I am not sure if you have ever had this experience - but I feel compelled to tell you about some funny experiences I have had whilst 'watching' a movie.

Let us begin with the fact that I love going to see a film. It gives me so much. I often use my intuition to guide me to the 'just right' movie for that particular moment in my life. It can help through good and bad times - to gain a new insight - and shift my attention/nodal point, to a better place where I can deal with whatever is coming my way from the Universe, in a more positive, clear, stronger way.

Now, be that as it may, there are also some occasions where my being is actually 'assaulted' (not necessarily a bad thing) by a movie I watch. I am amused and bemused by these occurrences, and have a really mad theory, and perhaps an egotistical one, which I would like to air, to get some perspective on this.

It goes something like this…

I have felt that particular movies are so close to my psyche/situation that it is almost as if my thoughts have been robbed by the writer/director! Now you can call me mad, but I assure you, it is such a strong feeling that it is almost not a feeling! That is, films of this nature are so real, that during the film I am actually aware that this is about some aspect of my life - and am so in shock, that I cannot process my emotions. I still am in shock. Which is why I write this essay.

Now let me try to explain if I can, what it is I mean. Let us take my most recent 'encounter', and please forgive my lack of decorum if I am inadvertently telling you about my personal life, but I cannot help but feel that an example and some proof is needed.

I went to see a film the other evening, with my good friend and flatmate. For reasons of litigation and privacy I will not name the film, but you may recognize it. Although the central theme was not my own, every aspect of that film could have been a carbon-copy of certain close personal things in an earlier stage of my life. Now, it immediately will strike you as a very egotistical thing to say, and perhaps a common thing, we do after all share very similar lives, desires, etc. which are played out on screen - but hear me out.

The film was a 'collage' of some very strong themes in my life, that were unusual and too recognizable to be coincidences. Silly things, small things, but which when added up made a distorted portrait of my life, my friend's, and my family. The central theme to the film was the struggling 'writer' who ends up turning his wife's experiences into a comedy script, and in the process violates her privacy by secretly reading her diary, to get the source material he needs. He does this without her permission, in order to portray her accurately, her inner thoughts and feelings, as his main character.

Now stop me before I fall off my soap box! But that was like an admittance by the film writer that he had plundered my soul! I cannot help but rant at this point - because there were so many seemingly small details that were instantly recognizable as my own, that I was dumbfounded.

The journal she wrote in - (my same pale blue diary), the guy's fascination with Lancaster bombers (my good friend has that particular hobby with that particular model plane), guitars and piano - he plays them - the way she dressed and where she lived was a snapshot of me in London several years ago. My mother with IVF, my humiliating (and comedic!) ordeals in hospitals for so many years….I am perhaps not convincing you, but believe me - this was so close to me - I didn't feel like I was watching anything but a snapshot of parts of my life. Mundane, human parts - but nonetheless, I walked out of that cinema in a trance, and a state of disbelief.

Had the film writer snatched my thoughts?

It was just too close, the sensation of watching it was so clear, unlike other films - it was so direct, because I venture to say, it was me - I was there, because I had been there, I was in those moments, because they were my moments. I may sound possessive, or paranoid - but you know when something is yours, when you have lived it. They were telling a distorted version of part of my life. I knew it was distorted, because I kept on feeling like I wanted to reshuffle bits of it to make more accurate. It is a common feeling for me with these types of film - it is like I am saying "No - you got that particular bit wrong - the rest was OK - but it didn't quite happen like that, or in that order."

I am having a discussion with the writer - to straighten out some anomalies - but why? Why should I care? I care, because it is about me.

And the irony was that this film was so recursive, so introspective, satirical, even coy about the whole thing, it seemed to me that the writer was aware of the nature of what he was doing! Sound weird? The writer in the movie had used the woman's inner thoughts from her diary - just like the writer of the film had taken parts of my life, and turned it into the film! And her immediate reaction was like mine - how could you do this to me?

At first I felt wronged, and robbed. How dare someone get into my head! Then I remembered what happens when we write…

When we write we are in touch with other planes, and dimensions. It is noticeable. I often find characters appearing in my fictional scribblings that I had no idea existed, and that are so well formed that they are real to me, and almost demand they get written about.

It is a psychic 'seeing' that is in operation. Am I also writing down the lives of people on this planet?

I cannot help but think so. Suddenly another question arises - did I impose my story on him? In which case, my inner desire to be an actress, make films, etc. is really happening - albeit on a psychic level. Initially it feels more like an invasion than a cool thing. I am perturbed, flattered. I am not sure. I am amused, and confronted. Is my ego just projecting, literally!?!

So, I would say that, apart from the films where there is a great yogic point, and lesson from them, there are also films which are from and about you. I hope you have one of these 'seeing' experiences, and can perhaps enlighten me as to how you feel it works, because at the moment these partial theories are the only things I have.

Call it spooky, or egotistical, or true - it certainly made me focus as I chewed on my popcorn and watched the intimacies of my small life on the big screen!

 

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