Disembodied Ninja: Dory

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Dory

Warning: spoilers for Finding Dory ahead. You have been warned!
Herself speaks.

I found Finding Dory to be nearly unbearable.

You surely know the overarching plot -- Dory, with her omnipresent (and enhanced-for-plot-purposes) Short Term Memory Loss, begins to remember her parents, and goes on an "epic adventure" to find them. And eventually, she does. Happy-ever-after all around, with her parents, and Nemo and Marlin, and other new-found friends, all returning to the sea and living together in harmony.

So why was it nearly unbearable?

The last straw for me was near the denouement: Dory once more finds herself alone, in a dark and grim part of the ocean, with naught but a murky, fishless kelp forest nearby. She calls and calls for someone to help her, and no one answers. And so she talks herself into helping herself, finding the safety of the kelp forest, looking at the sand and acknowledging how she likes sand because it is squishy, looking at the shells that remind her of her parents.

And the shells. Radiating paths of shells, more and more paths, so that she might see them from any direction -- paths built, in hope and love and pain, a radiating yearning for she who was lost, in the hopes she will be found again.

We could all guess at the moment: she follows the nearest path of shells, and finally is reunited with her parents, who have stayed in that one place, building the shell paths, for years and years, waiting for this moment.

I'm not sure which broke my heart more: Dory's calls for help, unanswered; or the painstakingly built shell paths, reflecting the agony of waiting, waiting, waiting, in hope and in fear, waiting, waiting, waiting.

Hopefully Offspring the Third and Cherished Friend, sitting on either side of me, were sufficiently engrossed in the film so as not to notice that single tear that escaped from each eye before I could go elsewhere in my mind and shut mental doors against the horror of unanswered calls for help and of terrible waiting. If they did notice, they were mercifully too polite to mention it.

I know these are some of the most virulent of my Dementors -- and knowledge is power, so I can arm myself accordingly. I have faith and strength. We shall see if I can prove myself to be as brave and resilient as Dory and her parents, when such times come.

I am glad they got their happy-ever-afters.

I cannot watch Finding Dory again.