A Bitter Taste of Freedom - Movie Review

“I feel responsible for what my country does,” said Anna Politkovskaya in footage brilliantly captured by Marina Goldovskaya, and that statement tells us, in a nutshell, who this incredible woman was. Despite popular belief, she was not a soldier, an “iron lady,” or a martyr; she was an ordinary woman who was exposed to an extraordinary reality, and she knew she could not keep it to herself.

A Bitter Taste of Freedom follows Politkovskaya’s life, with footage spanning from the early years of her marriage up to the building of her career as an investigative journalist revealing the tragic truths of the Chechen war. Her courage and fearlessness came at a price, though, and at age 48, she was assassinated. She left behind her two children and her first grandchild, also named Anna, who was born only 5 months after her assassination.

Interwoven throughout the film is footage of war-ridden civilians in Chechnya—mostly women—mourning and crying over the bodies of their family members. The heartbreaking reality becomes strikingly clear: these people’s stories and troubles have been ignored and, without Politkovskaya, they would have remained so. She had a duty to these people that was bigger than fear; as one of her friends says, “She kept coming there because she felt needed.”

Goldovskaya’s film is not only a tribute to Anna Politkovskaya, but also serves as a messenger that carries on the work she did, which is still unknown to many people around the world. The film proves that Politkovskaya was not silenced with her death; her work was far too important, and hopefully her courage will inspire others to keep reporting the truth and taking a stand for peace.

What Goldovskaya captures beautifully is Politkovskaya’s spirit and passion. People who criticized her writing for being too emotional, I think, will be shamed when they see this film. She was a genuine, glowing presence, responding to a vocation she did not ask for but could not turn away from, reporting courageously on what most journalists would never dare to touch.

What we learn through this film is that Anna Politkovskaya, a woman who saw and reported on countless deaths and the vileness that exists in human beings, was a woman full of life. Her passion for life, I believe, is what drove her to fight for it. A Bitter Taste of Freedom, in taking us through her journey, pays homage to that which Politkovskaya fought and died for: truth, peace, and freedom.  

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A Bitter Taste of Freedom will be screened at the IFC center in New York, August 19^th- August 25^th. Visit their facebook page for upcoming screenings, as well as links to the trailer and interviews with Marina Goldovskaya.

...On Directing WEIGHT

The day of a show usually goes like this:

Wake up, the first few seconds are normal, and then there is a sudden, sharp realization: I am performing tonight!

Excitement is followed by extreme panic. 

For the next two minutes I wonder if it's too late to leave the country.

It is.

And then I remember: I love doing this. No, love doesn't cover it. I am obsessed with it. If someone said: Here's a theatre, but you can't leave it for the rest of your life, you have to be here every day, and for many days in a row you might not see the light of day, but you will create theatre with integrity, love, and purpose; I would say, Lock me up. Tie me down. There is nothing else I'd rather do with my life. 

I have been doing this since I was four years old; performing, creating shows, making other people do what I want, making other people watch what I've created, and seeking, always seeking, an opportunity to bring a character to life. I am not a story-teller, I am a story-liver (as in, life liver, not body organ liver). Even when I tell my cousin's daughters a story, I do it as if I were acting out a play, taking on the character's voices and acting out all the actions. I usually end up a sweaty mess and, if the intention was ever to put the child to sleep, I fail at it miserably. They are as wound up as ever by the time I am done, because I am most alive when I am acting, and life is contagious. They love it. They need it. We all do. We all need stories to be lived in front of us; we ache for that exposure of the human heart.

Tonight the play I directed opens. How is directing different than performing? Multiply the above experiences by a thousand. And then put on the pressure to be the one who is calm, in control, patient, and knowledgeable.

WEIGHT was written by my soul sister, Kerri Campbell Evans. She showed it to me one day, and I had a vision. We looked at each other, and it was done: I'd be directing WEIGHT.

I have directed things here and there since I was a child; it's easy for me because, as my brother and cousins can attest, I like telling people what to do. But I have hesitated to call myself a director. I am so madly in love with being on stage, with communicating a character's soul to a live audience, that I often wonder if directing can be as fulfilling.

What I've learned is that it's fulfilling in an entirely different way. This play was important to me; I fell in love with the characters and felt a need to tell their stories. I saw my role: I would be the one creating the environment for my actors to bring their characters to life. I would give them what they needed, whether they knew that they needed it or not, in order to rise to their character's worlds.

In this life of odd day jobs here and there, I discovered two jobs outside of the theatrical business that I was suited for: teaching and tour guiding. So it made sense that I would fit right into my director's chair. I see the potential in people and then I make it my mission to guide them towards it. Because I know first-hand what that "a-ha!" moment feels like for an actor- the moment when the character clicks, when you understand something that could only be understood by living through it, when you feel with absolute certainty that there is a force much higher than yourself that takes you to this place of raw truth- because I know that this is what we live for, I have found it incredibly fulfilling to be part of the process that takes them there.

I am a mother tonight, watching my baby take its first step, speak its first word, and look out into the world for the first time, knowing that it is theirs.

I am so proud of my girls, and I am so excited to see our play, which we rehearsed in living rooms and pieced together bit by bit over the course of four months, being given to others tonight. That is the final step- giving the creation over. No matter how many times I do this, I will always feel the butterflies in my stomach. Like the early stages of falling in love, I cannot help but let excitement clash with nervousness, and hope that my heart's desire to love will be met with another open, willing heart.

Send your positive energy to our beautiful play and, if you're around, come support our magical journey.


WEIGHT opens tonight at the Strawberry One-Act Festival.
Hudson Guild Theater
441 W. 26th St. (btw 9th and 10th aves)
7:00pm

My Truth about My Lies

The first time I got really sick at school and had to be sent home I was in the second grade. I had a fever and got dismissed from school, which at first made me sad, until I got home and it turned out that being sick meant I could stay in bed all day watching cartoons with my mom by my side, who took care of me and gave me her full undivided attention. I registered that experience as feeling special. As soon as I returned to school the next day, healthier, I felt a deep desire to go back in time so I could have that feeling again. Since I couldn't go back in time, I figured out that I might be able to re-create that experience by being sick again. But I wasn't sick anymore, and I didn't know how to get sick. It took some planning, but a few weeks later, I went to my teacher and told her I had a stomach ache, the only illness I came up with that I could "fake". I was lying. It was the first time I ever lied to my teacher, and it may have been the first time I ever consciously lied to anyone. I was one of the best students in the class, so she didn't question me for a moment. She sent me to the nurse. The nurse, however, was used to children who wanted to go home to their mothers for the day, and told me I was fine. I could have given up then, but I was longing so desperately for that feeling of special again that I was willing to risk my credibility and reputation as an exemplary student. I went back to my teacher and told her the nurse didn't think I was sick but I still felt sick. My teacher actually got mad at the nurse, telling her that of all her students, I was the one who would never ever make up such a thing, and if I was claiming to be ill, it's because I was. I got sent home, and my teacher personally called my mom to tell her the story and to defend my honor. I had never lied to my mom either, so she believed the whole story. She actually seemed proud of me, proud of the fact that I was such a good, honest student that my teacher would take my word over the nurse's. I was put in bed and she sat beside me. All had worked out according to the plan. But the feeling of special wasn't as strong this time. There were new, overpowering feelings surfacing. I felt like a bad girl for lying, then I felt somewhat powerful for getting away with it, and then I felt endlessly scared that someone would find out I had lied. I had gotten what I wanted, a day in bed with cartoons and my mom at my side the whole time, but it didn't feel the same as the first time, when it was all genuine. Something had been accomplished, and something had been lost, though I couldn't quite figure out what those things were. However, I learned an important, very adult-like lesson: If other people think you're an honest person, you can get away with anything.

I would use that lesson to my benefit over and over again. It became one of the primary masks I would take on: The Honest Person Mask. I mastered the line, "How can you not believe me? Have I ever lied to you?" It would embed itself so deeply into my persona that when asked what one of my best qualities was during interviews I would automatically reply, "People always tell me I'm a very honest person."

Of course lying never felt completely "good". It was a way to survive. Since I couldn't simply demand things like, "I want to stay home with mom today instead of going to school and I want to be the center of her world", or- later- "I want to kiss other boys and not have to tell my boyfriend about it," and "I want to go to a rave without my parents knowing so I won't get in trouble," I had to come up with ways to get what I wanted, and those ways often involved, at the very least, some concealing of the truth. And, for the most part, there were never any major consequences either, other than internal ones that I wasn't mature enough to understand.

Then, one day, something new happened. I was in mid-conversation with a friend, talking about a guy I'd been involved with for a year, saying something along the lines of, "And he loves me. I know he does. Even though he doesn't say it," when my friend said, "Larissa. Stop it. Stop lying to yourself. You've been lying to yourself for a year. He doesn't love you. He doesn't want to be with you. You're going to waste your life telling yourself this lie." I was shocked. I hadn't noticed that I had gotten so good at lying that I had managed to lie, in a massive way, to myself. I wanted to be in a committed loving relationship with that guy, and since that wasn't the reality of the situation, I had thwarted the truth to fit my fantasies, and, as my friend pointed out, ended up wasting a year of my life with my own dishonesty.

Now, I know that women do that a lot. Women create whole relationships that never exist and deny mountains of feelings in order to believe they have something with someone when they actually don't, all because, well, we want to be loved and chosen. Blah blah blah. I'm not trying to say my experience was particularly unique, but it was a new realization for me at that time. I hadn't known the power I had to mess with the truth so that it suited what I wanted, nor had I ever been present to its real consequences in my life. It was as though at that moment, with my friend's words, I became aware of how little control I had over my ability to lie. Since it had become a way to get what I wanted, I hadn't really realized that I actually wasn't getting what I wanted, I was just making the circumstances look like what I wanted. When I lied to my teacher and the school nurse and my mom and pretended to be sick, I did get sent home, but I was seeking my mother's concern and attention, which were granted, but not to me- deep down I knew I was healthy, and so my mother's attention was actually being given to the lie I had portrayed, and that's why the experience didn't fulfill me. It looked like what I had wanted it to look like, so I figured it must be what I wanted it to be. But it wasn't. No matter how we set it up, even a lie that looks identical to the truth is not the truth.

It's like when you look at certain couples that are supposedly happily married. They live in a nice house, they have matching furniture, they have pictures on the walls where they're smiling, they have their set of activities and routines that they do together, etc., but something feels off. And it often is. They are playing house, acting out their parts, for whatever reasons (societal pressure or an unexpected pregnancy are popular ones), and so it all looks exactly like what happiness and matrimonial harmony tend to look like. But it's a lie, and everyone can feel it. And these lies are made of glass, it takes a lot of effort and specific organizing to keep it together, but one strong push and it will all shatter. Thus modern time's divorce rates.

As we say in Portuguese, "A lie has short legs," meaning it won't run very far, it will eventually get tired. I go so far as to say I think there are no inconsequential lies. No matter how it's justified or who it's protecting, it will do some kind of damage somewhere along the line, and it will never feel completely "good". A lie actually takes up space in our hearts and bodies, because we must then live with our knowledge that we have deceived someone, whereas the truth creates space. When I was telling myself that the aforementioned guy was in love with me and we were in a real committed relationship, I was carrying a lie in my heart, and it took a lot of effort and concentration to maintain it. As soon as I let go of it and told myself the truth, I had to deal with the pain, of course, but there was suddenly new space in my life- space for a truthful relationship. The simplicity of it surprised me- all the time that I was spending pretending that this guy loved me was time I could be spending with someone or in search of someone who actually would love me.

Of course, there's one dirty detail. The truth can be lonely. Once I chose to live by it, I broke up with that guy, and then I was single. I had no one to pretend to be with, which meant I had no one to be with. I was actually single for two years after that. And I'm not gonna lie (hah), it was lonely and it was hard. But you know what? Being with someone who didn't actually love me was also lonely and hard, and it was coming at a high cost. The payoff of honesty turned out to be the removal of inauthentic set-ups in my life that I had created in order to hide the empty space beneath it. I'll tell you what, though: that empty space, although sometimes lonely and hard, is real, and doesn't go away when we cover it up with lies. The only way to build upon that space in a way that creates more space is by living in truth and honesty. That is how we learn. That is how we grow. That is how we not only look alive, but feel alive, and our lives start to belong to us, rather than to our lies.

"The truth shall set you free."