I have seen a slew of films lately, mostly years after their first showing, and feel kind of lost in a time capsule. The men depicted all seem passive-aggressive and really tied emotionally to their mothers. Many of them have had to be surrogate husbands almost to their mothers, having had fathers who for one reason or another were not there. Most have pleasant memories of their fathers too, and the loss of him seems to spur a lot of future angst and soul searching. The same here. The mother was suffocating her little boy as she did everyone around her. I also am struck by how the image of reality we are told to have is not how people really are. People drink, do drugs, curse, are slovenly, rude etc. and social status has nothing to do with it. The drunken uncle, the whorish aunt, the lout of a grandpa - we all have them and yet, we pretend that we don't. We hurt each other too - a lot. Movies like this show how frustrating it can be to look from the outside while sharing so much of their experience.
