I love quirky. And I love honest insecurity and authenticity and weird realism and absurdity. So of course I loved Miranda July's The Future.
A couple decide to take the first step towards commitment by adopting a cat, but it's sickly and can't come home for a month. They see this month as their last bit of freedom and treat it as if it's their last month alive.
What would you do if you knew you only had a month to live? They ditch the internet because they realize how much time it saps from any authentic experience. And they both quit their jobs and explore what it is to be totally free. But, of course, we're never really free if we're constrained by social obligation or expectations.
And it makes a bit of a mess of things if you really act like this month is your last.
It's curious how quickly morality goes out the window in this movie and in other films where the end is nigh. If we're about to die, money doesn't matter, so stealing might take on a different nuance. (I'm thinking of all the looting in Last Night). But why does harming others directly no longer matter as much? To have total freedom, how important is it that it includes total freedom to have sex with anyone? De Beauvoir and Sartre, proponents of freedom, kept things open to have no constraints on one another. That can be tricky. And I wonder if we just don't know what to do with freedom when we find it so we resign ourselves to sneaking base pleasures and feel like we're really pulled one over on the world. But we're really just being dicks.
I love how they talk. The couple gets each other, so we really want them to stay together. What works is that they're each willing to play whatever game the other starts. This reminded me of the rules of improv - something I read decades ago, but was recently made popular by Tina Fey: always say "yes" to whatever your partner starts. Their relationship is tender and heart-wrenching.
She decides to do a dance a day for thirty days and put each on YouTube. She's told everyone. But it's scary to begin. It's anxiety-inducing as each day just slips away without a dance. I'm in a similar freedomy place as my littlest just went off to camp for 21 days. Can I write for 21 days straight? Or will I get sucked into Facebook trivia and watching even more movies or puttering around the house and garden fixing every little thing for that triumphant feeling of accomplishment illusory in its intensity? It's a lot of pressure to do something in this little corner of time I've got. But can I actively and authentically take advantage of my little slice of freedom? Can I accept the burden that comes with all this freedom?
We'll see.
A-
A couple decide to take the first step towards commitment by adopting a cat, but it's sickly and can't come home for a month. They see this month as their last bit of freedom and treat it as if it's their last month alive.
What would you do if you knew you only had a month to live? They ditch the internet because they realize how much time it saps from any authentic experience. And they both quit their jobs and explore what it is to be totally free. But, of course, we're never really free if we're constrained by social obligation or expectations.
And it makes a bit of a mess of things if you really act like this month is your last.
It's curious how quickly morality goes out the window in this movie and in other films where the end is nigh. If we're about to die, money doesn't matter, so stealing might take on a different nuance. (I'm thinking of all the looting in Last Night). But why does harming others directly no longer matter as much? To have total freedom, how important is it that it includes total freedom to have sex with anyone? De Beauvoir and Sartre, proponents of freedom, kept things open to have no constraints on one another. That can be tricky. And I wonder if we just don't know what to do with freedom when we find it so we resign ourselves to sneaking base pleasures and feel like we're really pulled one over on the world. But we're really just being dicks.
I love how they talk. The couple gets each other, so we really want them to stay together. What works is that they're each willing to play whatever game the other starts. This reminded me of the rules of improv - something I read decades ago, but was recently made popular by Tina Fey: always say "yes" to whatever your partner starts. Their relationship is tender and heart-wrenching.
She decides to do a dance a day for thirty days and put each on YouTube. She's told everyone. But it's scary to begin. It's anxiety-inducing as each day just slips away without a dance. I'm in a similar freedomy place as my littlest just went off to camp for 21 days. Can I write for 21 days straight? Or will I get sucked into Facebook trivia and watching even more movies or puttering around the house and garden fixing every little thing for that triumphant feeling of accomplishment illusory in its intensity? It's a lot of pressure to do something in this little corner of time I've got. But can I actively and authentically take advantage of my little slice of freedom? Can I accept the burden that comes with all this freedom?
We'll see.
A-
2 comments:
Youre so pretty @Marie !!!!:) !!!!
your pretty marie!!!!!
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