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August 7, 2021,
Mostly you feel this one and you prefer not to.
It is the periodic conversation that resonates with you.
While we wouldn’t say that you dread it, and sometimes it catches you off guard, once you are in the middle of it, you can’t escape it. You probably want to and it makes you really angry but once you have that conversation that resonates, even if you decide not to follow through upon the sticking point, too bad, you won’t forget it.
Ever.
What are we talking about?
Let’s turn to film, it will make things so much clearer.
The Year of Living Dangerously is a 1982 Australian romantic drama film directed by Peter Weir and co-written by Weir and David Williamson.
The story is about a love affair set in Indonesia during the overthrow of President Sukarno. It follows a group of foreign correspondents in Jakarta on the eve of an attempted coup by the 30 September Movement in 1965.
President Sukarno
The film stars Mel Gibson as Australian journalist Guy Hamilton, and Sigourney Weaver as British Embassy officer Jill Bryant. It also stars Linda Hunt as a Chinese-Australian man with dwarfism, Billy Kwan, Hamilton’s local photographer contact, a role for which Hunt won the 1983 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
The film was shot in both Australia and the Philippines and includes Australian actors Bill Kerr as Colonel Henderson and Noel Ferrier as Wally O’Sullivan.
How powerful was its impact?
It was banned from being shown in Indonesia until 2000.
The film took place during an era when we thought we could make the world a better place. That everyone should live in a society where their freedoms are protected. Things have changed tremendously in 2021.
Here, the conversation occurred between Guy, the journalist and Billy, his photographer.
Guy betrayed Jill (British Embassy personnel) by printing a story that was supposed to be confidential. Billy made that clear to him.
From Guy’s point of view, it wasn’t just a story, it was “the” story and that country was about to blow up in a civil war.
Guy did what he felt he had to do.
His office in Sydney sent him to Indonesia as a last chance. If he doesn’t hit it out of the park, they’ll yank his chain and bury him back in Sydney where he can write Old Cat Lady stories.
This was his shot and he took it.
Was betraying Jill wrong to get it? Billy thought so. What do you think? What we think has changed over the years.
Billy said, “I would have given up the world for her. You wouldn’t even give up one story.”
At first we saw it through Billy’s eyes because, after all, he was the one who coined the phrase while starring at his wall of pictures, past and present with an eye to the future:
“Here, on the quiet page, I’m master. Just as I’m master in the darkroom, stirring my prints in a magic developing bath. I shuffle like cards the lives I deal with. Their faces stare out at me. People who will become old, betray their dreams, become ghosts.”
Should Guy’s loyalty be to Jill where if he betrays his dream of getting the big story, he may become a failure? A ghost?
Or should he forge ahead and become the journalist Sydney expects him to be or else?
It does raise the question, how deep should your loyalty be to your friends?
It is a fair question isn’t it?
When we were young, we completely sided with Billy. Now that we are old and friends and family have behaved so treacherously towards us, betrayed us, sold us out, threw us under the bus, mostly for money, we’re not so sure.
They have absolutely no loyalty to us.
Initially we were naïve and thought they would. Then they were tested.
Should we have loyalty to them?
It is the age old philosophy, words to the effect, be careful when you are fighting monsters that you don’t become one yourself.
Should you let the evil of others change who you are?
To answer the question about Guy Hamilton, we would not betray Jill. Actions do have consequence though. As far as our career in Sydney?
We would become ghosts.
There would be no career.
So, though we wouldn’t behave the way Guy did, we completely empathize with why he did it.
There is nothing worse than being a ghost. Living a life of failure. People don’t respect you. They could care less about your virtue. They see it as a weakness. They know you could have had the brass ring in your hand and didn’t have the guts to stand at the edge of the cliff and reach for it.
We should know.
We have experienced extreme failure and extreme success.
We sense you know which experience we preferred.
The best part when you win? You get to re-live it. Tell others about it.
Did we engage in betrayal to finish number one? Well that is a relative conversation that can be massaged.
If we did, and we do say if, guess what? Years later?
We don’t regret it.
By the way, how did things turn out with Guy and Jill?
To get his story, he lost his eye. Actions do have consequences.
Regarding Jill?
She forgave him. She stayed in the relationship with him. The winner. The risk taker.
What happened to virtuous Billy?
He committed suicide. Indirectly, but he knew what was going to happen to him if he protested the corrupt regime.
Let’s provide you with one more example.
Naomi Watts
Mulholland Drive is a 2001 surrealist neo-noir mystery film written and directed by David Lynch and starring Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux, Ann Miller, Mark Pellegrino and Robert Forster.
It tells the story of an aspiring actress named Betty Elms (Watts), newly arrived in Los Angeles, who meets and befriends an amnesiac woman (Harring) recovering from a car accident.
The two women become friends.
Then lovers.
Like any aspiring actress who just moves to Hollywood, Betty’s chances of capturing the brass ring are about as good as a Division II school, who sometimes play Division One schools, becoming the NCAA National Football champions.
It probably is never going to happen.
But guess what? Betty nails the audition and she has a shot.
There is a fly in the ointment.
She promised her new best friend Rita that she would be there for her and go with her on an important quest to help her understand her past. Rita is too frightened to go alone.
As Betty is looking into the Director’s eyes, during her one shot to get the big part and he looks into hers, there is massive chemistry. He is not supposed to give the part to anyone except Camilla Rhodes (played by Melissa George) but the way they are looking at one another, if she doesn’t get that part, by George, he is going to get her another one. Substantial.
What should she do?
Rita is waiting for her?
What would you do?
We think you know what we’d do.
Best wishes Rita. The cab fare is on the dresser by your wig.
When Camilla is belting out Linda Scott’s classic song “Every Little Star”, she is knocking it out of the park. She is indeed the girl. That song plays over and over again in our heads:
Dum, da-dum
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da
Da-dum, da-dum
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da
Da-dum, Da-dum
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da
Why haven’t I told you?
Oh, baby, I’ve told every little star
Just how sweet I think you are
Why haven’t I told you?
Da-dum, da-da-da-da-da-da-da
I’ve told ripples in a brook
Made my heart an open book
Why haven’t I told you?
Friends ask me am I in love?
I always answer, yes
Might as well confess
If the answer’s yes…..
What a powerful scene. Absolutely Heartbreaking. Every time we think of questioning our dream, we watch that scene.
Over and over and over.
Betty decides to skip the audition and help her friend.
Would you have done that? Do you think Rita would do that for Betty?
The last question gets answered. Indirectly because after all it is a David Lynch masterpiece. The ultimate Zen Master who forces you to think. He doesn’t give you the answers but trust us, you can absolutely feel it.
Rita would not do it for her and in an alternate universe, Betty realizes it the hard way as she loses her dreams and, as Billy Kwan warned, becomes a ghost.
It is painfully sad to watch who Betty devolves into compared to the bubbly, bright and overly optimistic person that she was. Just think who she could have been.
It is okay to put yourself first. In most cases it is not selfish.
It is survival.
You can rise among and above the living or become obscure with the ghosts.
We have done so much for friends and relatives and virtually every time what was the result?
They spat in our faces. Very true.
We learned the answer to this question the hard way.
In this often cruel and dream fleeting life, who is your first responsibility to?
~ ~ ~
OPENING PHOTO Femcompetitor.com, grapplingstars.com, fciwomenswrestling.com fcielitecometitor.com fciwomenswrestling2.com Editorial-credit-magicinfoto-Shutterstock.com-photo-credit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulholland_Drive_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Year_of_Living_Dangerously_(film)
https://www.fcielitecompetitor.com/
https://fciwomenswrestling.com/
