“It’s amazing how movies can do that, lure you right into someone else’s pain as it tears down your walls for the actors relationships while making your own vulnerable.  Your breath slows as you wait for every argumentative word to pack a punch of climatic ridicule and then you gasp when both people really shutter from the mere shock of speaking it”.

I’m not sure why I gravitate toward the drama genre of movies but I can admit that a good cry usually makes me feel human.  Unfortunately but fortunately, I go deep quick; I jump right into a play of passion and feel the intensity of every character I like, just so I can make sense of my own world.  As an aspiring writer I have written on any topic that intrigues me or provokes a roller coaster of reactions from my innermost being, the problem lies in my ability to share it as vividly in type as I could if I acted it out.  And there lies my constant struggle to make it as an artistic expressionist in this world, for I am neither a published author NOR been star of a movie much less cast in a play.  I just know I’d be a natural.  I watch movies with dramatic undertones and messages like “The Judge” because of the storylines I understand the best.  As I have practised the trade of sentence formation, I have morphed writing  journalistic tales into personalizing the spiritual meaning behind all famous silver screen debuts.

I have my own characters in my head that flesh out scenes from my past which simultaneously reflect the familial rifts that unfold before my eyes from most movie scenes.  I guess that is why I watch dramas today from the writer’s perspective, so when I draft my first script it will depict my own testimony of transparency while watching others portray it.

I have watched “The Judge” a dozen times for the raw footage of family dysfunction and heightened awareness of the trauma and lies that shape our lives best on the home front.  I pay attention to the movies of hostility between mother and daughter, father and son because I know that touches everyone’s heart in our societal norm of blaming others.  I have a real knack for siding with the kids because I believe we are a chip off the ol’ block that produced us, most of the time un-admittedly.  I can watch Robert Downy Jr.’s character Hank, respond to his father and brothers just as I would to my mother and sisters.  I am the female version of him in my life. The realities of scapegoating that surround the grown children who were raised to stroke the ego of their father are ruminating in my thoughts of what I lived, still do.  And I just cry every scene when the Holy Spirit highlights to me a sore spot that I’m still trying to figure out.

It’s amazing how movies can do that, lure you right into someone else’s pain as it tears down your walls for the actors relationships while making your own vulnerable.  Your breath slows as you wait for every argumentative word to pack a punch of climatic ridicule and then you gasp when both people really shutter from the mere shock of speaking it.  With misunderstandings and years of estrangement fueling fires of abandonment, you have siblings fighting for the reputation of the very parents who drove them apart.  And someone always walks away because facing reality means surrendering those you cannot change.  Why not leave, at least you wont have to hear the slander even though you know it continues even more in of your absence.

Adult relationship with disrespect toward an elderly parent always depicts perceived mistreatment from the adult child.  What kills me is the very predictable routine statements that reveal the adult parent can’t own any mistakes.  Yet, the hope in the child, mid forties and all, is that some type of connection can be made maternally or paternally.  I as the daughter am ready to fight for whats right because it would be making up for all that has been wrong up until now.  Hank as the son, bridged that same gap by the movies end.

I guess that’s why I put “The Judge” into my DVD player so often, because it reminds me that one day my mom may grow ill and that my reuniting with my sisters will be inevitable.  I will have to make my peace now knowing that I have reached out to my mom for a relationship without an acceptance, all the while her believing that I am an ungrateful brat for possessing undue anger.  Many of us can relate to the drama revealed in movies because our spirits are still sensitive to rejection, most of us going to great lengths to gain acceptance.  The moment an adult child has to bathe his parent due to weaknesses in the flesh, a bond through great vulnerability has a chance to heal them both.  I’ve accepted that responsibility for my future, and envision it for myself through that pivotal scene where acceptance was felt and known.

I’d take any recognition for being a good woman in my mothers eyes, just as Hank awaited validation from his father.  The verbage, the disdain, the accusations, pained expressions, rebellious body language and great love pierce my spirit as personal waves of memory and all I can think is, “I can write my story and it would be genius writing”.  It would not be hard to assign characters and then choose the perfect cast to build a two-hour tale around the subject matter of judgment.  How fitting that the title of this film has released a slogan for those who believe they are righteous just as much as those who have no proof of it.  That is great writing.  That is putting raw emotion into words and action to bring them alive.  I know that story too well not to draft a script from my perspective.