Letting Go to Hang On

The paradox is that the more I let go of Anne through those stories, the more I am able to connect with who she is now.  I connect completely with Lewis’ words here in A Grief Observed:

 “…passionate grief does not link us with the dead but cuts us off from them.  This becomes clearer and clearer.  It is just at those moments when I feel least sorrow—getting into my morning bath is usually one of them—that H. rushes upon my mind in her full reality, her otherness.  Not, as in my worst moments, all foreshortened and patheticized and solemnized by my miseries, but as she is in her own right.  This is good and tonic.”

I gave myself the afternoon off one day.  I had filled out enough forms, requested enough recommendations, completed enough self-evaluations, and mailed enough thank you cards for a while.  I bought the movie, Inception, and settled down to a little afternoon matinee.  I expected the ripping good story and outstanding special effects that I got.  The big screen, the sound bar and the subwoofer made it a theater-quality presentation.  I thought to myself, "Once again, dear, you did such a good job (Anne picked out all of the equipment).  You would have really liked how this movie works on the equipment."  That brought a smile to my face.

What I didn't expect was the way in which the movie was a profound meditation on the power of unresolved grief.  The main character feels responsible for his wife's suicide.  He implanted within her brain an idea which freed her from one mental and emotional prison only to lock her into another.  And she found death to be the only real escape.  His guilt drives him to dangerous and irrational extremes and gives the plot its emotional edge, so that it is more than an action film made to be enhanced by 3-D technology (and no, we don't have one of those fancy 3-D televisions).

His first strategy has been to lock his guilt and memories into a prison deep in his subconscious mind.  We see that in literal terms as the memories of his wife struggle to get free of that prison and assert control over his consciousness.  Those unresolved memories pop out in unexpected and dangerous places as he uses technology to dive deeper and deeper into his dreams and the dreams of those around him.  The guilt and anxiety wrapped in the image of his wife are always inviting him to join her in death so that they can truly be together.

When I noticed that feature, the film really got my attention.  That certainly was part of my initial experience.  I never considered injuring myself or ending my life.  However, those fleeting thoughts of "If I were dead, at least I would be with Anne"--those thoughts came and went in the first ten days with some alarming frequency.  That has subsided for me at this point, but it was compelling to see that dynamic portrayed in the film.  I knew then that the film makers have some acquaintance with grieving.

The climactic scene involves a dream confrontation between the main character and the remains of his wife's memories.  It is almost an extended quote from A Grief Observed.  He tells the character that she cannot be his real wife.  He says with great passion that his subconscious has done a pretty good job of reconstructing her.  Yet, she is flat and narrow and colorless in ways that his living wife could not be.  She can be nothing but an image, and so this confrontation produces even more pain.  She has become an idol that demands control rather than a set of memories that give life.

The main character finally comes to a place of healing.  "I have to let you go," he says, again in an echo of C. S. Lewis' insights.  Indeed as he lets her go he then has her memories in more profound ways.  But the healing for him is more than relinquishing the image of his wife.  It is acknowledging that his guilt is a way of keeping her rather than merely a way of punishing himself.  The Helen Page character helps him to let go of that guilt, and then the memory can take a place that might give life and hope in the future.

I know, I know...it's just a really good movie, and it's a great deal of work to read all this into or out of the screenplay.  Yet, it is clearly there, and I will watch it several more times with that in mind.  I was reminded with great power of the need for my own mindfulness in this process--the need to pay attention to my own anxieties and fears, my own guilt and regrets, and to process those things consciously and with regular discipline.  I had let go of my breathing and meditation exercises for a while.  Somehow this is a good motivation to return to being mindful of the pain in order to allow the joy to emerge.

Of course, there is an interesting and ambiguous twist at the end of the film, as there should be in such a subtle piece of psychology.  But I leave that to other reviewers.

Besides, the subwoofer rattled the windows...Anne would have enjoyed that.