mettled

The 24th Day was important to me because it dealt with issues personal to my own experience like no other film has. This movie is sort of like "Death and The Maiden" for the AIDS era. Up until now AIDS in films have mostly followed a formula of coping with illness or portrait of gay issues. The 24th Day is more complicated than that because it discusses notions of justice and truth as well as revenge and denial. Laws regarding infection are still sketchy in this day and age. What if someone knowingly infected you with an incurable disease but the law wouldn't pursue him? What would you do? What about other lies, deceptions, manipulations people cast about themselves? If someone lies, they will not go to jail. But what if their lie was fundamental to your health? Or the health of your loved ones? 24th Day acknowledges that we are responsible for ourselves, that we have to hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes. No doubt about that. But it calls in to question the fragility of our social web wherein we need to trust others in order to go on living, and yet that trust makes us vulnerable. The movie could translate to many other spheres, like politics or religion, wherein the denials we live with can have devastating repercussions we'd rather not face.

I wish the USA had a director like Mike Leigh. His movies are amazing. "Secrets & Lies" traces the pain we often hold inside along with our secrets and the catharsis that can come by revealing them. Lives of quiet desperation within a family gradually find healing in this movie about adoption, children and the walls we build around ourselves for protection. There is a poignant metaphor in the brother Morris' career as a photographer, as his subjects attempt to cover the stories in their faces long enough to smile for the camera. This is an intense movie but it is not without beauty and hope.