stars with names

This scene in May December broke me because how innocent and pure Joe is, how he knows that's something wrong with his life, he's trapped but couldn't get out and he didn't want anything that happened to him to ever happen to his son. It's heartbreaking to see how young he still is.

I want to give all the award for Charles Melton portrayal of Joe, especially in this scene, when he curled up in his son’s embrace like he’s the one who’s younger than his own son because in a sense he’s, mentally he’s, that tremble in his hands as he tried to explain his thoughts, thinking that he would do something wrong to his son, gosh he’s too young to be a father, and Charles Melton just completely nailed this role with his whole mannerisms, that small broken voice when he whispered “that’s all I do”. he's helpless, he's anxious all the time, but he bottled up inside because he has no chance to open up.

The way they portrayed Joe's naivety like he's still a young 13 y.o boy trapped in time because the manipulation worked with a vulnerable boy like he was. They showed his youthful spirit still with his hobbies with the butterflies, his timid movement or the way Gracie bossed him around and he didn't even realize it, that he couldn't even be open and honest with his feeling or be validated about what he's feeling because Gracie would just spin those words around and make it look like he's the one who hurt her, twisting his words to her advantage, the abuse never actually end, even after the 24 years of marriage.

Gracie is a predator, an unapologetic manipulative woman that thinks she does nothing wrong because deep down she's just evil that way, the scene in a forest when she met a fox and she look eye to eye with that predator, I feel like she was looking at herself. The way she’s interacting with her children from the previous marriage, how cold a mother she was, she didn’t care much about anyone feeling. Or the way even her children with Joe didn’t like her that much, because they’re old enough to understand that their parents relationship is not normal at all, but they just couldn’t say anything about it because at the end of the day she is still their mother.

Also it was incredibly eerie at the contrast love letter that young Joe sent to Gracie, where it was just so innocent, no ulterior motive or whatsoever, he was just a kid, feeling safe and at peace around adult and expressing it that way to her, it wasn't wrong at all, not a sign that an adult should make a move at that! Then compare to the one that Gracie wrote to him, she understood completely the situation they're in, the way she asked him in the letter not to tell anyone about it, she's always been on the upper hand, she took advantage of Joe's vulnerability and used it to her own sick desire. It wasn't told explicitly in the movie but seriously everything just feel so nauseating to watch thinking how young he was.

Now Joe is older and you know nobody can safe him except himself, If he wanted to be saved or not, or if he'd accepted his life just as it's, he's just a victim but he told himself that he didn't want people to look at him like one. It's all in the adult hands that should be the ones who do better because they know better and put a stop to something that's morally wrong, it's the adult responsibility to give the understanding, but the problem is Gracie is not a good person at all or a misunderstood individual or anything, she did everything with full conscience and with no regret because she’s sick in the head.

Also Natalie Portman’s character, Elizabeth, what’s up with her? I feel like her interest for the project itself was so questionable, she looks like a predator herself at the end, was she having an affair with the director that wanted to produce the movie? The phone call she had with the director asking him about his wife was kinda sus, when she was looking at the tape for young joe character and asking for a sexier looking actor, 13 y.o boy? What’s up with that?? And that euphoric masturbation?? complete with a laugh she did at the shop where Joe and Gracie supposedly had their first sexual encounter together, it’s all so weird and not to mention she end up sleeping with Joe as well! She was taking advantage of him nonetheless, I know that Joe is older now and should be able to make his own decision but considering that Elizabeth’s intention was never actually genuine and lure him in, flirting with him at his workplace, it’s manipulative as hell.

The way Elizabeth keep trying to mimic Gracie’s every movements, I know it’s for the role, but everything that she does also kinda eerie in notion. Perhaps she and gracie wasn’t that much different? She just didn’t act on it? Or is she such a psychopath in away she wanted to experience all kind of peculiar side of human? Where she's just so detached on human feeling and only sees everything just as story? That’s why she wanted to be an actress because that was her motivation? Is she a case of an actor that took method acting in extreme? To the point she lose the way to connect with story in away that still has humanity in it because this is real people lives she’s adapting and not a fantasy. I really couldn’t read her true motives at the end. Perhaps there were two predators in the movie?

- God, I can't tell if we're connecting or if I'm creating a bad memory for you in real time, but I can't help it. - No, we're connecting, Dad. It's okay. It's okay.

"The world if the Hargreeves siblings never existed

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