Paradise
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List Price: $9.99
Features
• Closed-captioned
• Color
• NTSC
In Theaters : 04 October, 1991
Video Release : 21 April, 1994 |
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Paradise Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥
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In Paradise, indeed...
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A simple, old-time movie about the simple life in a small town does not change the fact that grief and estrangement are universal and cannot be ignored as if they will tippy-toe away. Secrets gnaw from the inside out.
Ben and Lily (Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith) lost a young son two years earlier, so when Willard (Elijah Wood) arrives, he steps right into this scenario of estrangement and unresolved grief.
Ten-year-old Willard has come to visit because his pregnant mother wrestles with her own potential loss--Willard's father has run off with another woman--and she needs time to figure out what to do. Willard's father becomes a pivotal point later in the story. Willard is sent to Lily because she was his mother's best friend in their girlhood days.
A bright boy, Willard senses that things are not well in this house. He makes friends with Billie, the wild girl next-door, nine-years-old and daughter of the town floozie, making this viewer ask, as always, why children must also suffer the problems of their parents.
Yes, Paradise, is an apt name for a perfect setting--fishing, swimming, warm summer days, tree rafts, boating. But, of course, it is not paradise. What then is this story about, if not an idyllic setting? It is about the daily-ness of life and how each little act leads to the next for good or bad, in the case of unresolved grief, out of avoidance, out of ignorance, out of now a set routine. That's where Willard's role is apparent. His presence presents a new paradigm, breaking the unhappy flow of energy. Not that he does this intentionally--he doesn't. He simply is a new factor to alter their energy, refocusing it back into this couple, who are so hopelessly lost in their grief.
"Paradise" is a quiet drama, a family drama, and one that ends well. |
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