ANALYSIS: IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU
A scene-by-scene breakdown of Linda, Child, and the black hole โ how Harry Nilsson's "Think About Your Troubles" becomes the film's audible thesis.
ANALYSIS
ๅๆDown the stretch of a hospital-like facility lined with child-sized body cutouts, Linda finds a tracing that resembles her; a smaller, younger, spirited version of a self she can no longer recognize. The cutouts are colored in, crude with words: "fat," "jiggly," "want to die," "worried." At the center of the little Linda version is a terrible gaping black hole with a tube writhing from the center. One word written inside: Help.
Linda is not the protagonist of this story. She is its most powerful obstruction, a woman at war with her own portrait, unable to see herself whole. The protagonist is smaller. Sicker. Her daughter, only mentioned as "Child," is attached to a machine, unable to feed herself.
That lack of care manifests itself as a black hole, a theme that feels supernatural. It breathes, it watches Linda, it spits out smoke, it breeds flies, it lives in her daughter's stomach, it looms as a gaping hole dripping water above her bed at home.
Harry Nilsson's "Think About Your Troubles" is a song about a teardrop cycling through the ocean, fish, a whale, the whale's decomposing body, salt water, filter, back to the teacup that catches a tear. The song is the film's thesis made audible. Linda sang it into her daughter's ear in the dark while she slept. On page 131, her daughter sings it back.
Scenes 91โ97 ยท Pages 129โ131 โ WHO WANTS WHAT: Linda wants to disappear. WHAT STANDS IN THEIR WAY: the ocean itself rejects her with supernatural force. TURNING POINT: she finally sees her daughter for the first time, a reflection of herself as a child. RESOLUTION: "I'll be better. I swear. I'll be better."