Thoughts: My late step-father used to watch the pod race scene often for its spectacle and sound. He would vibrate the walls until the windows shook. My mother reminded me of this during the scene as we rewatched.
The relationship between my mother and her second husband was a difficult one for me. All I ever got to see was the down sides. While working with my mother for a few years as her cleaning assistant, I was forced to listen to all the negative elements of their relationship, and of his rapid onset dementia- if a several year downfall is considered rapid. I didn't see much of him in those final years, despite living ten minutes down the road. I did try to create a pathway into helping the man, but the level of animosity he harboured for my mother, cultivated over their twenty year relationship, was terrifyingly pervasive, tainting every conversation and thought. When his wife would appear, it would crash like a wave into the open, and the two of them would exchange verbal venom: his overflowing with attacks on her actions built on so much perceived oppression; hers formed from exhausted verbal and physical abuse and responses to the criticism.
My mother lives with me now, in the house her and my step-father purchased as an investment property. Towards the end, during one of the many conversations about Keith's current demented actions and the trudge through the public health care system, I openly announced my opinion that he needs to just die. I had held this mindset for some time, and as the years wore on during my time working with my mother, I had become less and less wary of stating my true feelings and thoughts on the subject, less evasive and supportive and instead opting for exhausted personal observations. I explained how I only saw and heard what was presented, and that it was all negative. That the physical and mental abuse she suffered was unconscionable and that she should not be there. That her own actions had to be a part of the whole tapestry, and that the whole relationship was fraught, combative, toxic. All of this was based on the picture I had been painted. Dialling back from this conversation, I recall seeing him for the last time, still mostly present before the dementia fully took hold, was a frightfully clear picture of just how twisted the whole thing had become. When I received a tearful, hysterical phone call a few weeks on seeking my presence to come and figure out how to tell Keith that his beloved dog had been put down, without telling him the dog had been put down, I was open about how fucked up it all seemed.
I did go over, and I did attempt to assist. However the minute I walked into the home, my mother walked out and I was left with this pathetically enraged man, spewing bile about Leverne's lies and many statements about her character. He did not know where the dog was, demanded answers. My mother was not being clear. Leverne had told me that she couldn't deal with it, that I needed to work it out. I took one look at the situation, left the building, told my mother she needed to front up and tell him what happened. I called my brother in an attempt to grasp the situation, and to pull more family into this twisted knot, as opposed to figuring it out myself. She turned to ice, went in and told Keith the truth in a very unclear and roundabout way. All ways of conversing that do not work for dementia sufferers, a note I had made open countless times before. The situation circled around and around: hate and blame and distrust and deflection spinning between the two parties.
He deteriorated, was in hospital for months and months, became a hostile, violent, stubborn dementia patient, moved into a home for a short period after a lengthy NDIS claim, and passed away soon after. His ashes remained with my mother for several years, moving from his own home to the investment property, residing under my mother's bed. I envisioned several different horror scenarios, some of which I think hold serious weight for a story. My mother has become a better person now: clearer, more self-assured, prosperous, functional, caring. I however, continue to be the same misanthropic self-defeating half-finished flake.
The Phantom Menace I've always enjoyed, and despite its flaws it holds well in the memory with its iconic moments and robust score. The collage of visual elements and scene structures seem to lodge themselves into the brain far more than its two sequels- perhaps the sign of how the three films were imagined in the mind of the creator. Open strong, carry the story through. We didn't watch it as loud as I could have.
3.5/5
