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Thursday, August 3, 2017

A Monster Calls (2016)

This is a sad and yet wise movie about a boy who loses his mother when he is much too young. It is not a monster movie, so if that is what you are looking for, you have most certainly come to the wrong place.
The movie opens in the ramshackle British household of young Conor and his very ill mother. Their residence looks out onto a church and graveyard that seem guarded by a giant yew tree. Conor, a restless, shy, bullied kid who’s an inveterate daydreamer, an artist, and a  monster-movie lover—dreams one night of the tree breaking apart, and yielding a giant man of wood. Tree-men and like figures have deep roots (sorry) in Anglo mythology, but the monster who invades Conor’s dreams—whose insides are animated by terrifying, never-ebbing flames—belongs to Conor alone.   It is his fear and his hope, although he doesn't tumble to the later until the movie is well underway.  Speaking in intimidating rumbling intonations supplied by Liam Neeson the monster informs Conor that he is going to appear to him to tell him three stories. And once the monster’s stories are done, he will command of Conor his own story, and an ultimate attendant truth that only Conor can articulate.  It is a way to grieve and to heal and to survive the unbearable.

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