I’m not sure how long I can sustain double blogging in Japanese (http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/cafe_aebee) and English, but I’ll try.
Watched “Little Miss Sunshine” on Friday evening on DVD. Being depressed from a recent bungle at work, got some level of comfort from its dissident voice against winner-loser culture which has been prevailing too much in this country (and probably my life as well.) Plot, lines, acting and theme… everything matched the level of the Academy Award nomination.
A short episode of the eye-test play by the Little Miss Sunshine of the movie, Olive, which seemed to be used merely as gap filler between scenes, turned out to be the fascinating trigger of Dwayne’s breakdown and later breakthrough. A Japanese IT consultant living in Silicon Valley was writing in her blog that she felt irritated watching the family skirmishes (Many Japanese families don’t have explicit fights. Wives just cut husbands into pieces after a long enduring silence. Really.), but I didn’t have any trouble with that point, probably because of good acting.
At one night, I found myself watching Clint Eastwood on a talk show with awe and envy. His whole air was surrounded with the peace of someone who is totally himself after incessant success in life. However, that success was probably not only external, but importantly internal. He no longer has to prove anything! Having passed the halfway mark of my life, I asked to myself if I ever will have a time in my life like that where I no longer have to prove anything. Maybe I can do so now by just being, but something about this makes me feel that I may have given up, thus being a loser. Watching this movie made me feel that if I put my life into a winner-loser scenario from now on, the object should always be myself. It doesn’t have to be and shouldn’t be anyone else.
The movie also made me realize that loving is probably doing our best and being there for some one. Mentally if not spacially.
