It was a long day so I went to bed at 8pm and woke up at 1am. There was a movie on showtime called Jolene about “an orphan who makes her way in the world.” I almost didn’t even look at it since I thought they meant a kid orphan, but no it was a young woman, a sweet and beautiful curly redhead. It ended up being an excellent movie and very synchronisitic. She’d been left to her own devices growing up and was in and out of juvenile detention and then a couple of young marriages. The first husband is a drug dealer who was still married when he married her, so she wrecks his tattoo shop, breaking all the glass cases and mirrors and neon sign, and squiring his tattoo inks all over everything, and steals his drug money when his wife and child show up. She leaves her wedding ring in an opened, dumped out on the table pile of coke she found when she was emptying the dresser drawers into a suitcase to leave him. She ends up in Las Vegas dancing and starting a new life, she goes with the flow. She meets Mr. Big, and he moves her into a real mansion, he’s older, he gives her everything, she has time to paint and find her creative voice thru art, he promises she’ll always be cared for. But he’s got mob connections and ends up shot and she runs for her life. She’s got another chance for a new start. She moves to Tulsa, OK and meets and (reluctantly) marries the son and heir of the town’s foremost family. One their wedding night he sees her tattoo and it infuriates him so he brutally and anally rapes her. He’s forgiven. The day before their son is born, he beats her but it is forgiven, again. Another beating a few months later leaves her gasping on the floor, and he squirted her paints all over her just like she did to Coco’s tattoo inks when she left him. The karma is not lost on her. She takes her son in the middle of the night and leaves. No attorney will take her case since her husband’s family owns the town. Also she was still married to Coco when she married the heir. She doesn’t want money, just out of the marriage. Bottom line, she gets a legal aid attorney who is in over his head and her husband is awarded sole custody of their son as she is an unfit mother.
I want to share a review of it with you:
Jolene introduces in the title role a captivating and totally original newcomer named Jessica Chastain. This movie boasts a terrific cast, and Ms. Chastain not only holds her own corner of every scene, she’s the only thing you want to watch. It’s a smashing debut.
Jolene chronicles 10 years in the hardscrabble life of a freckle-faced redhead raised in a series of foster homes in South Carolina. All she’s got is an amazing talent for art, which nobody encourages, so in her desperation to start a life of her own, she marries a boy named Mickey (Zeb Newman), a shiftless weakling with no ambition who drives a diesel truck. Mickey moves into the house of his uncle Phil (Dermot Mulroney) and surly aunt Kay (Theresa Russell). In no time, horny Uncle Phil is showing Jolene all the tricks in bed her callow husband has only seen in Kama Sutra illustrations. But when Aunt Kay comes home early from the bank where she works and finds them in their underwear ready for X-rated action, Kay goes ballistic, Mickey does something rash and Jolene becomes a home-wrecker and a widow in the same day, labeled a juvenile delinquent with no living relatives and sent to a mental institution. Dashing Uncle Phil (another perfect performance by Mr. Mulroney in a small part) turns gray and ends up in prison for statutory rape. The first chapter in her new life ends like Elsie Dinsmore.
Still searching for someone to love and take care of her, Jolene is an instant hit in the loony bin, attracting the attention of a lesbian matron (Frances Fisher) who provides her with crayons and introduces her to new sexual adventures that–well, let’s just say she adjusts quickly. Jolene’s philosophy: “Once you get going, it doesn’t matter who it is and what they’ve got–all you gotta do is close your eyes.” Part Raggedy Ann, part Marilyn Monroe, Jolene is irresistible. Everyone she meets promises her a home and unconditional love. Somehow, it always seems to end when the police arrive.
Running away again after the Fisher character helps her escape, she hits the road on a Greyhound bus to see the country, occasionally selling her hidden pleasures to meet expenses. Working as a waitress on roller skates in a burger joint in Arizona desert, she meets and marries a tattoo artist and secret drug dealer named Coco (Rupert Friend, who played Prince Albert in The Young Victoria) and ends up with a big red valentine heart on her derriere. Things are swell until his other wife (Denise Richards) arrives with a baby named Coco Jr. What’s a poor, jilted bigamy victim to do?
Jolene dumps his stash of heroin all over the kitchen table, calls 911 to come right over and heads for Vegas. Working as a pole dancer, she meets and marries Sal (Chazz Palminteri), a wealthy businessman, which is the Vegas word for “gangster.” Sal is kind and adoring, giving her everything she ever wanted, including her own art gallery and a taste of real security, “like eating cotton candy all day long.” Alas, the sugar ends in a spray of bullets, and Jolene flees again. Years pass and she ends up as a receptionist in Oklahoma, where she hypnotizes Brad Benton (Michael Vartan), a rich, handsome eccentric whose family owns half of Tulsa. Mr. Right turns out to be a born-again Christian, a control freak and a closet sadist who beats her up and kidnaps her new baby. At 25, against all odds, she has become a profoundly accomplished artist, but her talent is all she’s got left.
In the words of Peggy Lee’s hit song “Is That All There Is,” you begin to hum “If that’s the way she feels, why doesn’t she just end it all?” But you don’t know Jolene. The movie builds its trajectory, brick by brick, as she falls under the spell of a string of bogus rescuers who reward her with nothing but temporary shelter from grief. Every time she gives her heart, someone breaks it. (It really is a role Marilyn Monroe was born to play.)
The idea of the perils that hide behind every door, waiting to pounce on life’s innocents, has fueled literature from Voltaire to Nabokov. Jolene is Candide with genders reversed, Lolita with a moral center. What sets Jolene apart and saves her from being another hapless victim is her unwavering optimism, painting every relationship as she survives it. When the right doors don’t open, she enters the wrong ones. She’s so adaptable to her fate that when all else fails, she can shift gears faster than a Maserati. Jolene treats misfortune with a wry smile, and with Ms. Chastain’s beauty and vulnerability as the focus, her character’s dreams and realities are vividly etched. You go away exhilarated. The movie has been through as many hurdles getting here as dear, sweet Jolene, but sometimes the most engaging movies are the ones worth waiting for.
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At the end, she knows her choices for her child are to fight a losing battle and wear herself out in the process, appearing like a victim to her son and everyone else, or to give him a chance for a better life than she had, even if it means only seeing him only every 2nd Sunday. Then she heads to Hollywood to pursue her dream.
It was interesting that the final cab ride she makes is in cab No. 1008. For me one big lesson of the film was knowing when to leave someone so they can become a better person than they could have been with you in their life.
I scribbled down some notes afterward, thoughts that came to me, but scribble is the word and I made a lot of abbreviations in Spanish, my secret coding method. I’ll just transcribe them here and make them into sentences later.
–Prioritizing what to give thought time to, making sure the essential things are taken care of since they are the foundation from which all else flows
–How can there be an “else” if it’s all One?
Because those who don’t feel it is all One need a figure of speech they can relate to. Instead of feeling like a drop of the ocean, they feel they are afloat on it, connected to it yet apart from it.
–If they feel they are not a part of the ocean , they will begin to worry and freak when the raft they are on begins to fall apart, |when they see that happening, they may start t throw off the raft anything they feel will weigh them down: people, things non longer want: all into the ocean, “I held on to you for so long and for what? For this moment to let go and see it was for naught, mere distraction to keep the mind occupied until you felt strong enough to let the Soul begin its work. Now the Soul (Mother ocean) is having its way with you, letting your raft fall apart right from under you.
–Where is that all knowing, all controlling mind now that you need it? Now it has nothing to offer, because now you see what an empty shell that mind was.
–That mind is yours to do your bidding, not the other way around. Now you know the purpose of training it and disciplining it via daily meditation and contemplation, so when worrisome thoughts come up, you have so trained yourself to pivot and find a better feeling thought. You’ve practiced it enough to know it works when you work it.
–Once the mind is controlled, the soul can express. The soul is doing its work all the while the rate is falling apart, It knows that only when you fall into the ocean and go with the current can you see what wonderful thing the flow is and finally lose yourself in it. That’s all it (or You) ever wanted anyway. That’s what a changeling does, it changes as its world changes because it knows staying in the flow is the way.
–Make peace with your raft, which is your past, and surrender to the flow. What does that mean? it means when change happens, don’t resist it. don’t complain about it, don’t be the victim, be the one who embraces change when it comes.
–Being prepared for change means keep your past cleaned up and don’t incur new karma by lying, by exaggerating, by gossiping, by taking unfair advantage. Keep your debts down, don’t accumulate, live lightly so when change comes, you have less encumbrance and can move swiftly.