The perfect movie for the holidays

Whenever you want entertaining life lessons, you turn to one person and that is...

Yep, Woody pretty much knows it all. Although my absolute favorite of his is Annie Hall (quite easily), around Christmas, there's a movie I just cannot miss and that is...

Hannah and Her Sisters, the bittersweet masterpiece is just the perfect holiday movie. It's a brilliant summary of life, our world as well as the best movie of the eighties (for me). Now I've seen it 8 times (counting the one two hours ago).

The movies chapters all offer different views and perspectives of life that get even richer and richer at each viewing. It's marvelous to me how Woody's brilliance truly unfolds to me over the years, since there are so many aspects of his movies that I become fascinated by. Things that I previously barely noticed or even ignored. 

This year, for me, that is the wonderful, stunning visuality of the movie. People so easily ignore the visuality of "small" movies like the ones made by Woody. The cinematography of Carlo Di Palma is just stunning and its best proof is the lunch of the three sisters. The way the camera gazes at the expressions of the sisters combined with the fabulous performances that these three ladies give and the flawless directing is an unforgettable experience.

Hannah's worries, Holly's nervousness and Lee's shame are all perfectly captured. It's like looking into three different souls at the same. Although Dianne Wiest was the one winning the Oscar (and deservedly so, she's my favorite winner in that category), the two other sisters are not less brilliant than she is. Barbara Hershey's performance is incredibly painful, but also uplifting, making her probably the emotional core of the story. Mia Farrow does an amazing job holding the movie together with her character: it's so easy to ignore her merits in the movie, but once you've seen this film many times, you recognise the amazing job that she does here. And no words are necessary to describe Dianne Wiest: she's the one you relate to, the easiest person to love in this whole story, despite playing a neurotic mess. The way Wiest portrays how Holly longs for love is just amazing and makes this character so relatable (her scene in the cab is one of the greatest ones ever made). 

Hannah and Her Sisters give us scenes from life tha feel so close and real to what we experience every day. One says you watch a movie to escape reality and to see something different as Haneke says "24 lies per second". But as Woody proves it, it can be "the truth, 24 frames per second", Hannah and Her Sister is a mirror in which we can all observe our lives and what we know and think about this world. And that's the best thing one can get at Christmas or any time of the year. 

Happy Holidays once again! :)

RABBIT HOLE

Written by David Lindsay-Abaire

Directed by John Cameron Mitchell

Starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest and Sandra Oh

Becca: I like that thought. Somewhere out there, I'm having a good time.

There are times in our lives where we all find ourselves falling down a hole we didn’t see coming. We are just merrily making our way through the world we know when suddenly, and when we’re not necessarily paying attention, we find ourselves plummeting. While falling alone can be horrifying enough, tumbling down the same hole with your partner can be incredibly difficult and alienating. Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart play parents who have recently lost their young son, Danny, to a car accident, in the delicate drama, RABBIT HOLE. Fortunately for them, director John Cameron Mitchell is there to catch them before they hit the ground.

Mitchell made a name for himself when he first wrote, directed and starred in the film adaptation of his own Off-Broadway show, HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (click title for review). His exploration of the marginally sexual not only continued its prevalence in his second feature, SHORTBUS, but it would go places most would never dare. In his third and decidedly most accessible work to date, RABBIT HOLE, Mitchell almost abandons sexuality entirely and turns his focus on grief and loss. I use the word, “accessible” loosely, as there is nothing easy about going down this particular hole. David Lindsay-Abaire’s adaptation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play, looks at a couple suffering the unbearable loss of their only child, a story that we have seen a number of times before, and makes it feel like the individual experience it has to be.

Joining Kidman and Eckhart along their journey towards catharsis feels like a privilege, like we don’t really have the right to be there. Each of their experiences is so separate from the other’s, but you can always feel that they are fighting somewhere deep underneath their own hardship to find their way back to each other. Eckhart is strong as a husband who is struggling with doing everything he can not to forget but Kidman is just plain unforgettable. She is doing everything she can to heal, including reaching out to the young boy who was driving the car that killed her son, but she can’t tell if anything is actually working. After all, what level of sadness is needed to let go and see the world the way it once was? That’s the thing about rabbit holes though, both in metaphoric terms and in regards to this film, you’re not the same for having gone down them.