Screenwriters: Priscilla Presley, Sandra Harmon, Sofia Coppola
Director: Sofia Coppola
Actors: Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla), Jacob Elordi (Elvis)
Dear Dear One,
Thich Nhat Hanh was my first spiritual messenger. I started reading him when I was really overwhelmed with being a new mom, having a house, being a wife, and simultaneously having all these ambitions for career and life. How was I going to accomplish it all? Wow, ambition is a beast. Mary Oliver has a poem about the perils of ambition. She calls it “Today,” and says “I am letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.”
But about Thich Nhat Hanh. In one of his books, which I would read in the master bedroom of my posh-ish suburban home, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote that people focus so much on what is wrong in life. He said it would be more helpful for us to ask the question, “What is not wrong?”
I ask this question a lot these days, in various forms. I have had some life situations, and awareness of situations, that are very, very wrong. Seeing and experiencing what is wrong is a spiritual gift, don’t you know? It is a gift because you can begin to recognize what is not wrong, and focus on the beauty of life, and your own resilience and adaptability. Isn’t that grand?
So, what is not wrong? This is a question I am asking you now, after I watched Sofia Coppola’s film Priscilla.
I wrote three drafts of a post for the film Priscilla. Three posts that were like fat on meat, about women and men, and the difficulty of communicating. About wants and needs and blah blah blah. If you were to read those posts, you’d see that there was very little meat, and just a lot of fat. Who wants to chew the fat in a blog post? Not I. Not you. And so, I am cutting off the fat to give you what I think matters most. The part that is nourishing. Nourishing is what we must draw our attention to.
In one scene of the movie, Elvis tells a jaded Priscilla, “You have everything a woman could want.”
The problem here is that he does not ask her what she wants. He assumes he knows.
So she walks out. That is the nourishing part.
Priscilla is a movie about transformation. About bouncing back. It shows how someone can come out of something harrowing, and hard, and dark. It is about new life after a failed marriage. This is something many of us know is vibrantly, brilliantly possible.
Resilience is the message of the film Priscilla, when we focus on what is not wrong.
One day, after a lot of years of depression and holding in so much emotion, and feeling lost and empty and lonely, Priscilla Presley tells her husband, Elvis, that she is going to stay with her friend in LA for a while. He is so drugged out he is like, “Yeah, sure, babe, do whatever you need to do.”
In LA, Priscilla’s hair gets lighter and softer. Her skin is sun-kissed and glowing. She takes karate classes and has a teacher she crushes on. This teacher supports her growth. He sees her. He gives her a different context for relating to a man.
And in LA, Priscilla has friends. She has a life. She drives a car instead of being driven around, and there are palm trees everywhere.
Priscilla finds new life. She finds herself.
The actress, Cailee Spaeny, who plays Priscilla, has such a soft and innocent look. The transformation of her appearance from being Elvis’s young wife to a woman on her own is at once subtle and jarring. The character of Priscilla, who always looked so awkward in all those 1950s clothes as wife and mom (like a kid dressed up in costumes) now appears so renewed, natural, and transformed. Is it the same actress, the same person? Viewers wonder. This Priscilla is modern, refreshed. She is no longer a prop. She is a person. She is alive.
I am sorry if I am giving away too much about the movie Priscilla, and the direction it goes in. But I want you know, if you are reading this, that people come through their challenges. People find light and come out to the other side. Sometimes, in the thick of challenges, people do not know if they will survive, or if they will ever find their purpose and their usefulness, the light they are meant to share in this world. They usually look to “God,” or Jesus, or karate, or meditation, or a sport. Regardless, they find something to hold onto, the way Wislawa Szymborska says she clings to poetry: “as to a saving bannister.” Human beings find a stronghold, and they get through tough times.
It is great if that stronghold is a healthy person who shows up for you, or a healthy discipline. It is even better if that stronghold is yourself, and being your own advocate, your own hero, and not looking for that to come from the outside. This is the kind of stronghold that leads to and creates opportunities where you can thrive. As long as you stay open-minded, open-hearted, and keep listening.
The film Priscilla unsettles me because it captures the falseness in our fairytale notions of life. I have carried those more than I’d like to admit. The movie points to our biases and the outdated stories we all have. Here is a young woman who meets a handsome, rich, talented man, who whisks her away and pays for everything, and they fall so in love. This, many of us still think, will lead to fullness and happiness, “new hope.” This is the path to a happy family and nice furniture and people knowing your name.
While those things can be lovely at times, they are largely not where happiness is.
Happiness is in a nice car ride, with the breeze in your hair. Happy is in noticing bright flowers, or baby birds that settle on branches in front of you, and whom you engage with because they are so delightful. Birds to whom you can say hello, and who seem to be listening. Why? Because you pause. Because you notice.
Happiness is making a warm meal and eating it, and seeing the moon and the stars glow outside your window, or even better, at a picnic table on a nice night where you can eat outside.
Happiness is your daughter’s smile. Her giggle.
It is a hug from someone who cares about you.
It is stepping softly and slowly in bare feet on earth, in having a space to call your own, in being a person you like and know.
Happiness is rarely fame, and a lot of people adoring you, and a lot of money, and taking people for granted who are in your life. Those things bring betrayal, bartering, thievery. That was Elvis’s path. He is gone. Priscilla is still alive.
There is a reason for that, cherub.
Hugs,
Ms. Wonderful
Priscilla is streaming for HBO subscribers and available for purchase through other providers.