Anxiety

Aftersun

I am rarely moved to literal tears by works of fiction. This film floored me.

“Don’t you ever feel like you’ve just done a whole amazing day, and then you come home and feel tired and down, and it feels like your bones don’t work? They’re just tired and everything is tired. Like you’re sinking”

Sophie

I was doing okay until the final scenes. Watching, I felt very much in the crosshairs as someone who struggles more than he might let on. Someone who is increasingly overwhelmed by parenthood and close relationships. Someone who doesn’t quite belong; never will.

Exceptional screenplay. Beautifully acted and shot. Masterful use of space between the notes. I particularly enjoyed the Lynchian strobing, and am left wondering about the intermittent use of striped shirts. The rave is a prison? Samsara?

Rain

Hope is seeing light rain through discreet black shutters as the afternoon retires. Hope is watched through the same pane at night, too. Only it has become an old telegraph post’s sodium light.

Despair is too much rain. Debris-covered drains. Pools, saltless with excess summer. Audible drops on cream ceilings that later race down mouldy paint. (None of these things are welcome, by the way. Not one.)

Anxiety lies somewhere in between. It is the doorbell that makes the dog bark. A door answered to a man shaped like an agent, unaffected by the hurried, dry breeze. Such a weathered face.