Movie #6 Truly Madly Deeply

[Lori]

I also look as forward to the perceptions and insights you all have as much as the films themselves! I hope others here watch TMD.

I'm trying....(Bjork). I've visited that thread and hopped back and away a few times from this acquired taste I can respect at times but...it's too much work and I don't quite buy it.

P.S., Dee. Page 78 on The Book Thief (hangs her little red face in abject pseudoshame). I am sick right now so perhaps will take to the bed and read some more!!!

[Lori]

Nina.

Oh Nina. I think she's one of my all time favourite female characters. Someone I'd love to know and I'm sure I'd adore in real life. Such a giving, loving, affectionate person, so bright, open, fun-loving, light and cheerful, with a deeply sensitive and reflective side. Her inconsolable grief is just the more painful for it has fallen on such a bright little spark. She has made progress though, if only on a surface level. But that's already huge and a lot of people can't manage it: functioning in the everyday, at work, interacting with people... She was doing great on all those fronts. But as soon as she was alone, she was swallowed by pain, she couldn't let go. It was so very hard to watch this raw anguish. I've seen this film many times, and still, each time it slams me in the chest. Her opening up to the new life she's been craving is simply delightful.

She's had so many wonderful moments. You've already mentioned a lot of them. I loved how she fell asleep with Jamie's cricket bat (for rat protection) and the ugly grey cat figure by her bed... I loved how she kissed the top of her nephew's head to compensate for her sister's fussy and somewhat cold treatment of her son. Loved the pens shoved into her nostrils, to make him laugh. Loved her taking the piss out of Jamie's word choice "juicyly". Loved her crazy dancing. Her honesty with everyone.

So basically, I loved everything about her.

I so agree with loving this character. We have concentrated a lot on her grief process and less on her resilient loving quirky self. I love films that really do depict the 'whole woman'. It is so rare that female characters are not pigeonholed: "mother, lover, sister, whore". Nina was a unique whirlwind putting love out there into the universe and handling with grace the oddities life hurled at her while she was in a capsule of mourning. Basically, she was you and she was me - she was every woman. Not so unique after all as these qualities run rampant in living breathing women, and this character was lovingly depicted and expertly portrayed as such!

[Dee]

Yes, that is very well observed. How she was so easily relatable. We can all recognise parts of us in her, and there are other parts we might not have but aspire to have, and she manages to make us feel that these parts are not entirely out of reach for us either. She is both a reassurance and an inspiration.

[Dee]

Page 78




Already????

You're ahead of me!

I'm sorry you're poorly, Pic. Maybe it really is Book Thief Time...?

[Dee]

I loved this light hearted addressing of the entire setup of the movie.

Nicely balanced out with the Spanish friend's matter of fact statement that spirits live all around us.

[Dee]

The Cat:

[Lori]

Hahahaha! Love that ugly little feline!

[Dee]

I'm gonna have to make one like it, I'm so in love.