Will Regards Hannibal With Something Approaching A Smile.

The Shining (1980) Hannibal (2013-2015)

I think one of the reasons this film resonated with many of us (or maybe it’s just me) is the fact that those of us who crave beauty in the most ordinary things want to spend our lives in a similar manner. In a time where hustling is a desired facet of one’s personality, the movie emphasizes a slow life. An enjoyable life. For those of us who want to stop and stare at the beautiful sunset/sunrise and feel content, we are trying to be part of the beauty too, in ways which we are familiar with. Capturing modest pictures that we find beautiful, treating this little life we were gifted so preciously, leaving little space for extravagance, and looking forward to a quiet life; making the most of those small moments we have for ourselves, contemplating the few books and films we’ve consumed in our lifetime, wishing we lived inside a Ghibli movie, treating life with respect.

We watched the repetitive moments earnestly because, like Hirayama, we too loved watching the leaves sway, light scattering through their gaps, and the dappled shadows, even if it was through a screen, a smile creeping onto our faces whenever Hirayama found a sight worth smiling for.

A lifetime spent searching for beautiful things is a beautiful matter in itself. Noticing the countless crevices on tree barks, recognizing the pattern of veins on a leaf when held up against the sun, feeling the warmth of a sunny day — the more you pay attention, the more these moments find you. We try to embrace love and be engulfed by it; sometimes we lose, and other times we win.

I first heard the word ‘Komorebi’ (木漏れ日) in a Radwimps song, and even without knowing its meaning, I found it very beautiful and would sing that word multiple times. Now that I know what it means, I realize that the real beauty is always there; it’s us who change in ways we couldn’t have predicted.

Amores perros (2000)

Dogs shouldn’t have to put up with us.  The characters in Amores perros create a cruel world, or perhaps they think they can only succeed in an illegal manner.  But there are dogs in all of these people’s lives, too.  They come in many forms, but they suffer in similar ways.  Cofi is a rottweiler who has a very “no thoughts head empty” energy during many scenes.  But he is a killer.  In another world Richie is like a toy but suffers because his masters are incompetent.  He gets lost under the ground and maybe dies. Iñárritu understands the experiences of his characters and uses them to great effect.  The dogs in this film are vessels for empathy.  They distill their owners’ existences down to the most powerful truth.  Much blood is spilled but the dogs are constant.  It is a cruel experience for the audience because there is no rest for them; they simply have to survive the film. 

Amores perros represents Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s best and worst instincts.  It has all his talent but also all his worst impulses.  He adopts a narrative structure like the films of Quentin Tarantino or others, a tapestry of characters interweaving.  The camera moves with a hand-controlled panic to pull us into the world. We constantly bump into other narratives, one line intersecting with the other as these characters affect each other in small or large ways.  Minor details in one moment are important in others.  Iñárritu creates a trap for his characters and then has doubts if he wants to engage.  At times he has great power.  It’s exciting and sad.  I too aspire to be a radical liberal turned doggo-tor.  But it’s incredibly hard to watch the scene when all the dogs in our protect die because Cofi only knows one way of life.  Humans destroy the lives of dogs.  I openly cried for the final minutes.  We cannot learn.  We cannot change.  Young people never learn to find healthy outlets for their emotions.  The only way to succeed is to offend and cause suffering.

THE RULES

SIP

Someone says ‘Cofi’ or ‘pandejo’.

Grainy TV footage.

Crazy baby toys.

An advertisement for Enchant appears somewhere.

Sick ‘00s beat drops.

A sum of money is named.

BIG DRINK

A part title appears onscreen.

The narrative jumps perspectives.

A scene isn’t abjectly miserable.

This is for all the people who are struggling but just keep getting up and trying. The ones who keep showing up, day after day, even when they don’t want to. The ones who stare at the fridge, willing themselves to cook food even though they want to skip. The ones who get up and get water even when they’d prefer to ignore their own needs. The ones who keep on breathing, even when they don’t really want to, because they trust the day will come when the tightness around their hearts has eased.

this is for everyone, because everyone here today has kept on being. even on the days when they didn’t particularly want to. the hard days and the sad ones and the hurt ones, too. You are still here, trying, and this is a moment of recognition for all the beautiful work you’ve done.

Keep going, love. The light comes back.

An Cailín Ciúin // The Quiet Girl (2022)

If you watched and loved The Bear and feel like crying some more you should watch Boiling Point (2021)

THOMAS SHELBY + smoking

Disco Elysium is pretty pessimistic, and I think that's why it works so well, but the conversation with the Phasmid felt so hopeful. Here is this impossible creature that's real. It speaks to you. You were born for the same purpose. It tells you your kind's existence coincides with what will end the world, and it doesn't hate you. It lets you touch it, ever so gently. Have you been able to be gentle before now? There's even an implication that you can fix things, after everything.

I will not blink. I will keep looking at you, you wonderful monstrosity of nature. This incredibly sensitive instrument exist to detect things that are beautiful. You are the promise I wrote on the wall, and I will be there again when something beautiful is going to happen.

Kazu-kun & Chizuru

I talked about Kazu-kun last time, and now I wanted to talk about how his character mirrors Chizuru's.

They are both close friends of Sakuko who fall in love with her. Which obviously is a problem since Sakuko is aroace and not interested in dating her friends.

And I want to talk about how they are almost perfect opposite of each other.

Kazu-kun struggles a lot to understand how Sakuko can be uninterested in love, and gets pushy about it (refusing to let her break up with him, moving in and asking invasive questions). Chizuru has known (and accepted) for a long while that Sakuko isn’t interested in love and therefore that her feelings would never be reciprocated.And because the show already has Kazu-kun to explore the amatonormativity-is-a-bitch side of things, Chizuru gets to just be an example of a very common tragedy of human relationship — sometimes you just don’t want the same thing, and it’s sad but there is nothing to do about it.

Kazu-kun is very clear about his feelings for Sakuko, to the point of making them everyone else’s problem. Chizuru hides her feelins for Sakuko to avoid bothering her with them, to the point nobody knows they even exist.

Kazu-kun does everything he can to stay at Sakuko’s side, including forcing his way into moving in with her and refusing to let her break up properly. Chizuru cuts off contact, moves away and changes her number.

The first thing I want to talk about is how this is so very clearly a gendered dynamic.

Kazu-kun, has I’ve said already, starts off as a very Entitled Straight Man™. And that informs everything he does in how he treats his feelings to Sakuko. He expects his feelings to be returned the same way most straight men are taught they’re owned women’s attention. He wants to be present in her life and he wants answers to his questions and he has very little qualms about how he gets what he wants, because once again men are taught they deserve women but rarely to care how their actions make others feel.

On the other hand, Chizuru is not only a woman, but she’s also a shappic woman in love with another woman. Both these things heavily influence how she deals with her feelings for Sakuko.

Firstly, she’s a woman. She has most likely been taught not to bother anyone with her feelings, while learning to be mindful of other people’s feelings. She’s also aware that unwanted romantic attention can hurt, in a way most men aren’t. She’s of course especially aware of it in relation to Sakuko, since she’s known her for years and knows very well Sakuko isn’t interested in love with anyone.

Secondly, she’s a woman in love with another woman. And like a lot of other sapphic women, she’s afraid of her attraction to women being invasive, dirty, or predatory. It’s particularly true here because Sakuko is a long-time friend, so attraction can feel like it’s “tainting” an otherwise “pure” friendship, or “invading” with “dirty feelings” what was supposed to be a safe space; and because Sakuko is AroAce, which in this perspective makes her even more “pure”, and therefore makes the “stain” even more unforgivable.

Hence why she runs away and cut all ties with Sakuko — when Kazu-kun doesn’t, even though he’s facing the same unrequited-love situation.

So yes, the dynamic between Kazu-kun and Chizuru is 100% a gendered dynamic. They could have had the same parallels with two men, but it would have felt and read very differently.

The second thing is: in the end, the both hurt Sakuko.

Chizuru, by desperately trying not to impose her feelings on Sakuko, still imposes her decision to leave and cut ties. Sakuko is hurt when their plans to live together fall through, worried when she can’t reach Chizuru, and hurt again when Chizuru explains why she cut ties and that they can’t go back to being friends (yet).

Kazu-kun drags her into a relationship she doesn’t actually want, then refuses to break up with her, then invades her privacy. Sakuko ends up needing to be the one to officially break up which hurts her too (though Kazu-kun accepts it with grace and keeps being her friend).

Even though they had opposite ways to deal with their feelings for Sakuko, they both did it in a way that worked for themselves without asking Sakuko’s input, and ended up hurting her in the process.

It’s the illustration of a very old fear of mine, that I believe is fairly common among aros : loosing friends because they fell in love with me. It’s not a fear exclusive to aros; it’s the driving tension in almost all friends-to-lovers stories; but it’s very prevalent in the aro community for obvious reasons.

It’s also an example of how amatonormativity fucks up relationships. Both Kazu-kun and Chizuru are first acting under the idea that romantic love comes first and is more important than anything else — that it justifies breaking up a very close friendship with no explanation or invading someone else’s privacy.

But thirdly, having two parallels situations also allows for nuances.

I have talked a lot about amatonormativity in these analysis, for very good reasons (such as it being the show’s main theme). But it’s not the end-all be-all. Even in a perfect society with no stupid rules and expectations, people’s feelings would still be messy and hurt sometimes. And having two different relationships to explore the friend-falls-in-love-with-your-aro-ass-what-do-you-do allows the show a real space for nuances.

Sometimes deconstruction works. Sometimes you take a step back and realize most of your problems came from assumptions and rules that have no real basis, and you’re able to work through them.

Kazu-kun does come to the realization that things can be done differently, which is shown when he asks Sakuko to be in a QPR with him instead of a romantic relationship. It’s him realizing that while their feelings may never be the same, they could make a relationship work if they focus on what they actually want to do together — for example, they enjoy karaoke together as new colleagues, as lovers, and as situationship-it’s-complicated-we’re-maybe-on-a-break. And when Sakuko refuses, he’s the one reassuring that they can stay friends, because he now understands that they can keep enjoying karaoke as friends.

But sometimes feelings are just messy. Sometimes even once the air is cleared you still hurt. Sometimes you don’t feel and want the same things and no amount of deconstruction or compromise will solve that.

Chizuru is still hurting that her feelings aren’t and will never be reciprocated. And the show allows her that. She hurt Sakuko, yes, but the situation is unfair to both of them. They don’t want the same thing and it’s hurting both of them and no one is really in the wrong.

Could Chizuru have dealt with the situation better? Obviously yes. Is there amatonormativity (and probably some internalized homophobia) at play? Yes of course. But even outside of all that, there are still tangled, hurting feelings.

And because the show already has Kazu-kun to explore the amatonormativity-is-a-bitch side of things, Chizuru gets to just be an example of a very common tragedy of human relationships — sometimes you just don’t want the same thing, and it’s sad but there is nothing to do about it.

And Chizuru does say that she wants to go back to cutting Sakuko’s hair, to be her friend. But she needs the space to sort her feelings first.

disappointed by farewell my concubine tbh!