by Nathaniel R
Apologies for the book-end birthday posts but we'll be back to movies in a hot second. Just back from the self-care birthday trip. Spent the weekend trying to enjoy quiet nature. Activities were as varied as laying in the grass, walking through the woods, and sitting on a beach with face mask on but shoes off. SUCH RANGE! (That image to the left was taken in Woodstock, New York. Nothing was open though we did manage an incredible take-out breakfast to eat outdoors thanks to The Mud Club. Ohmygod the deliciousness)
On the way back to NYC this morning we visited the spectacular grounds of the Vanderbilt Mansion. Twas so lush and moneyed, I flashed back alternately to every establishing shot of Downton Abbey and the party sequence in Baz Lurhmann's The Great Gatsby though no anachronistic music was booming to conjure the second...
We also went to a nature preserve with an old Lighthouse (images of Robert Pattinson masturbating came to mind -- I'm only human), walked on the longest pedestrian bridge, and stopped to see a couple of plaques for Sojourner Truth. The latter felt appropriate given the Black Lives Matter protests that are captivating the entire world. How does Sojourner not have a biopic yet? Oh right, Hollywood's biopic fixation is almost entirely of the 'Great White Man' variety (biopics about women, let alone black women, are much much much much much much scarcer).
Dear readers, I try not to think about the movies 24/7 but I often fail. Obviously Terence Malick came to mind several times while watching the wind create eternal ripples on fields of grass. Less obviously but quite emphatically whilst staring at the rocky marshy shores of that meadow preserve, The Piano lept to mind; mud, water, elemental amounts of feeling. What movies make you think of nature? Or, rather, when does nature make you think of the movies?