Sliding Doors

It has finally happened. I have had my first falling asleep experience with the "ZYX Movie Project." I was watching one of my favorite movies of all time Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow  one minute and the next I was watching the opening credits repeat themselves. I was so surprised! 

But thankfully for all of us I have seen this movie quite a few times so I am able to write this post anyway. Sliding Doors is one of those switch-on-a-switch, what-if-this-happens type movies. It starts with Helen, our main character played by Paltrow, in a situation where she might make it to her train or she might not. We then see the movie in two different story lines, one where she does make the train and the other where she does not. Thankfully for us viewers, one of the Helen's gets her hair cut and dyed so it is easy to keep them apart. This story is about Helen who did not make the Tube and her cheating boyfriend Jerry and Helen who did make the Tube and her friend James. 

It is a great story about love and friendship and with even better accents. James is Scottish and he says some great things. For starters he tells a story about his childhood girlfriend leaving him for Gary Glitter and that is pretty funny. He also quotes Monty Python and I love that stuff! The best part about the character James is that he gives you a lot of confidence that really wonderful men fall in love with really wonderful women. The end is a bit sad, but it all works out in the last few minutes so you are not sad for long.

When I was thinking about RA programming with this movie I thought a lot about healthy relationships. There are a lot of films that highlight healthy relationships, but this one gives you an example of a healthy one right beside the story line with an unhealthy one. You can even take some of the conversations between Jerry and Helen and talk about language used to illustrate some of those characteristics of healthy vs unhealthy. Watching that film while jotting down some of the things that are noticeable about each couple and how watching their interactions makes the viewer feel would be a killer program. 

It is funny to reread these posts about RA programming and think about how much I would like to attend these programs myself. I wish I could rewind and do nothing but RA programming all day long. But without that crazy time consumer class to get in the way. Oh and I really do not want to be 18-22 years old anymore either. Ok, so maybe I do not want to go back. So I hope that some of these RAs invite me to their programs this year so I can experience it from this age. Sigh, I really am a reslifer for life.