Insecurity

Our son-in-law showed us a montage/meditation around the film trope of an actor looking into a mirror, enjoying the childhood delight of an image doing exactly what you do. The twist, of course, is that in the magic room of the cinema, the reflection breaks the rules: taking on a life, a reality, of its own. From there, the development may be comedy, suspense, horror, sci-fi, surrealism etc. 

He has produced this as part of his work for a PhD. Quite aside from its thought-provoking content, we were astonished by just how many instances of the same core idea he was able to harvest from film history 

Interestingly, we also watched the BBC documentary by the acclaimed actor, David Harewood, about his experience of severe psychosis in his 20s (highly recommended). He describes sitting for hours staring at himself in the mirror, entirely convinced that the reflection was a separate entity that would - if he watched it for long enough - give itself away by moving independently. I wonder if his unconscious mind was influenced by films he had seen or, more likely, that core idea is born in all of us at some pre-verbal moment when we are first shown our reflection. That kind of sub-conscious memory is the elixir of powerful movie-making

A movie-image flashed into my mind as we took the baby-carriage to the J M W Turner view of Sheffield. Even to get here involves a steep descent, and it is still a long way to the bottom. "I'm sure he could create a similar study of runaway baby-carriages in film", I thought. But of course his ideas are original and mine have been done before. I'm glad that my memory of the famous scene being Battleship Potemkin was validated

I wonder if anyone has thought about marketing a safety line for catastrophising grandparents - something that would ensure that, even should I trip, black out or choose a bad moment for that heart-attack, I would at least be a sheet-anchor to prevent a bigger drama. MrsM held the side of the handle