OF DREAMS AND MORE: PROXIMA AND LITTLE WOMEN
PROXIMA
An exercise in distance and proximity.
Being close, or far.
People in orbit, planets to be discovered
In the infinity of space, in the infinity of the human heart.
Training in spite of different forms of inevitable and unrelentless obstacles.
Taming fear, and guilt.
A sense of discipline and purpose.
Tapping against glass ceilings, expected and unexpected.
A fine balance, losing your gravity when unmoored from your usual habitat.
What is the nature of our attachments? What happens when they get in the way?
Loyalty to others, and to oneself: defying gravity.
A mother and a daughter,
A daughter and a father.
A family, and what makes it comes together, and mean something.
A dream deferred, and retrieved.
Other dreams in its wake, articulated, acknowledge and acted upon.
A promise made and kept.
The movie provides a reservoir of images and metaphors to address the theme of motherhood—biological and other.
The mystery of delivery, the wonder of birth (s)
Beyond what the body can imagine for the light years of our inventive distances.
LITTLE WOMEN
The discussion and conversation on and around writing
And finding a voice.
To be empowered by a passion of your own making.
Question of authorship and identity.
Family and belonging:
Women’s agency or lack thereof outside marriage,
Romantic love and its ideal(s), or illusion(s).
To be in enamored with some idea of the beloved at hand, rather than his/her actual reality.
Blindness and sefl-delusion.
But awareness eventually wins the day.
The discussion(s) with the publisher: closing the loop, perhaps bringing some closure to the writer’s journey. Her growth and transformation. A trial of self-assertion and honesty.
Sisterhood as a lifelong commitment and achievement.
The dreams entailed in our family attachments.
The role models we find, and those we become.
The figure of the aunt: indomitable and unforgiving.
A form of resilience, or a calling?
Laurie’s grandfather and his own loss:
The emotional intimacy of the piano sequence when Meg’s music conjures up his beloved daughter.
The fine texture of our emotional lives, the occasional rupture which has to be mended with care and patience.
The Civil War and its theatre of destruction and horror. is evoked indirectly.
No actual battle scenes,
Yet there are allusions to the forms of terror generated by the antebellum South, in particular the horror of slavery.
The aesthetic and visual power of the movie.
The artistic design created by the bold narrative technique.
The flashbacks/use of fiction in fiction, like a mise en abyme: some scenes appear unreal, and turn the script into a self-reflective process.
Some scenes (such as the school with the pupils) are poised between fiction and reality, providing a welcome and nurturing space for the viewer to take his/her own stand as to what is imagined or real, possible and achievable. On screen and in life.
OTHER CONTEXTS, OTHER DREAMS
FRANKIE
The theatricality of the actress’s gestures
The setting like a stage
Individual portraits
The landscape and its metaphoric undertones
The folklore and the legend, the fountain and the miraculous waters.
A young girl initiated into the fragility of life and the transiency of things.
The vulnerability of the body, and the unquenchable thirst of the soul.
A RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK
A series of theatrical scenes: the reference to Shakespeare (very much like the reference to T. Williams in Jasmine Perfume)
And New York as a wonderful protagonist, or witness!
The landscape of the mind: rain and sadness.
Mini dramas
Witty dialogues, good and bold lines.
Ambition and jealousy,
The fragility of some loyalties.
The naïveté, yet the desire to explore an unexpected opportunity.
Cheating and honesty.
Our flaws and our redemptive dimensions.
In Arthur Miller’s image, our fragile galaxies of endless possibility.
Marie Lienard-Yeterian