On a Film and the INFJ.

I watched the remainder of the film Never Let Me Go earlier, and found myself affected by it in a way that very few films can manage.

 

 

For most of my adult life at least, I’ve been very much an observer of films. I tend to watch them dispassionately – following the camera angles, taking note of the lighting, and looking for loopholes in the script. I rarely engage with them as completely as I did with this one.

The result was that when the film finished I sat in my chair experiencing a frame of mind which I think might best be described as ‘emotional stasis.’ My consciousness seemed to have relocated to some quiet inner space, while the physical world around me turned into a grey, still, silent, almost ghostly facsimile of reality. It lasted for about ten minutes, and that’s rare.

Clearly the film was very well crafted in every detail (I even noticed one or two as it went along), so I was pleased that it won none of those pointless Oscars. It was far too good to fall into that money-obsessed melee. And, equally clearly, all the major characters were portrayed by the actors so seamlessly that their talents became invisible. In short, they became real, which is how it should be in the cinematic version of the craft. And one, of course, stood out:

Carey Mulligan as the leading character and narrator, Kathy H.

I realised later when my brain came back into gear that the secret of her appeal was that she presented the character as a typical INFJ. Being one myself, I was drawn to Kathy H as a moth might be attracted to a bright light. And what’s really interesting is that the younger actress who played Kathy’s child self in the early part of the film (Izzy Meikel-Small) managed the same trick. Somebody, somewhere, is to be congratulated.