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I just finished watching the second half of Pieces of April. I had seen it before being taken with the grief and sadness in the film and this time too I found it quite sad though it claims to be a "hilarious comedy", but I also was struck by the common threads that I see in this movie with many others that are out (About A boy, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). The different story lines that come about because of someone's interpretation of history, how they remember it. The son is a photographer and throughout the movie is taking pictures. At the end you see shot by shot through the clicking of the camera's lens April's Thanksgiving meal with her family. Pictures can capture something of the memory but what can't they capture? What will be missing and can it be filled in or are we left to create the past in our imaginations only delicately grasping for what was real and what will be remembered as real? Are memories, often misinterpreted or willfully recreated, all we have. Even in April's retelling of the Thanksgiving story to immigrants living in her apartment building she struggles to find a way to tell the story that would bring hope instead of isolation to her new friends who are trying to make this place thier new home. And in the end it becomes a story in which indians and pilgrims depended on each other much like the meal she is currently making.
It is a painful expression of a longing and need for community. For help. For sacrifice. For sharing of stories and lives and hopes, of ovens, meals and truth in memories. What I find most disheartening at the moment is the powerlessness I sometimes feel in creating that in this world. People are selfish, I am selfish, we would rather remember things our way, at times we would rather create our own world rather than share in creating it with others. And then at times when we do desire it and reach out for it, a blistering silence, or perhaps worse a critical threat is all we hear.
Tonight I am sadened by the lonliness in our world.
I am intrigued by the thought that maybe all we really have is the moment, the snap shot, because after it has passed it becomes something new.
I am hopeful that when morning comes things might make a little more sense :).
Joie, Thanks for those thoughts. I always enjoy it when you blog. :)
joie, my emotional reaction to "pieces" was completely different from yours... i found it to have a wonderfully redeeming ending- there was hope for love within that family in the end. did i totally misinterpret? or do we just see it differently? i have been known to look at the positive most of the time, maybe even to a fault...
well, you know I wouldn't say that I'm known for my optimism so maybe that's part of it. But I have more questions than I do answers about how to interpret the movie. On the one hand you do get a warm fuzzy from the ending.The family is together and they are happy together. A good memory is made. I have yet to conclude it as a hopeless ending, that is still open to discussion. I was more thinking about the rest of the film and the questions it raises about remembering the past. Memory is something that has the power to tie people together. The impact of retelling history and it's influence on a society. I think it is interesting that the holidayt was thanksgiving. A day that was created by Lincoln because he felt that we needed a national holiday to bring us together. And the holiday itself is based on a rosy interpretation of native "americans" sharing and teaching the anglo-saxons about survival. Ironic that the tribal community that we destroyed then has so many elements of what 21st century westerners yearn for now.( I am going on too long so I will end it there.)
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