In pre-pandemic New York, I went out, a lot: the Met Opera, Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway, live jazz, Carnegie Hall, New York Philharmonic, museums, gallery openings, readings, talks, talks about readings. A few years ago, I attended the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s screening and discussion of “Let the Sun Shine In,” starring Juliette Binoche who would be in attendance for the talk. Although the film was likely fine because it was fashionably French and set in Paris, it apparently did not leave any indelible mark on me because I can’t remember anything else about the movie. But what I can remember is what happened after the screening, during the Q and A. After a slew of painfully long and monotonous audience questions and monologues that had no point, no matter how intently you waited for one, I gingerly raised, then quickly lowered my hand. “I want to say something,” I kept whispering to the person I was with who kept responding, “Go ahead.” This went on for about 2 minutes of “shushes” from our seatmates. Perhaps it was his encouragement or my courage after hearing so many irrelevant comments. I continued to waiver with the hand up and down until the hand that was affixed to an arm belonging to the “the lady with the dark hair,” was identified by the moderator. No escape. So I arose from my seat and did it. I confessed to Juliette Binoche and over a hundred other people in the theater that years ago, I had suffered from a broken heart, went to see “The English Patient,” and cut off my hair as her character had done in the movie. This amused Binoche, the moderator, and the audience (see video clip of the amused). In “The English Patient,” Binoche’s character, Hana mourns for a man she had loved and lost to war. I can’t remember the name of the person I was mourning for when I cut off my hair, or if I was in mourning at all. After a year of Covid losses of life, health, and lifestyle, I can now say, no, that wasn’t mourning, especially as I can’t remember a name. Is this the result of brain fog or an indication of a series of unremarkable semi-romantic episodes? I don’t think my transformation was as dramatic as Hana’s. Maybe it was just time for a new look.
Why has that moment at the Walter Reade Theater returned to me now? I admire and appreciate Claire Denis’s film canon, as well as Juliette Binoche’s work in French and English, but I can’t remember much of the film I saw that night. Was that evening a statement on what constitutes mourning? Or a desire to return to the packed movie houses on the Upper West Side for post-screening talks with admired actors? Or maybe that night is a reminder of what I was, “the lady with the dark hair”. I still have dark hair, so what’s changed? What’s changed since the 20-something-year old who cut her hair off after seeing “The English Patient”? Better choices, I hope. Wisdom, I hope for even more. Or perhaps a more profound sense of mourning for what we have lost this year. Heartache is real. I won’t diminish the pain people endure following a breakup. Is this another breakup, not with a person, but with a life I knew and lived? If so, would that be so terrible? I don’t think so.