A LETTERED SOUL, BOOK 2- MUSINGS ON ART AND CULTURE

A SUBDUED WESTERN, BERGMAN'S PROBING MIND, WOMEN GASLIT AND HARD JOURNEYS.

The way her experience with the two men acutely make her shudder and yet seek an almost counteracting interest in being sexually aroused bring out the manner in which tears and horrid laughter mingle in her unraveling in the presence of another colleague. A tragic experience, when piled on top of an irreconcilable past, can do that, break the symmetry of one's understanding of evading or wanting the forbidden. I can absolutely identify with that inexplicable feeling. It's like the body reacts to danger sometimes as an incoming challenge. As if fear as an entity is being traded for a bold moral compass, seeking to identify the depths of one's threshold for pain, by calling the perpetrators towards its easy target. It has happened to me over the past year especially, consonant with a deluge of daily verbal and sometimes physical abuse, dynamics within the home that I've faced as a young man over the longest stretch of time, making me often run towards a point where I want to be defiled in some way. As an asexual person, I have been able to evade absolute danger perhaps owing to that trait of my personality and my innate faith.

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The reality then of being naturally aromantic, asexual and being almost at the receiving end of sexual advances and threat to the body from members of my own gender ( and no I'm not calling out any orientation here at all, just individual responses) hence was the most debilitating blow to me. FACE TO FACE was the first time I felt seen. It felt real to then finally write down aspects about myself that I wouldn't ever speak openly among mortals. But by being visually stirred by a respectable and dignified, no holds barred take on mental horrors invading one's adult personality, I could air my thoughts. So I want to accord Ms. Ullman the highest regard because the way she handles the final stretch of her confessions, imploding within and exploding emotionally in her body and spirit, illustrates the most accurate representation of how I feel. Only I haven't found a personal agent or friend to lend an ear to my ordeal which bears scars of a lifetime, like she does with her patient colleague.

FACE TO FACE is also a realistic portrayal of the way mental health professionals themselves go through dangerous motions. Maybe that's why they can possess the ability to treat their patients effectively or maybe it's a reverse form of therapy for their own unfinished pasts and experiences. Bless Mr. Bergman for always probing the human mind with such empathy and tact.

Of course, the pain never goes away. But the feeling of sharing one's life script lessens the pull of the psychological noose.

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WENDY AND LUCY (2008)

Kelly Reichardt's minimalistic strokes of realism again occupy this list. This time, it's courtesy the linear journey of the two titular women, one a human, the other a canine, in her emotionally wrenching 2008 feature.

Stricken by the sticky end of financial misfortune, Wendy goes through what we may view as fairly common trials of being a have-not. Broken car, almost no money, no job at sight and dissociated from her cash-strapped family members who anyway don't want to even entertain a phone call from her. That's her profile.

Michelle Williams is a miracle of a performer because she lends it the gut-punch of a documentary and the emotional implosion of youth falling by the wayside in real time. Those are the qualities she shares with her selflessly empathetic director/ writer/ editor Reichardt. The latter has a way of focusing on her subjects with a sublime lens that uplifts them from the modern desert of generational stasis without losing track of the way society is mostly composed of these sundry strugglers. They make up the demographic that occupy her ecosystem.