ana’s spectral screams as she flows and dances like a ghoul in the subway-tunnel. all i could do was watch and cry. a creature being born from anna's own flesh and psychosis. some grave womb of the earth birthing up into abjection. something freeing and all the bindings too coming up at once. the repressed trauma, rage, and desire of a failing marriage given horrifying tangible form. the physical manifestation of the very evil anna fears she creates within herself, a creature that civilized society demands women contain and suppress. a boundary dissolving union with her own inner chaos. it speaks to a profound, desperate need for connection that is real no matter how monstrous. the camera merely nearby.
there are doppelgangers, berlin and the shadow of the wall running through its heart -- symbol of imposed separation and ideological schism that mirrors the unbridgeable chasm opening between husband and wife. there are spies, there is the creature. it all leaves me with a profound sadness. the feeling still settling slowly. days later and i'm still processing.
i never feel capable of doing films justice with just a few words. so much life went into it. years of work. it only passed by me in two hours. sometimes a movie does its work and just pushes me back toward myself and people i know. this movie overflows. it filled me with its own images; anna and isabelle, mark and sam, the creature, that subway scene that i'll carry forever. they didn't leave when the credits rolled. they're still in my mind, maybe for good. the tender moments between atrocities where you see they still love each other desperately and that love is exactly what's destroying them. the movie is done but i am still with them, with her, in that moment, crying out. i take what closure i can from the falling bombs and the look in Helen’s eyes. their last kiss gives me something to hold onto. the film puts its memories right next to mine, i can't separate my own experiences of love and loss from anna and mark. they get soaked in, became part of me. this is just a marker. i remember this, i felt this, i recognize this particular agony of loving someone while also needing to destroy them or be destroyed by them. i feel for anna because her terrible transformation is just a form of being human. the creature becomes him eventually, transforms into perfect version of mark that anna wanted. she becomes helen, perfect version of anna that mark wished for. it's devastating to see their love still so present underneath all the madness. after everything, they still looked for each other, still tried to find the person they fell in love with even if it meant creating them anew. whatever monstrous possessiveness has eaten through their love, there is still love in there too, inseparable now from what has been done with it.
i want to cry out like anna. it's the part of me that cannot accept their loss. i can’t let it go. i recognize myself in this. i also try to keep things. i write because i can’t tolerate everything moving away. i want people not to disappear into the past. moments. versions of myself. i know love cannot mean arrest. i know it cannot mean turning someone into the image one needs. still the instinctive NO before loss. animal. i don’t want things to leave. i want them to stay. as they were. to come back. the bombs begin falling. helen looks toward the door. i return to ana in the tunnel. everything coming out. nothing has actually been released. i can't let it go. isn't that their problem? i'm sick for memories and the holding onto them, for remembering over and over.
