Diary of a Separation
Saturday 31st March 2018
I went to a members’ screening of “Force Majeure” at the ICA today. I had missed the movie first time around. Although billed as a comedy there was enough drama in it to make it a metaphor for my current relationship woes.
Thomas’s display of cowardice in the face of an act of God could be likened to my lack of agency and urgency in my marriage. My subsequent denial and self-denial mirror Thomas’s slow (ever so painfully slow) realisation that he is not the model husband he believes he is. In addition he comes to the sad conclusion that “gaslighting” his wife will not improve their situation. On the contrary, his behaviour contributes to the partnership’s breakdown. Whilst the ending of the movie offers some kind of hope, the reality is that the back spine supporting the couple’s emotional, physical, mental and spiritual infrastructure has become an amorphous, unrecognisable mass, neither vertebrate, nor invertebrate; in fact it has become nothing at all.
