The Brave One

I got the following email this morning, from a friend who has suffered personal violence. She speaks of her reaction to the Jodie Foster film "The Brave One." Some reviewers got it, some didn't. I very clearly understand the sense of shock when violence comes into our lives. I got the movie, and why Foster was attracted to it. It is a revenge film with a soul. If not perfect, it is disturbingly well-done, with only occassional lapses into B-movie territory. Here, with all identifications removed, is this lady's comment.
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"It is astonishing, numbing, to find that inside you is a stranger. A sleepless, restless stranger who keeps walking, keeps eating, keeps living." (said by Erica Bain in The Brave One)

We went to see Jodie Foster's new movie, The Brave One, last weekend. I haven't stopped thinking about it since. It was not what I expected. A vigilante move. Guns and violence. The violence in most films just leaves me numb. This film left me raw. It was both riveting and terribly difficult for me to watch. I rarely cry these days. At movies even less. This one had me sobbing at one point. It's not a tear-jerker movie. But it managed to hit me in a place I live.

I have rarely seen the experience of being the survivor of an assault that captured anything close to how I feel about it. This did. Want to know where I live? See it. There but for the grace ... of family and friends... am I. It is her isolation in the midst of the shattering pain and fear that drives Foster's character in the film to kill. I know the urge. I think it is the people who love me who made, and continue to make, the difference. They keep the rage from becoming all consuming.

Despite the title, this film is about alienation, not bravery. One of the amazing aspects of this film is the way it shows how such a trauma can rob the person of the sense of self. She becomes, in her words, “another person — a stranger to the person you once were.”

People thought of me as "fearless" before the event. I used to have no understanding of those "pitiful" people who were so terrorized by an event that they couldn't leave their home. Then I got to know the experience at the gut level. I am better now. Better but not returned to the person I was. There is a moment in the film that used mood and camera as well as Foster's amazing acting talent to really capture the way that fear can force you into isolation.

Another point in the film that made me cry out as if struck was a near direct quote for things I have said. "I miss who I was with him." I believe that one of the reasons I do better when my son is home is that I like who I am when I am with him. When he leaves, it is always a kind of small death of the self I prefer to be.

One aspect that the move glosses over is that most people damaged as badly as this character was will never be healthy again. Hard to move on when you are always in pain. They skip over what would have been months, if not years, of physical therapy and continuing health issues. The film focuses entirely on the psychology losses.

A part of me had hoped I would find a way back to at least most of who I used to be. Part of my grief - rage and sadness - is accepting that will never happen. Though I have problems with some part of the movie, this is one I had to agree with. Such experiences change who we are. The question is how to be that changed person. The character in the film doesn't find that. I sometimes wonder if I have.

I know that one of the ways I am working through my own issues is through the fiction I write. Recovery from assault is actually a common theme in many of the novels I have written in the last year. The characters find that horrible things can happen and you can still find a way to live a meaningful life. Sometimes I believe it. Other times, I remember this is fiction. I know that writing the characters' triumphs over such tragedies does bring me a large measure of comfort and relief from my own pain, both psychological and physical. It may not be perfect. It is a hell of a lot better than taking massive doses of pain killers or other medications (done that) or going around hunting down strangers who deserve to die.