I saw a film!
Aug. 27th, 2010 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sister_luckWell, not all of it, because I missed a couple of minutes of the beginning, but it's been forever since I managed to catch more than a 50 minute episode of television.
Twelve and Holding was a depressing movie though, about growing up in dysfunctional families in the United States.
It had its flaws - plotwise it wasn't entirely convincing in its accumulation of tragic developments - but I thought it was well-acted and it portrayed its three pre-teen main characters with a lot of sensibility and sympathy. These kids are constantly misunderstood and let-down by the grown-ups around them and they still try hard to belong to that puzzling and violent world. When they are faced by tragedy their parents are no help at all and leave them alone with their pain. The two boys want to help their mothers and it nearly kills one of them and as to the other - what he does is just heartbreaking. The girl is looking for affection: she falls in love with (and tries to seduce) a construction worker who turns out to be a patient of her therapist mother.
But adolescence is just one aspect: on a deeper level this film is about post-traumatic stress and how different people cope with it. I suppose in that way it also comments on the mental (and physical) health of a whole nation.
One thing I can say for certain: "Burning for you" by the Blue Öyster Cult will forever be linked to this film and to one of its truly haunting moments.
Twelve and Holding was a depressing movie though, about growing up in dysfunctional families in the United States.
It had its flaws - plotwise it wasn't entirely convincing in its accumulation of tragic developments - but I thought it was well-acted and it portrayed its three pre-teen main characters with a lot of sensibility and sympathy. These kids are constantly misunderstood and let-down by the grown-ups around them and they still try hard to belong to that puzzling and violent world. When they are faced by tragedy their parents are no help at all and leave them alone with their pain. The two boys want to help their mothers and it nearly kills one of them and as to the other - what he does is just heartbreaking. The girl is looking for affection: she falls in love with (and tries to seduce) a construction worker who turns out to be a patient of her therapist mother.
But adolescence is just one aspect: on a deeper level this film is about post-traumatic stress and how different people cope with it. I suppose in that way it also comments on the mental (and physical) health of a whole nation.
One thing I can say for certain: "Burning for you" by the Blue Öyster Cult will forever be linked to this film and to one of its truly haunting moments.
