Sentimental Value

skip third paragraph to avoid spoilers * * * * my mom is both a child of divorce and the eldest daughter of her family. she was around the same age as younger Nora is depicted in the movie, not too many years older, when her parents (the group of grandparents that i never met) divorced. from what i understand and what she's told me about those periods before, during, the immediate after, and numbers of years after the divorce, it wasn't as bad as Nora had it in the movie but there obviously was still complexity between both the father-daughter and mother-daughter dynamic. concerning the movie's central theme, it seems like in that 'years after' period, my mom went through a less disconnected and emotionally distraught, but very much parallel arc that Nora goes through. there seemed to be these years and moments of their relationship where the relationship eventually started detangling and became a really, good bond because whenever his personality or name is referenced in conversation, he's spoken about favorably. i overhear her on facetime a lot talking with her siblings in the Philippines and i hear them discuss sometimes about those years before, during and after it happened. as much as my mom is a joyful person (her nickname is quite literally Joy), i can still feel there was an emotional hill she had to get over in order to reach that point of peace in her relationship with her father. i keep referencing these years because it seems like by the end of this film, Nora found the first moment where her and her dad's relationship can start to change. She is at the start of a journey that at first she didn't even see was possible. i'd like to think on most occasions, a strained child/parent relationship can be redeemable. especially when it is more than likely a common ground can be found. and my mom found it with her father. and Nora found it with her father. family trauma isn't even the only thing that this film tackles incredibly well. there is commentary about the state of film distribution. there is visual storytelling talking about the uniqueness of a home and personification of a house. there are 5 different perspectives on a person's relationship with art; an introduction, a completely detached one, a scared one, a career defining one, and one where art is all their legacy. there is cinematography to showcase a movie that's mostly anchored to one location which is in and of itself of sentimental value. i don't have any siblings myself but i am still a child that does have parents who both come from families that contain rifts of whatever form. some of my dad's stories are reserved for another time. but Nora learned that she isn't the product of her parents' mistakes, my mom learned that same lesson, and i think we all should keep on trying to learn. i was wrong some months earlier, but this, this one is actually the most compelling movie of the year.