Art Imitates Art

A book within a book. A film within a film. I'm sure it is merely coincidence that this week I read When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead's homage to Madeleine L'Engle's masterpiece, A Wrinkle in Time, and saw Pedro Almodovar's latest film, "Broken Embraces," which features bits of "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" masquerading under the name "Girls and Suitcases."

While many books and movies are inspired by a specific genre (Pulp fiction, The Big Splash), or some seem like cheap knock-offs (Charlie Bone to Harry Potter), When You Reach Me is a delicately crafted book inspired by, but in no way imitating L'Engle's. Unlike L'Engle, Stead never attempts to recreate another world or invent dark forces that threaten the earth and life as we know it. Rather, Stead creates Miranda, a character struggling to understand friendships, family, and herself- much like A Wrinkle in Time's Meg. Miranda, however, lives exclusively in our world, and the science fiction elements in the book are present only indirectly- a note from the future, a realized prediction. Miranda carries around a copy of "the book" at all times. This book is never named, but is described in detail. I would question the necessity of its inclusion in When You Reach Me's plot if Stead hadn't both managed to make Miranda just the right person to love such a book and woven it into the mysterious notes Miranda receives with the line, "tesser well."

As I sat through "Broken Embraces" earlier this week I wondered why Almodovar seemed to be paying homage to himself. The New York Times review of the movie offers an adequate explanation:

"Its appearance is not vanity or clever self-quotation. Rather, the director’s pastiche of his early, funny work becomes, in the context of this somber new film, a poignant reflection on aging and loss. To catch a glimpse of “Women” in the mirror of “Embraces” is to see how cinematic images can be both tangible and ghostly."

Infusing someone else's work into your own can be to recognize and appreciate its influence on you as an artist, while doing so to yourself is a juxtaposition that can show how you have changed over time. We are, all of us, traveling through time and it is impossible to be unaffected by its passing. As one note to Mira says, "I will not be myself when I reach you."

For the complete Times movie review, go to: http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/movies/20broken.html?scp=1&sq=broken%20embraces&st=cse