I went to the movies this past weekend. I wanted a dose of Kevin Spacey so I went to see Margin Call. But before that I went to see Take Shelter. I was intrigued by the previews, but also by the title. There is something almost intimate and oh so inviting to me when you say or read “take shelter.” I almost imagine someone telling me “take shelter, my love, protect yourself.”
I was blown away by the movie. Specifically I was blown away by Michael Shannon’s portrayal of Curtis LaForche. Michael’s work is intense and brooding and self-contained like the small Ohio town where he and his family live. From the outside, like his friend Dewart says, Curtis has a good life, but things start unraveling and feeling uncomfortable when he begins having terrible nightmares that he can’t shake off. They persist and haunt him in his waking hours like the pain he feels when in one of them he is viciously bitten by his dog.
But Curtis is also a practical man moved by the self-imposed drive that he will never leave his family. Never. His mom had a psychotic break in her mid thirties (Curtis’s age now) and left him alone when he was ten. He has promised himself he will never expose his own family to that pain.
He decides to face his nightmares with effort and purpose. He checks books about mental illness from his public library and makes an attempt at self-diagnosis. But the dread and the threat of imminent danger he sees in the sky above do not really subside. He begins to presage a storm like no other and decides to improve the tornado shelter in his backyard incurring into a debt that the family cannot afford.
His wife Samantha and his daughter Hannah are strong presences in the movies. Hannah is a six year deaf child whose parents are looking into a cochlear implant that is only possible through Curtis’s medical insurance from work. This procedure is not a sure thing, especially when Curtis is fired from his job.
The movie captivated me. I kept waiting for something supernatural to happen or some aliens to start showing up (my husband’s perspective). But the story insists in keeping it real and to be something utterly possible. Curtis knows he is not right in the head and looks for assistance, but his fears permeate his every act.
The final scene is especially powerful. Following medical advice, the family gets away from the storm shelter for some days and goes to the beach. Little Hannah sees it first. She tells her dad it’s a storm. He looks out to sea. We can’t see what he sees, yet you know it’s something huge. When he finally catches his wife Sam’s eyes, you can see them holding a silent conversation from afar, like married couples do, asking her if what he is seeing is true or a product of his weakened mind, since we all know he can’t be trusted. She nods at him, validating whatever it is he’s seeing. He picks up his daughter and goes to her. Then you see what they’re seeing and it ends with Samantha saying “Okay.”
When I think about this movie and then think about Margin Call, I can’t really help but ask is Curtis really that crazy? I mean we do live in a crazy world; we can’t deny that or hide from that. Here you have a hard-working guy, loving and devoted to his family that has to make do with counselors because he cannot afford to see the medical staff who might be professionally trained to help him, a guy who loses his job and with it the possibility of affording the medical care his little girl truly needs.
Then you have the arrogant characters of Margin Call who flippantly talk about making anywhere from $250,000 to $2 million plus a year in Wall Street. The movie tries to explain the 2008 housing bubble burst. Now if the average salary for regular folks is what? 4OK, maybe 60K a year, isn’t it crazy that a 23 year old kid makes 250K, and we see little kids like Hannah or ill people like Curtis go unattended. I really don’t know if Curtis’s paranoia might be totally unwarranted.
Anyway, as I said before, I am no movie critic, but in my mind Mr. Shannon has become a heavyweight Oscar contender and shown me what acting at its best looks like.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
#38 -- I was seven…
We were six and seven when my younger sister and I got our green cards in 1967. As a favor, a friend of my mother’s, La Viuda or The Widow, made the long bus ride with us from Guadalajara to Tijuana so we could reunite with our parents.
At school children didn’t like me; they laughed at me and called me names. Children would stop drinking from water fountains after I used it making faces of how gross it would be to drink from the same water fountain as the Mexican kid.
The last thing I want is pity, because I realize we all have issues. In my case, mine have to do with abandonment, loss, bewilderment and a sense of not belonging and of unworthiness, and I do believe there is a direct correlation between them and my condition as an immigrant, being left behind and brought unprepared to a new country and all this implies. My defense mechanism has been detachment and forgetfulness. I just do not associate the natural pain with the traumatic events, and then I forget the events altogether.
But I do remember my first English word upon entering first grade:
There’s a white teacher in front a me. She holds a large whiteboard card in her hands. There is a red square drawn on the card and three letters under it. R-E-D. The teacher points to the red square and I understand I’m supposed to name the color, so I say “rojo.” She shakes her head vigorously and it’s obvious I’m doing something wrong. She points again, and again I say “rojo.” And she says no and insists on “red” pronouncing the word slowly and purposefully. I say “rojo” in the same manner. I don’t know how long we do this, until I guess I begin doubting everything I held for certain up to that moment, and my “rojos” quaver and quiet down and I timidly try my first “red.”
Instead of denying my “rojo,” I wonder if had my teacher reaffirmed it with my new “red,” would I have been a less scared and scarred little girl? Because through words we name our world and ourselves and if you already have a language by which you can say who you are, but then at some point, unexplainably, you’re taught or made to give it up, I think it’s fair to assume that you’ll question your worth and your value.
Now I know better. But it’s been a long and weary road the one I’ve walked to be at this point where I can say that I know I’m fortunate to know two languages, to belong to two cultures. I believe multilingualism and multiculturalism make you a more tolerant, understanding, forgiving and universal human being. We are able to relate better to human beings in all latitudes, and realize and accept that we are rather small in the greatness of our planet and our universe, and finally, that we are not the center of it all.
At school children didn’t like me; they laughed at me and called me names. Children would stop drinking from water fountains after I used it making faces of how gross it would be to drink from the same water fountain as the Mexican kid.
The last thing I want is pity, because I realize we all have issues. In my case, mine have to do with abandonment, loss, bewilderment and a sense of not belonging and of unworthiness, and I do believe there is a direct correlation between them and my condition as an immigrant, being left behind and brought unprepared to a new country and all this implies. My defense mechanism has been detachment and forgetfulness. I just do not associate the natural pain with the traumatic events, and then I forget the events altogether.
But I do remember my first English word upon entering first grade:
There’s a white teacher in front a me. She holds a large whiteboard card in her hands. There is a red square drawn on the card and three letters under it. R-E-D. The teacher points to the red square and I understand I’m supposed to name the color, so I say “rojo.” She shakes her head vigorously and it’s obvious I’m doing something wrong. She points again, and again I say “rojo.” And she says no and insists on “red” pronouncing the word slowly and purposefully. I say “rojo” in the same manner. I don’t know how long we do this, until I guess I begin doubting everything I held for certain up to that moment, and my “rojos” quaver and quiet down and I timidly try my first “red.”
Instead of denying my “rojo,” I wonder if had my teacher reaffirmed it with my new “red,” would I have been a less scared and scarred little girl? Because through words we name our world and ourselves and if you already have a language by which you can say who you are, but then at some point, unexplainably, you’re taught or made to give it up, I think it’s fair to assume that you’ll question your worth and your value.
Now I know better. But it’s been a long and weary road the one I’ve walked to be at this point where I can say that I know I’m fortunate to know two languages, to belong to two cultures. I believe multilingualism and multiculturalism make you a more tolerant, understanding, forgiving and universal human being. We are able to relate better to human beings in all latitudes, and realize and accept that we are rather small in the greatness of our planet and our universe, and finally, that we are not the center of it all.
Friday, October 7, 2011
#37 - Divided
With immigration back in the headlines, especially in Alabama, I thought about what being an assimilated immigrant means, especially when you maintain healthy roots to your homeland.
I’d like to explain what I unoriginally call The Change, and it’s not menopause (though I probably could talk about that one too). My Change happens when I go from one country to another, and it’s automatic, natural…basically instinctive. Let me explain.
Here in the States I’m bothered by cigarette smoke, trash in the streets and smog. It angers me that I agree to meet with a friend for coffee at 6 and she waltzes in 20 minutes late. I’m certain that a good chunk of my day I think only in English. I celebrate wholeheartedly the customs and holidays of this country. I love the freeways, the efficiency and logic of most every social process. I anticipate the hurried pace, the distances, the lack of time. The occasional homeless people I see surprise me precisely because it’s so rare to see them. In other words, I adapt and thrive in the urban landscape of living in Dallas, right smack in the middle of the First World.
Then I go to my homeland, to Mexico.
I share the table with six people and I’m the only non-smoker. I’m hit by the unpleasant smell of cigarettes, smoke getting in my eyes, and I don’t even bat an eye. People arrive late and I happily greet them with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. In cars it feels like I’m on horseback, jumping around in the backseat with no seatbelt while other cars flash by furiously and dangerously fast, a couple of inches from us, and still I’m able to smile like a kid. Downtown children literally play with fire for a couple of coins, as do clowns, jugglers and musicians with their marimbas, and Indian women sit with outstretched hands. Though saddened by the blatant sight of their poverty, I know them to be an integral part of my city. While there, English doesn’t come to mind. Someone suggests taking me to a Starbucks and I react offended. Don’t get me wrong, sadly I’m one of those people that keep Starbucks in business in spite of their overpriced coffee and coffee paraphernalia. But over there it’s the last place I see myself. So I insist on those small coffee shops that are unique to the city where my friends and I make that last of cup of java last for hours in delicious conversation.
As you can see, in my homeland I am another person. I’m the One From There, the one that lives with smog, smokers, poverty, chaos and social tardiness. And there I know myself to be also in my element.
As I said, what’s amazing is the ability of going through The Change. It’s like turning a switch. Click, and I’m the One From Here. Click, and I’m the One From There. One denies the other.
How can we explain, say chemically or physiologically these two consciousness, these two ways of being? Does a specific area in my brain become active while another has to totally shut down?
This is what being bicultural and bilingual is all about—being divided. I’m divided in two: I understand, love and belong to two countries, two languages; I have two pasts and two loyalties.
And this is how I go through life…divided.
I’d like to explain what I unoriginally call The Change, and it’s not menopause (though I probably could talk about that one too). My Change happens when I go from one country to another, and it’s automatic, natural…basically instinctive. Let me explain.
Here in the States I’m bothered by cigarette smoke, trash in the streets and smog. It angers me that I agree to meet with a friend for coffee at 6 and she waltzes in 20 minutes late. I’m certain that a good chunk of my day I think only in English. I celebrate wholeheartedly the customs and holidays of this country. I love the freeways, the efficiency and logic of most every social process. I anticipate the hurried pace, the distances, the lack of time. The occasional homeless people I see surprise me precisely because it’s so rare to see them. In other words, I adapt and thrive in the urban landscape of living in Dallas, right smack in the middle of the First World.
Then I go to my homeland, to Mexico.
I share the table with six people and I’m the only non-smoker. I’m hit by the unpleasant smell of cigarettes, smoke getting in my eyes, and I don’t even bat an eye. People arrive late and I happily greet them with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. In cars it feels like I’m on horseback, jumping around in the backseat with no seatbelt while other cars flash by furiously and dangerously fast, a couple of inches from us, and still I’m able to smile like a kid. Downtown children literally play with fire for a couple of coins, as do clowns, jugglers and musicians with their marimbas, and Indian women sit with outstretched hands. Though saddened by the blatant sight of their poverty, I know them to be an integral part of my city. While there, English doesn’t come to mind. Someone suggests taking me to a Starbucks and I react offended. Don’t get me wrong, sadly I’m one of those people that keep Starbucks in business in spite of their overpriced coffee and coffee paraphernalia. But over there it’s the last place I see myself. So I insist on those small coffee shops that are unique to the city where my friends and I make that last of cup of java last for hours in delicious conversation.
As you can see, in my homeland I am another person. I’m the One From There, the one that lives with smog, smokers, poverty, chaos and social tardiness. And there I know myself to be also in my element.
As I said, what’s amazing is the ability of going through The Change. It’s like turning a switch. Click, and I’m the One From Here. Click, and I’m the One From There. One denies the other.
How can we explain, say chemically or physiologically these two consciousness, these two ways of being? Does a specific area in my brain become active while another has to totally shut down?
This is what being bicultural and bilingual is all about—being divided. I’m divided in two: I understand, love and belong to two countries, two languages; I have two pasts and two loyalties.
And this is how I go through life…divided.
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