The movie we watched today made me think primarily about how one connects to the world if they are isolated from the outside portion of it, at least to a degree.
I think the main thing I learned from the film is the sense of identity they portrayed. It wasn't one that a person would covet, they live in poverty, but how content they are living how they do. They have no interest in "normal" jobs, filing taxes, making more money, etc. Their identity is almost like they don't have one. The lot of us are known by our names and the corresponding numbers (social security, driver's license), I mean you have someone steal these and you've got identity theft - oddly enough, Bo does this, without haven't any real knowledge of what they even are, and buys a boat. I'm sure she doesn't understand the repercussion of that, but that's part of her world. She primarily creates a fictional world around her. She has, what I think is a circus, that she holds in the middle of the night, she draws pictures, reads books or is read books. The world as she knows it is pretty much made up in her head.
They have no frivolous luxuries, they enjoy nothing but gardening naked and fishing. Half the things we would probably freak out about (only getting $300 a month) they act like it's no big deal. They manage, and happily so.
I believe that's why Will falls in love with the place and Arlene. We all pretty much do what someone else wants us to do. We have to become an employee and sacrifice our own freedom to pay for a meticulously crafted creation of freedom - money is freedom. However, as the old adage goes, you can't buy happiness. Will has a law degree, becomes an IRS agent, moves around, yet is still unhappy is his life. Bo considers him a well traveled man, whereas he considers himself stuck. He eventually takes on a similar life to Bo, in retrospect. He wants to become part of the outside world they've created, live by little to no means. And like Bo, he begins to create. This fuels his life in ways that being part of a regular world couldn't do for him, and the life he creates in the following 8 years before his death.
It's similar in ways to Henry Darger. He had a job and relation to the world around him, but was predominantly a recluse. He spent his spare time doing nothing but creating. He wrote the worlds longest book and with no formal training, just his own will to create. Creation is made by yourself and you don't need a lot to have it come to fruition.
In the case of the Groden family and Darger, they had no real "identities" in ways that we coin identity. They were humans with personalities, thus making an identity, but not much else. They would be, and in Dargers case is, devastatingly unknown. People don't know much about them until they discover the world they created away from the world that is manufactured to us.
The use of depression in the movie was an example of people trying to find an identity I think. Charley wasn't sure what his problem was, but I truly think it was because he lost his sense of self. He was forgetting who he was and why he was here. I believe this because he told George not to let him go. Obviously they all thought he wouldn't kill himself, they said so, but why did he say "don't let me go?" I think it's because George knows him, probably better than his own family, and understands the fiber of his being. George is the last connection to that being. He hears Will talk about his life and his depression and eventually snaps out of it, I believe this to have happened because he hasn't lost anything or who he was, who he was is a father and a husband and that's all he had to be.
In a similar fashion to Will, I envied the Groden family to an extent. I'm fully honest about the fact that I believe solitude is a luxury. I think being on my own and thinking to myself helps me stop and think clearly without a mess around me. I would really love to live out in the middle of nowhere in most people's eyes. Although, they lived in the desert and I would much rather live in the woods, the shear since of aloneness is what I would want. However, unlike them, I'd have to have a job because I'd really need electricity and the internet, I am a kid of this generation. But I like to be alone. It's when I do some of my best work. Either then, or with my closest friends. I've always said I didn't need much space wise. I just need a space to create and think.
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