the thing about doctor/river is that the blatant romance is a defense mechanism. it’s playacting it’s how they sketch out the boundaries of their relationship because they can never be sure of how the scales of intimacy are balanced - they love each other, sure, but they are so rarely in a place where they both know enough about each other for mutual trust. so you get these really interesting juxtapositions like how eleven is in full flirty mode for impossible astronaut/day of the moon to the point where it feels like they’re about to make out every time they’re in the same frame but at the same time he dismisses her with “trust you? seriously?” and is shocked when she actually kisses him goodbye. in let’s kill hitler they flirt like hell when she is literally trying to murder him but not at all when they save each others’ lives. in the wedding of river song kovarian complains about them being lovey-dovey in front of her but right after that the doctor attempts to reset the timeline and river has to drag him kicking and screaming into respecting her enough to tell her the truth. in angels take manhattan we get both “just you wait till my husband gets home” (flaunting their relationship to grayle) and “never let him see the damage” (she doesn’t trust him to love her as a flawed, mortal person). they’re out of sync all the time, so sincerity is off the table except when it’s a necessary shortcut to trust that doesn’t exist yet - river whispering his name to him in the library when he doesn’t know her yet, their literal wedding being a tool the doctor uses to convince her to let him “die.”
the thing about “hide the damage” in particular is that river was responding to the doctor’s own fear of seeing the damage. she lied to him because she was trying to give him what he wanted, even if he couldn’t admit it. and it applies both to the broken wrist and to their relationship in general. every time he looks at her all he can see is the pain of her death, and she can see that he’s holding back even if she doesn’t exactly know why. this was always going to be a barrier to true intimacy between them unless they could be linear for long enough to know and see each other as they are, not as they’re going to be or as they were.
that’s why husbands of river song is such a perfect resolution for them. the only way river would ever be honest enough to let him see her insecurities is if she didn’t know who he was, so it had to be twelve and not eleven. and it specifically had to be twelve fresh from losing his memories of clara, so that he’d stop running away from confronting her death and just give them those 24 years together on darillium to really get to know each other, to see the ugliness and the imperfections and stay together anyway. it makes perfect sense that after that they could reach the level of love and trust river has for “her doctor” in the library, in a way that just isn’t possible with a relationship built on whirlwind dates done out of order and nothing else.
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Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) - Watched on August 5, 2023
It spirals to its inevitable conclusion. We revisit a moment, a scene. A little more plays out, we step back or step forward. We live transfixed in a moment. Sometimes a scene mirrors another, it's all the same but with different details. There is no escaping fate, we can only be sucked closer and closer to our inevitable conclusion.
Stop Making Sense (1984) - Watched on October 5, 2023
I genuinely don’t think this needs any explanation or justification at all. I could watch it over and over and over and over and over.
Possession (1981) - Watched on October 17, 2023
It took me three sittings to get through this film and I wasn’t sure I liked it immediately after I finished it. And then it just simmered in my mind for days and weeks after until it finally clicked into place. I love the way Sam Neill moves in this. Everyone comments on the haunting way Isabelle Adjani looks directly into the camera, and yea. Yeah. Ok. Yeah. Yeah.
The Devils (1971) - Watched on June 26, 2023
I thought going into it with the full knowledge of Urbain Grandier would defang it, and perhaps this did soften the blow a bit, but it's audacious, frenzied, sensual. You get tangled up in its themes, its sensations, its torture.
Dog Day Afternoon (1975) - Watched on January 13, 2023
This set off a brief and ferocious obsession with Al Pacino. I have a strained relationship with films based on true crimes, but this slides past my qualms, perhaps just on the strength of the fact John Wojtowicz himself did write a review of it.
Bound (1996) - Watched on April 5 and August 19, 2023
The way Corky and Violet can come together with genuine trust so quickly. The way Ceaser can misunderstand Violet so fundamentally. The literal betrayal in realising who someone is.
Häxan (1922) - Watched on October 27, 2023
The 1922 equivalent of a Youtube video essay where a guy is like, "Guys, I just learned a bunch of fucked up facts about witches and witch trials. I think maybe we just execute women for being poor and mentally ill. Also aren't mental institutions a bit fucked up?" but like, a bit hornier than you would expect for the subject.
Cruising (1980) - Watched on January 17, 2023
It’s all about looking and being noticed. The camera is looking. Al Pacino is looking. The men are looking. And the ambiguity of the gaze and the plot.
Pontypool (2008) - Watched on October 4, 2023
It's a film about words. It's a film about broadcasting from a radio station and seeing nothing. Our imagination fills in the visual gaps. It's so much more horrifying to be piecing everything together from the safety of a recording booth.
The Lair of the White Worm (1988) - Watched on February 1, 2023
Hugh Grant—looking like a lesbian—who is a freaky little rich boy who believes in cryptids, Peter Capaldi—looking like a lesbian—sucking snake venom from a neck bite, an incredibly sexy snake woman with a house full of snake stuff, a giant snake puppet, surreal dream sequences, the coolest game of snakes and ladders ever made, snake dicks, weaponised bagpipe music, homoeroticism, and giant strap-ons.
Ravenous (1999) - Watched on October 19, 2023
This film is so offbeat and strange. It has the strange feel of a comedy, while being a really understandably grim depiction of cannibalism as manifestation of greed, expansionism, and colonization. I kept having these moments of shock that this was a studio movie, that studios were willing to make this film that so thoroughly deconstructs the American mythology.
Penda's Fen (1974) - Watched on July 6, 2023
The first movie in a long time that has made me feel as though I need to pick it apart like an essay, to rewatch multiple times and take notes and repeat sentences until I’ve done a thorough analysis. I've never had a film hit me in quite this way before.
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