Lilting

I watched lilting while I was doing the ironing for my trip away. I chose it because it looked interesting, and because Ben Wishaw looks beautiful in it. I think I’m glad I did.

On the surface it looks… well, what is it? Quiet enough to watch between strokes of the iron without missing much? Although, with some of the dialogue in captioned Cantonese, I had to watch, but that was ok. It’s beautifully filmed, but oh.

The film is about a lot more than it seems to be on the surface. Or maybe that was just me. It’s when Richard brings in a translator to bridge the gap – those gaps – in what was said, and – ‘no, don’t say that. Don’t translate that…’ what was not said, that the pain started.

It’s about hiding, and about guilt, and about what we don’t say, and don’t do, and what we do say instead, and the repercussions of that. The repercussions of trying to fill a gap with something not suitable. The repercussions of silence.

Wouldn’t it be better to say it, because we only think we know what the outcome will be. Wouldn’t it be better not to put reasons and explanations and meanings on what people say. To understand that what they don’t say matters too. To get that sometimes they just need a translator. Not from Chinese to English, but from themselves to fucking English first, and then onwards.

Sometimes I think we are all speaking Chinese, and instead of listening to the translators, filling in the gaps ourselves. And then, if we stop speaking, sometimes people hear better. If my plane crashes tomorrow, there will be no more blog, and no more stumbling speeches. Only what I wrote from my heart, without fear.

The part of the film where the healing begun was at the end, when the translator stopped, and they just spoke. Said what they wanted to say, in their own language, because they weren’t afraid of being understood. And then, despite not knowing a word that was said, understood each other completely.