mother-daughter writing

My mom finds my columns a little disconcerting--"Like catching sight of yourself in a mirror you didn't realize was there" she says. Fair enough.

SPOILER ALERT: I discuss the movie Limbo below and I give away a major plot point. You've been warned!


I just saw a movie (Limbo, by one of my favorite directors, John Sayles) in which a mother-daughter writing dynamic is dramatized. The daughter (Noelle) seems to be reading a diary she's found to her mother (Donna) and the mother's boyfriend (Joe), but at a critical point Donna discovers that Noelle is actually making up the story. She allows her to continue to "read" the diary, however, without revealing that she knows Noelle is making it up. The diary is ostensibly written by the daughter of pioneering parents, parents whose marriage goes sour (and worse) during the difficult winter they endure together. The mother in the "diary" ultimately kills herself. After hearing the story, Donna responds as only a mother would, I think. "How selfish," she says. "She left her child. I would never do that to you."

She sees Noelle's story, that is, as a comment on herself. It's the only way she can see it, I think. And yet it both is and isn't. Noelle's a writer, and this is her imaginative construct. It's true she and her mother have issues, and it's true that to some extent she works them out through the medium of the false diary. But I think it goes beyond that for her. She becomes involved in her characters' lives, crying as she "reads" particularly moving passages. They've become real to her, taken on a life beyond her own and her mother's.

I think my mother feels that my writing is always commenting on her, even when it isn't, and I know I feel the same way about my daughter's writing. How can it not be? The identification between mother and daughter is so deep, so difficult to step outside.

I think John Sayles is a genius for recognizing this. He's a rare male director who really seems to "get"--to like, to understand, and to respect--his female characters. Critics find his movies too "talky"--as a storyteller, I like that about them. "Talky" is good. And the talkiness of Limbo is terrific. It's really open-ended, though. I felt cheated for a few minutes at the end. Then I decided he was letting his viewers take over the story, as Noelle takes over the diary. Pretty gutsy.