I just barely got back from watching "The Woman In Black". I really don't plan on reviewing movies in this blog post, but I want to share some brief plot points. I'll be hiding the next paragraph in a nice 'anti-spoiler' tag. If you don't mind being spoiled, or have seen the movie, you can highlight the text by using your mouse. Hitting Ctrl-A also works. If this is a foreign language, see your nearest computer geek for assistance.
The main plot point for "The Woman In Black" is about a woman, Jannette. Jannette is deemed to be mentally unstable, and her son is taken away from her by her sister. Sometime later, the son is travelling with his adopted parents and dies in a tragic accident: their carriage sinks in the mud. Jannette angrily declares that she will never forgive her sister, and that her sister never tried to save her son. Jannette hangs herself, and comes back as a ghost in black. Whenever someone visits her house, she kills a child in the local village. The main character thinks he resolves the issue by finding and returning Janette's son's body to Janette's grave, but ghost has already sworn that she will 'never forgive'.
I found it interesting that forgiveness, or the inability to forgive, played a large part in the movie. As I drove home, I started to think about two people that I judge I have hurt pretty deeply. No matter how much time has passed, I always feel like I want to tell them 'I'm sorry'. I'm sorry that things didn't turn out. I'm sorry I wasn't in the right place to make our relationship work out. One of these people is a girl that I dated in college. The other is a man that I called my best friend for awhile. With the girl, I kept dating her, expecting some kind of spark to happen in me, and for me to become attracted to her. I'd rather not go into the other story, far too personal and painful.
Anyways, as I drove home, I felt a great deal of pain. I realized that I was still struggling to forgive myself for it. On another note, I also realized I still have a lot of anger due to the incidents directed toward the other people. That probably extends from the pain of not being able to forgive myself. Honestly, I feel like a man divided. Instead of there being two equal pieces, I end up with two shadows. The scene in my head almost plays out like a scene from a play.
One part of me lie curled in a ball, trying to numb everything out. He rocks and tries to comfort himself. He says 'I'm sorry' over and over. He also says 'I can never forgive myself for what I've done'. In reality, he is the innocent one. Standing over him is Tumm. Tumm is dressed in black, as usual, with blood on his hands. He is the real one at fault in the situation. Tumm's duty is to draw boundaries, enforce them, and to understand what is going on with the other part of me, which is lying huddled on the ground. Tumm is pointing his finger, angrily, at me and at the people around me. He says 'It's all your fault!'. He points at me and says 'I can never forgive you. You're worthless. It's all your fault.'
As silly as it sounds, writing it out like that helps me to gain insight into what is going on, and how I can figure out how to heal myself. Tumm needs to accept the fact that he was also responsible for my actions. The other part needs to know that he didn't know what was going on, and that he was under a delusion of sorts. It's like I need to realize I'm both guilty and innocent at the same time. And ultimately, I need to forgive myself to find a sense of closure.
As an interesting irony, tomorrow is Valentine's day. On Valentine's day, four years ago, that girl sent me a note and asked me to a movie. That was the beginning of our dating relationship.
On a lighter note, I'm glad I was able to walk out of a horror movie with most of my sanity intact. The last horror movie I walked out of, I was terrified of the dark all the way home and for a few days afterward. The only side effects this movie had were: 1) my eyes constantly looking for the woman in black, either in windows, cars, down hallways, etc 2) me being terrified about the children I live with.
Oh, on another note, I don't recommend watching "The Woman In Black" if you have small children, especially if you're already pretty sensitive to horror movies. That being said, I will close up this blog post and get some sleep.
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