two-way communication?

Frustrated. I sensed difficulties. If I could I would have expressed what I had to say and made it clear to those listening to me. Yet there are blockages. Here and there. It takes two. One discusses something, the other tries to make sense out of it, the premise being that they could at least agree on definitions of certain concepts and main themes in the discussion. Such a premise does not naturally appear, rather often it is that when a communication is not working, the problem might lie in a lack of such a premise.





I stumble, and I shiver.





I would never accept something to be true just because its credibility comes from published works or well known scholars. Not that I doubt everything. I am on no ground to do so. I certainly respect hard work and hard won fame, but when I suspect some argument to be problematic, I refuse to take in 'a long history of such and such dealing' to be the reason I should feel convinced. Yes, others have dealt with it in that way before, but that is still irrelevant. Not enough to answer my question, because I am not convinced how it is used to support the current argument. I see an attempt to link two things, but I see the attempt not the link.





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Last night, I watched Closer on TV. Last week I watched In America on TV.





I was quite touched by some scenes although there could be detected implausibilities in the plots of these films. Natalie Portman's character hides her real name from her partner for years, perhaps he never looks closer at her, therefore he never knows her real name or understands the real her. The Irish couple in America survive their poverty in New York City like a miracle. The sisters, especially Ariel (Emma Bolger), the younger one, play such wonderful parts in the film. To me, Ariel and her sister Christy (Sarah Bolger) are much more real than Saoirse Ronan's part in Atonement or Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine. Ronan's and Breslin's characters each function well in their films but in terms of realism in the characters, they are just less convincing, in my eyes. Not that they have to be in order to be characters in films. I am aware there are different levels of realism in performances for different purposes. Contrary to them, the acting of the Bolger sisters carries them across the border between fiction and reality, I think, and this is why this type of acting really touches me. Similarly, Natalie Portman's character in Closer (in some scenes) presents this type of acting too, to the degree that she oddly exists outside of the film unlike her fellow characters who funtionally exist within their set categories.

These are just some personal responses to two films I saw again recently. Perhaps this demonstrates how I let characters communicate with me. I do take it seriously. This is my way I suppose.