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We’re All in This Together: Staring Over Waterfalls

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Written and directed by Katie Boland, We’re All in This Together tells the story of Finn Parker (Katie Poland), a young woman struggling with addiction who left home over ten years ago to begin a new life. When she receives a call from home, Finn learns that her mother Kate (Martha Burns) has thrown herself over a waterfall and she is forced to return to the town that she grew up in. Even so, her homecoming is far from welcome. As she faces her estranged sisters, a nephew she barely knows and the painful memories of her ex-boyfriend, Finn begins to remember why she left home in the first place and wishes she was anywhere but there.

With heart and humour, there’s a lot to like about Together. Well-written and executed, Together feels like a very personal project for Boland. Dedicating the project to her mother and grandmother, she carries the film with her energy and a remarkable amount of focus. Already the film’s writer and director, Boland throws herself into dual roles in front of the camera as well. While playing twins is hardly a new cinematic trope, Boland immerses herself in the roles and manages to create two entirely distinctive personalities. This sort of performance requires an amazing amount of focus but Boland’s incredible enthusiasm keeps the film alive.

One of the best aspects of Together is the way that it highlights the challenges faced by families afflicted by mental health issues. In some ways, Kate’s dalliance with the waterfall becomes a metaphor for the fragility of her mind. As she threatens to throw herself over the edge (again), the viewer understands that her sanity is teetering on the brink as well.

However, although Kate remains the story’s catalyst, she is not its focus. Instead, while Kate struggles to hold things together in hospital, the film emphasizes the stories of those who remain on the home front. For example, despite the fact that she has stayed home to care for her ailing parent, Nicki still struggles with tremendous feelings of inadequacy. Unable to “save” her mother from her destabilizing health, she feels incredible guilt and struggles to keep her own life together.

At the same time, Finn bears the weight of shame and guilt as the daughter who separated herself from the family drama. Having left the family for unknown reasons, Finn has fought to start a new life yet she carries her the baggage of her hurt along with her. Nevertheless, even though her attempt to separate yourself was a decision that was made for he sake of her own safety and mental health, she is deemed a quitter by those within her family. To them, she is viewed as a coward who ran away. 

To her, the decision to leave was born out of necessity.

For both Nicki and Finn, the challenges of living at home have stagnated their lives and splintered their relationships with one another. Even though they’re struggling together, they feel as though they struggling alone.

Nonetheless, this is very much a film that highlights the power of being together, especially during times of crisis. (I mean, it’s even in the title.) While each individual’s story matters here, there remains a bond between them that’s inescapable. As such, they must rely upon each other when things matter most. When they come do, they allow themselves space to heal together, and potentially help keep each other from going over the edge.

We’re All in This Together is available in theatres on Friday, October 14th, 2022, including some pre-screenings on Thursday, October 13th, 2022.

Kicking Blood: Kicking the Habit

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“You gotta kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight” – Leonard Cohen

To be fair, Cohen’s words were likely never meant to connect with vampire films. But they certainly apply to Kicking Blood.

Kicking Blood tells the story of Anna (Alanna Bale), a young vampire who must feed on the blood of others to survive. Together with her brood, they feed nightly off of toxic men and thrive off the high they feel after doing so. However, when she meets a humble alcoholic named Robbie (Luke Bilyk) who tries to get clean, Anna begins to wonder if she can kick her own habit of consuming blood as well, even if doing so could kill her.

Directed and co-written by Blaine Thurman (The New Pornographers), Kicking Blood has a surprising amount of bite to its story. Tightly the written and executed, Blood may be brief but also has something to say. Clocking in at a paltry 75 minutes, Thurman’s film takes a much more metaphorical approach with its storytelling. Although the film fully leans into its horror elements, Blood is equally as interested in exploring the trauma of abuse and its relationship to addiction as well. In this world, death is a dark and mysterious place… but what does it mean to live? Is it possible to begin again when what came before is so broken? These are the questions that are embedded within Thurman’s tale of blood that make it worth exploring.

At first, Blood feels very much like revenge film. As Anna chooses her victims, we quickly notice a pattern beginning to form. Each prey that she targets has been some form of predator. Whether adulterous or abusive, each of Anna’s victims reveals their sins. As such, she appears to justify her kills as an act of vengeance against the darkness of man. (Who’s going to miss men who have hurt others like that, right?) In this way, her feedings are given shades of justice as she fights on behalf of those who have been hurt. If these victims cannot stand up for themselves, she will do it for them.

When she meets Robbie though, things begin to change. Broken by alcoholism, Robbie is ready to die and suggests that he is willing to let Anna take his life. However, in doing so, she sees something different in him. His humility and repentant soul are different than the other men that she has fed upon. In this way, there’s a complexity within their relationship that complicates this tale of vengeance. As Anna’s instinctive desire to feed battles a burgeoning compassion, suddenly she struggles to bring herself to end his life. 

Unlike the others, Robbie may worth saving.

However, her experience with him also begins to show her things about herself. It’s here that Blood’s metaphor begins to shift. Whereas once feeding took on an element of justice or revenge, now it seems to point to addiction. For Anna, her desire to inflict violence masks an inner rage that she carries within her. While each kill may be necessary for her to live, it also gives her an energetic high that keeps her going. Even so, her experience with Robbie challenges her to choose a new path for herself. While her friends feed for the rush, Anna decides to try and break free from the painful pattern that rules her life.

Whether or not that’s possible for her is another story.

Dark and edgy, Kicking Blood makes good use of its runtime to prove its point. Using vampires as a metaphor for addiction and abuse, Blood takes one of the darkest of classic villain tropes and uses it to explore what it takes to find hope and healing at a time when it feels most elusive. 

After all, as the man says, when darkness falls, Blood reminds us that we can kick against it.

Kicking Blood is available in select theatres on Friday, April 15th, 2022.

Audible – Teen Angst in Silence

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The teen years can be a challenge. It is a time when people struggle with their identity and their place in the world. Even for the most “normal” of teens, these years can be a struggle. Add to that having to deal with a disability. In Matthew Ogens’s documentary short Audible, we meet a young football player at a school for the deaf as he struggles with teen angst, deafness, and the loss of a friend.

Amaree McKenstry-Hall plays for football for the Maryland School for the Deaf. At the beginning of the film we see the team losing its first game against a deaf school in sixteen years. It also breaks the 42-game winning streak against all teams. For regular high school athletes, this would be a difficult time. We watch as Amaree and his schoolmates deal not only with the defeat, but with the struggles of facing a world as a deaf person. When school is over Amaree and his classmates will face discrimination and isolation.

As we get to know Amaree, we learn that his father left when he became deaf, and the two are working on rebuilding a relationship. His father, a onetime drug dealer, is a minister in a local church. He also is a bit unsure of his relationship with a girlfriend. Amaree’s biggest emotional challenge is dealing with the suicide of a classmate.

All of these are issues that many teens face. As such this is very much a look at coming-of-age in America. But when you include the challenges of getting ready to move into living fully in a hearing world, it all becomes multiplied.

Because it is a short (running time:39 minutes), it doesn’t have a chance to go very deep into Amaree’s stuggles, but we do see enough to understand that like all teens, he has many pressures. But we also see that he has qualities that may be helpful as he moves on in life.

AUDIBLE/NETFLIX © 2021

Audible streams on Netflix.

Photos courtesy of Netflix.

Reporting from Slamdance – Narrative Features (Part 1)

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I want to use this report to touch on a few of the films that are part of the Narrative Feature section at the Slamdance Film Festival. I’ve got to admit that as I’ve been focusing on shorts for a bit, it took a bit of a mental shift to wait for a story to develop. But watching films is sort of like riding a bike, it comes back to you quickly.

A film with a somewhat off-putting title was far more engaging than I expected. Taipei Suicide Story, directed by KEFF, takes place in a specialty hotel—it caters to people who want to die. The desk clerk is informed by one of the cleaning crew that there is a guest in one of the rooms who has been there a week and still alive. When he goes up and finds a young woman who explains that when she arrived, she knew that everyone there was like her, so she no longer felt alone. She no longer needed to die, but she also didn’t want to live. He tells here she has one last night to either die or leave. As the night progresses, the two spend some time together talking—connecting. Will this be the push she needs to end it all or to choose life? How will her decision affect the clerk?

While the film is very brief for a feature (48 minutes), it pulls us into the strange world of the hotel. The daily cleaning service is obviously much different than the hotels we visit. There are some bits of very dark humor that just show up as seemingly throwaway lines. (She’s contemplating buying some instant noodles, and he suggests there are healthier options.) But mostly we are drawn to these two people who are meeting on what may be the last day they will be together. I was a little surprised how much I liked this.

In A Brixton Tale matters of race and class complicate a relationship between two young people. Leah, a young vlogger from a well-to-do family connects with Benji, a shy black young man from the Barrier Block. and uses Benji as the subject of a videoed documentary on Brixton. They become close and are falling in love. But when Benji sees the way she’s edited his life, he feels (rightfully so) that he’s been used. When someone posts a sex video of Leah online, she and Benji seek revenge, and the violence ends up greater than they had planned, but given their social disparity we know that Benji will pay the price.

There are levels here. The film is a minor indictment of voyeuristic filmmaking that wants to show a gritty side of life that the filmmakers are not part of. When we see Leah’s film exhibited to a very upscale crowd, we know that they care more about the quality of the film that the quality of life that Benji lives. It also points out the discrepancy of hope for the two characters, especially when legal troubles come. A Brixton Tale is making its world premiere at Slamdance.

The Polish film Hurrah, We Are Still Alive, directed by Agnieszka Polska, is a noirish story of a group of “socially engaged” filmmakers who are in a holding pattern as they await the return of “the director”. Even in his absence, he seems to have some effect on what is going on in their lives. In part this is because he has taken some of the money left with the group by the Movement (a revolutionary organization) to “invest” to finance his movie about Rosa Luxemburg.  When a woman from the Movement shows up wanting the money, she reconnects with one of the actresses. Some cowboy police officers are also threatening the group. But we also know that an enforcer is being called in—from two different directions.

There is a certain Waiting for Godot vibe to this plot, but without bowler hats or the existential reflection. But there is a sense that all these people are lost and floundering in the director’s absence. It has places where it gets a bit to artsy (especially a few interludes with a rose and blood in the early part of the film that don’t seem to fit with anything). But the noirish feel is well done.

Photos courtesy of Slamdance Film Festival.

She Dies Tomorrow: The Long Nights Journey into Death

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She Dies Tomorrow. 

Maybe. But she’s fairly certain that she will.

Written and directed by Amy Seimetz, She Dies Tomorrow introduces us to Amy (Kate Lyn Shell), a young woman who is convinced that her life will come to an end the next day. While she has no idea how or when it may take place, her belief in her oncoming death is so strong that she remains frozen within its grasp and virtually immobile on her living room floor. Worried about her safety, Amy’s friend, Jane (Jane Adams) rushes to her home to check on her. However, after listening to Amy’s anxieties, she soon begins to carry the same fears about her own life and she passes those along to others.

Poetic and visceral, Seimetz’s film is a cinematic ode to pain and suffering. While the film features fascinating performances, it’s Seimetz’s use of visuals that are most notable within the film. Filling her screen with a terrifying mixture of shadows and light, she purposefully crafts every moment within Tomorrow to make the viewer uncomfortable. Through her use of long takes, bleeding colours and alternating between awkward silence and classical music, Seimetz presents the viewer with a graphic representation of the filtered mind of someone who suffers from severe depression and anxiety. This is not a film that wants you to like it. 

It’s a film that wants you to feel it.

While she has no specific reason to suspect her own death, Amy lives in a constant state of self-loathing and fear. Having lost all hope, Amy fears the rise of a new day and what trauma it could potentially bring along with it. Hers is a life that has become entirely bereft of the underpinnings of optimism at the hands of chance and self-loathing. However, what’s most terrifying about Tomorrow may not be what happens to Amy but rather the affect she has on the world around her.

Though she never intends to pass her feeling onto others, her friends are soon reshaped by her pain. Moving like a virus (which seems appropriate in during a global pandemic), this loss of hope and fear of the future infects one person after another, eating away at their psyches and personal relationships. In many ways, the expediency of the anxiety points to the fragility of the human psyche, especially as it pertains to the concept of death and the unknown. For example, though her family lives seem stable, Jane’s suspicion of her own imminent demise causes their world to shatter as well. As they question their own mortality, their blissful ignorance is lost and celebrating a birthday becomes a pointless exercise.

As such, hope is a commodity easily lost in She Dies Tomorrow. Having placed their confidence solely in innocence, each character allows the creeping doubt of mystery to dissolve their faith in a future. As such, the film leaves more questions than answers regarding any form of joy that can be had in our lives, especially if death awaits us all around any corner. While this is undoubtedly a bleak perspective, Seimetz’s script is willing to simmer within it. Whereas some films argue for finding hope in relationships, romantic love or a belief in God, Tomorrow is looking for something tangible that it never truly finds. 

In Tomorrow, hope simply has no foundation upon which to take root.

Famed critic Roger Ebert once said before he died that ‘every movie needs to offer some sense of hope’. While it need not resolve all its issues or answer all its questions, he meant to suggest that hopefulness at some level was essential for the best scripts to land with the audience. At best, Seimetz offers the viewer the possibility of moving forward by allowing Amy to understand that ‘it’s okay not to be okay’. Having struggled with depression myself, I can attest to the fact that this is realization can be freeing to the human soul on many levels. Nevertheless, that small breath of air that the film offers remains very little and leaves the viewer with little to stand on.

Although credit must be given to Seimetz for bravely delving into the pain of depression, She Dies Tomorrow is an undoubtedly difficult film to watch. Beautiful and challenging, this is a film that requires a great deal of patience and courage to engage at the soul level. While pain is never an easy thing to watch, it is even more difficult to see it spread through others like a cancer, decimating all in its path. As such, whether or not She Dies Tomorrow is not the question that the film wants to ask. Instead, Tomorrow is most interested in looking for a reason to continue living.

She Dies Tomorrow premieres on VOD on August 7th, 2020.

Huffman, Happiness and Finding Herself: 1on1 with Anastasia Phillips (TAMMY’S ALWAYS DYING)

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Directed by Amy Jo Johnson (The Space Between), Tammy’s Always Dying tells the story of Catherine (Anastasia Phillips), a woman trapped in a dysfunctional relationship with her suicidal mother, Tammy (Felicity Huffman). Every month, Catherine finds herself having to literally talk her self-destructive mother off the ledge of the same bridge. Caught in the confines of co-dependency, these suicide attempts are Tammy’s selfish way of keeping hold of her daughter and, having been broken by the experience of trying to save her mother, also the only thing that Catherine believes she’s good at anymore. Asked what excited her most about the opportunity to play Catherine, Phillips beams with enthusiasm about the chance to work with such an incredible team of women onscreen and behind the camera, especially an experienced veteran like Emmy-winner, Felicity Huffman.

“At first, I knew that Felicity was already attached,” she beams. “I knew that she would be a total powerhouse to work opposite and that it would be a huge learning experience for me as an actor. So, that in and of itself was exciting. The script was hilarious and dark and different. The character of Catherine was something I had never really seen on the page before. I’d never really seen a woman who effectively doesn’t have a story be at the center of a story in quite that way. So, I thought that would be a huge and exciting challenge. Also, [it was] terrifying because there isn’t quite as much to dig your heels into. A lot of it is reactive. That’s sort of who Catherine is as a human being as well. She’s codependent. She’s lived in her mother’s shadow. So, I just thought it was a really interesting opportunity. That would be the two things that really excited me.”

“I hadn’t worked with Amy Jo Johnson. I hadn’t met Joanne Sarazen, the screenwriter [or Jessica Adams, the young female producer on this], but as soon as I did, I understood that… there was this trifecta of everything that’s promising about Canadian film right now and the strong female voices in it. So, I mean there’s just no way I could say no once I found out they were considering me.

Whenever one gets the opportunity to work with a seasoned professional like Huffman, there is always much that one can learn from them. For Phillips, the experience of working with Huffman challenged her to memorize the entire scene in order to bring the moment to life onscreen.

“Actually, [Felicity] made the request of all of us that we work without sides on set,” Phillips begins. “So, that sort of trickled down from Amy Jo and I liked it a lot. What I learned about Felicity is that probably, because she grew up with such close ties to David Mamet, the Atlantic Theater Company and her husband, William H Macy, being such a prolific stage actor, she has such respect for the written word. She treated this like a play that everyone would have already learned and so the idea was that we would all arrive on the day, cut the strings and free fall together. I think I will never work a different way after having had that experience. In this industry, you really just get out of it what you put into it and, if you’re still concerned about something as silly as, ‘what’s my line?’, it’s so impossible to fully inhabit the character, the role and just the world. She was just beyond prepared and committed and I will continue with that work ethic myself going forward.”

Though the vast majority of their performances stemmed from the Sarazen’s well-written script, there still remain a few moments of improvisation that made it into the final cut.

“I’d say that almost 99% [of the dialogue] is off the page,” she recalls. “I love it. I love Felicity for this. There’s one scene where I find her lying on the floor and I’m trying to wake her cause I think she’s dead. So, I’m shaking her awake and Tammy suddenly wakes up and she says, ‘I’m not dead. Don’t look so excited about it.’ And then she says, ‘I borrowed your underwear.’ That’s a Felicity throw in. It’s so funny and it just adds this button. So, there are a couple of ad lib moments like that Felicity tossed in, which I think are just pure gold.”

While the opportunity to work with Huffman was incredible, another appealing aspect of the film for her was the unique challenge to play a character like Catherine, who is consistently at the end of her emotional rope.

“Ooh, it was kind of scary because I couldn’t rely on any tricks,” says Phillips. “I basically just had to sit in the place of my deepest vulnerability. The place I occupy when my self-confidence is at its absolute lowest. Basically, [I had to] just marinate in all the disappointments in my own life and then I could sort of begin to understand the day-to-day existence of this woman. Rather than building up something, it was kind of like stripping away all of the things [that] I use to protect myself as a human being and then just being that raw thing that remains, which was kind of terrifying. We’re always trying to compensate, right? I couldn’t do that in this instance.”

Trapped within a destructive relationship with her mother, Catherine’s character seems to identify herself based on other people’s expectations of her, a trait that Phillips believes is common within dangerous co-dependant relationships.

According to Phillips, “I think that’s the term ‘codependent’ [means] exactly that… The chaos of living with an addict is so great that one completely abandons themselves and any notion of who they are just to be in crisis management mode. So, Catherine never had a chance to really think about who she is, [or] what she wants. It’s always been just react and respond to the crisis of her mother.”

What’s more, Catherine’s struggle within the film also sends her on a quest to find her true self. In order for Catherine to find peace, Phillips feels that she must work on setting clear emotional boundaries with her mother and learn to put herself first.

“I don’t want to give away the ending of the film, but I think [in order for her to find herself], it’s finally making the decision that she will put herself first, rather than her own mother and in any decision that she makes [that puts her on the road to finding herself],” she explains. “So, in this film, it starts with her deciding to go to the city. It starts with her deciding that she’s not going to be the one to pick up the pieces after Tammy’s life falls apart again. Just that she’s going to put herself first and, in the long run, what that means, it’s probably just as simple as having friendships, maybe a romantic relationship that’s not so dysfunctional as the one that she has with Reggie. It’s just such small stuff on how you honour yourself versus giving up your power to put other people’s needs before your own.”

Given the film’s emphasis on the struggle of emotional health in the midst of co-dependency, Catherine’s quest for happiness is central to the film’s core. With this in mind, Phillips argues that the search for happiness begins by being able to accept your situation so you can properly seek an answer to it.

“I sometimes I think that rumination isn’t the way to happiness, which is what I usually like to do,” Phillips admits. “I think maybe happiness is acceptance. Not fighting the river or trying to go against the current of it, just accepting what is happening at that moment. You know, trying to minimize the resistance that you have towards it so that you can sort of respond rather than react.” 

In addition, the film also highlights the fact that, even though there are those who seem happy on the outside, it does not mean that they aren’t broken themselves.

“I like that line of Tammy’s, ‘You can never see what’s broken in a happy person,’” Phillips claims, “but it makes me feel a little bit like suspicious of what the notion to be happy is. [It’s] as if happy is just a state of mind that you choose despite all the other horrible things that are going on in your life. You just choose not to indulge them. You choose not to wallow in them. You choose not to reveal them maybe or project them. So, maybe happiness is just a choice you have to keep on making. You can be happy despite the poor hand of cards you’ve been dealt in life because you have chosen not to be a victim of that, but to allow yourself to enjoy your own life.” 

“I really think that Joanne Sarazen, who wrote the script, has these one-line zingers that you could write a philosophy paper on some of them. There’s so many nuggets to unpack and I was very fortunate to be a part of it.”

For full audio of our interview with Anastasia Phillips, click here.

Tammy’s Always Dying is available on VOD now.

The Holidays & Mental Health; Star Wars

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your sunday drive podcast

It’s nearly Christmas – a joyous time, but also a difficult time for many.

In this episode of the Your Sunday Drive podcast, we welcome local family medicine physician’s assistant Dave Mulder to talk about the holidays and mental health, trying to lend a Christian perspective to an issue that many face this time of year.

With The Rise of Skywalker just days from release, we also take a quick few minutes to discuss the spiritual significance of Star Wars.

Come along for Your Sunday Drive – quick conversation about current events, politics, pop culture and more, from the perspective of a couple of guys trying to follow Jesus.

Hosts: Matt Hill and Nate Polzin. Presented by the Church in Drive of Saginaw, MI, as often as possible. Please visit churchindrive.com and facebook.com/thechurchindrive

Jarrid Wilson & Hope in the Face of Suicide

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Jarrid Wilson

Aren’t Christians supposed to have it “all figured out?” Does the gospel really work? Can people change? Is victory over our struggles possible? How?

In this episode of the Your Sunday Drive podcast, we talk about Jarrid Wilson, a pastor and mental health advocate who recently committed suicide, and some related questions for Christians and non-Christians alike.

If you need help, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK. 

Come along for Your Sunday Drive – quick conversation about current events, politics, pop culture and more, from the perspective of a couple of guys trying to follow Jesus.

Hosts: Matt Hill and Nate Polzin. Presented by the Church in Drive of Saginaw, MI, as often as possible. Please visit churchindrive.com and facebook.com/thechurchindrive



teenFish#4 – The BIRDBOX Challenge

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Have you ever really wanted to know what goes on in the mind of today’s teens? Not just ‘what are they thinking?’ but how they feel about life’s issues? About truth? About where God is in the world today? At long last, ScreenFish is proud to announce teenFish, a new podcast series that lets teenagers speak about media that matters to them in their own voice. Hosted by Daniel Collins (Infinity Warm-Up), teenFish will be air the first Sunday of every month and invite local youth to engage the truth and lies of the shows and films that excite them.

Netflix created a stir with the release of BIRDBOX, it’s cultural phenomenon starring Sandra Bullock. Telling the story of a world threatened by a beast that causes your death as soon as you see it, the film proves that there’s more to it than thrills and kills. This month, teenFish returns as Daniel and Jacob dive into the film’s conversations about suicide and the sins that lie beneath.

You can stream the episode above, on podomatic or on Spotify! Or, you can download the ep on Apple Podcasts, Google Play or more!

McQueen – It’s Okay, It’s Only Clothes

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Image result for mcqueen documentary

Arguably one of the most eccentrically talented fashion designers of our time, Lee Alexander McQueen took the fashion world by storm. His candle shone bright in the small amount of time he was on this earth. He was often misunderstood, in life and in fashion. He looked nothing like what a stereotypical fashion designer looked like, and I think this is where a lot of his initial career judgments came from. Later in life, Lee’s insecurities would lead him to alter some of his physical appearance.

As a young apprentice, he was exposed to a street-wear company that took inspiration from the anniversary of man landing on the moon. This was the first time Lee was exposed to the idea of using unique topics to pull inspiration from.

Image result for alexander mcqueen the highlan raoe

Lee was best known for his dark and often shocking lines that depicted things like rape and death. These were not easy garments to look at, often looking like something from a crime scene. The models would literally look like they had just been raped. Lee received a lot of backlash for his work. But he was filtering his life experiences into his art form. Lee always admitted that he didn’t care what people thought of him and he wasn’t afraid to pull from his darkness. Although disturbing, it goes to show that parlaying negative experiences into a creative outlet can often be healthy.

Lee wanted the audience to leave his shows feeling an emotion, whether it be repulsion or not. He felt like if he didn’t leave feeling an emotion than he hadn’t done his job.

Sometimes his pieces would be inspired by more positive aspects of his life, like his love of nature, the sea in particular.

Image result for mcqueen and blow

He met a magazine editor named Isabella Blow who was prominent in the fashion world. It was Isabella who essentially discovered Lee’s talent. He was her protege. She didn’t have any children so she poured that energy into Lee. Vanity Fair would later refer to them as fashion’s muse and master.

At 27, and not in a good place financially, Lee accepted a position as creative director for Givenchy in France. His first line with Givenchy with risque and not well received. But Lee stayed true to who he was, pouring England into Paris in his own unique way.

Lee knew he was gay from an early age. He struggled with a father who would make jokes about it. His father would have preferred for him to be a mechanic instead of getting into fashion.

During one of his fashion shows, some students kicked down barricades and started a fire. The cars that were part of the set were unfortunately not emptied of gasoline so they set fire. Lee refused to let the fires be put out. He kept sending models out to the catwalk and refused to let the show stop. He used the prank to his advantage. This was very telling of his work ethic and drive. He didn’t want anything to ruin the illusion of his shows.

With his intense schedule, it’s shocking that Lee didn’t burn himself out. He was living six months in England, and the other six in France, going back and forth between Givenchy and McQueen. With more money came more unhappiness, as well as drugs. He became angry and aggressive.

During this time, with immense career pressures and the death of a close friend, Lee was experiencing his darkest moments.  On top of it all, Lee’s mother, whom he idolized, succumb to her illness. On the eve of his mother’s funeral, Lee took his own life.

Image result for lee alexander mcqueen

Cinematically, I appreciated the cuts with animated skulls and dark images, including haunting classical music, cellos specifically. It really set the tone for the entire piece. It was fascinating to see clips of Lee working, speaking in interviews, and from his fashions shows. It gave it sort of a home movie feel.

Before his death, Lee created a charity called Sarabande, which provides scholarships to students and artists. “Sarabande Foundation was established because Lee passionately believed that creative minds with the potential to push boundaries should be given the same opportunities he’d enjoyed.”

This film is so telling of one person’s struggle with mental health. It’s good to confront your past and your demons, yet bringing it all to light again can often add salt to the wound. Sometimes we experience horrible situations, such as loss, that completely take over. It is important to sometimes take a step back from busy schedules and everything that overwhelms us and check in with ourselves to make sure we’re doing alright. And if the answer is ‘no’, even if it’s ‘I’m not sure’, I encourage you to speak to someone. Whether it’s someone you know and are close to, or a professional. It’s okay to talk about it. It doesn’t make you weak or less of a person. In fact, you are so strong for talking about it! Sometimes it’s the hardest thing in the world to talk about your problems. But you can! And you’re awesome for doing it.

If you are struggling with mental health or suicidal ideations, please know that you are loved. There are numerous resources that can assist you. If you are in Canada, we would recommend you visit https://suicideprevention.ca/need-help/ which will provide you with contact information for various assistance per Province. If you are in the United States, visit https://www.mentalhealth.gov/get-help/immediate-help.