diary 8: crying at the movies

Wakanda Forever and the ghost of a feeling

1.

We went to see Wakanda Forever at the four-screen theater five minutes away from the house. (The fact that there’s a four-screen theater five minutes away from this peaceful mountain abode is just more evidence that not all rurality is the same rurality!) and anyway, I was crying about two minutes into the film. So was J. Chadwick Boseman’s death hit him especially hard when it happened, so I knew that we were both signing up for a theater weep of some kind. But I had no idea that this movie was going to get me to cry on four separate occasions.

I have quibbles with the plot of Wakanda Forever, and many of the intended jokes landed with a sad thump. It was a decent enough sequel, especially considering that the original script probably had to be shredded entirely when its lead passed away. But in spite of all that, I was amazed by how strongly a missed presence and a collective grief came through in a purely telegraphed—that is to say, not expositional or plot related—way.

The concept of grief is never far away in the plot. Its major emotional question is: How far can vengeance reach before it becomes its own evil? There are a number of funeral scenes. It’s not as if the narrative content of grief isn’t abundant. But the way that it was coming across to me, the waves of it that I was picking up in my body, weren’t always related in a narrative way. And in some fashion that I can’t really describe or put a finger on, I got the sense that many, any, most of the decisions in this movie were made in one hand while the other held onto a tremendous wave of sadness.

Photo by Etienne Boulanger on Unsplash

What is that? What is it?

But of course I know what it is. The feelings of the person who made something are present in the molecules of everything they make. Which is why, on Top Chef, you always know that the person who’s making their grandma’s tomato-cabbage stew is about to totally torch everyone else with their coulis and their lardons and their sous-vide cutlets. And it doesn’t always have to do with the supposed content of the thing, the paintings or novel or whatever. Or that’s my theory, at least.

Anyway. This is totally an endorsement, if you love crying in the movie theater as much as I do.

2.

This update is a little later than usual because I’m in a bit of a tight (although definitely self-imposed) deadline to deliver another revision of Kerosene. It’s almost ready to go out to editors. My agent said, in tremendous confidence, “We’re going to sell this book before the end of the year.” So the time is nigh, or so it seems. And when we spoke a few weeks ago, she gave me a few very doable notes and asked if I could turn it around by Thanksgiving. So there’s that!