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jmerzetti
Reviews
The Guardians (2018)
Truth is always stranger than mere fiction.
I stumbled across this issue less than a week ago, have read most of what I could find on the topic, watched the American documentary Silent Torture, and followed up with The Guardians. Very impressed with the director's work.
With all I've read and watched, I'm left with what is my most conciously entrenched impression: elderly people who are poor are blessed with a "get out of jail free" card. The reason is simple. They have no assets to exploit, steal, purloin, rob, cheat and lie over. It is really as simple as that.
This is a growing industry, set up to separate elderly people from all that they have spent their lifetimes gathering. But that's only the tangible assets part.
On top of this, they are robbed of their family ties, lifelong friendships, quality of life, and the very reason to live. They are kidnapped, drugged, incarcerated, and reduced to the status of non-persons. They have no rights, and they have no more agency or authority over their own lives than would a helpless infant.
It's all perfectly legal, in the land of the free. Free, yes - free enterprise at its best (or worst).
The Guardians tells the story with great sensitivity and empathy. Yet it never staggers into the maudlin or sensationalistic. A fine, humanistic approach to a scam and scandal that so desperately needs to see the light of day.
Detachment (2011)
The scene that breaks your heart
I'm not going to review the entire movie here. There's enough gut wrench and dark depression to satisfy any hunger for cinematic ice water.
It's the scene. That one damn scene that makes perfect sense, given the unfolding narrative. But still I guarantee you, you won't be ready for it.
Even if you know it's coming, you won't be ready.
It's the betrayal of trust. That's what does it. It's a perfect scene. By the time it shows up, we know the how of it, but it's the why of it that matters so much.
Spoiler alert. Even when you know it's coming, you can't turn away. You fall into it like a tornado.
Our sad hero, Henry. Right when he has nothing. No job, no mother, no father, no grandpa, no real friends, no wife, no children....
Gives away the one thing he does have. Why? So he can wallow in his own chaos, loneliness, existential dread, bleak, black, dark, emptiness?
And what he gives away, but more importantly, who he gives away, is the one person who knows his true value. As if he can't handle that. As if she can identify him, hold him to account, make him turn his life toward something better (as he had done for her.)
And that's where the heartbreak comes in. That's what has you howling at the screen - Man, how can you do that?
You want to fall to your knees. You want to turn it off. You want to re-write the script. But there it is. Just as large as life. Tragedy.
Henry's living proof that the mistakes we make in life come so easy, even though at the time they seem so hard. We make them alone, and they make us alone.
So I guess my little spoiler wasn't such a spoiler after all. Mostly because that scene isn't so obvious. Until it hits. Hard.
It stays with you for awhile. Been a long time since a scene in a movie hit me that way. I'm giving the film full marks based on it alone.