I watched an old movie last night and it fascinated me. Falling Angels is set in the sixties and great attention was given to detail here. People who didn't live through the sixties think it was psychedelic, but, in reality, it was bleak. And things were hidden. It was a time when families strived to look normal, and were anything but normal. Three very different daughters try to find their way while growing up with an alcoholic mother who's practically comatose and a misguided tyrant of a father. The guy is so out of touch he gives the blond daughter a baby doll for Christmas when in reality she's pregnant by a married man. The girls also find out the family secret, which is that they had a baby brother who was killed and his death is surrounded by mysterious circumstances. I just thought this was a great movie and it had me on the edge of my seat waiting to see what craziness came next. You can see it HERE, if it sounds like something you'd like too.
18 comments:
Yes it was bleak. The drop-out generation were dropping out for good fucking reasons, if you ask me. Many of those young, "free-love" pot-smoking acid-dropping hippy girls (and boys) were fleeing from situations of dire abuse and/or stifling attitudes in their homes.
Many will not believe this DD, just like many argued against your opinion (and mine) that the sixties were a time of grotesque and highly unflattering fashions for most people. Okay, maybe not Jackie Kennedy - but most people were not Jackie Kennedy, were they? LOL.
Nope. I remember home as being a sparse bleak place, that was the fashion then. There were no bookcases or cozy things. Avacado and gold was in and everything was sleek and cold. Clothes were very ugly and never fit. T-shirts and jeans were a rebellion against fahion hell. The fashion industry has changed a lot since then. Hair hurt too, stiff and horrid.
I watched it for a little while, I am here at work & had to keep it down. Its pretty good. I'd rather be sitting on my couch with it on my TV! Its Friday! Thats what Friday is for. I was 12 in 1969. I was younger than these girls. But I remember everything about the 60's. I remember Vietnam, Johnson, Nixon, Life magazine weekly tally of the dead killed in Vietnam (complete with pictures). Page after page of faces of young men, picture after picture. All dead. All just barely out of high school. The acid generation, the music. The mini skirts, the "Yardley" look. The 60's were there for a reason, I guess. It gave us The Beatles & most of the other notable music artists for my generation. I got my 1st kiss in 1969. I dont think the 60's were good, just ok. Another decade of my life.
rox
Gawd, the poor unfortunate dumpy, frumpy sister destined to be her mothers keeper. Cannot wait to see how this turns out!
rox
hahaha...that elctric skillet! OMG! I had one of those things. Only a yellow knob. It worked great. Could never get the bottom clean. Before microwaves, the electric skillet was so modern. And if I had known girls in a house like theirs back then, I would call them "rich kids"...'cuz they would be!
I will have to take your word for this one. You have intrigued me into watching this movie. It almost sounds slightly like virgin suicides. I love movies with dark plots.
Christ I remember that furniture. Fugly plastic-y crap. Even some of the pieces made out of excellent wood like teak, they managed to make look like some repressed tight-ass's idea of high class.
In one of my aunt's houses, every room was sparsely furnished with that crap. Little carefully arranged "vignettes" made up of a rigid, uncomfortable sofa & chair, two identical fugly lamps on those two-tiered side tables, all set on a shag area rug. Yuck. Her furniture, always the latest, was always extremely uncomfortable, and always seemed to have thin little arms and legs and thin cushions. With some of those long, cylindrical cushions placed here and there for "comfort". Like you could ever relax in those rooms. Those acid yellows and greens and that fucking Burnt Sienna, those colours were everywhere. *puke*
To be 100% fair, I associate a lot of sixties stuff with horrible memories of being molested. I was a little girl in the sixties and the above-mentioned aunt had a husband who routinely molested all us girls, the nieces. He got away with it too. None of us ever got up the guts to have him charged because of their children, who are our cousins too. He's in his eighties now and soon he'll hope he drops dead and burn in hell. (If there were such a place, which I doubt...but I can always hope, can't I.) My aunt, a devout Catholic, was and is completely unable to cope with his perversions, although I know she knew about it. She just didn't (and doesn't) WANT to know about.
Anyway those are the sort of hidden things you're talking about, and which too many of us know too well. It still makes me feel anxious just thinking about it.
Ooops...make that, soon *I* hope he'll drop dead.
Anon 4:55/57: I'm sorry you grew up in that enviroment. No child
should have to endure such pain.
And the sad part of that is how it never goes away.
4:43..spam much??? jeez...
anon 4:55...and the bastard is still alive! That figures! Right? Nice loving kind people always die young. Mean sonsabitches, pervy bastards never die. Gawd! Burn in hell is right. Were you able to have any kind of lasting relationship with a man, ever? Marriage? Kids? How about the cousins & the aunt? Do you still talk to them? This sucks. I'm sorry. That sorry, no good bastard. How dare he live to be in his 80's! He doesnt deserve that.
rox
I was born in Portland OR in the mid-60s to conservative parents and all that psychedelic stuff passed me by. The only thing that set us apart was that we were vegetarians, hence, FREAKS! Didn't take much back then.
'Mad Men' seems to be a pretty accurate reading on the 60s inasmuch as it really seemed like what we imagine the 50s to be like with the occasional odd bird passing by. Fashions were cute, though: My Mom had a cute, mod-ish wardrobe and she was in no way a swingin' gal, you know, all cocktails and shimmies.
The 70s - now that was a swinging decade!(?) That's when I remember all the hippies and wacky clothing...both of which I still see on a daily basis in the year 2009. I do love a platform heel....
It seems that keeping shameful, disgusting family secrets is timeless. There are still plenty of parents living in denial that his or her spouse would abuse children so horribly.
I wonder if that 80 year old man ever understands the magnitude of his disgusting actions on the kids he molested. Old fucker.
Lu
DD, I like that you can look at the past and say it had problems. I really hate people who insist everything used to be perfect. My grandmother for example drives me crazy because she acts like NOTHING bad EVER happened in the 40s, 50, 60s, etc., everything was just so perfect, everything now sucks so bad, etc. It really pisses me off. I don't understand why some people think there was ever a time period when everybody in the whole entire world was happy. That is so unrealistic and delusional.
I am always shocked at the number of women who've been molested and raped. Every one I know has a story about it. That behavior was even more abundant back then, because hardly anyone was prosecuted for it. It was swept under the rug.
I tried to watch this earlier in the day and it was so choppy I gave up. Funny thing is the afternoon was spent ditching Verizon wireless connection to Skybeam and now it plays perfectly at half the price. I will in the morning and can't wait.
Anon 4:55 here:
No one who was molested still talks to or has contact with the aunt or her ditchpig slimebucket husband. Most of us have had problems with relationships. I'm now on my second marriage. My current husband was molested as a child too. We had problems until we went to counselling, where it all came out and got more or less dealt with. We're doing okay.
Thanks to all for asking and for your concern.
Statistics are hard to define exactly...but approximately 30% of girls are molested before adulthood. Mostly by people they knew and trusted, and I use that loosely.
So those of you who feel different, just know that you have lots of company around you. It wasn't your fault, talk to someone who can validate all those mixed up feelings. I know...I went through it and it was the best thing I ever did.
When you said old I thought you meant it was made in the 60s, it was made in 2003.
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