As the Disney song goes, it is a small world after all.
Some months ago, when our friend Michal was visiting us, we
introduced her to dear friends and neighbors, J and L. As we sat and chatted,
we quickly discovered that Michal’s mother, O, had been a classmate of L from
kindergarten through high school. I cannot quite recall how we stumbled upon
this fact, but it is one of those wonderful “small world” stories that can
happen when you least expect it. We have known Michal’s family since they and
we lived in Dallas in the early 1980s, and have known J and L since moving to
Riverdale over 25 years ago. I just never had reason to link them.
O and her husband, who have lived in Colorado for many
years, were in New York this weekend for a wedding, and we managed to get O and
L together. They had not seen each other in almost 50 years, but it seemed as
if just a few months had passed for them! Barry and I were quite impressed at how much
the two friends remembered of their school and teachers. It was a small school,
and most of the class of 50 or so was together for those thirteen years.
This is certainly a very different experience than typical
in public schools, where students attend a series of increasingly larger
schools. Most of my friends in high school had gone to different elementary and
junior high schools than I, and I would be hard pressed to provide more than a
small number of names of teachers or classmates from those schools. This was true even before the tumor, which
primarily affected my short term memory.
What a joy to watch these two old friends reconnect!
Since we are in New York, we managed to see an excellent
film called “Love is Strange.” It never ceases to amaze me how well-known
actors appear in these small, independent films, when clearly they could earn
far more in more widely distributed movies. In this case, the lead roles are
played by John Lithgow (Ben), Alfred Molina (George), and Marisa Tomei (Kate,
married to Ben’s nephew). The two men play a couple living in Greenwich Village
who have been together for forty years and are excited to finally have the
chance to be married in New York State. Shortly after and because of their
wedding, George, a long beloved music teacher, is fired from his job in a
Catholic school. He is unable to find another job and soon learns that his
retirement fund is not quite what he thought it was. Ben is somewhat older and no
longer working. They are forced to sell their cooperative apartment and find a
less expensive place to live, but are determined not to leave Manhattan
(neither of them drives). None of their friends or relatives who live in
Manhattan has space for two people, so they are forced to separate. Ben goes to
share a bunk bed with the teenage son of Kate and her husband, who is Ben’s
nephew, while George finds a couch in the apartment of a young gay couple.
Not surprisingly, this arrangement is stressful for both the
hosts and the guests. While George is a quiet fellow who listens to classical
music, the young couple throws late-night impromptu parties. But the focus is
on Ben and his nephew’s wife Kate, who is a writer who works from home and is
bearing the brunt of Ben’s intrusion into their lives.
In our discussion over dinner, Barry and I discovered that
we had each seen a key part of the plotline somewhat differently, which led to
different impressions at the end of the film. The more we tried to figure out
what the filmmaker meant, the more we realized that perhaps the ambiguity was
intentional. You can see this story in many different ways, through many
different lenses. That is, perhaps, at the heart of the beauty of the film.
A.O. Scott summed it up right on the mark in his NY Times
review, saying:
By the time the movie is over, you feel as if
the people in it were friends you know well enough to tire of, and to miss
terribly when they go away.
Have a great day!
Love,
Rebecca
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