Brave

I saw Brave today with my daughters.  The trailers really make no mention of this (maybe because they're afraid of scaring off the boys), but the movie really hinges on a mother/daughter relationship.  Imagine that.  In a fairy tale, a real (animated) live mother.  Not a step-mother, not a dead woman, and not a woman who turns up for five minutes at the beginning and the end.

I didn't realize until I was weeping rivers of tears how rare it is.  Sure, you've got your Terms of Endearment and your Freaky Fridays (respect due, of course, to Jodie Foster - and remember when Lindsay Lohan was just the adorable promise of her freckles?), but this most powerful of relationships, the one that we carry around through our entire lives, is almost never portrayed, and sure as hell not in a Disney movie.  It could be that we're all too busy working our way through the thicket of that particular filial forest, I suppose, and it could be the oft-lamented lack of women writing and directing scripts.

I don't know if it meant anything to my girls, to see a mother and daughter going at it and then going for it together, but it really really did to me.

I'm glad that they didn't see my tears, because I'm sure it would have just elicited a groan, a roll of the eyes and an "oh, mo-o-m."  Which is just as it should be.

Lest I should be accused of posting about something relating not at all toward quilting (which was the only way I could really justify writing a blog) I will add that I particularly admired the filmmakers' insertion of the tapestry, and the implication that Elinor's skills were as essential as Merida's abilities as an archer.