Exploration four

The story that affected me the most was the story of the Chinese women who got burned pretty severely on her arms and also on her face.  Her circumstances were very bad. She was burned so bad that in one of her hands she could barely move it. This was because of how tight her skin was becoming. The tightening would only get worse as she aged. She had many many surgeries to help her burns, but there wasn’t much they could do to help. Over a period of them talking to her we see that she began to say "this is it". "No more surgeries". She had had enough with the doctor’s appointments and the surgeries. Throughout the documentary I really fell in love with her attitude toward her situation and her humor.  Instead of making herself be the victim she said she felt like she was given a second chance in life. “What’s the point of grieving” is one of the last quotes she says that stuck out to me.  She is a very strong woman.

I love how the movie was over a long period of time. The reason being is that it showed, over 8 years, how the people had grieved and matured in their thoughts about the whole event. Over a long period of time the Chinese women became satisfied with her situation.  She in some way found her-self and so did the other people. Some took longer than the others, but they all eventually got there and learned to move on.  The time-lapse structure was a huge strength and I thought it was an excellent idea.

The most important thing that I learned from these stories was it was ok to grieve but eventually you had to come to grips with reality and move on. Moving on doesn’t mean that you forgot everything that happed, that would not even be possible. It just meant you had to move on to the next chapter of your life. For example, the lady that lost her fiancé, eventually over time she got remarried. When the attack first happened she never thought she would do that. But she learned that it was healthy to go ahead and take the next step in life. It took awhile but she did it and loved her new life. They all took the next step in life, and this was very important that they did this.