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jess-rewatches-prodigalson · 3 years

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Killabustas (S2, E9)

My time-stamped thoughts for this episode are below. As always I reference Malcolm’s mental health. A lot. So if that’s going to be a trigger for you, don’t keep reading.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

0:00 - Are the birds flying past Malcolm’s apartment supposed to be an omen for the rest of the season? Or just some foreshadowing for the bird-heavy episode? .....I’m probably reading wayyy too much into this.

0:12 - Ugh. Someone give this sweet cinnamon roll a hug. He’s spiralling. He is so close to having a total mental breakdown and it breaks my heart. (but like, I also want to see it because emotional whump is my favourite).

0:23 - “How can I trust you? I know what you did.” This. This is what’s killing Malcolm. The fear that if Gil, Dani, JT, and Edrisa find out what he did for Ainsley they won’t trust him. He’s afraid they’ll abandon him. He’s afraid that they’ll hate him as much as he already hates himself. ISTG the moment they all find out (or tell Malcolm what they suspect) Malcolm will break. That will be the metaphorical straw that breaks the camel’s back.

0:34 - Anyone else think Malcolm looks completely adorable (yet super sad and scared) when he’s focusing on painting? <3

0:45 - “Why must everything you paint have an exit wound?” I love that this suggests that this isn’t the first mother-son painting session. <3 hahaha

0:47 - “It’s a pear.” It’s heartbreaking that Malcolm didn’t even realize that his pear was bleeding. C’mon Jessica, it’s time for an intervention. Malcolm is breaking in front of you. DO SOMETHING.

1:01 - NO. DAMN IT FEDAK. I wanted to see Malcolm’s reaction when Jessica told him she was writing a memoir. I wanted to see it so badly. I wanted to see him panic about the fact that she was inevitably going to disclose information about his childhood that he’d rather not have public.

1:09 - “How much worse you really are.” OOOOOOOOOOHHHH SHIT. I can’t believe he said that to his Mother’s face. hahahaha OMG. Malcolm is a little shit head and I love him. Well, at least I know he’s upset about the fact that she’s writing this book. His jab at Jessica proves that much.

1:42 - Is Malcolm playing matchmaker here? hahaha or is he just trying to get Jessica out of his loft ASAP?

1:53 - “Why didn’t they call me?!?” Can you hear the sound of my heart breaking? I understand why they didn’t call him in on this one BUT it’s not helping Malcolm’s mental health. On top of the fear that he is becoming his father, the stress of covering up a murder, the fear that his sister is going to become a serial killer, his childhood trauma, and usual mental health issues - Malcolm is afraid he’s going to be abandoned if the team finds out about Endicott. This is reinforcing those fears.

1:55 - “Where should I start?” At least Jessica can see how much pain Malcolm is in. I wish she’d do something constructive about it.

2:00 - “Forget to call someone?” Something about the way Malcolm waltzes into the frame and delivers that line is super endearing. He’s like a little kid running after his older siblings and their friends when they tried to go to the mall without him. <3

2:05 - Why the hell didn’t Gil just pull a 1x12 on Malcolm and insist Malcolm take a holiday? Hell - he could’ve gotten Jessica to enforce it. The fact that Gil is being super distant with Malcolm is not helping Malcolm’s very fragile mental health. GIL I’M DISAPPOINTED IN YOU (and I have been all season....) :(

2:12 - “Trauma’s my middle name.” Okay so 1) what is Malcolm’s middle name? If it’s Martin please tell me he changed it when he changed his last name. 2) At least we got a small papa!Gil moment this episode. <3

2:26 - “Fine.” This is Gil terrified. Remember what Gil said in 1x12? “He was losing it. I mean, I could see that. But I was afraid that I’d lose him.” That’s why Gil is letting Malcolm on this case. He knows Malcolm is losing it and he’s terrified of what Malcolm might do to himself with time on his hands. Gil doesn’t think Malcolm should be working but he knows it’s the only thing he can do to help Malcolm in the short term.

2:42 - hahahaha Gil’s taken-aback look when Malcolm starts not-so-subtly being a member of the Gillica fan club. hahaha <3

3:00 - Okay. I’m done. Edrisa can’t still think she and Malcolm might happen. I can’t handle this blantant one-sided worship anymore and I’m so glad it’s ending this episode (I hope).

3:07 - “and also, you’re bleeding.” <3 JT looking out for Bright. <3

3:12 - “Oh. I thought that this was your hobby?” <3 Dani teasing Bright. <3 I love that Dani, Edrisa, and JT are at least giving Malcolm some positive attention right now. It’s good for his fragile mental state. <3

3:40 - The directing is really good this episode. I’m not usually a person who notices that kind of thing but DAMN.

“It’s an expression of power and control.” “Sounds like someone with serious anger issues.” Yikes. Why do the ‘cases of the week’ always relate back to Malcolm’s current mental health crisis?!? Malcolm dismembered a body (for Ainsley but still). Now he’s profiling that the act of dismembering a body is an expression of power and control. That reinforces his fear that he’s becoming like Martin. Dani’s distaste and offhanded comment about anger issues won’t help Malcolm’s very real fear of abandonment. Hell, it’s compounding his fears that he’s like his father - the man obsessed with power and control who has a nasty temper when things don’t go his way.

4:09 - “Our killer derived pleasure from this.” Dani looks terrified when Malcolm says this. Is it just because she thinks this is a gross and scary murder scene? Or is it because she’s connecting the Malcolm+Endicott dots?

4:11 - “budding homicidal psychopath” is this supposed to be foreshadowing that Malcolm is becoming a psychopath? The writers have been suggesting that Malcolm enjoyed cutting up the body all season. .....and I don’t want the story to go that way. Please no.

4:15 - “I think I just became a vegetarian.” hahahaha JT is my hero. I love this dude and his dry but humorous comments.

4:26 - Once again - I can’t rewatch the Martin+Capshaw scenes. Once was more than enough. My basic thoughts on this particular scene? Capshaw and Martin are both gross. I think Martin is desperate for physical contact and Capshaw knows it. I think Capshaw is manipulating Martin (why is a mystery to me). I also think Martin is manipulating Capshaw so he can use her to help him escape.....I do however think Martin is a heterosexual male who is full of lust and physical desires. (which is really gross to me - a sex-repulsed asexual).

6:22 - I have a serious love-hate relationship with this scene. On one hand, Gil is clearly so so so concerned about Malcolm here and it warms my cold dead heart. On the other hand, the fact that he sends Dani to talk to Malcolm instead of just talking to Malcolm himself kind of pisses me off. Gil’s been really distant with Malcolm all season and it’s killing me. BUT I also kind of understand why Gil is passing off Malcolm to Dani (I don’t agree with it but I digress). All season the writers have been pushing the Brightwell relationship. We’ve seen a lot of really good meaningful conversations between Dani and Malcolm. At this point in time, it appears that Malcolm is willing to open up to Dani more than anyone else. Think about it. Even in season 1 - Malcolm never really opened up to Gil about his mental health. Gil knows that Malcolm won’t talk about his mental health with him - so he’s sending in the expert (Dani). I’m not happy about this but I kind of get it.

6:39 - OMG. Malcolm excitedly sliding into the room is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. <3

6:44 - “What are you guys talking about?” “You.” Exhibit A. If Malcolm had just responded with “what? why?” or Gil had followed up his statement with “we’re worried about you” we could’ve had a meaningful conversation about Malcolm’s mental health. Right. Here. BUT Malcolm knows why they’re talking about him. Malcolm is deflecting. He doesn’t want to talk about this with Gil. So he rolls his eyes and walks away. Gil shouldn’t have let Malcolm off the hook so easily. :(

7:36 - “There’s a special place in hell for people who hurt birds.” Ugh. I just want to hug this little cinnamon roll. <3

7:55 - “Where’d this murder board come from?” hahahaha I love how JT’s constant mood is “I work with crazy people”.

8:07 - “You’re a web sleuth.” I love that JT somehow manages to get across that he thinks Edrisa is a complete weirdo but he respects the hell out of her. Also - the fact that JT teases the people he loves is so cute to me.

8:31 - “Ouf.” This was funny but it also felt a little ooc? Like wouldn’t Gil just cross his arms and say “Edrisa” as a gentle but stern warning?

8:53 - Does Edrisa have no filter or do people really think about sex this often? As an asexual, I’m genuinely asking.

8:55 - I love how uncomfortable Gil and JT get every time Edrisa starts talking about sex and/or reproductive anatomy. hahaha

9:37 - Did Martin ever kill animals? As a teenager maybe?

9:47 - “They have all the control over this cages, seemingly inferior creature.” ....is this supposed to be a subtle reference to the Martin/Capshaw thing? Capshaw being the killer and Martin being the inferior animal she’s controlling?

10:15 - Nope. I’m out. Can’t do it. So gross.

11:00 - “It’s super gross.” Malcolm is all of us.

11:08 - Soooo is Martin fantasizing about killing Capshaw after they do sexy things (hopefully consensual ones)?

11:52 - “Oh I’m already crazy.” This is somehow adorable and completely heart shattering. Malcolm is hiding his pain behind humour but he genuinely believes that he’s crazy. :(

12:00 - Is this the only conversation Malcolm and Edrisa have ever had without Edrisa hero-worshiping Malcolm?......I like it?!?! These two are total weirdos and should definitely be besties.

13:14 - Damn. Edrisa is shining in this episode. <3 <3

13:33 - “No. You won’t” hahaha JT being the team big brother is so cute.

13:46 - “You coming?” Malcolm is so soft here. <3 <3

14:00 - I love everything about this scene. I love how Dani opens up to Bright - even though it’s clearly still painful for her to talk about. I love how attentive and caring Malcolm is. I love how in character they both are. Malcolm is trying to deflect his problems. I love how Malcolm is 100% aware that Dani doesn’t believe his “I’m fine” bs. Dani is trying to get him to open up by sharing some of her own demons with him. Dani looks upset and worried that Malcolm won’t open up - but not surprised.

15:00 - “I pulled a Bright.” hahahaha OMG. I love that Dani and Malcolm don’t question this expression at all. It suggests that the team has used the phrase “pulling a Bright” before and I am here for it.

15:27 - This is what I call ‘passively suicidal’. Yes, Malcolm jumps in front of that car because he thinks it will help him solve the case. Yes, it’s technically an action motivated by the will to live. HOWEVER, he doesn’t move out of the way when Dani tells him to. That car is driving slowly. He doesn’t move. Because he’s in a mental state where he doesn’t care if he lives or dies. He has moments when he cares about life (like solving a case) but those just aren’t enough anymore. Yes, he looks a little alarmed when the car approaches him - but I honestly doubt Malcolm is frozen in fear.

15:56 - “You had the right of way. He can’t sue.” Holy shit. First of all - I immediately think Ashton is a douche. Secondly - is this how America works?!?! In Canada we teach our drivers that the ‘pedestrian always has the right of way’.

16:11 - “My super close friends from online.” Honestly - I feel called out. This is how I must sound when mention my internet friends to my family.

16:25 - Sooooo we’re all in agreement right? The fact that Malcolm has hit the left side of his head without medical treatment this many times = 1) mental breakdown sometime before the end of the season or 2) a way to get him out of taking the fall for Endicott.

16:38 - *sigh* can someone please hug this man!?!? He just can’t catch a break. This whole conversation between Malcolm and hallucination!Martin is heartbreaking. It shows that on some level even Malcolm knows he’s going to break soon because his mental health is in tatters.

17:23 - “She’s not like the others.” Who are the ‘others’? Are these the other people that Malcolm’s had a romantic interest in? Are ‘others’ friends from Malcolm’s past? Or are the others Gil, Edrisa, and JT?

17:34 - Ugh. Floppy haired. Bruised. Sad. My whump heart is so full.

17:56 - Does Malcolm not go on the internet? He didn’t know what a sock puppet is? (granted, I’m 24 and I didn’t know either).

18:04 - The firefighter’s name is BLAZE (Blaise)?!? Are you kidding me?

18:24 - “No. No, it isn’t.” Damn. JT is worried about Malcolm. Just look at him.

18:51 - Do I think it’s weird that this dude is so openly flirting with Edrisa in the middle of a police questioning?!? HELL YES. Do I think it’s weird that Edrisa’s allowed in the questioning??!!? HELL YES. Am I glad they’re giving Edrisa a love interest who isn’t Malcolm? OH HELL YES. ....also Edrisa and Blaze are kind of cute? Like they’re both weirdos and they’re both into each other so ...?!!?

19:47 - Wow. This whole “Killabustas police interrogation” scene is painfully hard to rewatch. Like - the dialogue makes absolutely no logical sense but it had to be there for the plot? Everything is just too convenient. The pamphlets. The fact that these members were all so quick to meet IRL. The fact that these dudes were able to track Alex down so quickly....I mean....who is buying this nonsense?!?!

20:05 - Ugh my asexual ass can’t handle the amount of horny people in this episode.

20:18 - Anyone else think it’s strange that Gil referred to Malcolm as “Bright” to Jessica?!? I mean, Jessica is Malcolm’s mother. PLUS it feels like Gil is trying to emotionally distance himself from Malcolm?!?

20:24 - “Remind me to take Malcolm out of my will.” hahahahaha OMG. I love Jessica so much.

20:44 - These Jessica/Gil scenes were a highlight of the episode for me. They’re just so cute. I love how supportive Gil is. I love how Jessica isn’t repressing her feelings with booze during this episode. I love how open about her insecurities Jessica is with Gil. I love how happy they both look. <3 <3 <3 <3

21:24 - “Some still do.” YES!!!! YES!!!! Keep flirting Gil!!! Don’t give up on her!!! <3 <3

21:45 - Holy shit. How much does Edrisa get paid?!?! This is a rich person apartment. I’m shook.

23:05 - Again. I must fast forward through the nasty romantic manipulation that is the Capshaw+Martin scene. The sexual tension made me nauseous the first time. But I WILL say that I think the black guard in this scene - Mr. Benjamin will be the dude Martin maims next episode (from the previews) - not Mr. David. Either that or the black patient in the room.

25:25 - “Watch out. I bite.” ........I have no words. My asexual ass is shocked, disgusted, and .....kind of proud of Edrisa for going after what she wants (even if she’s super crass about it).

26:03 - “That’s a seriously twisted mind.” “Sure. The kind I get.” This whole scene is heartbreaking. I honestly can’t tell if Malcolm is projecting himself, Ainsley, or both of them onto the suspect. “He killed for attention” - sounds like Ainsley to me. “Alex was going to out him to the group” ......HOLY SHIT. Does this mean Ainsley’s going to try and kill Malcolm and/or Jessica because she think’s they’ll rat her out?!?!?! “It’s about preserving the group. The Vulture needs them.” - That sounds like Malcolm to me. Malcolm doesn’t want to tell the team about Ainsley because he needs them and he’s scared they’ll abandon him if they find out about Ainsley.

27:10 - I’m getting secondhand embarrassment from the west coast of Canada.

27:21 - “Our killer would never order take out.” Weak, Malcolm. Weak excuse.

27:40 - annnnnndd this scene was a hard skip for me. I can’t watch Martin and Capshaw prepare to do sexy things. Nope. ALTHOUGH, I will say: Capshaw’s story about how she ended up in Claremont is interesting. Whether it’s true or not is debatable but it definitely shows that Capshaw is manipulative and creepy like Martin. I have a very strong feeling that Capshaw is a psychopath, serial killer, or sociopath.

31:00 - Edrisa checking out Malcolm’s loft is everything I dreamed it would be. The fact that she’s clearly in awe of his weapons collection. The fact that she has no regard for his privacy and just starts going through his fridge and sleeping area. The fact that she so openly comments and judges the stuff in his loft (ie. restraints on the bed, lack of food in the fridge). It’s perfect.

31:27 - “This is the fridge of a very sad person.” LMAO. I love this line so so so much. I love how Edrisa seems to be realizing for the first time just how broken Malcolm is. I love how sheepish Malcolm looks when she unintentionally calls him out. I love how amused Dani is by the whole situation. <3 <3

32:00 - annnndddd the Killabustas have taken over Malcolm’s loft. They don’t ask for permission to set up his TV. They don’t awkwardly hang out near the door until Malcolm invites them to ‘make themselves at home’ or any of the other common pleasantries us North Americans go through when we visit the homes of acquaintances. They walk right in and claim ownership. It’s kind of beautiful?

32:13 -......so did they already have Malcolm’s wifi password or am I expected to believe that they either a) have a mobile hotspot, b) are using data, c) web-sleuthed their way into hacking his wifi, or d) Malcolm had his wifi password written down somewhere super obvious inside the house?!?! This is honestly the most unrealistic thing about this episode. It’s 2021. The first time you visit a friend’s house you ask for their wifi password. It’s what you do.

33:28 - Ok. I like the kiss on the cheek. Very respectful. She clearly would’ve been down for more but he’s a gentleman and I respect the hell out of it.

33:48 - “I’m sorry Blaze is so jacked.” hahaha OMG Edrisa - Malcolm’s not romantically interested in you. He never has been. Read the room woman!

36:11 - Ashton is Malcolm in this scene. “I’ve been a freak my whole life. I had nothing until that bird video. Suddenly, I was a part of something.” == “I’ve been a freak my whole life. I had nothing until I joined the team. Suddenly, I was a part of something.”

36:38 - “Ashton, it won’t work. Family will only go so far. Because once they know the truth - who they’re really after - they’ll give up on you. And no more family.” Ouch. This hurts. Malcolm genuinely believes that Gil, Dani, JT, and Edrisa are going to abandon him the second they find out what he did for Ainsley. Malcolm thinks they’re going to hate him. Malcolm thinks they’re going to think he’s like Martin - a criminal. A killer. Look at how broken Malcolm looks and sounds here. It’s not just that Malcolm thinks he’s going to be abandoned. It’s that he thinks he deserves to be abandoned. He thinks he’s a monster.

37:02 - EDRISA!!! DAMN. I love this badass. <3 <3 So proud of the girl who literally had a panic attack in 1x15 when she had to save a that ‘almost-victim’ by injecting alcohol into him.

38:05 - My heart is so full. This is honestly one of my top 10 moments of Prodigal Son to date. I love that we see Gil’s new car. I love that he’s working on his car in a police mechanic shop. I love this little glimpse into Gil’s personal life - the man who likes fixing up old cars with a cold beer while listening to 80s music in an boombox from the 80s. <3 I love the absolute adorableness that is Jessica and Gil awkwardly flirting.

I love that Jessica - the rich socialite - holds Gil’s wrench without question. Even though she looks a little confused. I love that Jessica comes to Gil this time. He’s been instigating the flirting most of this season. It looks like Jessica’s finally ready to be an equal partner in the relationship.

I love that Jessica - the rich socialite - takes a drink of Gil’s working-class beer with a smile. His social class isn’t beneath her. She doesn’t care about how rich he is - just about the purity of his intentions and the depth of his devotion to her family.

39:00 - “Oh I remember her. How fiercely she protected her kids.” I LOVE THIS. I love that Gil is attracted to Jessica’s devotion as a mother. I love that the fact that she had children with another man (a serial killer) doesn’t bother him. He loves how fierce, independent, and strong she is and that’s absolutely gorgeous.

I love who wholesome their romantic moment is. Unlike Edrisa and Martin’s live scenes - it’s not fast, heavy, and physical. It’s slow, gentle, and emotional. Gil and Jessica dance like an old married couple when the song they danced to at their wedding comes on the radio.

I love the setting of the scene. How they’re dancing in a dirty mechanic’s shop. Jessica is dressed like the rich woman she is and Gil is wearing a plaid shirt rolled up to his elbows. The contrast is striking and beautiful. I love that Jessica isn’t trying to make Gil fit into her social status. She’s not dragging him to rich people galas and forcing him to dress or act like someone he’s not (although he would so do that for her). She’s hanging out with Gil on his turf and she’s delighted about it. <3

40:08 - “Do you think you can ever really know someone?” Isn’t this what Malcolm said to Gil in 1x17 as the whole Endicott thing was boiling? You know - a few episodes before the team arrests Malcolm in his loft when he’s in the middle of a mental crisis?!? Is this foreshadowing for the next mental health breakdown?!? (Hopefully a fully mental health breakdown this time?!?!)

40:18 - “Masquarading as someone he wasn’t” Yikes. Malcolm truly believes he’s lying to the team just because he’s not acting like a monster. Malcolm has truly convinced himself that he is his father’s son.

40:45 - I don’t even care how you feel about Brightwell. The fact that Dani is the only person this whole season who has told Malcolm that he’s not a monster makes her the greatest friend he could ever ask for.

40:51 - “Ever since Nicholas died.” ....well Dani isn’t a moron so if she didn’t connect the dots before she will now. If we don’t get an intervention next episode I’m going to throw hands.

40:57 - Why. Does. Martin. Have. To. Ruin. Every. Chance. Malcolm. Gets. To. Begin. To. Heal?!?!

41:16 - “ooooohhhh here comes the kiss” .....honestly though. Martin is every Brightwell shipper.

41:20 - I respect the hell out of Malcolm for shutting Dani down like this. Yes - he absolutely should’ve come clean with her. HOWEVER, he clearly isn’t ready to share this burden and the fact that he shut down the progress of any romantic relationship is really good. Because Dani would be SO MAD if they started dating while he was actively lying to her. It would be the end of their friendship. Forget your Brightwell ship - they wouldn’t even be friends.

41:40 - “Why are you ruining this!?” Dani had to have heard this. Even if she didn’t....Malcolm was pretty obviously glancing over her shoulder at hallucination!Martin before she left. There’s no way Dani - a detective - won’t be able to figure out that Malcolm is hallucinating. I WANT A MENTAL HEALTH INTERVENTION. NEXT EPISODE. I’M MANIFESTING IT INTO EXISTANCE. EVEN THOUGH I DON’T TRUST FEDAK TO GIVE IT TO ME. I JUST WANT SOMEONE TO HUG MALCOLM.

42:06 - Honestly thought Capshaw was going to beat the crap out of Friar Pete here. This woman is unstable. Mark my words. She’s going to kill someone (if she hasn’t already).

I know I kind of shat on this episode a bit but I honestly really liked it? I loved the character development it gave us. Even if the plot was pretty subpar.

Thanks for hanging out. See you next week. <3 :)

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vesperdynamite · 6 years

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I’ve taken up writing again, or kinda, idk man. It’s supposed to be horror but it is what it is! Anyways, I wanted to share this with people who’d be less biased so tell me what you think of it!

I remember when I was younger my grandparents had a little bit of property down south of my hometown. It wasn’t much though, just a small cottage surrounded by forest and a dirt road going just across the front of it and stopping in their driveway. I remember when my brothers and I were young we would run around out there, sometimes supervised, sometimes not. The woods somehow were full of bamboo, patches of it just big enough for a 10-year-old to hide in well enough not to be seen for several hours. The three of us would sit in these patches, carving out little hideaways for ourselves, reading, listening to the cd player one of us had brought, picnicking. That might sound odd but it was truly a good time, an innocent time.

One summer afternoon, as we were sitting in one of these clusters something strange happened, a kid came up to us. She had to have been the age of my youngest brother, 6 or so, wearing an aviator jacket. I remember thinking how strange it was and commenting on it and never getting an answer to my question. The only thing she said was “Do you wanna play?” My brothers and I weren’t as shocked as one might’ve guessed we would be. There weren’t that many people on this road or the paved one it led to, so we weren’t surprised that maybe one of the grandchildren or child of another resident had taken to wandering the roads or woods as we had. So when she had asked us to play with her we didn’t even respond, we just stood up and played with her for hours until we were called in for dinner as the sun set. We all waved by to the little girl in the bamboo and ran back to the house, laughing as we went.

My grandmother is a short woman with black hair while my grandfather could be described as Santa, all he’s missing is the long white beard. They’re very kind people, always have been. Very Christian as well, praying before every meal, going to bed and waking up. We prayed with them of course, being children and all. I remember asking my grandmother asking about the little girl and suddenly we were all being whisked off the property by my parents within the hour. For the second time that day I had not gotten a response to any questions I had asked, an oddity for my curious 12-year-old self, I was entering middle school and considered myself an adult and above not getting the answers I wanted.

When I got home I asked my parents what was wrong with my grandparents and why they hadn’t answered my question. I knew something bad had happened out there from their reactions but no one had told me exactly what had happened. My exact question to them was “What happened to the girl in the fluffy coat?!” there may have been a foot stomping as well.

My exasperated parents sat me down and told me that near the beginning of World War II a German family had moved in on that dirt lane, long before grandparents had owned the land, and the husband went off to fight for America. He came back before it ended due to injuries, a changed man. The family lived there for years, having many children but only one daughter. The pilot treasured his daughter more than his own life. He put everything he had into her wellbeing. Then one winter night, she had been sent out to try and draw water from the well out back. She pulled her fathers oversized coat on and went out. Then the pilot snapped and picked up his service revolver. He shot his wife and four children before shooting himself on the front lawn.

After not seeing any of them in town for a while one of the wife’s friends went with her husband to check on them and they found him laying spread eagle in the weeds. Using the phone inside the husband dialed the police and the wife went to check on her friend and the children. Some animals had gotten into the house somehow and had eaten the corpses of all the residents inside. Once the police came the family friends left. The police counted four bodies inside the house and one outside it. The body of the daughter was nowhere to be seen. After searching the woods, they found her in the well, her body having become bloated due to the water exposure.

“Now they demolished the house so your grandparents didn’t buy that house.” My mother hurried to assure me. “The family lived closer to the main road and eventually your grandparents bought the property and expanded further into the woods.”

Hearing the story put me off of going out into those woods for a long time. I stayed with my grandparents occasionally but took to reading in the den, where I could be seen and see my brothers on the lawn, and I noticed grandfather took to keeping his rifle case closer to his recliner.

The older I got the less I went out there. Eventually just stopping altogether. That is, until I heard they were going on vacation during the upcoming summer and needed someone to house sit for them, tidy up and make sure their plants survived. Now at age 20 I had just finished my second year of college and was looking not to be bothered by family, the cottage out in the woods became a blessing to me. A place I could live on my own at, food, drink, and wifi all paid for.

I spent the week before my grandparents left helping them prepare and pack, they were going to Big Bend, California, Illinois, then back home. The journey would take them the better half of the summer just to get around the country and I was so excited to be truly on my own.

The first month consisted of my going to work, and binging cop shows and other things that I could find online, staying inside as much as I could, eventually I grew bored of that and decided to pull my boots out and go for a hike. I had a good chunk of land at my disposal although I was still put off by the story of the little girl I figured it was just a story and nothing more.

Grabbing a book, a soda, and a sandwich I tossed them into a satchel and set out. After a coupe hours or so I found myself a nice little patch of bamboo with a flat little circle in the center and decided to take my lunch. I lost myself in the book until I heard a small voice call out to me. “Do you wanna play?” Looking up I didn’t see anyone and decided maybe I should play some music and put my earbuds in, and headed deeper into the woods.

The woods grew thicker the deeper I went, trees becoming closer and closer together, sometimes so close they started to look like people out of the corner of my eyes. I decided it was probably time to head back home and turned to make my way back to the cottage. And I know it was my brain playing tricks on my but I swear that I saw a little girl in the distance on my way back.

As time went on I eventually braved going deeper into the woods, staying out there until I could just hear the night creatures start stirring around me. I soon found the well my parents had spoken of in the story but it was much less than I had ever thought. In my young age I was picturing a large stone circle with a wooden frame and a bucket with rope. What I found was a small wooden thing that came up to my waist that was boarded shut once upon a time but had buckled under some unknown pressure.

That’s when I heard the gunshots. Five shots were fired in total. Three in quick succession, one that followed it about a minute after and then one last shot. Then silence. No animals made any noise, no bugs crawled. I discovered that after that last shot was fired I held my breath until I absolutely couldn’t any more. I couldn’t pinpoint the direction the shots had come from so I couldn’t go the other way. I just sat on the edge of the well waiting for something else to happen.

I sat there all night, playing games on my phone until it died and after it did I went back to the cottage. It sat undisturbed. I circled around it and found no holes in the sides or doors and went in, holding my puny little pocket knife like I had seen action heroes do. Nothing was wrong in the house. On the front lawn was a pistol. This was when I suddenly realized I had to call the cops. Shots had been fired and they had probably come from this gun. The police came, took my statement and the gun, telling me it might’ve been a hunter or any of the neighbors practicing, because noise does travel.

I didn’t sleep at all that night and when I did finally fall asleep the next day I could only dream of that little girl, her body tossed into the well by the man that loved her more than anything. I found my grandfather’s rifle and set it up next to the chair like he had so many years before. I wasn’t going to let ghosts get the better of me.

A week after I found the pistol I got a phone call from my grandparents asking if everything was alright. I said that everything was absolutely fine and I had just gotten a little worked up over nothing was all. After reassuring them for half an hour I decided that it was time for me to finally face this little girl or whatever was actually going on.

Setting out to city hall or wherever the city kept their records, I had to know if this family had really lived there or even existed. After spending three days searching I found that the ‘Werden’ family had indeed lived on the property and murders had occurred on the property but had not been committed by the father. They had been committed by a stranger that had heard of German people living on American soil and decided they were Nazis.

Jacob Sorrenson killed the Werden family in cold blood, executing them all on the front lawn, youngest to oldest. He was only caught because he bragged about it in the bar hours later. They could never find the body of the little girl though. Sorrenson claimed he killed all of them but would never reveal the location of the little girl’s body. Feeling sickened I went to my parents’ house and slept on their couch for the night.

Going back out there the next day with fresh eves I decided to search for the possible grave of the Werden girl. I didn’t know what I’d do if I did find it, I just knew I had to. I spent the rest of the summer looking for anything that could resemble a nearly 60-year-old grave, researched what could possibly indicate a body is buried somewhere but found nothing out in those woods or near the well.

Eventually my grandparents returned from their trip and asked me if I was okay and I confirmed that I was indeed fine, I had just been a little spooked. After all, how do you tell someone they built a house on the grave of a little girl?

#fiction #writing #writing again #horror kinda #want to submit this to a podcast #or record it myself who knows what'll happen

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ratherhavetheblues · 4 years

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INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘ FROM THE LIFE OF THE MARIONETTES’ “Weak people choose strange paths…”

The films of Ingmar Bergman have elicited from his loyalists a bemusing history. At the point where a consensus about the remarkableness of his skills and heart was at full tide, there also began to occur some battle fatigue in face of waves of other demanding presences of his. A pantheon readily arose, by way of influential critics who jumped to the idea that the mother lode had been reached and that the latter flood was secondary and not worth the strain. That Bergman began to produce films by way of television, also seemed a sign of losing it. (Also a sign of the viewers’ easily losing it, was the myopia about films predating 1957, regarded, if at all, as quirkily overreaching.)

For what it might have meant, the television series of Scenes from a Marriage (1973) became a last hiccup before finding other entertainments to go with popcorn. The soap opera (with a difference), in question, displays a couple of patricians and their on-again, off-again liaison, ad nauseam. But Bergman-being-Bergman, he inserts another couple, very different from the silver spoons. The protagonists host a dinner party for their friends, Peter and Katarina, who proceed to humiliate each other. After the hosts are rid of them, they stage a rededication to their superiority. “Peter and Katarina don’t speak the same language. We speak the same language…” Peter and Katarina, played by different actors, in German rather than Swedish, resurface in the 1980 film, From the Life of the Marionettes, in order to elaborate what heterogeneity can look like and feel like. Peter, another silver spoon, manages to remain another Peter Pan. His malaise with a Katarina drawn from one of his staffers, drives him to butcher a prostitute, perform necrophilia upon her and end up in a mental hospital holding his teddy bear. His wife is left to be an adult. Few of the original loyalists would have seen this film. Too bad, because it’s easily as brilliant as Scenes from a Marriage and any of the other films thought to be great.

The immediate shock, so unlike Bergman’s usual sophisticated procedure, signals, I think, a new form of traction bidding to surmount the dilemmas of a perverse planet. Doing something that new, the project would suggest, might occasion a rich departure.

Therefore the film today begins with the savagery meted to an anonymous (but eventually named) young girl becoming, in a coward’s eyes, an enemy army. The first we see of her is a close-up of her lips having been heavily covered with scarlet lipstick, along with a necklace of cheap tags, resembling a dog collar. (This imagery will pay dividends, later.) Then the attacker whispers, “I’m tired…” Long after the presentation of the hooker’s demise, we’re given a second look at the preamble to the horror. She tells him, “I don’t smell anything anymore… When I was a kid, my mother would take me to see her parents in Denmark. I remember how the seasons smelled. Winter… winter smelled like snow, coal stoves and wet gloves. And summer smelled like seaweed and ant hills. Spring smelled like melting ice and snow in ditches… budding Easter catkins and rain. But the autumn was the most beautiful of all…” She notices that Peter’s fallen asleep (that being a familiar “glitch,” when a heart was vividly at its best). She comes over and kisses his cheek. “I wasn’t asleep,” the Lost Boy lies.

The violence at the shabby brothel speaks to a hatred of nature, in someone letting fear overtake a brave and confused hope. But, as with the victim’s word-choice of “catkins” (a blossom resembling a spike), much thrilling dare and joy anoints her last moments. In his fatigue, she covers his face in a sort of benediction—her grace engaging his errancy. On the other hand, her swatch of black hair cascading over his head discloses a monstrous figure. During the explosion of his attack, small features speak to the ways of primordial action whereby intensities entail a gentle gift. As she struggles to avoid being crushed, a wash cloth appears on a clothes line. Its contours describe a bear cub. She manages to run to the concern’s stage, a vision of blood red, where two paper palm trees on the wall fail to bring a cogent dance. With each tree, however, as so often maintained, a subterranean force is called upon. Here the crazed figures crash between the trees, describing, instead of a harmony, a horror. At this moment, the coloration subsides to black and white, where many thoughts and many feelings bid for truth.

Though not over the hill like Peter, Katarina has a tiger by the tail which she manages quite badly. Firing up his indiscretion, the body of the work consists of several vignettes regarding his policy of refusal to grow up, and particularly refusing to touch the phenomenon of death. Two weeks before decimating a large percentage of the poetry of Munich, Peter Pan sees fit to pay a visit to a family friend by the name of Mogens Jensen, a professor of psychiatry. (At another instalment, twenty hours after the murder, that academic was quick to insist, to some kind of tribunal, that, “To be honest, I am deeply shocked. I’ve known Peter Egermann for twenty years. He is an amiable, talented, conscientious man whom everyone likes, as far as I know. He’s happily married to a hardworking career woman. He has a large circle of friends and leads a comfortable, rather modest life. A charming mother, Cordelia Egermann, the actress. His father died a while ago. His family is wealthy. His brother is a consul [in Bergman's film, Dreams [1955], a wealthy man seeking a miracle is also a consul]. His sister is married to a businessman.”/ “No hereditary depression in his family?”/ “Not that I know of… ” [all speaking the same language, until Katarina crashed the party]. “Peter and Katarina never consulted you?”/ “It was never serious. Nothing Valium couldn’t cure…” [This interplay includes the doctor’s large collection of African sculptures, seemingly the antithesis of classical rational logic.]) Peter admits, “There have been many long nights and too much drinking, recently. Besides, I am very aware of the fact that time is passing.”/ “Fear of death?” the specialist asks. Peter very ill at ease, without mentioning his fear, claims that what precisely bothers him is that he wants to kill his wife. “I’ve been carrying that idea around with me for two years.” The Valium expert, expert at circumventing death, listens to Peter’s assurances that, though both have been unfaithful, “We’re great in bed” [sounding like Johan and Marianne, in Scenes from a Marriage]. Then he reproves the conscientious man for asking, “I want you to tell me my hormones are responsible for my urge to kill her…”/ “Why did you come to me? You don’t believe in your own agony. You don’t believe in the existence of the soul…” [serious matters, but bemusingly pursued]. Peter, far gone in a relapse of bourgeois snottiness, can’t imagine what the family friend could be fussing about. Jensen continues, “Of course I’m angry. Because you have so little respect for your fear” [a paramount fear which the scientist won’t touch]. Concluding their conversation with Peter’s, “Maybe you should prescribe something for me,” the delinquent only pretends to leave the office, and, “letting himself out,” lurks in the darkened foyer, his advantageous cleverness leading him to expect the doctor to speak to Katarina. He’s wearing a woolen scarf, woolens being a flash point of the Anna of the film, The Passion of Anna (1969), who can only tolerate a mundane life and will attack at any chance to butcher carnal unruliness. On one occasion, she expresses her dislike by butchering a herd of sheep. Just before the exit, a Peter, who could feel he’d made an ass of himself, trots out a little homage to Katarina. “I’ve always loved to watch my wife, even when we hated each other. Or when she was revoltingly drunk… I’ve always loved the way she moves.” (Cut to her in their bathroom.) “She watches me in the mirror. She is lost in her own thoughts and she breathes heavily. I’m standing behind her, and I’m holding the razor in my right hand. She watches me the whole time. And now she really sees me. An imperceptible smile hovers around her lips. Now the knife slowly moves toward her throat. I can feel her slight agitation, a slight pulse at the throat…” (She smiles in seeing the now-constant clash this way.)

While standing in the dark, Peter lines up within a lamp alight on the wall and a pronounced part of that wall. Nothing happens. Katarina, rushing to what Jensen might enlighten her, stages an opening gambit far from impressive, to wit, “Have you got anything drinkable around here?” Completing the triad, the doctor proposes her coming to Tunisia with him, on business, for six weeks. She tries for the high road with, “Why hasn’t a clever man like you realized that I love Peter?” Cut to Peter, superimposed upon three windows, the depths of which might as well be in Tunisia. Giving us a sense of the priorities of that haute couture business she runs as a sidebar for Peter, Katarina exudes studious bourgeois unflappableness. The healer perseveres, “I think it’d be a lot of fun to have an affair with you…” Showing more urgency than the first responder, she snipes, “I didn’t come here to sleep with you, but to talk about Peter… Besides, I have my period…” Neither coitus in the office nor the possibility of someone getting hurt attains to seriousness. But the surroundings themselves lift this misadventure. There are two identical table lamps and one of the pedant’s wild creatures in between. Far, unfortunately, an impressive array. The lady with unstable cares pronounces, “If Peter’s really sick, he needs me.” In that frame of melting solicitude, the caregiver declares, “I don’t know, Kat… My intuition won’t let go of this…”/ “I also have an intuition,” she chides. Asking her what her intuition reveals, he receives a feeble strain of one-upmanship: [My intuition discloses] “that consciously or unconsciously you’re trying to figure out Peter’s and my relationship.” Despite this self-aggrandizement, she also reveals that the “relationship” is veering out of control. It veers promptly in her “relationship” of the world of classical reasoning, being so cavalierly wielded. “I’ve always been afraid of you…” This window of her intuition” curdles to the cartoonish. “Peter’s a part of me. Don’t you understand that? I carry him inside of me, no matter where I go. He’s inside me [that intuition of kinship being a vastly complex system, not amenable to whimsy]. I’ve never felt that with anyone else… If we had kids, it’d be different. He’s my child, I’m his…” (In the film, Dreams, a fashion careerist hears from a married lover of her’s that he has reached a state of affairs where he is as weak as a toy, “a worn-out teddy bear.” The connections between these two films will blossom throughout.) “No, that’s not true. We didn’t want to be clever or mature. That’s why we fight and hit each other and cry. We don’t want to grow up. But we share the same blood circulation. Our nerves have grown together in some strange, uncanny way. Can you understand that?” Her so seemingly passionate about their closeness of sensibility is far more hope than substance. In fact, her bidding, in painful truth, to be not of the same language as Peter, carries a danger she underestimates. Her final words with Jensen here, therefore, measure her cowardly incompetence. “Whenever Peter’s not feeling well, the same happens to me. I want to run home to Peter and hold him and say, ‘Now, from now on, I’ll understand everything you say or think… everything you feel…’ I want to hold him fast until he finds me. Why the hell don’t we see each other, although we live together?”

The next step involves her mother-in-law, a week after the murder, receiving a police investigator at her estate. “Peter was the child I’d always wanted. We were so happy. He had a wonderful childhood. Maybe it was too sheltered… He was a fearful child. He was afraid of the dark. He always wanted the light in the hall to be left on. He was afraid of all sorts of things: dogs, horses, large birds. He was like me. I was also sensitive and somewhat sickly. He was very close to his sister… They’d play with dolls and put on puppet shows. He was a quick learner at school [not, you can bet, a quick learner at what they don’t teach in school]. He always got the highest grades. When he was twenty, he met a nice girl [you can bet a patrician, like him]. They got engaged and planned to get married after finishing college. And then he met Katarina and fell madly in love with her. Katarina had a lot of control over him. She had the say. What Peter’s parents said or thought wasn’t important anymore… I don’t understand anything… I’ve had a good and happy life. Peter came to see me a few days ago. He had a list of things that needed to be dealt with, pertaining to his fixing up an old house for them.” (A rare lingering bit of rebellion. She noted that the roof is badly insulated. In The Passion of Anna [1969], a weak-willed man addresses his rotting roof. Disaster follows. But here, not a complete massacre occurs; therefore, we’re enmeshed into a very complex dynasty, a life of marionettes that, rarely, beats the odds.) Onscreen, many candles surround the old lady. A surfeit of candles. Three lamp lights—two, rigidly, side-by-side: another, way off beam. He stands behind her, being eclipsed by his mother, with only his arms and hands seen at her head (a configuration resembling his threatening knife upon Katarina; and also resembling the precious fashion designer, in Dreams).

The episode, “Five Days before the Catastrophe,” tests the catastrophic errancy of a woman struggling to navigate a true magic which her vision fails her. The odd couple find themselves at variance, unable to sleep, and they come to the dining room table to table their agendas. He begins a cognac, while raggedly choosing to cover up with a bedsheet. Then he opines that the meal they had that night at another couple’s place was “horrible.” She chooses whiskey. “That relaxes me. And it’s healthy.” He argues, “Don’t drink so much…”/ “I’ll drink as much as I want, my darling. I never go overboard…” That goads him to remark, “You were pretty insufferable last night.” Her rebound is, “Don’t I know it… I was like that on purpose. That’s the way it is. On purpose[making sure she was at an advantage; that being the bane of any hope for that disinterestedness she needs to practice on the way to creativity]. I enjoy embarrassing Martin… He always tries to fondle me in secret. So I get tipsy and fondle him. Openly. That’s a subtle way of getting back at someone, Little Peter.” Subtle! The pressure requires real subtlety. And the pressure for us is to realize that Katarina has embarrassed herself. We won’t get much subtlety from her. But this film has challenged the viewer to provide the vast subtlety she lusts for and fumbles. He, from his sterile decorum, complains, “You’re starting to get loud and nonsensical.” Her, “That’s your opinion… Everyone else thinks I’m terribly nice,” would be a prelude to hating herself when alone and sober. More empty loudness from her, pertains to an argument about his mother, cropping up the following day. When he reminds her that she promised to be present for a discussion of the quirky house, she sneers, “I don’t have the time. Your business friends consider it an honor to eat that grub your awful old mother prepares… She’s a rotten old monument to your [deceased] father’s imperium of oppression…” (Though Peter laughs at that, that we know now he’s been contemplating her murder for two years, there has to be some quiet rancor.) The tenor of their conflict reaches an unexpected turn for Katarina. “Now I’ll tell you what I actually didn’t intend to tell you. No, it’s nothing special, just a feeling… It happened early yesterday morning. I was in the bathroom drying myself with a freshly washed, rough towel that smelled good. Suddenly, I had an insight, or what it’s called… I saw all these familiar things around me and knew that they soon wouldn’t belong to me anymore. That everything would be taken away from me. None of these things around me would belong to me anymore… That feeling was gone after a minute or two, but last night it came back…”

Peter ignores this (as he ignored, by sleeping through the prostitute’s insight, she being light years more significant than he). What he doesn’t ignore, however, is the mention, by Katarina, that his friend, Harry, had set up a tennis workout early in the morning. On hearing the reminder, Peter informs her that his friend’s tennis elbow was acting up and that therefore the game was off. This brought to mind (despite her having so recently come close to cogency) a recurrent annoyance about Harry’s smoking habits, which reach 70 cigarettes a day. Her gambit of attending to some form of vitality (which does not touch her alcohol habit) becomes a case of her (ragged) concern for a peculiar sensual force. There is another Harry, the protagonist of the film, Summer with Monika, who, after disastrously attaching himself to a poisonous girl, runs her out of his life. This figure makes plenty of sense here, inasmuch that Katarina is on the hook to ditch a dead-end sensibility. That other Harry becomes adept in work and wider responsibility. But Katarina’s wider responsibility is as hard as it gets. Next morning the rush-hour traffic powers past their flat. Two streams of vehicles, headed in opposite directions, presenting much statement but no links. There are contrasting lights in the German darkness, depending on the direction. At work Peter dictates to a secretary, “We have two alternatives.” Not three. Later he notes, “The problem is that a completely new point was raised…” In an ironic conclusion to this very long instance of pedantry, rounding off a punishing display of mutual disarray, we have Katarina rehearsing the models for her imminent fashion show. The effete impact being a paragon of how not to deliver well.

Our major protagonist makes good on her threat to be missing in action at Mama’s soiree. At a bar (where she drinks heavily and shoos Peter along to thrill to something she too should care about), one of her colleagues, the major designer of her concern, spirits her away to his art deco gem of a flat (showing two diamond-shaped lamps vertically positioned in the dazzling darkness along with one rounded lamp too far-off be a player), for the sake of lifting her spirits, and becoming, as far as his lights allow, a genuine friend. Tim, the first responder, had mooted, “I have a wonderful idea. Come to my place for a few hours. You can take a nice long bath. I’ll make us a salad.” In face of this handsome proposal, she corrosively claims, “I’m fine where I am.” In standing up she collapses upon his chest. “I feel so bad.”/ “I suddenly had the feeling that you were terribly unhappy,” he perseveres. (She covers one eye with her hand.) Once to Tim’s tidy home, he shifts the subject to that Martin she felt she had to outsmart with “subtlety.” “We were very attached to each other. But as you know, fidelity doesn’t exist. Not true fidelity.” (Tim is shown by a full-length mirror. A twosome.) “When you’re gay, you can’t be faithful.” Pulling himself back to the subject of conviviality, Tim states, “You have to cry if you feel like it.” Then back to political advantage: “Most gay men like women. Not because we’re particularly feminine, but because we’re more in touch with our feelings. I didn’t come up with that. Martin said that. But it could be true.” (One light is on behind her.)

Tim emotes, “Splits! It’s immeasurable grief… Maybe it isn’t grief at all, but some sort of madness.” (She in the way of a lamp with two lights.) She contributes, not entirely candid, “People like me have never given the soul much thought. Then the soul starts acting up, and you’re helpless. You know?” Tim says, “I understand.” She continues, “Perhaps a few tears are shed at first. A strange kind of crying which then turns into a terrible howl of grief and hopelessness. Then it turns into a blind roar… a roar… a roar…” (Cut to Tim, nonplussed. Is Katarina caught up in Tim’s sentimental menu?) The designer avers, “Everybody breaks down once in a while… I’m pathologically addicted to intimacy!” (Two diamond lights between them.) Then Tim speaks at length about about the horror of getting old.“Two incompatible people… Sometimes I think they all stem from one and the same origin.” He concludes this rampage of intimacy by asking Katarina to lay her hand against his cheek. She does. But when he asks—“Can you feel that my hand is me? That it’s me?”—she shakes her head. (Katarina joining a host of dullards ignoring what’s up. Can she rally? That’s the heart of the saga.)

Three days after the murder, Tim, the apostle of intimacy, is summoned by the police due to his being instrumental in Peter’s meeting the victim. After a lot of flim-flam at the expense of a one-track-minded functionary, he declares—what happened to intimacy and more in touch with our feelings?— “I liked the idea that Peter was cheating on her with a prostitute. But that’s only part of the truth. Weak people choose strange paths. I gradually focused on taking Peter from his wife and making him mine. I saw the coldness in his marriage… I knew I could save him… People like me have a feeling for such things.”

A somewhat less predatory scene pertains to a letter from Peter to Mogens, which never becomes sent. It functions as a glimpse of the influence of Katarina. And it confirms that that toss away platitude, “Weak people choose strange paths,” is studded with deadly practices. Peter premises is cri de coeur, by declaring (Tim-like), “What I’m going to describe isn’t a dream in the usual sense.” (It’s, in fact, more a dream like the fervid dreams of the film, Dreams.) “Although I experienced this under the influence of pills and alcohol, the experience seemed more real and horrible than the reality of everyday life.” Cloaked in a calming fog, there were him and Katarina seen in bed from the vantage point of the ceiling. The documentor struggles to describe the fabric of this action: more than “sensual;” not only “erotic;” “a direct link between my lower body and the intense, sweet-smelling moisture of a woman.” (Katarina’s hair tumbling as she sleeps.) Then a moment showing them nude from a long distance, with over-exposed visuality, insinuating a snowscape. In the vein of “more in touch with our feelings,” Peter gushes, “I moved over a glittering, spacious surface with my eyes closed. And all was very quiet. My contentment was complete. I had a strange urge to tell a funny story.” (Can Katarina’s heights get past the funny story stage?) “There was a little eye on every finger.” (In Dreams, one eye upon a raincoat suffices; here the push to be “big” collapses the traces of remarkable initiative.) He moves to touch one of her nipples. Then he rattles off a formula, where only the deftness of motion can prevail: “If you are death, then I welcome you, dear death. If you are life, then I welcome you, dear life.” Amidst such sophomoric efforts, he does break from tradition to realize, “that it was dangerous to become afraid.” Back to his cruising speed, he imagines consistently to be unable to penetrate her. “I fell into a rage. I withdrew to stop myself from killing her.” Her vigorous countering of his aggressiveness, leaving him holding his head, produces a long glare of intransigence between them. This is followed by her gently soothing his wounds. “It is difficult to describe that particular moment. The very air I was in was transformed… We entered a sudden spirituality without reservations.” That her range puts his to shame culminates in his fantasy of having killed her “in some cruel way.” The missal describing a weakling. No wonder it was never sent.

The episode, “Two Days before the Catastrophe,” brings the letter to solid action. It begins with Katarina frantically trying to reach Professor Jensen, because Peter is up on their roof contemplating jumping to his death. True to form, the psychiatric flop is not available. Her backup choice is one of his cronies, namely, Arthur, a name (in the form of King Arthur) redolent of maintaining good breeding. (In The Passion of Anna, a weak-willed artisan on a broken roof ends up like a figure in the works of Samuel Beckett. From here on in, it’s about whether Katarina can fare better than that.) Arthur tries to rally the on-again but largely off-again rebel with, “It’s respectable to want to jump, but inhuman to torment one’s fellow man.” He adds, “Someone will see you and alert the police… Can’t I at least get your fur coat?”/ “That would be nice of you,” the not quite desperate enough malcontent replies. (Weak people choose strange paths.) He’s back before Arthur can carry the furs. Katarina attempts to calm the country club regular, but at this stage he shows no interest in their constellation. She drops that hot potato and hopes to find more success with the paragon of easy chivalry. “Poor Martha (Arthur’s wife), we’ve disturbed her.”/ “Not at all,” he tells her. “She had an early operation at the children’s clinic.” In the Swedish Bergman film, Dreams, a woman, named Marta, uses a trump card of children to fend off the protagonist fashion entrepreneur, Susanne, intent on a weak paramour. Marta is a pretty smart cookie, but not as bright and brave as she thinks. On the subject of hard knocks, Peter, attempting to look somewhat less weak, kicks Katarina backwards from her position of sitting on the carpet by the chair he occupied after doing without his furs. Arthur does nothing noble here. “Come sit with me,” is his policy of law and order. An embarrassed lady of the house chirps, “I’m fine on the floor…” Then both of them begin to glare at each other. She plunges on with, “We had a drink with Johan and Marianne. Then we all went out to that new Italian restaurant near the theatre.” (She drinks. Arthur smokes. Far less overt is her uphill climb to bring her seldom uncanniness to a full fruition and a hope for beating back a horde of cowards, along lines of surpassing those who kick, while keeping in play those who meant something, being held in reserve.) Arthur asks her, “What’s that on your neck?” This brings instant communication from Peter, “Her necklace broke… I got caught in it, and then it broke.” (Peter got caught in Katarina’s audacity. And then it broke.) Arthur remarks, “Make sure it doesn’t get infected.” Peter the Weak blurts out, “Oh, Katarina says she wants to leave me. I say great. What a godsend. Then she says she can’t live without me. I say I can live better without her. She says I’m important…” (Katarina lies back on the floor.) As the transaction spins crazily, Katarina loses her temper, as she has done may times. But, while she has an end-game, he has nothing.

During the rest of the humiliation from out of that overt consideration of suicide, the conflict and its results do nothing but confirm that their life together is no more. She snipes, “Shut up, Peter, you’ve had your performance.” But now Peter—terrified in face of his wife’s reckless and valid cares (and occupying the model of that Anna, the little pedant and coward, emerging from the film, The Passion of Anna)—opts for an eleventh hour return to full bourgeois appetites, including a final “performance” to recompense his treason against his clan. How far apart are they? One indicator says a lot, though no one notices. As Katarina lies back on the carpet, pondering her future as a solo act, we see her from upside down and particularly the collar of her shirt. Two button holes and a button: the two of them no longer in business, but, for her, filling little needs could go far. That she is far from steady enough to see her way through this snake pit may be transparent in the following communication later in the conversation. “Poor Peter, I feel so damn sorry for you.” (That is precisely what the protagonist, Susanne, in Dreams, has to endure, from a prim, nihilist Marta, who believes that no couples ever become magic. That, in the cyclone going on at this point, Katarina becomes a stiff, is food for thought. She set this doomed, underground adventure by way of a degree in charisma. We’d like to discover if she can reinvent (and then some) a new and wider fruition. Out of the pointlessness of tons of clashing verbiage, there is one kernel of might from her: “We accepted the rules [of skepticism] but had no knack for the game [the play and its good-naturedness].”

In the episode, “Three Weeks after the Catastrophe,” we find some signs that Katarina is beginning to find a knack. Paying a visit to her grieving mother-in-law, our protagonist counsels lightening up, going on a visit to Paris where the grieving one has a sister. As to being possibly needed by the butcher now ensconced in an institution for the hopeless, the daughter-in-law relates, “I went to see him yesterday. He didn’t seem to be all there… He’s getting injections to stave off distress.” So prostrated is the mother with the shock, Katarina (surely feeling some irony, which now, though, for her, might have an impact for some good, for some people) suggests Professor Jensen to lighten her load. The offer is accepted. Despite Katarina’s history of hating that lady, she now declares, “I can come to see you every day…” This gambit is promptly shot down by the host’s digging into their troubled relationship. “You think it’s all my fault…” (But Katarina has begun to leave such sterile warfare, while needing to stand up to a history of panzer violence.) The mistress of the mansion argues, “You’ve always been very critical of Peter’s and my relationship.” Having to retort, “You were critical of our marriage,” would simply not be what was on her mind. A better manoeuver, though, would—in face of the woman with no future (like her son), dictating, “I gave birth to him and raised him. He’s a part of my life. You don’t have any children. You don’t understand a mother’s feelings…”—“You’re right. I don’t understand.” Pleased to feel on top, the maternal one speaks through a dynasty. “I didn’t want to hurt you.” The guest in the leopard-skin coat, assures the old lady, “You didn’t hurt me.” Pouring on that favorite insult by those smelling a kill, “I feel so sorry for you,” is met by Katarina’s, “I don’t believe that… I’ve been here for half an hour. All you’ve talk about is your feelings…”Perhaps her parting words forever (but not necessarily), the solo pours out her heart to someone who wouldn’t give a shit. “Full of astonishment, I look back on our lives… on our former reality, and think, ‘Was it all a dream?’ It was a game. Lord knows what the hell we were doing. This is true reality, and its unbearable.”(It could be that being in the presence of Peter’s mother has somewhat rattled the soloist.) True reality is not unbearable to the strong, and Katarina knows it. She also knows that being a soloist is madness. Her being felt on the spot to match the matron’s emotions swings her into a line she’d find ludicrous when composed. “A strange, hard surface. But under the surface I’m crying. I’m crying for myself because I can no longer be the way I was… I cry for Peter. I’ve never been able to put myself in other people’s shoes… But suddenly I think I know what Peter is feeling and thinking….” And even in such a maudlin funk, her better self returns. “But the [exponentially] worst part of it is… that poor woman. I tell myself she was only frightened for a moment… That doesn’t help.” Just before Peter presumes to make his piddling statement for the sake of the “betters,” he learns that the woman knowing catkins is also a Katarina. The guest that day to the mother-in-law was very significantly on a track to touch those worth touching. To more fully disclose Katarina’s distinction in leaving that fortress of enmity, we look back to Peter’s doggerel where his wife (the only thinker that long family tree had ever enclosed) had had her creative heartiness cribbed and twisted into a cheap stunt. “There was a little eye on every finger.” What had the unsteady thinker wasted, on a worthless associate, was her hard won realization that her gentle and powerful proof against inertia not only opens and drives the fireworks of the cosmos itself, but being gifted by a vast menu of carnal initiatives, by way of which to be truly blessed, truly loved. (The outset of the film, Dreams, with its producing a large set of red lips, like those of Katarina’s, also traces a word for the wise: “One has to say no at some point.”)

An Epilogue showing Peter’s cell returns coloration. It has nothing to do with him (the exponent of, “no way out” and solitary chess, recalling the cowardly patrician in The Seventh Seal), but that Katarina is in the building, perhaps for the last time.

As this saga has unfolded, we’ve come to a unique need to add to Katarina’s struggle. Bergman’s exceptional skill about problematic drama eschews attending to further steps along this endeavor. The hundreds of montages accompanying the narratives were not only about the “mood” of the stories, but the actions of the viewers. The placements about the mundane, the ecstatic and their harmonics are not precious museum-pieces; but a way of life hugely dissimilar from the dynasties which have commanded fealty for, in one case 4000 years, and, in another, 2500 years. That they are massively wanting is one thing. That their homicidal proclivities exude a pall upon the land may be well seen by the former’s incompetence and arrogance to the point of a world-wide collapse, without so much as an apology. That is the reality which Katarina and we must deal with at a level of difficulty so extreme as to seem, “no way out.” But along with the Byzantine history, there is a stunningly underused resource to foster a “knack” in return. The likes of Katarina, who finds snippets of magical dynamics setting her apart, can, if alert enough, become buoyed by an agency recommending action for the sake of interplays that have no end of joys, but very much end of sentient life. This planet of toxic dynasties, so effective in paralyzing the full range of creativity (delivering a world of marionettes), is far from the only place graced with a creative knack.

#ingmar bergman

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