Since I have recently posted some stuff after two years (presently being March 09, 2024), I looked back through drafts and found this one that I had some basic thoughts jotted down in bullet form but not much more, but I have always really liked this film and thought it has some really deep and really rich human material in it.
But before any of those thoughts: Rest in Peace, Natasha Richardson, and may you have continued healing, Liam Neeson, even though it's over a decade now. You were both great in this film, and the falling for each other onscreen was very rich and endearing, but even more so was the fact that it happened in real life during the making of the film.
The first thought on the content of the film is that the progression she speaks of in the big speech near the end, about adjusting and relating from her world of little things to their world of big things, is not the only progression she makes in the film. That progression is indeed deep, and well instantiated in the film: at the beginning that opening dirt-bike ride makes it seem like she is very, very remote, accessible only by a long trek on this rugged form of travel, but in the end, we have the friends showing up at the cabin in leisurely manner, with only a short walk from the cars.
But there is a deeper human progression, which is learning how to realize the sorrow in the death of another. This happens really in the motel at the end, when she stands on the balcony and sees the big puddle in the parking lot that is reflecting the sky, and it triggers again the memory of the sister falling backward off the rock into the water. But, whereas all the previous times, the memory was of the two of them falling together, this time only the sister falls, and she does not resurface. Nell has learned to let go and experience grief as grief. The progression from the language of the small to the language of the large brings with it a much stronger distinction between the self and other because there are so many others now, and to have the intimacy with all of those that she had with her sister would be overwhelming. And then that stronger distinction from the others feeds back into her distinction from her sister as other, and that distinction facilitates understanding her sister fully another person, and that understanding moves toward being able to grieve properly for the loss.
The culmination of that progression is the final instantiation of that memory. In the closing shot, it is at the picnic and the other girl is the daughter of Neeson and Richardson's characters playing on those same rocks. Nell is able to take great joy in knowing the little girl and playing with her and seeing her play. But she now also has the ability to perceive who is who: she smiles at the little girl playing and she sheds a tear at the memory of the sister. And those are connected, but they are no longer blurred. The other is now truly and properly the other, both the sister in memory and the little girl here and now, no longer the image in the mirror.
The second thought is that this progression happens in another linguistic element, the one around which the film centers, her "Nell-speak," her language developed with the sister that has the marks of the mother's speech impediment from stroke. During that long dirt-bike ride at the beginning, we have the audio overlay of Nell's voice sliding back and forth between and blurring a singing in her Nell-speak, on the one end of the spectrum, and on the other a dirge singing without hint of formed words. By the end of the film, speech as communication is one distinct thing, and tears are another, just as the little girl presently at play and the sister long passed are distinct from each other, even though similar both in form and in Nell's emotional attachment. They are not blurred, although they must be connected in the one whole, distinct human person in relationships of love with other people.
I've always thought this is a beautiful film.
As Nell quotes Song of Songs 4:1: "Behold, you are beautiful, my love."
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