Goodbye, Terence Davies (1945-2023)
A moment ago, I knew exactly what I wanted to say to you. I have run through this letter in my mind so very often and I wanted to compose something eloquent, but the words just don't seem to be there.
So mused Hester Collyer in The Deep Blue Sea, and so I felt this past week, trying to articulate a fitting farewell to Terence Davies and failing to do so, over and over again. Words don't seem enough to describe what the filmmaker meant to me. Suddenly, my limitations as a writer became obvious, heavy on the soul, almost accusatory, for I can't seem to express what cinema lost on October 7th, 2023. It feels too big a calamity to encompass within a measly obituary. At the same time, this bruisedness that conquers me seems foolish, one of those idiocies of celebrity culture. How can I not feel silly for this grief over someone I've never met and will never meet? How can I worry about this considering everything else going on in the world? I don't know, yet I do.
Eloquence and intelligence, sensibility and sense have slipped from my grasp, so vulnerability might have to be the last resource available to confront this text, clumsy as it might seem. At my wit's end, it's all that's left…