This is a meditative, fantastical movie that manages to feel both threatening and delicate and left me with much to think about. I think that two of the most audacious interrelated ideas it presents are about time and narrative structure.
This movie is preoccupied with time, of a life, of a friendship, even of a world. Notions of time necessarily asks questions about endings and thoughts about the end plague these characters in their present. We all feel that time is not linear, this is just an abstraction, and the characters' present encompasses past and future. The film's structure, I think, cleverly supports this non linear time.
There is a very vivid sequence that occurs midway through the movie and takes place in the deep dark forest. I would venture that this sequence, while presented in the middle of the movie, actually represents and reveals the end fate of the characters.
Earlier in the movie a supporting character, Peggy, tells Maggie, the lead character, during a moment of illness, to look into the future and to catch up with the future, to catch up with a moment where Maggie's pain will subside and she will once more feel well. Here, catching up will bring relief to Maggie. However, since Maggie is dying (as we all are) looking well into the future, looking into the end and catching up to the end is dreadful and terrifying. The surreal imagery of the forest sequences in the middle of the movie suggests that Maggie is thinking of the future that her character will eventually catch up to. Here the movie deconstructs of linear progression of time and this is one of the ways that the movie is fascinating and not typical.
I think this movie is very much worth watching, just may be different than you expected. It is one that stays with you and keeps you in its hold.
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