cinema therapy

Have you seen the movie Broken Flowers with Bill Murrey? It has stayed with me even though I saw it months ago. Bill's living the life of a bachelor in his 50's, living alone in a mansion, living off investments, living with one woman after another until the day his past catches up with him. He receives a letter in the mail, with no return address, from an unnamed ex-girlfriend. She writes to tell him that after their relationship was over, she discovered she was pregnant. She had a son - his son. He is a teenager now, starting to ask questions and on a quest to find his father. There are four ex's from that time period in his past who could have sent the letter. So Bill goes on a road trip, tracking down the four women, searching for clues as to which woman sent the letter and who his son is.

I feel drawn to this movie because there was such potential for redemption of the past. He had the chance to go back, an older man now, and set things right. Not that he was a changed man but it was the process of revisiting his past that changed him. There's something about the opportunity to revisit the past that stirs me deeply.

“We love whom we love not so much because of the future we hope to build but because of the past we hope to reclaim” - Lauren Slater Feb. '06 National Geographic This Thing Called Love

“The most beautiful thing about love – and the most difficult – is that it makes us go back to our unfinished places and relationships, and maybe, finish them.” Stephen Levine