Karen S

I have been thrilled by this film since it was originally released. It was a filmic manifesto of a gorgeous, demure, small town teacher whose buried identity was that of a killer. The film’s core exploration was of a woman’s battle to merge personas- a culturally acceptable mother figure with a fierce tigress who had to battle her own demons to honor motherhood. It is at times farcical, hilarious, and fantastically violent. With Geena Davis in this role I could suspend disbelief. Davis is masterful at playing roles of women with hidden strengths that emerge out of crisis and she delivers in this high voltage action flick! All I can say is “chefs do that!”

This is a movie that I will watch again, not for entertainment, but to try to understand its message. There is a subtle brilliance, a sardonic undertone that threads through. It is not obvious to me that the film mistakenly could not be an action film versus an exploration of the moral dissonance enveloping our country and world in the present day. It was worth the cost to rent it and I don’t want to be reductive about it just because it didn’t entertain me like a Schwarzenegger film.

Still one of the most revealing films on the subconscious drives in American culture. Weaving together an exquisite spirituality and wisdom found in the mundane that is realized in the love between a drug dealer and an angst ridden teenager. Brilliantly written, directed, set designed, acted. And as true today as it was in 1999.

The story has me completely unmoored, adrift in an open sea of constructs that are detached from my linearly framed world. It feels like a puzzle slowly coming together. The threads that keep the narratives connected are Kirsten, the book, and the human struggle around family, tribe, connection, displacement, exile. I am taken in by the show and it’s flawed heroin who is childlike, vulnerable, yet fierce and a force to be reckoned with. I am really enjoying this series.

I was so disappointed to discover there was no season 2. The show is one of the most compelling dramas I’ve seen in a while, that uses space as a metaphor for where grief can take us; a beautiful, mysterious, tender, cruel place. I was so drawn in by the characters of Irene, Franklin, and Jude. And I was surprised at the way Byron, flawed as he was, grew on me. Anyway, if a season 2 ever comes around I will be waiting with bated breath to see it and unfold.