Coraline

put this on because it finally feels like almost-october and i wanted the right kind of spooky. did not expect it to quietly take me apart. coraline moves into a house where her parents are always too busy to look up. everyone gets her name wrong. she says things out loud and they land in the space where a person should be. i have been that girl at the dinner table. i have said something twice and then decided it wasn't worth saying a third time. then the other mother appears and she notices everything. cooks her favorite food, sews a whole world around her, looks straight at her and listens. and coraline almost takes the deal, because being seen feels that good, even when the eyes offering it are buttons. that part sat in my chest for the rest of the night. attention is not the same as love. the people who actually love you are usually tired and distracted and doing their best in a kitchen that smells like nothing, and that is still the real thing. the ending, when she plants the garden with everyone and they finally say her name right, made me cry in a way i did not expect from a stop-motion movie about a little door in the wall. i think i needed to hear that being invisible for a while is not the same as being unloved. five stars and a lot of feelings.

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