my sister doesn’t like slow movies, and i don’t like my sister

film, family, and the importance of "my own private idaho"; a kind of part two to "how film binds me to my father"

I don’t want to spend every article talking about my family and how we are connected through film, but the more I think about it, film gives us something to love and understand together, and therefore, love and understand each other.  I know my mother because we watch romcoms together. I know my father because he showed me Raging Bull. I better understand my brother because of the mess of comedies and superhero movies he watches. And I allow people to know me.

My sister’s favourite movie is Howl’s Moving Castle.  For a long time, Studio Ghibli movies brought us together. We loved Ponyo and My Neighbor Tortoro and The Secret World of Arrietty. We’ve watched tons of a movies together, of course, and we’ve seen lots of movies in the theater together, sitting next to each other, leaning over to whisper something and giggle in each other’s ears.

Film and my father is such a tied together concept.  One does not exist without the other.  But with my sister, film gives me an opportunity to tell her who I am.  To be honest with her about what makes me up.  I showed my sister Fight Club, and I’ve showed her My Own Private Idaho and I’ve watched with her, and told her to watch, various queer films with the hopes that these will help us to better understand my sexuality and how us both being queer binds us better than any other similarites. I want her to know who I am. Because I need her to see me as I see myself.

My sister moved out this summmer, and now we’re the furthest apart we’ve ever been. She’s on the other side of the country and I’m sleeping in her old bedroom. But we’re also the closest we’ve ever been. I’ve never spoken to her more. Sometimes, my sister sends me voice messages. And they’ve become my favourite thing (I’ll never tell her this). To hear the excitement in her voice as she tells me Arctic Monkeys is coming to Vancouver or of her opportunity to study in Europe. To be able to hear her smile, because holy shit Arctic Monkeys are coming to Vancouver and you have to go!! And sometimes, I go to record stores to look for things just for her (she has a record player and I don’t) and I think about all the music she loves. All the music I love. Talking to my sister on the phone used to be a strange concept, actually calling her, but now we talk for hours. We talk about whatever new movie’s just come out, and Alex Turner (and, by extension, Arctic Monkeys, as mentioned above), and Taylor Swift, and school, and how I’m becoming friends with her girlfriend, and writing. And we’re so similar it makes me sick to think about. Being just like your sister is not like being like your mother. It’s a much more horrifying thing. But we cannot deny the ways we are similar. I think we spent our entire childhoods hating each other. There is a brief beginning where we dressed alike because we were friends, and now there is an ending - only an ending because we’re growing up and barely children anymore - where we can stand each other.

My sister and I were always competing. We were both too much like our mother, I think, and we competed, tearing at skin and bone, biting like wild animals, trying to be the most like her. Because there could only be one. And we were similar. Not twins, but everything I loved, she loved too. Sometimes I wonder, what did I miss out on by refusing to enjoy the things my sister did?

I don’t know what I’m saying. Just rambling. I wanted to talk about My Own Private Idaho. I guess it’s a bit of a stretch that she doesn’t like all slow movies. But she needs something to grab her attention and hold onto it the entire time. Which, I guess, I don’t blame her. So when she lets me show her a “slow” movie, I know it’s got to be good, and she thinks it will be, because I love it. My Own Private Idaho was one of the movies I loved so much that I just had to show it to my sister. So we curled up on my bed, and watching the library DVD on the big box TV that we had in our living room in the 2000s, I showed it to her. When I first watched it, I’d seen anything like it. I knew Gus Van Sant from Good Will Hunting, but this was something different. It was almost too personal.

My Criterion dvd copy of My Own Private Idaho is from my sister. She bought it for me after I rewrote the ending of the movie for her, something she requested I do, through tears that had sparked near the end. And so I did. If I wrote it now I’m sure it would be much better, but it satisfied her and it gave her something that movie’s ending had not. I’ve begun to notice that my favourite dvds that I own are all from other people. My very first, Fight Club, from my father, which sparked the collection. The Godfather trilogy, from my grandfather’s collection, because he had two copies. Because they mean something more. Somebody listened to me, looked at me, and realized what I loved. All these thrift store dvds, they mean something, but not like the ones gifted to me. Somebody loved me and wanted me to have something to love.

There’s a scene in My Own Private Idaho where Mike and Scott are in his (Mike’s) brother’s trailer, and Mike and Dick are talking about their mother because this is the one thing they have in common still. They argue and then they’re talking in soft, calm voices. Brothers, still bonded together through a mother. While, obviously, the rest of the scene reveals something that is not at all similar to what my sister and I are, this bit it. We are, above all, daughters, and this is what we will always have in common. The hardship of being a daughter, being a gay daughter, being just like our mother. And we talk. And there’s shouting in the middle. Heavy, loud shouting saying things we’d never say to anyone else. She’s at the top of the stairs and I’m in the living room, lungs burning with our screaming words. And then we’re having lunch. And watching TV. Arguing is our best sport.

Showing My Own Private Idaho to my sister was such an exciting thing for me. I didn’t have to nag her, all I had to do was tell her how much I loved it and she agreed to watch it. It was a movie so close to my heart, and for some reason, even though it wasn’t my movie, it kind of felt like my memories were put on film. The grief of losing a friend, in any manner, was something I was so familar with. It felt like I was letting her get close to me. And I think the same thing happens any time I talk to her about a movie I love. Like when I showed her The Social Network, which she watched just because I love it so much. It feels like, every time she watches something just for me, we get closer. She sees me better. She begins to know me.

I’m growing to love my sister. But sometimes I wish she didn’t exist because she knows me too well. But then again, it’s nice to be known. And it’s nice to show her the movies I love. And I might not like her, but I like watching movies with her.