Saturday, June 27, 2009

Fugitive Pieces

The film Fugitive Pieces had many powerful images and scenes that reminded me of events that have happened in my life, whether they were directly related to what was going on in the scene or not. One of the most powerful scenes that brought on vivid memories for me was the scene where the child has to hide in a crawl space in the wall so that he can avoid his captors. This brought me back to a day that I had not remembered until viewing the film. I recall being a young child and my Dad showing me the current houses he was building. One of the houses was a huge mansion and it was all very exciting to see. The person that was having the house built was obviously wealthy, and until I saw one part of the house it all seemed like a dream I would love to live one day. I had hesitations when he showed me a secret, tiny room that he had installed in between the rooms of the two children. It was a room that could be locked from the inside, and was joining the two closets of the rooms together. I asked my Dad what it was for and he had to explain to me that with wealth and popularity would sometimes come enemies. There might be some people out there who would take the children in an attempt to make money from a ransom. The crawl space I was playing in quickly became unappealing and I wanted to get out of it as fast as possible. This was the first time that I was really faced with greed and with crime and the serious events in the world that we sometimes have to deal with. I attempted to imagine what it would be like to have to run into the crawl space to avoid capture, and to not know what was happening to my family while I was inside of that tiny room. Unfortunately for the child in the movie, he was still able to see and was forced to witness his fathers murder and his family’s abduction. When I saw that part, I did not know which would be better; the curiosity of not knowing and being spared from witnessing something terrible, or being able to see what was happening with the possibility of viewing a horrific scene that would stay with you for the rest of your life?

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