It's been a while since I wrote about movies, but I've seen some good ones lately and wanted to share!
I recently canceled my Netflix account. In the European countries where I've lived, the volume of movies and shows available has tended to be much smaller than in America (though it's gotten better), and after a while you find that you've watched everything you want to see. At that point, I find it's good to suspend my account for a few months, until new seasons of my favorite shows come out and different movies become available.
The only thing is though, that then when you go to find a movie, you don't have any library to browse through--you have to know what you're looking for to find it online! So I asked my old friend Google the other day, "Tell me a good movie to watch," and I found a random list to look through.
One movie stood out to me and I decided to give it a try. It was called Now, Voyager and starred Bette Davis. I like her (All About Eve is one of my favorite movies) and I'd never seen this one before or even heard of it. I'm so glad I did watch it, because it turned out to be exactly what I needed!
Now, Voyager tells the story of a nearing-middle-aged spinster who lives with her domineering wealthy mother, who does her best to keep Charlotte ugly and isolated. When Charlotte's sister convinces her to spend some time at a sanatorium, a psychiatrist there helps her come out of herself and encourages her to venture out into the world and live.
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She embarks on a voyage to South America, on which she befriends a kindly man, and gets thrown into an unplanned adventure with him when their transportation breaks down in the mountains of Brazil. Though the two cannot be together because he is already married, the brush with love, acceptance, and desire strengthens Charlotte with the confidence to go back and face her old life in Boston with newfound boldness.
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Her mother is loath to accept the new version of her daughter and tries her best to return everything to its old dynamic. The tensions between the two women soon result in another nervous breakdown on Charlotte's part.
She returns to the sanatarium, hoping that the psychological treatments will help her once again. But healing comes in an unexpected form when she befriends a little girl there, an unwanted child like herself, who she tries to help, and who ends up helping her more than she ever could have imagined. The end of the story is more hopeful than happy, as in real life.
A couple days ago, I was feeling so down. I went through some heartbreak earlier this year, and though it was really tough at first, I thought I was doing pretty well by now. Then a couple of seemingly small things happened and plunged me down into the dark again. I went for a walk, not very hopeful that spending time alone with my gloomy thoughts would do much more than worsen the situation.
Then, on the rural path where I usually walk, I crossed paths with a little boy (maybe 4 years old) and his grandfather, looking like they were on their way to do some fishing. The boy was carrying a net and a bucket and with a big smile on his face he looked up at me and said, "¡Hola!"
"¡Hola!" I said back--and it changed my day! Instead of marinating in my depression, my mind turned to a story idea I'd had a few years ago, and I spent the rest of the walk developing it in my mind to write down later.
I think it's so important to spend time with children. They are the hope for the future. It's so easy to become cynical as we listen to all the bad news and feel the pain of our own disappointments, that we forget what it's like to be young and free and happy. Kids can remind us of that. I'm so glad these two, the fictional and the real, came into my life and made it better.