Lucky By Alice Sebold

Film of the Week: The Tree of Life

A pretentious pile of tedious guff? A bold and brilliant masterwork? A two-hour long shampoo commercial with Classic FM’s greatest hits as the soundtrack? Or perhaps just a very expensive way for the director to declare: "2001: A Space Odyssey is my favourite film."

The Tree of Life is all of the above and much more.

And we are lucky to see it at all. It’s rare enough that even a prize-winning film by a director whose last opus fumbled from sight would be released so swiftly after its initial airing. There was even concern it might not see the light of day here at all never mind the back of a projector bulb, an astonishing prospect.

But I guess an A-list cast, the director’s reputation, a major award and the fact it’s been a hit in France might have persuaded someone otherwise. I thank them for it’s saved me from having to travel to Paris.

I’m not the only one who'd go to such lengths and this gives some idea of the rabidly loyal cinephile following Terrence Malick has after only four films, all the more remarkable considering his last, The New World, wasn’t well regarded but deserves a second glance.

His reputation is almost entirely based not just on the widely admired cult classic Badlands or the war epic The Thin Red Line but chiefly for his 1978 masterpiece Days of Heaven, a film so heart-achingly hypnotic and beautiful you wonder why other filmmakers don't just give up.

And so after scooping the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival just weeks ago and with five star reviews pouring forth, The Tree of Life is finally unveiled, loaded with expectation.

The first half hour sledgehammers you with a cluster of sequences that will play out later in more leisurely detail. It’s dazzling but over the top, almost silly and yet occasionally breathtaking. It also felt no more than a dreamy montage of choice Hubble photographs, Planet Earth highlights and an intriguing family drama all drowned out by operatic arias. It was all a bit too much and it had only just got going.

I was resisting liking it. It was too beautiful, there were no flaws in the images and yet it felt muddy. The whispery voiceovers of characters communing with God seemed unnecessary....

And then I just caved in and let it wash over me.

An hour later I was stifling tears and on occasion my jaw dropped at a magnificent shot or a piece of delicate choreography where I had to snap myself out of thinking ‘how on earth did he get that?

Discussion: Lucky by Alice Sebold « Amy Reads

Date Read: 24/02/11

Sometimes going into a book blind isn’t the best idea because you get hit with something that you really aren’t prepared for. In this case, a book about a violent rape, its aftermath, and the prosecution of it. Definitely a heavy subject and one that I likely shouldn’t have read when I did, but that is not to say that it wasn’t an incredibly interesting and important book.

Rape is one of those areas of human existence where common sense and normality is completely turned on its head. Normal rules do not apply, and it is hard to even comprehend the rules that do exist. Why do I say this? For the same reasons that Sebold can be called ‘lucky’. Sebold is lucky because she wasn’t murdered (according to the police officer she reported it to),  but also she was lucky because of facts like:

NONE of those things should be called lucky in any sense of the word, but in our (Canada seems similar to the US in this so I will use the our term here to indication the US and Canada) justice systems, those things are all that can help to guarantee a conviction.

I’m slightly offended by all of the goodreads reviews that talk about Sebold’s ‘holier than thou’ survivor mentality. Now, I’m not quite sure where the anger comes from but perhaps it is from the sections where she discusses the disconnect she feels between herself and her family and friends at times. I don’t know how anyone can judge that though without being through it themselves. The book really highlights that disconnect and how you try to push it all aside and believe you’re fine, and how many people will discount your feelings and emotions as being overreacting or ridiculous. None of which is helpful in actually dealing with anything.

What the book really highlighted for me was the way that our culture views rape. This is the ‘perfect’ scenario for the crime which rarely happens yet is the only kind we will allow to be discussed. We don’t talk about intimate partner rape, we don’t talk about how usually the victim knows the rapist, how usually there is denial, how there is more coercion and guilt and less physical force or evidence. I really wished that Sebold had talked about that a little bit more. For anyone who’s been through rape as it happens for the masses (i.e. not those ‘lucky’ few) the experience is completely different and traumatizing in such different ways in part because of this myth that exists. Sebold talks about her fathers reaction when he hears that the rapist didn’t have a knife to her throat the whole time – what of those of us on whom a weapon was never drawn? While we are able to pinpoint some similarities the thrust of this book in one way shows us how we failed in the eyes of the justice system by not having that perfect crime. It reinforces those officers who tell us there is nothing they can do because they don’t want to believe anything other than the myth.

Lucky

Lucky

Lucky

The lovely bones, a novel

Lucky - 16 Copy Floor Display, A Memoir