Hello! Hi! It’s been a while since I shared any writing here. About eight years I think. In that time I did more programming than criticism, became a parent just before the global pandemic and put my writing skills to good use at the arts charity I work for, writing funding applications, social media posts and really good emails.
Well, my daughter is six now and I find myself moved to write about film again. Different now though is the kind of writing I want to do. I’m much less interested in reviews and criticism and for practical reasons, I’m much less able to ravenously consume as many films as possible. What I’ve long cared about is how films and film-viewing shapes our identity. What films mean to us and how they affect us. That’s my new subject and you’ll find it explored here under the category of My Square Eyed Life. Yes I am a true millennial and that is a reference so My So Called Life. Without belaboring the introduction, here’s a little piece about a film that made me cry.
“She’s sensitive”
“She’s so sensitive”
Who are you saying that to, Mum? Not to me. Maybe to Dad? It’s such a vivid memory, being held and comforted as I wept. I couldn’t stop crying.
Why weren’t they crying like I was? Why is everyone looking at me like there’s something wrong with me? Don’t they feel it too?
“Stay.”
“I’ll be right here.”
And then the sweeping epic of John Williams’ score as the weight of that moment hits us. E.T. will always be a part of Elliott because they bonded in a way that made them one being.
I mean, devastating, right? They have to part, they can’t stay together, but Elliott will hold E.T. in his heart…! Family, surely you feel this like I do?!
No. They did not. Not my younger and older sisters, not like I did, in such a demonstrably vocal and uncontrolled way, as if I was Elliott and I was being left by my best friend.
I think I was about six or seven years old, I’m not sure. The film was released three years before I was born, so this was the nineties when I was watching it with my family, at home. Probably it was on the telly and probably my Dad recorded it onto VHS so we could watch it again sometime.
It had such an impact on me. I really, really felt it. I was so changed. I couldn’t believe films could make you feel that way and I found it so hard to come back to reality once it was over. When people say ‘it’s just a film’ what they mean is, it didn’t really happen. I understand why that makes sense to say. There is no alien visiting earth who’s gone back home, sure. Now the film is over we can go back to our lives and shake it off. But that’s not really how good art and storytelling works though, is it? If it comes together well – as Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra Terrestrial did in 1982 – then the impact of that story is deep and real.
E.T. is about family and loss, connection and grief. It’s told in a way that connects with children because it centres the wonder and magic of discovering something just for you, and trying to save someone because you can, and you must and it’s within your power to do so. So much in childhood is about what adults say is important, but from the child’s point of view, they know what matters, too.
I showed E.T. to my six-year-old daughter recently. It’s been an intention of mine for a long time, but we wanted to wait until she was the right age or gauge how she handles big drama and tension. She didn’t cry like me. In fact, she said “it’s not scary for me.” Another in a long line of amazing moments as a parent witnessing my child’s personality forming, her own individuality showing itself and we’re the lucky ones who get to see it.
She was invested, she cared what happened, she asked delightful questions about the Mum and the kids getting to go out by themselves on Halloween. She was particularly interested in Elliott kissing his classmate in school when he released the frogs. That was a fun moment, trying to explain E.T. being inebriated and being connected to Elliott. “And why did he stand on that boy?… and why did he kiss her?”
I cried again. A lot. Of course. That moment, “I’ll be right here”, that’s what it feels like to lose someone and to grieve them. They’re gone, but the connection is held tight in your heart, it never goes away. Sometimes it orbits further away, sometimes it comes very close again, often unexpectedly, and always an acute feeling of love.
What was named my sensitivity in my childhood I can now understand as my empathy, which must have been, as it is now, pretty major and surprising for the boomer adults around me. That I’m so affected by cinema is part of my personality. It’s maybe my favourite thing about cinema, beyond artistry and creativity and actors and sets and music – that cinema can move you, literally take you somewhere that seems like an elsewhere, a wondrous place, but is actually connected exactly to being human.
cinematicinvestigations.com 