2017 Oscar Nomination Favorites

I am always so impressed by Natalie Portman's talent as an actress. I think I feel even more impressed with her because I knew her as a little girl. Natalie was a fellow camper at an The Stagedoor Manor acting sleep away camp in the Catskill and performed together with my Lindsay. I remember sitting in the audience with Natalie's parents, watching the young girls perform, it is always striking when young kids grow up to be terrific actors and actresses.

 

When I saw Natalie in Jackie, I was blown away by how she literally gets into the skin of Jackie Kennedy. I was also just completely taken by the film Jackie because it not only took you back to a time in history, a time that everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing the moment when Kennedy was assassination, but it also gives you an inside look at President Kennedy's death from his wife's perspective. We all knew it must have been emotionally tortorous for Jackie, but you never got the inside look of what it was like for her to not only witness, but to hold her husband's head as he died. Not only was he gone, but her life as she knew it was gone— Jackie literally had to move out of her home, the White House, with her kids. Where were they going to go? What where they going to do? She literally shared the same thoughts that any one of us would be feeling but for some reason, just because she was in the White House, we assumed she never had to deal with it and her grieving was somehow different. But she did. And I never thought about it until I watched this movie. 

 

This is a heavy movie. What you are seeing is a slice of what live has been like in America for so many of the African American community, where they ask do I even dare to dream big? Do I even dare to hope for something great to come from this life? As life gets in the way due to alcohol, drugs, gangs, and arrests the chance to succeed has been robbed. The time they get to actualize their dream was taken away while in prison. I'm glad I saw it because it offered a different perspective on opportunity. I was fueled with compassion and shared frustration.