Feb 17 2008
Heavenly Creatures
This started out being a movie review of Heavenly Creatures, which i have wanted to watch for a long time because it was directed by Peter Jackson. (He also did Lord of the Rings.) But, it has morphed into something else. A tale from my own childhood also follows.
Going into it, i didn’t know what the movie was about, although i did have a vague notion that it contained lesbians. And i associate Peter Jackson with fantasy. So i thought it would be some combination of those two concepts.
Heavenly Creatures is about two girls and their close relationship. Sexual intimacy between them was insinuated, but there was nothing graphic. And there was fantasy, but nothing sexual. The fantasy was the fantasy of their combined imaginations. They made up worlds and people and afterlifes. They role-played and had imaginary names for themselves. They eventually became obsessed with each other. Their parents became concerned and strove to separate them. Their panic at being separated drove them to concoct a plan to murder one of their mothers. With her out of the way, they thought they could be together forever.
I was quite surprised as the ending credits rolled that this was based on a true story. They were caught and convicted of the murder they perpetrated.
This movie touched me a bit, and i have been thinking about it all day. Peter Jackson indeed did an excellent job. I sympathized with them! The agony they each felt at being separated was clearly captured. And i identified with it.
I identified with it because i also was involved in an obsessive relationship at that age. 14 years old is a time of figuring out who you are and becoming separate from your parents and their routine. Of starting to rebel and identify who you are. Except, you have no boundaries and no experience and no context. And it is surprisingly easy to lose yourself in someone.
When i was 14, i fell in love for the first time. His name was Sonny. He was my brother’s best friend, and i had had a crush on him for years. When he finally noticed me and we began to hang out, i had never been so happy. With the innocence of youth, we gave our hearts to each other completely. We both felt that there was nothing more important in the world than each other.
Our parents didn’t get it though, and rarely let us see each other. We went to different schools, and Sonny was often grounded. Our relationship was conducted largely by phone. When he was grounded from the phone, we wrote letters to each other.
Our relationship was serious in our eyes, and since our parents did not understand and would not allow us to see each other more frequently, we came up with our own solution. Sonny only lived 7 miles away from me, and he had a bike. So, in the dead of night after everyone was asleep, he rode his bike to my house. My window was ground level, so it was easy to get inside. I thought it was terribly romantic of him to bike all that way (7 miles seemed so great a distance to me) in defiance of parental tyranny.
The first of these nights, we had been “going together” for about 6 months and still hadn’t had our first kiss. And we were both nervous and shy, and it took at least an hour for us to get around to that kiss after he crawled into my room that first night.
We were both innocent, and remained so. I don’t think either of us really knew what sex was at the time. It was certainly never a danger during the handful of secret rendezvous we had. If it had continued much longer… it’s hard to say. Of note, those secret liaisons brought us much closer emotionally. First of all, we shared a big secret. Secondly, it was unsupervised time together - if we did not do anything particularly sexual, there was still a lot of kissing and hugging that isn’t appropriate for 14-year olds.
But then, of course, we were discovered. And separated. And not allowed to communicate in any way for 15 months. Letters were intercepted. Phone calls were screened. No contact was allowed, and soon we stopped trying. It was awful. I was devastated and depressed for quite some time. I wrote stories about us running away together.
Heavenly Creatures reminded me of that period of depression. It seemed most cruel to separate me from my true love, and the way the girls in the movie felt was portrayed very similarly. They went one step further than i did, though - they formed a plan involving murder, and executed it. It was a disturbing movie.
It’s disturbing in a large part because it has made me revisit this time in my life and i don’t think i was that far away from being as crazy as the two girls ended up being. So, in that light, I can’t say i disagree with the decision to separate us. It was extremely traumatic to me at the time, but it was probably pretty unhealthy to have such a strong attachment at that young of an age. I still blame both sets of parents for not accomodating us a little more. The relationship might have progressed more normally in a properly supervised environment if they had just let us see each other a little more frequently.
To finish the story, when we were 16, Sonny and i did become reaquainted. But we had both changed. The innocence and romance were gone. He had acquired some brutish attitudes, and certainly didn’t think it was cool to be in love. I had acquired some cynacism and skepticism. We did try half-heartedly, but i think we were both disappointed. It just wasn’t the same. We decided to be friends, but only kept in touch sporadically after that.
About six months later, Sonny committed suicide.