N I (N)

This is a movie you have to watch twice. And it's not just a watch. It's an experience. The first watch is weird, unsettling, all kinds of strange feelings. The ending will leave your mouth hanging open. Then you'll google to understand the themes. If you're a woman you will have already felt the themes, and then to have them explained to you will feel like an AHA. This film is about being a woman in a man's world. Carrying all the guilt forced on us for "original sin" and blaming us for the feelings men get when they look at us. Blaming women for the awful things men do. It even explores the idea that men are jealous to the point of seething for not being able to give birth. Men are jealous of women and so they get angry and take it out on us. Just sit in that, because this film does. The film further explores the idea that since men can't birth life, they give birth to the traumas they inflict on themselves and women over and over. Women and men don't think about these things. But we live in a world where we're soaking in them. This film exposes that world. The plot? A woman who is recovering from a tragic loss goes to spend a weekend in a grand country house. While she explores the beautiful estate, strange things begin to happen with the men in the town. But the plot is sort of beside the point. The point is women living in a world full of men who want to diminish them, blame them, screw them, use them, control them, etc. etc. etc. Harper says something in the beginning talking to her friend that I think sums up the whole film: "This kind of thing is going to happen again and again. In one way it's going to happen my whole life. So I'm just gonna have to get used to it." Now that I understand the film, I'm grateful to it. So many things I've experienced as a woman with men and repressed, shrugged off, had to move on from, run away from, hide from, plead with, bargain, beg... I think I will be rewatching this movie for the rest of my life. On my second watch now. I feel touched beyond being able to articulate it. Thank you to the filmmakers. I don't know if men will like this film, though. Too bad so sad. Maybe that's the point.