Was I posting that "China Doll" video for the second time the other day? (I told you I was lightheaded.) Beauty isn't everything, but it sure isn't nothing! Looking at super-beautiful women like those, I feel a bit sad. Maybe there's a part of me that's asking, "Is that all there is to life?" But the odd thing is that I don't really mind it. Sorrow's part of life, and we shouldn't run away from it; we should embrace it.
We may wonder, "What is real?" I know pain is real: it's "elephant in the living room" real! And sorrow is real too. I've started to believe that love is also real: our mother loved us not wisely but too well. The deepest sorrow surely comes from love.
There's a particular moment I remember from Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights. I find most of his movies somehow off-putting, but I liked that one. It comes in a montage near the end that shows all the characters "hitting bottom." (I could have done without the heavy-handed chime music, but that's a small point.)
It involves porn actress and frequent cokehead Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), who's in a child custody battle with her ex-husband who disapproves of her lifestyle and wants her to have zero access. There's just been a divorce hearing where the ex said she'd been arrested for drug possession, which she foolishly, desperately denied, but of course the arrest was on record.
In this montage we see Amber sobbing outside the courtroom--no need to say what the court decided! It was such a real moment--I could feel the motherly love that led to this sorrow. (If I ever have the good fortune to meet Julianne Moore, I'll ask here how she filmed that scene.)
Custody battles are sad. Dr. Phil said that when parents fight over their kids, "The mother may win or the father may win, but the children always lose." (Dr. Phil is an annoying bully on the make, but he's right about that.) Some people want to believe that divorce for couples with children is always wrong, but that isn't so. Divorce is clearly the lesser evil for some couples, even for some couples with kids!
What's saddest of all is when one parent convinces himself or herself that if their child is cut off from all contact with the other parent, that'll somehow be in the child's best interest! (They can't admit that this is really about what they want, or even just about denying to the other parent what they want.) It isn't fun being that parent's lawyer. You may well realize that the child is getting a bad deal, but if your client is bloody-minded you have no choice but to work for what they want. A person's right to have a lawyer who'll do what he wants trumps everything else, and that's the way it must be.
I was just reading about Dylan Farrow insisting her father Woody Allen really is guilty of incest with her, and some people still doubting her. This allegedly happened when she was seven: granted that there are fathers who screw their daughters, but this is aberrant even by incest standards! I'm not saying it couldn't have happened, but it's very convenient that her mother Mia Farrow suddenly noticed it after their breakup over her other daughter Soon-yi: Woody claims that Mia told him, "You took away my daughter, and I'm going to take away yours!" Did she rationalize to herself, "He's guilty enough of incest"? It certainly worked: the judge not only gave her total custody but made Woody pay her legal bills!
As for Soon-yi, Woody could at least have waited until she graduated from college!
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