I suppose it had to happen that I would get to a day where I had nothing to say and little time left in which to say it. It’s an hour before the end of the day. All day I’ve been trying to decide what I would write about, and now here I am. I did have an idea but it will take me more than an hour to execute that idea so I will have to do that tomorrow or the day after.
I went to see Split with the Floppy Adolescent today. (I think I should say spoiler alert here, although I’m not sure that I’m actually spoiling anything, but possibly I do, so consider yourself spoiler warned.) It was his idea to see it and even though I knew it wasn’t really my bag of chips I wanted to go to the something that he suggested as a gesture of goodwill towards him so often going to the things that I suggest. (It really isn’t easy at this age, is it, finding things to go to, because I can think of heaps of things he’d love to see but as is the case with so many things, once he is at a certain age I suddenly remember how it was to be that age, and what I remember about being that age is that going out with your mum is okay, but it’s not okay if you’re out with your mum at something where lots of people are out without their mum.)
I don’t think I enjoyed Split at all. This is not to say that I don’t think it’s good – I mean, I was completely sucked in by it, that is for sure, with the opening credits and music sufficiently suspense-filled. But I knew right from the beginning that it wasn’t going to be a film that I would be glad to have seen. I avoid, whenever I can, movies that subject women to humiliation or violence or some combination of the two. I thought Split did an okay job of avoiding being overly gratuitous. But I was (am) deeply uncomfortable with the use of child sexual abuse which I thought began as opportunistic and by the end had become exploitative.
There was a beautifully poignant moment in the closing scenes which was well-directed and beautifully-acted. That moment pulled a lot of things together for me. It left me bereft because all I could think about was the deep pain that some people live with all their lives. And then I wasn’t at all sure that I’d done the right thing going to it with my teenaged boy. Judging it simply as a film, I’d give it I think 3 1/2 or 4 stars out of 5. Judging it as a film-going experience?