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mia's avatar

“demented Rockwell possessed by Hieronymus Bosch” --absolute banger. started sopranos w alex and never finished due to his Tribulations (law school)--this is the perfect sign to start it up again :)

also love the concept of Alive stories!

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Tim Maddocks's avatar

Thanks for reading, Mia! You guys gottta do it! Gotta the sopranos! You won’t regret it.

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Peter Trachtenberg's avatar

Love your take on First Reformed: "The story pits two disparate kinds of anguish on a collision course without feeling mechanistic." So perfect. Do you think the ending is the pastor's fantasy?

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Tim Maddocks's avatar

ooh that's a good question. once he pours the draino, it's certainly on the table, imo. In an article from IndieWire, Schrader says: “I don't know what the ending is. ... It can be read in either one of two ways. One, that a miracle has occurred and his life is spared. The other is equally, in my sense, optimistic, which is that he drinks the Drano and he's on all fours."

I like how any sense of romance is held at a real distance but there is *just* enough romantic tension that you can take it as real. I think the scene where they do that weird hippy lying on the ground meditation opens it up for something true to have developed. ... but I don't know. I think, more probably, more realistically, it is, like you say, a psychic expression of fantasy. But I think just the fact that we can convince ourselves that romance is even slightly possible is maybe what makes it a reallly a great ending: a pure expression of love and hope cast in resin -- even if it's utter fantasy.

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