02/25/2007
Let "The Holiday" begin
It’s a good movie. The home-exchange is apparently one good way of escaping such a horrific life. Amanda and Iris were as normal as any other woman around the world, they need loves. Desperately need one. Especially Iris who had been Jasper’s survival kit for years and found herself alone with tears at last.
However, trying to picture myself or women in my neighborhood into the idea of flying away from our bitter lives was kind of hard. It’s not easy to dream about something I never dream of. We, the average Indonesian married women with kids, are too tightly bonded to our family and thus bravely giving up many of our dreams; thought that it’s the best for the family. We lack of self-supported resources such as finance, confidence, and sense of adventure.
Look at Amanda and Iris and at how different they are from me here. First, they are no ordinary women. They are both free from financial trap; they have brilliant careers in area they’ve loved along their lives. Very few women I meet everyday have the same freedom, even if they are also high wage earners. Again, family financial consideration comes first. At the very top, ability to choose our wardrobe, food, and a little tone of lifestyle with our own money are the only established position we occupy at homes. Many of us received much less than we deserve.
Another angle to oversee: they’re both single. The opportunity to escape any problems seems limitless since they have enough money and have none to worry about if they go. Last month, I tried so hard to cheer my friend up. She’s having a crisis in her family life but very little can she do to cherish herself and get shaped again. She has no money; so the idea of leaving her family is more complicating than resolving her problem. Although I don’t have the same trouble, I could read her mind. Me myself is still attacked by guilty feeling every time I am trying to have fun alone or with Aris alone. Fun has been associated with another f word: family. There’s no fun without them around. Several times we attempted to have dinner out, or to attend some music concerts, or to see some movies at the cinema but we only went half way and always came back home 30 minutes later.
The Holiday reminded me about what holiday is all about: doing unexpected things. I never did that in my whole life. I was always almost penniless until I married at the age of 28, so a holiday seemed impossible. An adventure or a world without strangers has been beyond my imagination. Like I said before, books are the only ventilations for my opaque days for years. There was nothing unexpected happen when I was reading a book, right ?
Watching Amanda and Iris exchanged their homes and renewed their lives in two weeks led me to think again about my MBA plan. I began to realize that the plan is actually the most adventurous thing I can imagine until now. Silly, isn’t it? Any normal people, like Atik, would choose to go to South Korea, Aussie, or Hongkong or somewhere better to get relax and have fun. An MBA, wherever the place, never sounds so relaxing and comforting from the beginning.
Back to the movie again, I loved it! The best scene was when Amanda came to Graham’s place and found that he got companions that night: two beautiful angels, Sophia and Olivia. Cliche as to family lovers. You see yourself: nothing unexpected about me. What can you expect then?
22:11 Posted in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: womanhood, the holiday
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