Turn the page...

Does it fucking kill you too? Not anymore.

See, I think that still works.

You are the guardsman assigned to protect the eight-year-old Prince. You are currently in the middle of the forest because he absolutely had his heart set on "going hunting", and the royal second-grader should definitely not be traipsing around the woods on his own. You let him go a little on ahead and he comes running back talking about how there's a dead girl in the clearing and there's no-one else around and he wants to take her home because she's really pretty, Hans, and she's all alone!

You let him drag you to said clearing and okay, that is one angelic-looking dead child alright, and on the one hand the quality of her clothes and the craftsmanship on the coffin (who builds a see-through coffin?) speak to potential Consequences if you simply carry her off, but also for the amount of vines that have grown on the coffin she looks extraordinarily un-decayed, so you should probably get the court alchemist's opinion on that, and there's no way he's going to come all the way out here in his embroidered velvet curly-shoes. And also this kid is technically assigned by God as your natural superior, or something.

So fine. You hoist the coffin onto your shoulder (it's not like the Prince can do it. He's eight.) and head back toward the castle, Prince chattering blithely all the way. And then you turn your ankle on a rock and suddenly there's a thump and a cough and a lot of shouting from inside the coffin and you have now become a key player in a tense political incident with the next kingdom over.

And then you'll catch yourself thinking about something or someone who has no connection with the past. Someone who's only yours. And you'll realize... that this is where your life is.

BROOKLYN (2015) dir. John Crowley

I think the main problem that I have with the movie is that it felt more like a montage of Alex and Henry scenes than anything else. One thing I saw pretty consistently in the few articles that I read was that the directors wanted the movie to just focus on them and that everything else had to go. And they definitely did that, I don’t think there were any scenes that weren’t about Alex and Henry. But the problem is that I don’t think I would’ve understood what was going on if I hadn’t read the book. This goes back to what I was saying about how the movie just isn’t long enough to really develop the story. The book did it beautifully, because it showed us what Alex was thinking, it showed us what Henry was thinking, it included interesting side characters to help us understand everything and to move the story along. The movie just picked a few scenes, threw them together and then bam they were in love. It just wasn’t as believable and I think that if it were just the movie without the book to compare it to, it wouldn’t have stood on its own. I feel like the directors relied too much on the assumption that the audience has read the book, and just decided that we could fill in the gaps for ourselves. Obviously I read the book, so it wasn’t that bad for me, but I think if I hadn’t I’d be lost. The movie simplified a lot from the book in ways I didn’t love. It took away a lot of the complexities of Henry and Alex and just made them two important people who couldn’t be together but they fell in love because reasons.

So I’ve finished the book!

I love all the letters they wrote to each other. The letters built the strong emotional connection they shared and the understanding between them so that when they said they felt forever for each other, I believed it wholeheartedly. The letters also show a lot of their characters, especially Henry of whom we don't get the POV.