“You’re Not You: Honestly Recommended”

I usually like to watch movies of horror and thriller genre. This movie was the first of the kind and it was just a random watch. I had no idea of the plot and ratings. The best part is, it turned out to be one of the best movies I’ve seen lately.

Here’s a short review of the movie.
The movie starts with glimpse of the happy married life of Kate (Hilary Swank) and Evan (Josh Duhamel). Kate is a professional pianist who plays on concerts. It’s on her birthday that she discovers that she is suffering from ALS when she is unable to grasp a glass properly and plays the wrong notes on the piano. Then the movie fast forwards one and a half-year later, when her disease has progressed so much that she demands around-the-clock care. Evan, being a good husband, is trying to provide that in every way possible for him. After firing her last nurse because she made her ‘feel like a patient’. She is interviewing Bec (Emmy Rossum) for the job, who’s late for her interview and shows up hung over and smoking at their doorstep. Kate hires her despite Evan’s detestation for her. She takes a bad start including making mocking comments on Kate’s impending death, unable to work with cutting board and blender, and dropping Kate helpless in the washroom.
As the movie progresses, it shows how Kate’s worsening condition brings her marriage to rocky grounds,she starts losing her friends and how she forms a bond with Bec. Bec helps Kate let loose and give voice to her underlying frustration and Kate teaching Bec some degree of self-respect and responsibility.
Both the ladies have done fine acting. Hilary swank has done justice to her role really well. Though she has some moderately clichéd scenes of cinematic suffering, it’s her look of resignation as she struggles to turn the pages of a magazine, or her quiet discomfort as strangers attempt to shake hands, that really convey the brutality of the disease. The movie has some powerfully emotional individual scenes that make tears well up in the eyes.

For me, this movie defines the fine line between sympathy and empathy that most of us fail to recognize. It conveys the strains of the terminal illness on the sufferer’s spouse. On the other hand, how pity & sympathy takes over the love and warmth of a relationship. There’s more to it, than to just take care of the sufferer as a patient. No one likes to be invisible or become an imposed responsibility.

Some of my favorite lines from the movie are as quoted:

– “He turns me over in my sleep. He feeds me. He bathes me. He does everything but breathe for me. Believe me he’d do that if he could.”

– “Why is it that… we want the ones that don’t see us.. instead of the ones that do?”

 – “That’s the thing about giving up. You don’t realize you’ve done it until it’s too late.”

– “It’s not about her. It never was. It’s about being invisible.”

 – “You’re not you. You’re me.”  

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 Have you seen the movie already? Or still have to watch it?
Share your views about the movie. 🙂

Permission to change: Granted or not?

Constant change, the world we live in is all about it. You change the way you dress according to the latest fashion. You change your old cellphone with a latest phone because it has more features or only because you wanted to. Its a dynamic world that we live in. But when given the question like for example ‘you guys used to be best friends, now you don’t even talk to each other’ and almost all the times the answer is ‘he/she changed’ or ‘they’ve become a different person’.
Yes, that’s where I’m getting to. We want change in everything around us now or then. But when the people around us change, we just can’t accept it. We don’t give people the freedom of change.
As a human being and a person we have evolved since our time started. In my view, we all change because our life changes from time to time. Its nothing surprising. Ask yourself. Are you the very same person you were 5 years back? . The answer would be ‘no’. You have evolved in your emotions, in your reactions & in how you handle people. This is necessary for the survival. As you grow up, you learn the bitter truths of life. You start accepting things that you once denied. You learn that you can’t always speak your mind. You can’t always have things your way.

Why we can’t accept it?
Change is something to which not everyone adjusts well. As much as this change is important, people will still have a hard time accepting it. That’s because we always want the people to stay just the way we met them. We have a hard time letting go of the picture that we made in our mind of that person, the first time when we got to know them. The change in them threatens us and leaves us insecure that it’ll drift them away from us. Sometimes this change does drift people away but at other times it doesn’t. Either way we have to accept it.

Why we should accept it?
When we ourselves don’t stay the same, why do we expect the people in our lives to stay the same. Isn’t it ironic? We all evolve, all of us struggle through life. You may not see it but everyone’s busy fighting their own fight, big or small. Why do we always forget that every fight that we fight in life, leaves a scar on our souls and its meant to stay there. Either you can keep mocking the person about their ugly scar or just accept it the way it is. You can’t blame the person for being a certain way they’re. Everything that happens in our life changes us in a certain way. The change can be good or bad. That depends on how they let the stimuli of change effect them. So, the statement ‘you know, you’ve changed.. You’re not the same person anymore’ is a Hippocratic statement in itself. We should give people liberty to change.

There are never enough justifications for change, so don’t ask for them.

Though not easy, let the people change & accept it. Don’t try to bring back the older version of them. Don’t even expect. Don’t hurt yourself more in the process of change. That’s how life works. Just let go of what you remember of them or the memory of who they were will haunt you down every time.
Change and let people change. Let life process continue.

So in your view, should we give people the liberty to change? how many people you knew changed and grew apart? How hard was it to let go of how you used to know them?