An epiphany can change your life if it is about something that is actually true. It is a true epiphany as opposed to a daydream or a wish. The true epiphany is waking up to something that has happened some time ago, but you were not aware of it.
The island means that you can't move away from the friend you don't want anymore. Or your former friend can't move away even though you know he wants to. Of what is the island a metaphor? We can't escape ourselves, so is the other person or the friend part of ourself? So, is the former friend a part of ourself that we reject or that rejects us? Perhaps if we love someone, but then that love dies, it is like losing a friend.
I so wish I could have been half-the-country away to have attended this conversation. I’m only 16 minutes in, but listening to you and Arnold discuss the validity of “breaking up with a friend” feels very personal to me. I’m also of the strange mind that believes in breaking off a branch when you see it straining, yet in reference to Colm’s behavior, he seems to warp the action of abstinent refrain into resentful taunt. This begrudging that propels the movie forward feels like the absurdity. For one, acts of masochism have no true affect on others who don’t care about you (which is practically what Colm is begging Paric to forfeit, his care). is this cycle of resentment inevitable once the first domino has been set into motion? or is there an action that could have been taken to satisfy both of their conditions? All this being said, I sort of skipped over my original point that, to end a friendship seems to actually be the right thing to do (in a deontological sense), but the act of self-mutilation is just another form of weeping whose call for sympathy comes out a raspy whimper. Colm becomes a coward out of pride. He ruins his life willingly. Why make yourself a curmudgeon to your own solitude? Edit: I hear now that this question was the first to be addressed! wonderful!
Art is not a sermon. It elicits an adventure. It draws the viewer or reader or listener into the space the artist has created. Sorry to be so Freudian.
I feel like it’s wild not to acknowledge that this “natural” development that’s been conceived “purely out of the passage of time,” is only respectful of Colm’s reality. Paric’s moment of reckoning is one of provocation, it was not of his will as it was of Colm’s.
Colm is an insecure old man. He wants to have his talent legitimized and he uses his old friends as pawns to this degree, threatening (and carrying out) the dismemberment of his instrument (ie his hand) capable of realizing those songs that he so desperately wants to be valued for. His threatening to cut off his fingers is a plea to be valued for them and his compositions, finally seen as he desires, no longer praised for his gullet and silver tongue. I think his demands for space are not due to annoyance or burden, but source in an insecurity about his creative value. For whatever reason, he needs someone to sacrifice a close friendship as an offering.
Padraic is not an intellectual person based on what we see in the movie. It goes back though to discussion of how to live a 'good' life that Padraic seems to have a social intelligence in adjusting to his surroundings in a way Colm does not. Insiherin is by any reasonable modern definition a bleak society. The question is, is adjusting your expectations and trying to find joy in what is available or is being oppositional to it the more proper way to live? Most people are probably not as extreme as Colm or Padraic and have varying answers depending on context. Then the way the island is also sheltered from the war is another wrinkle; the island may have limited options but is also safe in a way the modern world.
An epiphany can change your life if it is about something that is actually true. It is a true epiphany as opposed to a daydream or a wish. The true epiphany is waking up to something that has happened some time ago, but you were not aware of it.
The island means that you can't move away from the friend you don't want anymore. Or your former friend can't move away even though you know he wants to. Of what is the island a metaphor? We can't escape ourselves, so is the other person or the friend part of ourself? So, is the former friend a part of ourself that we reject or that rejects us? Perhaps if we love someone, but then that love dies, it is like losing a friend.
I so wish I could have been half-the-country away to have attended this conversation. I’m only 16 minutes in, but listening to you and Arnold discuss the validity of “breaking up with a friend” feels very personal to me. I’m also of the strange mind that believes in breaking off a branch when you see it straining, yet in reference to Colm’s behavior, he seems to warp the action of abstinent refrain into resentful taunt. This begrudging that propels the movie forward feels like the absurdity. For one, acts of masochism have no true affect on others who don’t care about you (which is practically what Colm is begging Paric to forfeit, his care). is this cycle of resentment inevitable once the first domino has been set into motion? or is there an action that could have been taken to satisfy both of their conditions?
All this being said, I sort of skipped over my original point that, to end a friendship seems to actually be the right thing to do (in a deontological sense), but the act of self-mutilation is just another form of weeping whose call for sympathy comes out a raspy whimper.
Colm becomes a coward out of pride. He ruins his life willingly. Why make yourself a curmudgeon to your own solitude?
Edit: I hear now that this question was the first to be addressed! wonderful!
Art is not a sermon. It elicits an adventure. It draws the viewer or reader or listener into the space the artist has created. Sorry to be so Freudian.
I feel like it’s wild not to acknowledge that this “natural” development that’s been conceived “purely out of the passage of time,” is only respectful of Colm’s reality. Paric’s moment of reckoning is one of provocation, it was not of his will as it was of Colm’s.
is it reasonable to demand someone’s absence?
Colm is an insecure old man. He wants to have his talent legitimized and he uses his old friends as pawns to this degree, threatening (and carrying out) the dismemberment of his instrument (ie his hand) capable of realizing those songs that he so desperately wants to be valued for. His threatening to cut off his fingers is a plea to be valued for them and his compositions, finally seen as he desires, no longer praised for his gullet and silver tongue. I think his demands for space are not due to annoyance or burden, but source in an insecurity about his creative value. For whatever reason, he needs someone to sacrifice a close friendship as an offering.
Padraic is not an intellectual person based on what we see in the movie. It goes back though to discussion of how to live a 'good' life that Padraic seems to have a social intelligence in adjusting to his surroundings in a way Colm does not. Insiherin is by any reasonable modern definition a bleak society. The question is, is adjusting your expectations and trying to find joy in what is available or is being oppositional to it the more proper way to live? Most people are probably not as extreme as Colm or Padraic and have varying answers depending on context. Then the way the island is also sheltered from the war is another wrinkle; the island may have limited options but is also safe in a way the modern world.