Spoiler alert: This article contains mild spoilers for the movie my old ass.
Writer and director Megan Park my old ass It is a simple meditation on time and temporality. But “simplicity” in this sense absolutely works in your favor. Sentimental, but not interested in manipulation. Self-absorption for the purpose of dismantling solipsism. She is candid in that she finds emotional beauty in the mundane regrets of life. It evokes nostalgia for a heart-wrenching youth without asking the viewer for a literal return. More than anything, the film demonstrated, for me at least, the appeal that can be found in fatalism, which is happily embraced.
The story follows 18-year-old Elliot (Maisie Stella) a few weeks before leaving for college. Born and raised on a quiet cranberry farm in Ontario, Canada, she has since developed a sense of empathy for teenage restlessness and a desire to start off as an adult.
Both Elliot and Aubrey are fatalists. But their differing interpretations of how to deal with a fixed future are at the heart of the film.
To celebrate her birthday, Elliot and friends embark on an incredibly high school-like, hallucinogenic overnight campout in the woods. Later that night, after his friends have gone to bed, Elliot meets his 39-year-old self (played by Aubrey Plaza, so we’ll call her “Aubrey”) for the first time. Assuming it is a hallucination, as Aubrey claims, the teenager and the “young adult” engage in casual banter. But this one is surprisingly endearing. Aubrey tries to convince Elliot to cherish the remaining time he has left at home before going off to college, because nothing will ever be the same again. This is a laundry list that only a brain mature enough to savor moments trapped in the past can create. Even if your brother is poor, go golfing with him, watch Saoirse Ronan movies with him even if your other brother is poor, be kind to him. Mom and dad, don’t forget to enjoy the time you have left on the farm, and most importantly, Stay away from Chad.
The next day she met Chad. He’s an incredibly wholesome cranberry farm worker, and she quickly tries to suppress her feelings. Realizing that Aubrey was not just a hallucination, she calls the number Aubrey left on her cell phone (“My Old Ass”). These phone calls are how the major developments in the movie happen. In sporadic phone conversations, the older self guides the younger self to enjoy what is right and abandon what is wrong.
However, Aubrey is unable to separate Elliot from Chad. Despite her best efforts, she falls in love with him while picking cranberries and boating across a Canadian lake in the summer. You should admit that you have it.) do not have Catching an emotion is a much more unlikely scenario).
There’s no way to tell the rest of the story without giving away major spoilers. So, if you’re worried about that at all, It’s time to abandon ship.
Aubrey visits Elliot one last time and tells him to stop seeing Chad. They end up in an argument. Elliot assumes that Chad’s problems are secret character flaws and asks, “Okay, can you just tell me what’s so bad about Chad?”
“There is there is nothing I mistook him for Chad. That’s the problem. Chad is amazing. But Chad is dead, right? he died. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it from happening, so just forget about it. ”1
This stops the conversation. But after taking a breather, Elliott responds: I’m going to love Chad as much as I can. I don’t care if it hurts. I don’t want to be like you, I’m just scared of everything. It’s better to love than not feel anything. ”
When they learn how the story ends, they evoke opposite reactions. Some see it in terms of its potential to bring out beauty, while others see it as a gaping hole that can only be damaged. Here we arrive at the central theme of the film. Fatalism is made bearable only by accepted hope, but made unbearable by cynicism.
Fatalism is the idea that what will happen in the future is inevitable, so we should just let it happen. It usually produces pessimism, paranoia, hopelessness, and cynicism, and a lament that all our actions are ultimately futile.
Both Elliot and Aubrey are fatalists. But their differing interpretations of how to deal with a fixed future are at the heart of the film. Aubrey sees fate as an escape from her cruel and unwise mistress. Elliott sees it as a window to savor the highs of the highs and the lows of the lows, to feel deeply and deeply everything that happens to him.
Cynicism breeds distrust. peopleskepticism is disbelief in us. Assumption.
The dichotomy of cynicism and skepticism is beautifully expressed between the two men. Aubrey the Cynic and Elliot the Skeptic. Although cynicism and skepticism seem functionally similar, they diverge in crucial ways. There is hope in skepticism, but there is no hope in cynicism. Social scientist Jamil Zaki memo This is because cynicism is distrustful. peopleskepticism is disbelief in us. Assumption. Aubrey wants to protect herself from the possibility of others hurting her, but Elliot is skeptical of the idea that everything love does can be hurtful. Whereas in cynicism a lack of trust closes off all possibilities of love, in skepticism a cost-benefit analysis of love is done before deciding whether the possibility of being hurt determines the possibility of love. Masu.
This presents a truism that helps us live life in general and the Christian life in particular.
As scholar Andrew McGowan memoall Christians face persistent and difficult questions about how they should live their time. Yet, there are few biblical models that explain how to properly engage with the Bible. We know how the story ends, but it’s not always clear how our current choices will contribute to the story. Especially considering how small they seem in the span of eternity.
How Christians and God himself relate to time has been hotly debated. Some portray God as completely outside of time, free and distant, as if he had gotten the cosmic ball rolling and then stopped intervening. In this sense, our choices feel wasteful or unnecessary. If everything were to happen as it was destined to happen, what difference could we make?
“If you weren’t young and stupid, you wouldn’t have had the courage to do anything.”
But the philosopher Boethius solace of philosophy, God claimed otherwise. just Not bound by time. Rather, God exists forever in the currentexperience everything in line with God’s creation. This does not negate divine foreknowledge or complex divine intervention (in fact, Boethius suggests this as a replacement for foreknowledge because foreknowledge is too simple). It’s not just dangling a string and hoping we don’t fall into a hole, it’s suggesting that God is with us in our present consciousness. .
Similarly, philosopher David Lewis provide An optimistic view of fatalism. Even if certain future events are fixed, this should not prevent us from believing that we have freedom of choice. I have no choice but to act seriously As if Our choices make a difference.
The important thing is that we can enjoy time. Enjoying the present is not hedonism. It is also a way of bringing us closer to God and allowing us to affirm the joy inherent in things without being controlled by them. C.S. Lewis, in an attempt to balance our relationships and pleasure, summarized This saying is: “Our Father refreshes us on the journey in some comfortable inns, but does not encourage us to mistake them for home.”
The spirituality of Boethius and the two Lewises deconstructs the irony in Aubrey’s fatalism. It doesn’t matter if everything goes according to plan or not. There is neither joy nor rational wisdom in hopelessly accepting a determined goal. Perhaps it is that very determined nature that inspires us to act in ways that inevitably change what was once thought to be fixed.
From the point of view of Missio Dei (God’s mission to reconcile humanity to Himself), it is imperative for those who image God’s man to silence suspicions of nihilism. Our belief that we can participate in this mission with the help of the Spirit is one of the great thresholds that prevent us from drifting aimlessly through life.
As James K.A. Smith reminds us in his book, How to survive time, Together, we are “caught up in the unfolding of history and the actors shaping the future.”
It is important to come to terms with this issue, to build hope that overcomes our cynicism. Because the way we think about this issue affects all of our experiences.
Don’t let suffering stop you from experiencing the things that make life most rewarding.
As Boethius wrote, “Everything that is perceived is apprehended not according to its own power, but according to the faculty of the person who perceives it.” In other words, we have our own minds about the world, individuality, Understand things according to your beliefs. Everything we experience is colored by our emotional state. This is why Elliott and Aubrey’s outlook on the situation is so natural. Their interpretation of the situation symbolizes their stage of life.
the study We’ve long noted that our risk-taking tendencies begin to decline in our 20s. As we grow older, risks seem less and less appealing, and eventually come to seem foolish, careless, and reckless. This is why Aubrey’s explanation of the situation seems painful, whereas for Elliot it is impossible to take risks for the experience of love. do not have Makes sense.
But this is part of the complex design of the structure of life. If we didn’t have a neurological disposition that tells us to take risks, we wouldn’t take them. This will ensure more psychological security, but it will also save us all the great art, beautiful relationships, and world-changing work that would have been lost if our risk aversion had begun to peak sooner. Think about it.
role of cormac mccarthy I wrote“It’s a good thing God didn’t teach the truths of life to young people starting out in life, otherwise they wouldn’t have wanted to start at all.” Or in Eliot’s own words: To borrow a phrase: “If I hadn’t been young and stupid, I wouldn’t have had the courage to do anything.”
Finally, Aubrey’s position is completely unrealistic in my opinion. People tend to forgive themselves for the choices they made in the past. Research shows that the majority of regrets toward the end of life are about things we’ve experienced. I haven’t done it done in contrast to what we did have end. This is usually because when you decide not to do something, it may feel good in the moment, but the “what-ifs” slowly build up and lead to long-term problems. disappointment It goes beyond the initial comfort of choosing the safe route.
So perhaps the most obvious lesson of the film is that of Shakespeare. In other words, loving is literally better than not loving at all. This coming-of-age film is the perfect reminder that we shouldn’t tolerate suffering, even when it’s immediate and understood. potential Suffering prevents us from having the experiences that make life most rewarding.
- I’m 95% sure this is a line, but since it left my local theater, I have no way of fact-checking it. Still, the gist of the dialogue is captured. ↩︎
