Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

Before I get to what I think about "Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You", I have gotta point out something that really irritates me. In the IMDb summary, it talks about 'James as he works through his life at the therapy sessions'. These are NOT therapy sessions and as a trained psychotherapist, it irritates me when untrained folks do what they call 'therapy'. A life coach is NOT a therapist. Now I am not against life coaches--if you want one, fine. But in this movie a seriously depressed and suicidal young man goes to a life coach instead of seeking appropriate mental health treatment--and the life coach was WAY over her head and very unprofessional for ignoring this. Badly written and a bit irresponsible if you ask me.

As for the movie itself, this film reminds me of a couple other Marcia Gay Harden films I've seen lately--wonderfully acted yet with a script that seems incomplete or at least in need of a re-write. Now this does NOT mean I didn't like the film--it was worth it overall--even with its flaws (such as an ill-defined plot and an ending that seemed ridiculously simplistic). The acting and characters were that good. In particular, Toby Regbo (who is credited very low in the cast even though he's CLEARLY the lead) did a great job with the part he was given. Interesting and involving but the parts don't exactly work together to form a pleasing whole. See the film and see what you think.

This film was fantastic. I have almost nothing in common with the main character, but I somehow managed to connect with him in multiple ways. He embodies the tortured teen spirit that comes inevitably with an unstable home environment, and his confusion is expertly depicted through the film's witty dialogue and realistic nature. I also thoroughly enjoyed Aubrey Plaza's character; she was charming as usual and played the part very well. The cast was very well chosen and had great chemistry - each individual actor is clearly talented but when put together they are a force. I have only good things to say about this movie!

James Cameron's story SOMEDAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO YOU is coming of age tale that is, at turns, funny, sad, tender, and sophisticated. As adapted for the screen by director Roberto Faenza with Cameron and Dahlia Heyman this becomes an experimental film that will delight many and confuse some. The cast is excellent and once the audience moves into the rhythm of the narrated story it is difficult not to re-live youth and pull for the lad whose story this is.

James Sveck (Toby Regbo) is a lonely young teenager who is tortured by his grossly unstable home environment and is fraught with hating people, suicidal thoughts, depression, and the preference for solitude. It is the summer before he goes off to college at Brown University and he is conflicted: his vain Lothario father (Peter Gallagher) insists that he go to college, his gallery owner mother (Marcia Gay Harden) has just returned form Las Vegas and her third failed marriage - this time to a compulsive gambler (Stephen Lang); his sister Gillian (Deborah Ann Woll) is writing her memoir and falling for an older married Polish professor; and James is working with his mother's gallery director (O'Ryan Graves), trying to make since of art, people, relationships and the chaos of the world that confuses him - the last thing he wants is to enter the college world. His mother lines him up with a Life Coach (Lucy Liu) and slowly James begins to come to grips with a past bad memory and to learn to accept who he is as someone worth living. James only loving connection to the world is his grandmother (Ellen Burstyn) and from her he learns a lot about the vagaries of life and how to cope. The story is told in the first person narration which helps give an intimate inside view of James as he works through his life at the therapy sessions which his parents insist he attend and it is in this manner that we learn about James's past and present through the stories he tells and his recounting of previous therapy sessions and the ambivalences and uncertainties of adolescence.

The film manages to balance teenage angst and relationship failures with an equal amount of drama and comedy. This is one of those films that linger in memory long after the final credits.

Grady Harp

To all of those people out there commenting on how bad the acting was or how poorly the script was written or how there was no plot to the movie. You. Are. Wrong. As someone who read, and absolutely loved, the book I would like to say how much it meant to me that someone else enjoyed this book enough to craft it into a movie. When I first found this piece I was incredibly moved by it. Having gone through trials and tribulations as James had, finding someone out there, even fictional, who had experiences similar to my own was a godsend. I'd been there. I knew the pain of not belonging and the pressure to do so. I'd had those same hopeless thoughts. This book, if not saved than severely changed my life. So to all of you ragging on this movie because of its "flaws", you don't understand the message behind it, and I feel extremely sorry for you.

Solitude desolate me; company oppresses me.

--Fernando Pessoa

a kind of lonely, all people is just a shadow of nouns, a dispensable example setence. People occupied father, mother, friends these identify pronoun, and unable to sense anyone, expect the "I" that start every sentence, but others can't feel that "I" as well.

I used to dislike this book name, "if have to need torments and pains to be a 'better' people, then i don't want. I'm not tough enough or have any patience." The Sorrows of Young Werther, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, in China it's translated to "the worries of young Werther"the word Leiden to angst, worries, isn't that a cruel translaion? Werthers is dead after all. It's pain, torments. And this book, tha word "pain" is more like teen angst, not too deep.

Now i feel the book name is a kind wish to James, James at seventeen is safe, he is like Marcel in In Search of Lost Time(À la recherche du temps perdu), the first half part, the pain is not done yet, bitter is his own, no objects, no responds.

But a talk between James and mother: "She turned away from the window. "I'll warp you. I'll pass all my bitterness and skepticism on to you, and you won't believe in love."

"I already don't believe in love."

"Of course you don't. How could you? You've never been in love. Or have you? Have I missed something?"

"No," I said.

"You will," she said.

"No I won't," I said.

She put her two hands on my shoulders and bent down and kissed my cheek. "You're too sweet not to fall in love. I know how sweet you are. Maybe better than anyone."

"I'm not sweet," I said."

maybe someday James would feel like Marcel that the force that circles the earth the most times in a second is not electricity, but pain. But at seventeen, he's safe.

And like the book of disquiet of Pessoa, "Because I see these people so often, they become a part of my life", for James and Holdon from the catcher in the rye, that's their solitude. People dosen't matter occupy their thoughts,

the most common between James and Holden, that their every setences start with "i don't like", but they do want to love something, just not yet.

The passion for writing this, the setence come out frist, "if you think you're another James in this world and dont have any friend, let's be friends." several years ago i frist time read this book, i surprise for i read it just as i read my own written book, and now reading Pessoa is the same feeling, marked every sentences, i wrote "James thinks people in books are real, but he didn't know me." but me in present, aware of the thought to be friends with him is a offence. We'll dislike each other after all, our life is made of reflexive verbs.

This book at the end become my blood, my anaesthetic like Pessoa's words, nothing more. And make me know my life is just a unwritten novel, i dont have to write anything.

I translated this movie, and part of the novel to Chinese. If you want, not need... i dont want to publish my translation, paper books should be sweep to garbage, and it requiring times and effort, money.

And me, "my life is not interesting", read the novel is better to know me. If someone is interesting, i'll despise him, and i dont know why i coulnt accept anyone's kindness, but heart is still revealing.

The original texts is Chinese, i translated it to English, im not good at English Writing, and i don't need to.