
Big Little Lies. A Movie For The Feminist Within.
I watched the first episode together with Alin and he was like “I can’t watch this. This is too girly.” Insert feminist protests here. Later on, a friend confirmed that Alin was not the only man who couldn’t take so much estrogen, her husband had done the same.
I don’t like to watch dramas by myself. There is something about sharing that burden.
I don’t know how to say this, maybe it sounds stupid, but I take movies very personal, especially sad stories. Yes, it is me, it is us, girls. So I cry a lot because I feel exactly what Willy (yes, the orca) felt when he/she/it jumped over that pier into that vast blue ocean. And he/she/it was finally free, but at what cost? He/she/it had lost his best friend, the tiny human, the only person ever capable of understanding him/her/it, if not for the other orcas out there.
As you can see, stuff is quickly escalating, even when we talk about a childish movie like “Free Willy”. So I was reluctant to watch Big Little Lies, mainly because I suspected some nervous breakdowns, shattered glasses, abuse, etc. After all, Nicole Kidman is playing so … I don’t know exactly, it’s something about her face … that look of a wounded animal, maybe?
Well, she totally nailed the role this time. Actually, they all did: Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley, Zoe Kravitz, Laura Dern, men and kids.
Big Little Lies it’s a story with and about women. After seeing it, I only feel like saying “Eat this, Harvey Weinstein!”.
The series follows five middle-upper women from Monterey, whose kids go in the same class at school. Their stories are interconnected and cover a wide range of struggles. I will stop here because I feel like if I’d want to say more I will just blurp it all out. Maybe it’s because of the ocean, the omnipresent ocean in the movie, that all my feelings/words seem to be boiling at the surface and it takes just a tiny bit to have them tumbling out.
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To be honest, I totally lost track of what I wanted to say. It’s been two days since I started writing this and Alin and Carla have repeatedly distracted me. What I know for sure is that this short series kind of made the feminist in me still keep the lamp on.
It is no secret I don’t want to associate myself with this current, mainly because I believe it has been diverted or lost its original meaning, stamina, purity, whatever you want to call it. But Big Little Lies rekindled something in me, something that goes in that direction. I couldn’t be more vague, right? Told you Alin and Carla messed me up!
I wish there’d be a word, just one, for it. I can’t only think of one. I can think of tenderness, I can think of beauty, I can think of ferocity, stubbornness, passion, fearlessness, devotion, strength, gentleness, ambition and, above all, something that doesn’t come so often, not when it comes to women anyway, I can think of sisterhood.
This movie embeds all of those and it does so very balanced and smooth. We all know how volatile some intense feelings can be and how difficult it is to transfer that to the public without falling into ridicule. I believe it’s all being caught in it.
So see it, embrace it and celebrate it!
We (women) are beautiful and we do rule the world from the shadow. Wink!