upon a home for the elderly in the advancement of their dizzy years.

Being found by a caretaker who believes herself to be barren, Queenie, Benjamin is soon taken in by her as she and the consulting doctors believes that if he is to die, he shouldn’t die alone and if death is to come to the newly orphaned infant, what better place would there be than a home where death is known to be a frequent visitor.

Benjamin, day to day, defies death, and no only defies it, become stronger day to day, his ailments, those which resemble that of advanced agedness, slowly subsides. It is at the scene in church, when Benjamin is willed to walk by a firebreathing pastor, that the viewer then gathers the conclusions of his condition causing him to age down rather up, as well all do every second.

It is in the house of the elderly overseen by the only mother he knows, Queenie, Benjamin develops his first understanding and respect for the aged, the stories they would tell rich enough to begin an endless wonder, a wonder soon to become in the film the very thing to lead him to wonder beyond the house he has grown down and been cared for when he encounters Ota Benga, a character based on the true story of a Pygmy who was captured near the turn of the 20th century, placed inside of a cage for whites to view as a unique exotic species at the human zoo displayed during the World Fair in 1904, which was also billed as “The Louisiana Purchase Exposition,” a event which attracted some of the wealthiest and most influential figures in the world between its 8 months of exhibiting.

It is seldom to encounter films which utilizes true events inside the fictitious/created tales. [The Curious Case of Benjamin Button] along with another blockbuster hit classic [Forrest Gump] stands as the few select films known by most around the world by very title.

Though Benjamin falls in love with the only woman he would ever love, Daisy, when she was a younger teen, having taken work aboard a tugboat became his first great opportunity to know more about the world outside of New Orleans, a opportunity not lost to him or a second thought.

The restorative nature of travel places inside of us the obligation to lose ourselves to once again find ourselves, open our eyes to things we never truly seen in its full remarkable presence, entertain thoughts beyond any thoughts arises so quickly we suffer moments of doldrum while trapped under the amazing weight, a weight shown strange and mysterious to us because it holds nothing in common with burdens capable of straddling us permanently if left unchallenged. It is in one of his longer stays in a quiet and sparsely populated Russian city blanketed by the presence of snow day to day, Benjamin meets the wife of a British spy, Elizabeth, who in her peculiar formalities, possess a seduction seen almost exclusively amongst middle-age women. While spite may be taken towards Benjamin’s engaging in cuckholding ELizabeth’s husband, one cannot ignore the fact that we can never know what lessons we will encounter that will teach us essentials of human existence, of human happiness. The brief affair between Benjamin and the upper-class Elizabeth brings discomfort to Daisy, who is pursuing her dreams as a dancer in New York, but with a depth of perception, one could determine Benjamin’s confession of love for another woman to Daisy wasn’t reciprocated with betrayal nor hate, rather soon seen as the unexpected twist and toss of life, where one can wind up far from where they ever desired to be, yet find themselves face to face with a greater desire long discarded, surrendered so long before as a fantasy only fantasist living in the dreamworld would only mistakenly entertain.

Benjamin’s return from sea, after suffering the loss of his beloved Captain and close friend, Captain Mike, Daisy visits New Orleans not so long after. True one can see the electricity alternating between them but their lives and maturity are far vast. Daisy was a premadonna ballerina wallowing in the arrogance of being wanted by nearly all who laid eyes on her, viewing sex as many ballerinas come to, as a mere tool to enhance the line of their body and empower them with the confidence a woman usually carries, well-aware of her power and a confidence like that of youth, capable of weakening and conquering almost all men.

During their dinner, their difference becomes more stark, as Daisy speaks of a bigger world in a much bigger atmosphere and Benjamin, happy to remain silent, appreciates all the beauty she has become the epitome of. They are both in love but it is only Benjamin whose life experience has made him much more mature to admit it, reinforced by the experienced of knowing the feeling of love and having have felt it. After dinner, Benjamin unintentionally embarrasses and disappoints Daisy when he refuses her advances, believing if he was to sleep with her then, at that moment in her life, he could fall victim to her perspective of lovemaking being only a mere tool of seduction and not a gift given from one partner to another.

This opinion I reiterate when Benjamin is seen seeing other women, all of whom provided a temporary comfort and loose and artificial surrogates for the woman her truly wants to be with, the one still living the life of a woman enjoying and wanting, at that time in her life, the attention of a large audience, not a single man. Daisy, I believe, fights her love for Benjamin, possibly terrified that to love him would mean to relinquish the dream she had been living, translating Benjamin’s request for her to return to New Orleans to end her career, though she was lying in a hospital bed in Paris after being hit by a car, with at least at hint of her dancing again professionally would never happen.

Daisy would eventually come to accept the ending of her career, returning to New Orleans, giving in to the feelings she felt all her life for him, joining him on long sojourns to the lakehouse left to him upon the death of his father. Benjamin and Daisy return from their lake vacation to find that Benjamin’s adopted mother, Queenie, died in her sleep, a terrible and tremendous loss, his only fortune being Daisy who was there for him while they both grieved for a woman they loved who gave them both the love of a mother.

A very intriguing twist then comes, Benjamin sales most of his inheritance, primarily the lakehouse and he and Daisy downsize to a small and homely duplex and begins to lead a simple and happy life, still aging in different directions, Daisy’s which would take her to an elderly infirm age and Benjamin’s which would take him into pubescent and into childhood. This fact only becomes troublesome when Daisy becomes pregnant and Benjamin worries about how held end up, a burden to Daisy, a father incapable of being a father, and against all of Daisy’s reassurances and his own pull to stay and love her, he sells all his estates and starts accounts to keep Daisy and his daughter, Caroline, who he named after the mother who died bringing him into the world, a woman he eventually comes to believe, had she survived, he would have never been orphaned. On her deathbed, her last wish was that her husband, Benjamin’s father, takes care and protects him, which he does in an initial distant manner.

Believing Daisy to be asleep one night, Benjamin attempts to quietly slip out the door but his departure is discovered and more than likely anticipated by Daisy, who just stares and is stun in hurt and despair, as Benjamin gets on his motorcycle and rides away, sure that his leaving before his daughter was old enough to remember him, would prove a bit more sacrificial and while he is unable to cause hurt to Daisy by leaving her, he spares Caroline such pain.

Caroline, now an adult, reading the journal of Benjamin, discovers that he was her father all along, and suffers a sharp bout of hurt for her mother’s concealing the paternity for so long. But she has to know her father, has to know how the story edges towards its end and in what manner, discovering all of the postmarks Benjamin wrote to her from the many countries he traveled to during every holiday, giving her a joy that even though he left, he was always there and would wish to be there in spirit, something made insurmountably impossible by his progressing condition, which ages him down to a young boy suffering from dementia.

Benjamin’s very endeavor to prevent Daisy from having to care for him becomes so. An old lady herself, she moves into the very home Benjamin and she grew up in, Benjamin alongside her, where he dies in her arms as an infant.

If one can take anything from [The Curious Case of Benjamin Button], it’s the perspective of life being much more spatial than most would believe, extreme and mysteries possibilities, how even the bizarre and hideous paths can open up to something so substantial, it can continue to nourish a dream and develop even the vigor to give life an infusion, a jolt of belief, the first some may ever encountered in the entirety of their lives.

Dontrell Lovet’t