Volume 3, Entry 9: Talks

Some people and places never fade

On our last night in Elk Grove in 1996, we stayed the night at our family friends’ house. We had turned in the keys for our home the day before and were due down in Irvine to accept our new ones 24 hours later, so they offered us refuge. Julia gifted my parents her bed, while Tom and I slept on an air mattress on her floor.

The next morning, we ate breakfast in their kitchen. This was the site of many meals and birthday celebrations and card games, but that morning I assumed I would never sit at it again. That was my understanding of moving: we would leave and then never return or see them again, no matter how many plans for visits and trips were swirling around us. We left Arkansas and never returned; I generalized those to be the same. This was the mark of an ending and, when we finally piled into the mocha station wagon I would four years later learn to drive in, I cried as we watched their family house recede into the distance.

That breakfast wasn’t an ending, though. They visited us once in Irvine, we met them once halfway at Yosemite, and we stayed over with them in Elk Grove once as well. And then we moved back! One literal year to the day in fact. We had many more meals and celebrations at their house—graduations and birthdays and New Year’s Eves but also just Friday night meals after weekly dinners that we did because we were family even though we technically weren’t. We ate brunch every other Christmas morning there pre-COVID. There was even a night once during college where I dropped something off at their house and ended up sitting down for dinner with them and their cousins from Hawaii and spent two hours perfectly content to be absorbed into a family. Years—so many years—have passed and rearrangements have taken place but I still know that kitchen. I still know that living room. I still know that backyard. I still know that guest room.

The guest room, by the way, is not where we stayed before our move down. That was definitely Julia’s on the second floor. At the time, the guest room was a study with the family computer and wall-to-wall bookshelves packed with tomes. Julia’s dad, Eric, was my first intellectual role model, the smartest person I knew, and the books and magazines in there suited his character in my head. I can still place everything in that room as it was, with the computer on the right of the doorway and the small single bed made-up but used for storage as well.

Many hours were spent in their guest room-slash-study during elementary school and almost always for the same purpose. The eight of us would eat our Friday dinner at Papa’s Pizzeria, making sodabombs, losing at pinball, and wasting quarters on stickers and tiny plastic knickknacks in crummy plastic bubbles. Then we would drive home, mixing up the cars—I always like Eric’s with the radio up on whatever Motown hit 101.1 played and him singing along in full voice—and then arrive at whichever house the parents would play cards at that week. While Tom and Kathryn played games, Julia and I would go into the guest room and talk about feelings.

The precise content of our conversations is mostly lost to my failing memory, but not how I felt about them. I resented those conversations before they began, whining about them to my mom before we would drive to Papa’s every week. Afterward I would act the same way, groaning about them and whining away anew. A lot of this stemmed from what I perceived as a gesture of condescension: the enlightened Julia was taking it upon herself to educate the Neanderthal me in the ways of being a mature person. This was Ron’s disdain for Hermione years later; this was being a dumb fourth grader and wanting to play, not sit across from someone on a bed and discuss our world, the people in it, and how we felt about both.

But yet, most weeks, this is exactly what we did. Holed up in the guest room-slash-study, Julia and I talked. No matter how much I protested outside of our sessions, I didn’t hate being in there though. I didn’t hate talking about feelings or, more often I’m sure, listening to Julia talk about hers and try to coax something out of me. It felt safe in that guest room, and even then at ten and eleven I understood that Julia cared about me and that these talks were part of the way she showed me that.

Other than with Matt at our occasional sleepovers, these talks were the only times I ever talked about feelings with anyone. No structure, no catalyst event for them. This was Megan’s circle time with merely a diameter (or an infinite number of circles; two points can lie on an infinite number of circles after all) a few years before she was born.

Julia and I talked like that for years until we moved. I remember apprehension before our final talk after our (presumably) last visit to Papa’s together. I was a stupid fourth grader and she and I had even had a feud of sorts that spring but that was long forgotten in the way kids can forget stuff like that. I understood that our final talk was a meaningful endpoint for me but also for us. Despite all my whiny protesting, I knew that those talks had been meaningful and important. I felt like I needed to honor that and, for quite some time, I believed I needed to kiss her. That felt like the thing to do to show that, you know, our talks mattered to me. That she mattered to me. The door was always closed so a kiss was a possible thing, but such a gesture also felt like a miscast message. Julia was absolutely someone I loved deeply—and love still—but she was a friend, a mentor, and basically even a sister. Kissing her didn’t compute as wrong to fourth grade me, but it felt oddly misaligned and also impossibly epic and transformative, like a domino that would keep knocking down dominoes for the rest of our lives, bifurcating everything from that point forward.

I didn’t kiss her, though—at least I don’t remember doing so. I do remember crying, though, if not in the guest room with her then alone in my room as I fell asleep that night. I knew something good was ending. It wasn’t—not in the sense that Julia would ever be out of my life—but she and I never sat down and talked just the two of us ever again. Not in that way.

On Tuesday, I stood on the edge of that same kitchen. I never stepped forward to glance at the guest room door, clinging instead to the wall only a few feet from that familiar kitchen table always stacked high with French Toast casserole and scrambled eggs and Kringle on Christmas mornings to facilitate the same sort of free-wheeling conversations that make me love While You Were Sleeping. I stood on the perimeter of that kitchen to say goodbye to Julia before she moved to Seattle with her husband and two young kids.

This was not the first time she had moved—there was Seattle before and also San Jose—but this felt different. Those moves still left her orbiting Elk Grove and that childhood home; there was never a doubt that I would see Julia again. Getting married, we were right there at her wedding. The closest talk she and I have had since elementary school was dancing there in the trees, nineteen years to the day from our move to Irvine. But on this night, there was an air of finality. Not an “I’ll never see Julia again” finality but a “This kitchen will never be quite the same again” finality. It scared me a little bit; there was an impending sadness hanging around the warmly lit room but also a generally upbeat vibe. Sentimental flames licked at my fingers but they didn’t burn.

But there was also this beautiful joy that came from seeing her so comfortably parent while in full conversation and juggling logistics in her head and communicating with Sean through her Apple Watch and responding to six different people peppering her with questions. (A teacher’s withitness is so OP as a parent.) That her daughter clung to a Rapunzel doll only added to my kernel of happiness. Sadness flicked around my head but this was anything but somber.

We all talked for an hour. Lots of talk about logistics and the move and her kids and composting. About everything and nothing. I had been okay with not saying goodbye when commitments stacked up after school but put me in that house and that kitchen and I didn’t want to leave. We even got a few jokes in about turning 36 that really hammered home both the passage of time and the powerful pull of growing up together.

Energy fading at 8:00 for me, we headed out to leave. Julia came over and gave me a hug. This was nothing new, but as soon as I wrapped my arms around her I didn’t want to let go. Hiding the lump in my throat was a part but a larger one was that same bit of joy for this person I’ve loved as long as anyone I’ve known and feeling like I should say something but not really knowing how to capture it in words off the cuff like that. How to say that I talk to people about feelings as you taught me to. How to convey that I love you in the deepest way someone can and that it all makes sense why I didn’t kiss you in fourth grade. How to squeak out that it makes me so immensely happy to see you with your family, the perfect mom I knew you would be as a kid. How to express that I hated the whole world one hour ago but could barely sense that here in this house with you and your family but also our family. There was too much to say in twenty seconds with a crowd of people shuffling around.

Like always, though, Julia understood better than me what I needed.

“I’ll be back down this summer,” she said. “Let’s get together.”

“Okay,” I said, emotion barely audible. “That would be great.”

“It would,” Julia said. “It will be so nice to talk.”

Yes. It will be.

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Content Consumption

FILM

Free Guy (2021)

As someone who really likes Ready Player One, it would be very easy for this review to be written on the defensive. The two films bear striking similarities in concept, tone, and broadly undeveloped caricature villains. Ready Player One supplements its thin story with nostalgia; Free Guy augments with the schtick of Ryan Reynolds. Both are crowd-pleasing, entertaining vehicles for gaming stories and both work. But there’s a cohesiveness that Free Guy lacks that kept resurfacing while I watched, undercutting my enjoyment and weakening the overall effect. I rolled my eyes at Reynolds’ work in Red Notice but loved him here, yet Free Guy ultimately feels empty otherwise, a PG movie given just enough crass edginess to masquerade as something less thin and wholesome. // Guy (Reynolds) works in the crime- and commotion-riddled Free City as a bank teller. Robbed, assaulted, and ignored all day every day, he dreams of more. When he bumps into the mysterious Millie (Jodie Comer), he instantly falls for her, thwarts a robbery, and acquires sunglasses allowing him to see the game underneath his world. When Millie insists he level up, he begins doing good deeds throughout his world and inspiring change. But Guy is a non-player character in a video game whose code was stolen from the real-life Millie and her partner Keys (Joe Keery) and Guy’s actions put both their lawsuit and the fate of Free City in Guy’s virtual hands. // The concept here—NPC assumes agency and changes the world—is a cute one that plays well on the screen. Reynolds’ Guy is so well-meaning and earnest that rooting against him is impossible; his almost child-like innocent goodness is endearing. The real-world story of intellectual property theft, repression, and a domineering corporate villain (Taika Waititi) sags more but does elevate the stakes for the story’s climax. Guy’s story never plays with cynicism which is super refreshing. // The problem is that the film leans so hard into that outside story. The film stretches on and on and on; I found it almost twenty minutes too long and that’s as a person who never complains about length. The final act felt like the product of an entirely different movie, what with Waititi’s Antwan hacking up servers with an axe and Guy suddenly coming into possession of some impressive intellectual property. In a way, the ending feels like a swerve into emulating Ready Player One which can work—I love that film—but it undercuts this one. The ultimate conclusion both inside and outside Free City worked for me but the damage was already done. It was like the filmmakers didn’t trust their world or characters to carry the fun little story home. // They should have. Free Guy was a silly concept that played as fun entertainment and perfectly channeled Reynolds’ immense charm and quippery. It didn’t need to be anything more and trying to ended up leaving the taste of cynicism in my mouth.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021)

The 700 Club inevitably ended up playing on our family television every once in awhile. A show we were watching would end, regular broadcasting would conclude for the night, and a preacher would take over. The TV would be switched off after a few moments, and I would never think another second on that programming that felt a bit like the informercials that took over Fox Sports Net after the games finished. // The Eyes of Tammy Faye tells the story behind the 700 Club and the rise of preaching power couple Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker (Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain) who ascend from a broke couple of seminary dropouts to the heads of a 24-hour evangelical empire of opulence and deception. The Bakkers’ strained marriage, their complicated relationship with fellow evangelists Pat Robertson (Gabriel Olds) and Jerry Falwell (Vincent D’Onofrio), and their ultimate collapse at the hands of the FBI are all seen through Tammy Faye’s own journey from eager but excluded parishioner to acclaimed hostess and entertainer with millions wrapped around her finger. // Based on the 2000 documentary of the same name, The Eyes of a Tammy Faye is an amazing vehicle to showcase Chastain. Tammy Faye is a huge personality with a Betty Boop voice who is always singing and performing and elbowing her way into conversations, refusing to be left out or subjugated. Chastain is often near unrecognizable in the role but also sympathetic, which makes her Best Actress nomination well-deserved. // Ultimately, though, the film plays out like a bland documentary that traces real lives rather than transforms them into a dynamic story. The stakes felt low throughout the film, the Bakkers’ ending inevitable from the start. I certainly appreciated learning more about the ubiquitous program they led and enjoyed seeing Chastain and Garfield plays their roles but, as an outsider to the world of televangelism, the impressions and mechanics were far less powerful. The film never quite made me root for Tammy Faye—my distrust of religion goes a bit too far for that—but the film and Chastain succeed in crafting her into a believable figure with human motivations. Presenting the entire story in biopic form, though, costs the film any sense of urgency or intensity.

Belfast (2021)

Simultaneously a light-hearted slice of life picture with coming-of-age tones, a meticulously crafted period piece, and a stirring film full of boiling tension about an explosive moment in history, Belfast is a deeply personal look at late 60s Ireland told almost fully through the perspective of a young boy. Written and directed by Kenneth Branagh based on his own childhood, Belfast is an excellent film in every facet with a script that is a perfect mix of funny, profound, and moving, a dynamic cast who all nail their roles, and craftsmanship that enables the film to feel like a child’s story without ever condescending. Belfast sucked me in completely yet still left me room to reflect on my own childhood. In a word: Belfast is a treat. // Buddy (newcomer Jude Hill) is a boy playing in the streets of Belfast when an Protestant militia arrives and begins destroying Catholic families’ homes and threatening civilians. Buddy’s neighborhood gets barricaded but his life otherwise continues. His mother (Caitriona Balfe) guides him and his older brother Will (Lewis McAskie) while their father (Jamie Dornan) works in London, with extra support and love offered by his grandparents (Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds). As the conflict continues to boil, though, major changes bubble to the surface and both Buddy and his family must look ahead to a different future than any of them had predicted. // Like JoJo Rabbit before it, Belfast centers its adult story around a child. Unlike JoJo Rabbit, though, where absurdist humor distilled through its protagonists eyes helped make the gravity approachable, Belfast tethers itself to a fully grounded story set not in Buddy’s head but in his world. We see the conflicts—both large and personal—through the lens of Buddy the same way we see him watching movies or listening to music: over his shoulder, at his side, from the other side of the room. The stakes vary greatly throughout Belfast, but all of them are treated with sincerity, whether they be Catholic-Protestant tensions, ailing family members, peer pressure, or trying the win the heart of the smartest girl in class. The world and conflicts are never simplified for us anymore than they are for Buddy; instead, we experience everything alongside him in glorious filmmaking and cinematography as well as find ourselves in our the old outgrown shoes of our memories. // Making it all work is a phenomenal ensemble cast. Hill is a perfect find as Buddy, every bit an innocent kid with wide incredulous eyes whose emotion and spirit never felt one ounce less than authentic. Balfe has the burden of being the concerned mother but never lets her feel one-note; Ma is thoughtful and warm but also demanding and tenacious, the fierce protector of her boys. Dornan, too, shines here, with his fatherly presence strong; like the film, his refusal to condescend to his impressionable sons was subtle but powerful on screen. And Dench and Hinds—both nominated for Oscars for their performances—make Granny and Pop more than just objects. Dench has less meat to work with but comes off as multi-dimensional in a role filled with warmth and sadness both while Hinds is jovial but so invested and compassionate. Each character leaps off the screen not with showiness but sepia-toned realism. // Belfast is masterful filmmaking behind a story that is richly personal yet feels familiar and universal. With human characters played by a transcendent cast and an upbeat soundtrack serenading every scene, the result is a crowd pleaser that moves but never cloys or condescends. Belfast and Branagh deserve all the praise they have received.

É stata la mano de Dio (2021)

Yet another slice of life built around the impressionistic recollection of a filmmaker’s childhood, É stata la mano de Dio (The Hand of God) meanders through memories of family, yearning, and tragedy for an aimless teenage boy. The stories are lived in and tie loosely together but the end result works as a strangely cohesive whole, forming a mosaic of emotion and growth. // Fabrietto (Filippo Scotti) is a quiet loner living with his parents in Naples, Italy. He lusts after women, bonds with his huge extended family, and talks excitedly about fútbol. When the local team purchases international mega-star Diego Maradona for the season, Fabrietto and the town are on cloud nine and, although unbeknownst to Fabrietto, Maradona’s presence will not just elevate Naples’ civic pride but also save him from a terrifying tragedy that leaves him questioning everything about life and the world. // This is one of those films where I watched leaning forward—reading the summary about Maradona’s rescue of sorts meant I watched greedily for clues as to the mechanics of the plot. How would a soccer star rescue this random kid? Would their boats crash? Would Fabrietto fall or get hit by the star’s car? This didn’t pull me away from the rich details of the world—this is another film with conversations between families at tables that have an authenticity that I delighted in, even if they were so often crass and cruel—but it meant that I was weeding through those details looking for flowers only to eventually discover that the film’s hook was not the prize here. A lot happens in É stata la mano de Dio but also very little which is to say: this is a film about family. // And it’s an effective film about family that captures that wide spectrum of emotions that grow from those bonds we are born into but also those bonds that become as strong as family because we were taught the importance of those connections. One of my favorite scenes here is Fabrietto visiting a smuggler (Biagio Manna) in prison. The two had bonded in only one long night and the smuggler was as sketchy as they get, but Fabrietto not only visited him in prison but reminded him of a forward-looking inside joke. It is an inconsequential moment but yet a moment of such profound generosity and warmth that the film came together for me. This was a moment shaped by all those moments that preceded it, a moment in which the writer and director could demonstrate the impact and influence of all the love he grew up with. I enjoyed É stata la mano de Dio plenty—I like this genre—but it was this tiny scene amid 125+ minutes of others that made me appreciate what Paolo Sorrentino was trying to do.

West Side Story (2021)

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

I knew West Side Story was Romeo and Juliet. This was maybe the only thing I knew about the classic musical beyond details like Sharks and Jets. Romeo and Juliet means a brutal ending—not that I ever fully engaged with that play—so I knew that West Side Story would end in brutal fashion. And yet there I was watching as Maria (Rachel Zegler) approached Tony (Ansel Elgort) and, even knowing what I knew, I believed things would be different. The two star-crossed lovers would embrace and run off and be happy. I believed it to my core. For five seconds, I believed that I had been wrong about the ending. I felt giddy relief. // And then Tony was shot and I crashed down to reality and I sobbed. Hard sobbed. This was a massive surprise! I didn’t even think I was that engaged or bought into the film. I definitely wasn’t invested in the romance which was as love-at-first-sight ridiculous as can be. But yet that scene destroyed me. I’m so relieved I didn’t see this in theaters because that was not a reaction I could have smothered in a semi-public place. // I’m also glad I did no research on the film ahead of time. From what I saw on IMDB, there was some sort of one-star smear campaign against the film. Having never seen the play or the original, I can’t romanticize the original and use that denigrate every decision about this new one that is a visual and audio spectacle. Elgort’s singing voice is marvelous, Mike Faist brings a twitchy, slimy anger to Riff, and the tension in the film leaps off the screen. I found multiple songs catchy but all of them well-performed and the dancing was gloriously choreographed and filmed. I particularly loved the shots when shots were taken within huge dance numbers that gave me a perspective I could never get in a theatre. Steven Spielberg did this as grand and majestic as he could and it worked for me. No matter what came before it, 2021’s West Side Story is an achievement. // My gripes are all the same ones I would have with Romeo and Juliet. This story is ridiculous: Maria and Tony meet on a Tuesday and 30 hours later everything ends. This isn’t how love works outside of cinema and infatuation-fueled minds. But it works here, becoming urgent and somehow believable in a way I didn’t understand until I broke down in the final scene. It made me a believer—at least for five seconds. West Side Story was every bit as beautiful as any sensory experience should be, but maker me fall for the big, dumb romance at its heart? That’s the film’s biggest victory.

Drive My Car (2021)

For some people, a film that builds toward people sharing vulnerably about their traumas and regrets might feel slow or boring. I get it: in Drive My Car, no one so much as raises their voice, the opening credits roll after a forty-minute prologue, and the powerful scenes are conversations with tears welled up in characters’ eyes. The film nevertheless builds toward a powerful, understated conclusion that felt as satisfying as any I have seen. There’s a lot of movie here—179 minutes’ worth—and yet it never drags. It has a ton to say and it says it all masterfully without holding the viewer’s hand. Drive My Car is a meditative masterpiece. // Based on a short story by Haruki Murakami (disclaimer: one of my favorite authors), Drive My Car follows Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), an experimental director who leads a happy life with his screenwriter wife Oto (Reika Kirishima). When Kafuku discovers his wife having an affair, he says nothing, but her untimely death leaves him reeling and stagnant. When he is invited to direct a production of Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima, Kafuku finds himself challenged by an unexpected cast member (Masaki Okada) but also his program-mandated chauffeur Misaki (Tôko Miura) who each has a story of their own to push Kafuku ever forward. // With many pivotal scenes taking place inside a red Saab, Drive My Car is nevertheless visually stunning, filled with shots that evoke emotional intimacy. The space feels tight and the characters close, the road and world outside always humming along to remind us of the movement despite the steadiness of ever shot. The decision to have Kafuku’s plays be multilingual was a deft touch, reflecting the theme of unknowability that pervades so much. Just as Kafuku must get his cast to tell their story without the benefit of a common language with each other or their audience, so to must he learn to accept a story without being able to know its details. // Performance-wise, the cast was excellent. Nishijima is fantastic in the lead here, collected and understated in every interaction but also wounded in a way that seeps out just often enough. Miura makes Misaki an enigma for most of the film but one that is always alert; we know that there is something there and we wait dutifully for the revelation. And Okada, in a role that demanded real touch to land, captures Takatsuki perfectly, with the boy-band good looks never fully masking his sorrow and dissatisfaction. A character who could have been unsympathetic through no fault of his own ends up a moving contributor to Kafuku’s story. // The best adaptations find ways to carry the original’s heart without feeling glued to every detail. Drive My Car is precisely that: a faithful adaptation that expands everything from Murakami’s short story in a transcendent way. Three-hour films about plays with people talking about their lives aren’t for everyone but this is a remarkable piece of filmmaking that can speak to many people about a great many things.

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A Friday away from school was the best birthday present I could ask for.