to each of our own stories

"When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you’re telling it, to yourself or to someone else." - Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace
 
basically i love watching documentaries. with this one, i noticed so many good reviews although to me what it's actually about wasn't really that interesting. so here the director tries to tell the story about her late mother and also how she found out that she wasn't his father's biological daughter.

halfway through the film i kinda expected something big to happen. i kept looking at the remaining time left and wondered what kind of drama or plot twist that would happen next. it didn't happen. and i realized that it actually wasn't about it. it wasn't about the story itself but how the same story was told by different people from different perspective. and who these people are were revealed one by one as the story goes, which makes such a good structure for the film. and then the most exciting part is of course the faux home videos shot in super 8. they're all beautiful and convincing i spent most time wondering which one was the actual real footage from the 80s and which one was shot later with actors for artistic purpose. if i were a filmmaker i think this would be the kind of film i would make. it's simple in its sense but well thought and artistically made. as i've been always saying, the most beautiful art piece for me is always the one which somehow makes me think like oh i could actually makes something like this. like it resonates to me personally instead of just being something i'm fascinated by.

there was one scene where her father was asked about something related to his wife about her death, i don't really remember the exact question, but he began to get teary, with the fact that she passed away almost thirty years ago. it struck me how one person could have such a significant impact on how some other person write their own stories. i've been wondering these days about relationships and how someone that is not myself could have such control over what i feel. and i tried somehow to take over that control as hard as i could. i read about and i have a friend who try hard to live in solitary in order to have such control over themselves. to be content with oneself. but i don't think it's really a solution. at the end of the day as cliché as it sounds, as bob marley said, the truth is, everyone's gonna hurt you, you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.