@Tony -forgive the psycho-analysis, I’m a terrible analyst -but your own framing of a similar loss hit more o the very personal level of making sense of these things (and even turning them into generative and artful experiences) has so much to do with reading them through the fictional narratives that speak so powerfully to us.

“Noir as a sensibility” -brilliant! This speaks even more pointedly to the power of these narratives to transcend genre and style. I forgot about the scene where is mother visits him in the pickup -all I can say is exactly! I didn’t remember that scene ’til you framed it for me here, and now I have to re-visit Cool Hand Luke as Noir -I love that kind of creative film reading! And I love the fact that I can have these deeply personal experiences with you in what seems like a impersonal environment. Awesome stuff. Thanks again, Tony.

You are likely right that it is more fruitful to consider noir as a genre rather than a style, but I have this feeling that a film is not only what is inside the frame on the screen, but also includes what each engaged viewer brings to it. In the case of film noir, I would call this a “noir sensibility”.

Cool Hand Luke (1967) comes to mind. This movie is not considered a noir , but for me it’s power can be understood with a noir sensibility. Luke is an outsider, battling at all costs for existential freedom, to the point of nihilism but with an unwavering integrity. His death at the end of the film while not passive, is to me as strongly inevitable as the Swede’s. And talking of mothers, the scene where Luke’s dying mother visits him in jail from the back of a pickup is perhaps one of the strongest evocations of the bond between a mother and son I have seen on the screen. She can see his destruction and is powerless to stop it, and the biblical allegory is reinforced when we realise that the driver of the pickup is the resentful brother who stayed at home.

This is a beautiful, haunting post. Your love for your mother and the loss you feel resonates throughout. As Tony says, it is a brave thing to put out there, and that fact makes it all the more powerful.

As someone who has always shard a very special bond with her own mother and who now finds herself in the often bewildering condition of *being* a mother, I am particularly moved.

I thought I understood this kind of bond, until Madigan was born. To hear your words, spoken from the other side, reminds me why I still often feel like my daughter is this living, breathing, bodily extension of myself. The love I have for her is simply raw. For me, that kind of raw love is the truest, barest kind there is. And your words here bring that all back to me.

Martha

Thanks for an equally brave comment. It is really amazing to see how much your own dealing with loss is also framed by the films you love. So many of your thoughts above reflect the very topics you are so obviously passionate about. Your notion of the “last dark days” and “each of us must face the end alone” seem to reflect the uncertainties of existence that makes Film Noir, in particular, such a powerfully existential genre (and I really do think it’s more of a genre than a style most of the time). The idea that we are all somehow alone is at the center of most great Noirs. Just think of your recent blog post on The Killers: during the Swedes final moments -for which he is both unprepared and horrified- in the face of imminent and certain death he refuses to run away. Additionally, we can see the convulsive loneliness of his death through the brilliant shot that lingers on only his hand gripping the bed post.

Thanks for the amazing comment, Tony, and I am ever grateful for your ability to constantly fuel my filmically wired memory machine of a brain on a regular basis.

As I have never seen a Cassavetes film nor set foot in the US let alone NY, my conception of NY life is a phantasmagoria of impressions from movies, television and books, and the only reality I can share with you is family.

My mother passed away last month at 91 years, and I know I will always miss her as painfully as I do know. When you lose your mother you lose a part of your soul.

And life at home was also lived around the kitchen table of a working class house. But death was rarely spoken of by her, and strangely perhaps she never prepared us for her death, even in the last dark days sinking in and out of delirium.

At 54, I am closer to mortality than I feel comfortable with, and in the final analysis, each of us must face the end alone, and can we ever be prepared?

A couple of nights ago, I watched the 2006 movie, The Fountain, with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. It was painful but equally cathartic. I don’t know where this line from the film originated, but it strangely resonates: “Death is the path to awe.”