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Grey Gardens, Directed by Albert and David Maysles
Portrait Films, February 19, 1976 (US)
Starring: Edith (Big Edie) Bouvier Beale and Edith (Little Edie) Bouvier Beale
We’re stuck, trapped in an endless state of imaginary transition.
Edith (Little Edie) Bouvier Beale: I think my days at Grey Gardens are limited.
We float in the current, stuck in a now that never is.
Little Edie: It’s very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present. You know what I mean? It’s awfully difficult.
Old pictures that we stumble upon (search for) are vanity’s cruelest daggers. We refuse their subliminal accusations that suggest our best days are behind us. We are forever young. The same youth that is locked eternally in pictures is locked inside of us as well.
Little Edie: Do you think I’m gonna look funny dancing?
Albert and David Maysles: No.…
Little Edie: I do terrific dances!
Stuck. Decrepit and dilapidated like dirty, rotted old driftwood on the banks of an unforgiving sea, we wait to float back out with the tide.
Little Edie: I can’t stand being in this house. In the first place, it makes me terribly nervous. I’m scared to death of doors, locks, people roaming around in the background, under the trees, in the bushes, I’m absolutely terrified.
The intimacy is painfully absolute. And as crazy as it gets (and it gets) the strangest sensation is not of a voyeuristic bent but instead that we can see ourselves inside the disrepair. We are the dirty walls, the cracks in the floorboards, the raccoons in the attic. We all have our own our own delusions, our own Grey Gardens. We are drawn to the same shores where we stand at the brink as conquering heroes (in our heads). We taunt the sea that has not yet claimed us.
Little Edie: He might as well leave right now, ’cause he’s never gonna get it. So that’s it.
Edith (Big Edie) Bouvier Beale: Get what? Sex with you?
Little Edie: What he’s after!
Big Edie: He doesn’t want any sex with you.
Little Edie: That’s all they’re after.
Big Edie: An old person like you?
Little Edie: That’s all they’re after. So why don’t you tell him right now? You should tell him right now so I’m not bothered by him.
The pages turn. When did we stop living in summer? When did we start loving the fall? Things are dying all around us.
Big Edie: Will you shut up? It’s a goddamn beautiful day, shut up!
We sing and dance to bring the pictures back to life, to bring back the summer vacations where we swam forever in a moment, our moment, diving from houseboat roofs straight up into the Kentucky sky before falling back down into the cool receiving hands of Lake Cumberland.
-G
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