A LETTERED SOUL: REFLECTIONS ON LITERATURE, CINEMA AND CULTURE .

OF FAMILIAR IMPULSES AND RELATABLE STORYTELLING.

The following writings concern some influential titles that this writer consumed with the passion of a cinephile, surprised as always at how cinematic art  ends up speaking profoundly to the present moment in time.

This random list includes storytelling which embraces ideas of community and family while always contemplating the best in both. Somehow, the reality of anticipation builds up tension just like the unexpected stream we see free-flowing right now. So here they are.

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SELENA

The kind of familial solidarity that this biography of Grammy winning Mexican-American superstar Selena Quintanilla Perez gifted me with is something I believe we have all come to re-embrace in these times of quarantine. Come hail or storm, as long as our kindred give us inner strength, we can achieve our immediate goals; it is exactly the nucleus of this script toplining Jennifer Lopez in the titular role of a lifetime, brimming with positivity as it eschews common tropes of fame and all its extravagant addendums. Instead, it naturally looks at Selena's rise as she emerges on the forefront of a cultural renaissance, aided by her family band, her father's constant support and a mother who tells her to follow this rare path of success since in her heydays, an early marriage and limited worldviews were the only options available to youth.

It's a humbling look filled with musical uplift and gender balance. By the time the shocking end comes, taking Selena from the mortal realm at just 23 years of age, it hits doubly hard because we are reeling from the sheer uncertainty of our present lives.
Especially when it is an unnatural/ unjustified death brought on by forces beyond our control.

As I finished watching SELENA, I felt that until that moment of reckoning, she had love and a sense of belonging to ground her in the world. It's an observation that must matter to us since death often leaves behind a residue of regrets and unresolved personal dilemmas. In this instance of a celebrated but painfully short lifetime, the amount of love and respect exchanged among kith and kin and by extension a whole community seems to be the justified consolation before her send-off to the great beyond. In hindsight, no life should be lost yet hers was fulfilling within her empire of bonds. It makes sense now more than ever.

**
LEAVE NO TRACE

Debra Granik's LEAVE NO TRACE is as pure and unspoilt an exploration of a father-daughter bond as the secure cover of nature it rallies around.

Parts of it have a kind of spiritual simplicity, an enlightenment as also the factual composure of a documentary ( look no further for that example than the director's very own STRAY DOG); while her own sense of identification with rural communities and the solitary core of their values, whether good or bad, makes one quote her breakout turn with 2010's WINTER'S BONE.