Sentimental Value

“i want a home.”rewatched this at the newly opened Filmhouse, singapore’s newest indie cinema. in a country as small as ours, it’s important to support these third spaces, for artistic and cultural access, that deviates from the mainstream, and for alternative voices to be heard and to gather, in search of community and belonging, that feels like home. that is what the cinema and theatre mean to me. in the beginning of the movie, their family home is personified through the lens of nora, our protagonist. nora likens their house to herself, both of whom absorb and internalise everything that happens within the four walls, a metaphor for generational trauma. the cracks in the walls, the lightness of the home from the lack of inhabitants, are reflected in nora’s psyche, in her inability to connect with her father, in the way father and daughter, weaponise their art into creating artificial distance between each other. as artists we substitute and sacrifice our realities in pursuit of our art, because our livelihoods already deal with so much human emotions. so what better way to bridge gaps than with our art?  a running theme in this movie is unanswered questions, and how the different characters go about understanding them.  i went back into this movie with an unanswered question myself, “why did i connect with this movie so much”, and i think i found my answer.