Ordinary People

“What was your one mistake? You know it. You know it.” “I held on.” This movie is devastating honest it hurts. A look into somebody’s life, a glimpse into how mental health was viewed in the 80s. A broken family still dealing with loss, a resentful mother, a son clouded with grief, and a father trying to hold it all together. It’s got the classic “wrong sibling” story but it’s still so powerful, even on my second watch. It’s so hard to watch Conrad and his mother interact. She resents him for Buck’s death and I think his father was right, the best of her was buried when Buck died, all she can think about is herself and how she looks. All of Conrad’s issues are personal attacks on her, it’s all quite narcissistic. There is this wall of resentment between the two and I think it’s party because they have the wrong things in common. They both deal with their grief in a similar manner, they were both the only ones who didn’t cry at the funeral and deal with their grief quietly as it builds up, but it builds up in different ways and I think that they can both kind of tell and it makes things worse. I just think that the way this movie handles grief and depression is very relatable, they do it right.