On mothers, memory loss, and films
On Mother’s Day I didn’t think about my mother; instead, I was stuck remembering all the women who raised me but who weren’t her. While watching Laura Schroeder’s debut film, which I had previously never even heard of, I thought of the same women. Not just them; I also remembered the people who I loved and left, returned, only to inevitably run away again. To me, leaving meant loving; disinterest became devotion, and whatever silence was given to me, I knew it would be broken, even with an argument, even with an insult. I love films about family dynamics. I overanalyse whatever I see on screen and desperately attempt to relate it to personal experience. Whatever family I saw on screen must have meant that I had one on my own. Barrage completely stripped me of my own sense of understanding of things. I felt like a child again, throwing a tantrum and screaming, “What would my mother even know about me? What would anyone else?” For me the subject of the returning mother is always ha...