Like Stories of Old Campion's Bright Star comes to mind (since it's my favorite film). All the characters in that film are enduring silent sorrows while life goes on around them. Even her attempt at finally expressing it at the end gets caught in her chest, her breath and body having forgotten how to externalize it.

Do you write essays or books! I will love to read the transcripts of your videos so I can pause and reflect. I enjoy replaying your videos, works of art!

To me, 'Ordinary People' is a film that captures this lost art of grief. All the members of the family have their own quiet, unspoken ways of grieving that affect the viewer deeply.

Like Stories of Old, this is yet another brilliantly made Video Essay. I love the way you interpret Malick's ideas and his visual poetic expressions.

Thank you for another incredible analysis. I think Good Will Hunting also addresses the notion of making space in oneself, and with another person, to attend to the grief and pain that had been neglected and unattended to and was therefore governing how he lived his life. Inside Out also actually does a good job of illustrating the importance of hearing sadness/grief as much as you would listen to joy, because if the feeling is there, it is there for a reason and is destructive to ignore because it ultimately leads to a numbing of oneself. Our lust for what we have been indoctrinated to believe is happiness; through endless consumption of external stimulation, be it culinary, sports, fashion, or whatever else we obsess over are all fantastic distractions to run away from our pain. The horrific world of marketing and advertising has no doubt led the charge in the stimulus infiltration of our minds, as they well know that a numb a population, dependent on external experiences to feel alive, is most susceptible to being sold love, or friendship, along with a barbeque or a car. Ultimately, however, going toward our pain and giving it space within to be felt creates a liberation, and going away from our pain creates prisons, which largely exist in order to maintain an orbit around the gravity our grief creates. Your work is brilliant, Thank you.

In my view, it is appropriately appreciated. Great filmography and a method to tell its message, great storyline, but a misleading message based on untrue historical reality. As art, I give it an A, as historiography, I give it a C.

I vote for The Thin Red Line

⁠I think that was the best one too. But The New World hits me the hardest

This flatline can be experienced while dying in all sorts of ways that seem to be a bit more "collective." Visions of hospital lights moving above. An urgent need to go somewhere else (speaks to the collective denial). Fleeing from a car wreck that you may have been responsible for, running down a highway in the desert without the right shoe. The car is our soul and we don't seem to go back for it too often. God bless those that do, and may we sit with the reality of where we are, and regain an essence of what has been lost.

But those who suffer, those who feel deeper the sorrow have a hard time to even approach joy...

@@presidentlouis-napoleonbon8889 So true. Evidently this joy won't be experienced until one is dead.

jaanthenymph I know exactly how you feel. I couldn’t have described the fake “society “ any better. I wonder if everyone is walking around this way .

I totally agree with both of you. Today I actually told my friend about how it took several sessions to stop doing this when I was meeting with my therapist. My wife and I just separated and I was suicidally depressed yet I was still wearing this facade in my therapy sessions like I was in good spirits; clear-headed and optimistic; looking toward the future. In fact, I was heartbroken, lost, and extremely vulnerable but I was operating under the implicit assumption that I can't go around telling people I was in such bad shape. I think it's important we do come out and share these experiences. KZfaq is kind of perfect for it because of the whole anonymous thing actually. As long as others see these, more people will open their eyes to their own similar experiences.

@@peterfazio9306 I really relate, as I've done this in therapy, too. Kept up the "I'm ok" persona until I could trust that I wouldn't be ridiculed. It's just so ingrained in us. And we all have such a need to express true emotion that we pay therapists to do this, to process our grief and pain, because none of us know how to do this with each other. In our culture, therapy is considered safe because it's done in private. Meaning, we're safe from being shunned for feeling, and others are safe from being confronted with another's pain. We're living in a time of toxic positivity. Maybe that's what group therapy is ultimately about - it's a community of people sharing their grief.

Damn, I felt this comment. Thank you.

Jaanet can we please be friends, cause we’re definitely kindred spirits.

You bring up a good point, thanks!I had planned on expanding a bit on that in the annotated video - I think the tribal cultures in movies like these aren't necessarily always portrayed as historically correct but also as a metaphor for these parts of ourselves that we feel we have lost due to modernity. I feel like most people who really romanticize tribal cultures often give the impression that we need to 'go back' to that way of life in the literal sense which of course isn't an option, and so what I liked about the Francis Weller book is how it only looks back to discover the lessons that were lost and explore how we can use them to move forward.

Good points! (I didn't mean it as a critique of your video.)

True, i heavily disagree romanticizing these tribes for that. IMO they were at war with nature, killing animals, other tribes and anything to survive. Its understandable but would not call it living in harmony. Of course i still respect this analysis for other aspects and just for exploring things we have lost.

It's important to know that Easter island weapons were non-lethal as explained in this post (news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160222-easter-island-rapa-nui-collapse-archaeology-moai-mataa-warfare-weapons-Jared-Diamond ). But they sure were violent towards nature due to the human instinct to overcome everything. The point of the video was to suppress this feeling and make harmony with nature and our nature itself, to acknowledge every emotion mainly grief and sorrow, which we usually don't do due to the judgemental society.

Almost as soon as Europeans came to North America they pretty much decimated nature and the environment ---- nature was and is aboriginal's form of spirituality - maybe not perfectly but us whiteys could learn a shit load about what it is to live in harmony with nature from them.

I have, it's not, IMO, as good or even as deep as Malick's The Thin Red Line Which is what led me to get this film for my collection...I found it as a story, very disjointed, but understand what the director was going for (and how this video relates to that) :)

Interesting topic for sure! Thanks!

People in our time and for a long time now are almost ashamed to grieve properly. Instead, grief is used as a tool of many practical and at times nefarious uses.

That's really interesting! The book I use in the video is pretty American-centric indeed, thank you for that contribution :)

deLumren - Interesting. In Portugal we also have a similar word, although ours can also represent a sort of satisfying nostalgia, along with the sadder and more negative aspects. It's so representative of our own People's personality that its tangible representation in art, a specific style of music, has become our trademark cultural export. I think the Russian and Portuguese peoples share a lot of ground in terms of art and emotion (especially poetry and literature in general), and the only reason why we're not seen as a sullen people is because we have very sunny weather, which Science tells us helps those with depression. If not for the sun we'd be a very sad bunch - and this is for reasons that mostly escape us. Perhaps 'social grieving' is indeed what we're experiencing, and we kind of embrace it by doing it as a community.

Sometimes theres no other choice than to hide the grief, sometimes theres no one to share it with, or people depend on you and must show youre strong

I actually planned doing this video on both The New World and The Thin Red Line because I think The Thin Red Line has a very similar element of introducing us to a more tribal way of life in the opening scene only to see it gradually corrupted by warfare (with private Witt as the sorrowful character at the center witnessing all of it).

Oh yeah, great pick!

Kinda similar message, but again in my perspective, the message isn't necessarily true. Traditions are good, integration with nature is great, but too many films as a reaction to negative aspects of the modern world idolize the past with extreme distortion. The fall of the samurais was also the moment of the rise of modern Japan and the abundance of that nation in the modern world was only possible because of it. Under the samurais, people were discriminated, they were legally murdered, they were enslaved. Under the modern government, the discrimination existed heavily, but was mitigated than the past, only execution after a trial was legal murder (samurais couldn't kill people on the street with the protection of the law), the enslaved were emancipated. The Native tribes of America were of course more connected with nature because it benefits more and you are more likely to survive. But tribal life has big limits and one of them is that you can hardly live an abundant life. Just like the English, the Natives had a hard time in survival. When the harvest went bad, the people starved in the winter. You work work work to live one more day. And you repeat it over and over. Terrence Malick's artistry was magnificent and the film as a work of art was an A. The Last Samurai as well. But their portrayal of the past is heavily biased and misleading.

I highly recommend the newly released special edition from the Criterion Collection, it's amazing and has all three cuts of the film (I prefer the extended cut)

Thanks for the suggestion. I will watch that one then.