mistakes done

"What do you really want?"

After two days of sewing blood vessels together under the microscope, I didn't feel like doing anything today so I watched a movie: The Words.  My father had told me I would like it, and he was right.

The story is like looking at someone in the mirror looking at someone in the mirror looking at someone in the mirror; it's about a writer (Clay) delivering a story about a writer (Rory) who stole a story from another writer (the old man).

When he is still young, the old man loses his daughter to illness, and the relationship between him and his wife starts to fall apart.  He endures the lifetime pain by writing about it.  He gives the writing to his wife to read but she ends up losing it.  The old man loved the words he had written so much he had to end the relationship with his wife, the very person who had inspired him to write in the first place.  He sees her once again years later with another man and their child and that's the end of his story until many more years later when he finds his words published under the name of another young man.

Rory, when he finds the story in an antique briefcase he had bought in Paris, is suddenly terrified that he will never become what he wants to be.  The story hits him with such great power that he is forced to accept his limitations.  After he meets the old man (the old man had followed him to tell him "the truth"), he wants to take his name off the book and "put everything right", but is told to live with the choice he has made.  He stole a part of the old man's life; now he has to live with the pain, even if that destroys his most precious things.  "We all make our choices.  The hard part is living with them."

The ending suggests that Clay is Rory, but we never know.  The movie ends almost abruptly with a female student (who Clay has invited over to his place) asking Clay what he really wants (when he tells her to leave soon after they start making out).  I don't think it was only me who felt like being thrown into a deep well.

The theme is sort of the same as Crime and Punishment, but I could relate so much more to this story.  Mistakes sometimes sting so badly.  But you can't always make the right decision.  Life comes with life changing mistakes you can't undo.  Maybe the only thing that can make us feel better is that we're not alone.  We all live with a bit of dark shadow in our hearts.