this film is entangled with our life in strange (hah) and fascinating ways...we had a Strange-ish trajectory from hardcore "Western science is everything" nerd towards some acceptance of the supernatural and the mystical, though of course it wasn't compressed into two convenient hours.
I wouldn't have even begun to take any of that seriously if I weren't profoundly unhappy and lost. my brittle and simplistic understandings of the world were shattered, and I was therefore willing to leap for impossibilities. but I've found myself thinking about that paradox—the fact that gods and magic look like an answer only when one has no other answers.
it's easy to laugh at Christians so desperate for a world of miracles that they find them everywhere, in splotches of paint and fortunate business deals and humiliations of enemies. but I have done similarly; I have looked for omens and hopeful signs in trivial things. people grab for these things because otherwise they feel helpless, in a world that's failed them.
I have told myself that I wanted a world alive with magic; and now I ask myself, would magic be needed in a world that was happy and harmonious? do miracles even happen without the need to counterbalance great misery?
~Chara
