Booksmart meets Judas and the Black Messiah

The other day, I watched a movie called Booksmart. It was hilarious, and energetic, and vibrant – too wild of a ride for me at times – but a truly great film about friendship and self trying new things.

I walked away from that movie, as I often do, with a sense of jealousy or longing for the relationship captured on screen. Whether that be friendship or romantic, I sort of have an issue with falling in love with the people or dynamics in movies.

That evening, in pondering all the many *cough* many movies I’ll *smaller cough* one day write an make, I wrote this in my notebook:

I want to make a movie / story that leaves you looking at your own life again, but now seeing the beauty in it – feeling contented. Not wishing for the ‘perfect’ friendship or relationship that was written, but rather feeling content in your own story. 

While pushing the boundaries of melodramatic, this is a point I stand by. There are beautiful stories – rare though I think they are – that display beauty, while also instilling beauty. There is a character in a book that I cannot remember right now… that is described similarly: their beauty seems to radiate and lift up those around them, rather than outshining them. Movies that don’t just show how great life could be, but how great life is if you look for the beauty in it.

Tonight, I watched a new movie called Judas and the Black Messiah – a true story of Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers during the Civil Rights movement. It was very hard to watch. It was beautiful, and beautifully made, and all the harder because of it. The movie displays the hardship Black communities have been fighting against in the United States for generations, and focusses on the brutality of the mass Police response.

I came away from this movie looking at my own life, and seeing the beauty in it more clearly. Seeing the privilege and the opportunity and the blessings I have grown up with. And seeing more clearly the pain and hurt and brutality that overshadows the lives of so many others…

I’m not sure what the point is here – but this is what I was supposed to write tonight.