Practical Magic and Sisterhood

I'm two glasses in and feeling nostalgic so let's GO. Also if you're my student I was writing this instead of grading, I'M SORRY I'M NOT PERFECT and also I do not believe in brevity or short sentences

I debated over which film I would do in-depth coverage on for weeks. I thought Dirty Dancing the most appropriate since it is one of my favorite films and was cited in my first post, it’s a foundational film in my relationship to the medium, I have fond memories of my mother and I watching things together, you were there you remember. But Dirty Dancing centers around a romantic plot. And I’m gathering and saving all my thoughts about specifically romantic films for a separate project. I thought the first thing I should earnestly discuss should be a childhood film, which knocked out Ida and Pain and Glory, two films I’ve taught before and that I desperately love. I thought about Rosemary’s Baby, Never been Kissed, The Goonies, possibly every movie made from 1990 to 2008. And then, for some reason that I cannot remember at the time of writing, I thought about the scene where Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock, Gillian and Sally respective, make margaritas in their kitchen, where two sisters, who have survived awful things, and the worst to come is around the corner, popped into my mind. So I’m gonna wax poetic about Practical Magic, a film that garnered such reviews as: "it is not a good move - from a professional,” (1-star from Google), “whAT?” (1/2 star from Letterboxd), “when white supremacists say they are the granddaughters of the witches they didn’t burn, these are the witches,” (1/2 star from Letterboxd), “this could’ve all been avoided if they were lesbians,” (1/2 star from Letterboxd) “The whole movie would have been funnier if they, and not the younger women, had been involved with the Transylvanian cowboy and the cop, but that would have required wit and imagination beyond the compass of this material.” (2 stars from Roger Ebert) and finally “Just an absolute slay,” (5 stars).

For the uninitiated, Practical Magic, is a 1998 movie adaptation from the novel of the same name by Alice Hoffman. As a pre-teen I was an avid reader of her books. Along with Johanna Lindsey, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Nora Roberts, Danielle Steele, the list of both horror and horny authors go on. I was the poster child for “Someone Should Pay Attention to What I’m Reading, Just Because I’m Reading Doesn’t Mean I’m Reading Something Good, In Fact it Probably Means I’m Reading Something Rancid That Will Shape My Personality for Years to Come.” I did get caught reading an absolutely bananas horny Inuyasha fanfiction on the family computer when I was young, and had to be confronted by all four adults who lived there about reading pornography. Which, to be fair to me, that fanfiction was not even that bad, pornography it was not, like it was horny, and there was sex, but like, I would go on to read FAR WORSE. If you are reading this and you are one of those adults who confronted me, or really any family member, firstly go away, I don’t want you to be reading this, secondly I’m an adult now and I still read it you should’ve intervened earlier, thirdly I did not stop, but I did do the basic things to get better at hiding it, like taking the jacket off romance hardbacks, deleting my browsing history, always having another tab open, you get the idea. Lastly, once again, I don’t want you to be reading this, please respect that, stop now. Shoutout to my copy of Captive of my Desires that is just a black book now, and shoutout to my middle school for letting me print documents you never looked at once and assuming they were for a class, they were never not once for a class. And actually shoutout to you Inu-Girl07 for writing an 81 chapter fanfiction with all my favorite character pairings (as I’ve gotten older, do I like the fact that I so hardcore shipped Sesshomaru and Rin, no, not exactly, but it is what is) and setting it in a high school. That was really cool of you.

ANYWAY, I read the novel, I watched the movie, yes with my mom, and I remember loving both. The differences between or how the novel renders things differently, I’m not particularly interested in examining. I remember this movie being a romp, fun but heartfelt, I remember as a kid thinking so seriously about the man (I was still heterosexual, weren’t those the days) that I would marry (and I still considered marriage and children an inevitably, I wanted ten, five boys, five girls) and if he would come to me like Gary had come to Sally, if our love would be so consuming. What I remember most about this movie is the romance, Sally’s desire for love, Gilly’s recklessness, I thought of the two sisters as two possible roads, and I knew that it was better to be a Sally than a Gillian. This is a movie I’ve returned to many times since then, but I haven’t seen it in years, and certainly not with the brain for media that I have now. Upon rewatching, woof. I still love it, against my better judgement I think. If I didn’t have all this love/nostalgia stored up for it, I would probably also say: “Should’ve been called Practical(ly the worst movie I’ve ever seen)” [I do want to point out that that person could’ve spent a couple more minutes workshopping this zinger to make it make more sense. Something like “Should’ve been called Practical(ly the worst movie I’ve seen) Magic (that this ever got made.)” I spent fifteen seconds thinking about that and it’s much better.]

I’m going to talk about the plot of this movie, so if you haven’t seen it, and you want to, go watch it first! So much happens in this film it’s hard to make the summary brief, and even in writing, I wonder what elements of this film could’ve been cut. It’s only an hour and forty minutes but they really loaded those minutes up. If you want to skip the plot recap, I’ve bolded the word “Analysis” further down so you can get straight to my rotten opinions.

PLOT:

So we begin with voiceover, one that we learn in a few minutes is a conversation between Frany, Jetty, Gillian, and Sally, the two sets of sisters this movie will follow. Frany and Jetty are telling the story of Maria, their ancestor who the town tried to hang as a witch to their nieces named above. People in the crowd are dressed as you imagine the stereotypical pilgrim would be, with clothes probably sourced from Abercrombie and Fitch. Maria, who is pregnant, survives the hanging and is then banished to an island where she builds a house, and waits for a lover who never comes. She then curses any man who loves an Owens woman to death.

We cut to a sunny day on a beach, where a father, mother and two daughters are playing. The voice over informs us the curse is why their father died, and Gillian and Sally’s mother, the sister to Frany and Jetty, knew it was coming from the clicking of the deathwatch beetle. Sally and Gillian move into their aunts house after their mother dies from a broken heart.

In the kitchen Sally and Gillian practice magic, Sally shows a natural talent for witchcraft while Gilly doesn’t have the same ease. Frany says Gilly’s talents will emerge with time. (I’ll return to this later.) After seeing the Aunts (The most confusing aspect of this movie is that both Gillian and Sally refer to their aunts as “The Aunts,”) perform a spell (ritual?) for a woman in order for the man she’s having an affair with to leave his wife, Sally says she hopes never to fall in love, while Gillian can’t wait. In the next scene, young Sally casts a love spell with a list of impossible characteristics that can’t exist in a man, so she’ll never fall in love and protect herself and her heart. Those things are: He will hear my call a mile away, he can ride a pony backwards, he will whistle my favorite song, he can flip pancakes in the air, he will be marvelously kind, his favorite shape will be a star, and he’ll have one green eye and one blue.

We fast forward to Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as the older sisters. Sally is wearing glasses to denote she is the uglier sister despite her being LITERALLY Sandra Bullock in glasses. Gillian is running off with a man, and promises her sister that they’ll grow old together and die on the same day. They cut each other’s hands open, share blood, and Gillian leaves.

Thus begins the next section where we see Sally’s home life with her two children and husband, dancing around and playing in the yard. Gillian is at a pool party dancing, and Jimmy Angelov is staring at her from across the pool. Sally hears the beetle as her husband leaves for work. He is hit by a truck while Sally tears up the beautiful wood floor looking for the beetle. Sally goes to the Aunts and finds out they cast a love spell on Michael, and they didn’t think she was going to love him and therefore he would be safe from the curse. Sally demands they bring him back from the dead and the Aunts refuse. Sally and her two children move in with the Aunts, and she tells them that her children will never learn magic.

Sally and Gillian both look at the scars on their hands and think about each other. Gillian doses Jimmy’s tequila with belladonna so she can go visit Sally. She wakes Sally up, and after saying hello, Sally says, “I was really really happy,” and starts to cry. They then spend the rest of the night catching up with each other. Gillian tells Sally to take care of her kids and she’ll never forgive herself if she doesn’t get out of bed. As Sally is falling asleep Gillian mouths “I love you,” and Sally says out loud, “I love you too Gillian.”

At night Sally is writing Gillian a letter where talks about there being a hole in her life, an absence. She talks about how she dreams of love, how she wants to be seen. After putting this letter in the mailbox the phone rings and Sally seems to know something is wrong. Gillian is on the phone and asks Sally to come and get her. Sally arrives at a seedy motel and helps Gillian try to leave Jimmy after he’s punched her but he abducts the both of them. While driving, Jimmy tries to brand Gillian and tries to strangle her, but he passes out and eventually dies from the belladonna poisoned tequila Sally gave him. Gillian says they have no choice but to bring him back from the dead.

Gillian and Sally successfully bring Jimmy back from the dead after spraying whipped cream on his chest, but once he is back he resumes trying to strangle Gillian while shouting “I want you to be my wife.” So what do they do? They kill him again by a skillet to the back of the head, and bury him in the back yard to a quirky score of like Addams family bouncy clarinets. We are not even halfway through the movie at this point. Gilly and Sally hug over the clandestine grave and thank each other for being each other’s sister. Sally and Gillian are at a PTA meeting where the phone tree is being decided, which will surprisingly be an important element for the climax. Gillian does magic so Sally will be at the top of the phone tree. It’s in this shot we see our only Black character in the movie.

Here we get to the most iconic scene of the movie. Jimmy’s feet are rising above the dirt. Inside Aunt Frany and Jetty are making margaritas. Gilly wakes Sally up and they scream “MIDNIGHT MARGARITAS!” They go downstairs and all the women drink, get hammered, dance in the kitchen and sing that Lime in the Coconut song. [A brief trip to Wikipedia tells me that this is a novelty song?] Afterwards Gilly is reading Sally’s palm and says she’ll end up a frigid old hag. All four women say pretty mean things to each other, calling Gilly a slut, that Sally should fuck more, calling each other wenches and witches. Sally at some point realizes that the tequila bottle they’re drinking out of is the same brand that Jimmy was drinking. Gilly throws it on the sink and breaks it which seems to break the drunk spell they’re all under, and Aunt Frany and Jetty ask for an explanation to the spooky vibes, but the sisters don’t answer. So the Aunts leave so the sisters have to figure out how to fix what they’ve obviously broken.

The next day Kiley, Sally’s daughter, sees Jimmy standing by a rose bush that’s grown overnight. Sally is taking clippers to the roses when Gary Hallet, both Aiden Quinn and a detective investigating Jimmy’s disappearance appears. Gary is spoiler alert the man Sally cast the spell for and will be the love interest despite entering the movie almost an hour in and having no time for us to understand or see a love develop between the characters.

Gary talks to Gilly after telling Sally he’s read her very personal letter. Sally watches Gilly unsuccessfully flirt with him before Gary asks why they have Jimmy’s car if they haven’t seen him in days. Sally tells him that they stole the car after he kidnapped Gilly, along with some stuttering and stammering that feels like Hugh Grant by way of Sandra Bullock. Sally also repeats for the hundrendth time that Gilly has horrible taste in men, which feels, significant. It’s in this scene that we learn Jimmy was in fact a serial killer, and killed women in the same way he attempted to do with Gilly. After having the car searched and towed Gary talks to townsfolks who tell him that they are witches and that men with connections to the Owens woman die.

In a completely unprofessional move, Gary says he will come by Sally’s house at 10 am for a date, but also to further investigate whether or not she is a MURDERER. They are in the greenhouse and he tells her all about the rumors he’s heard about her and the witchcraft she practices. They stare intensely into each others eyes, and Sally tells him that badges only have power because they believe it does, woke queen. Gary asks Sally if she or Gillian murdered Jimmy and when she gives him a sassy nonanswer, he makes pancakes with her daughter in the shape of a cactus and flips it really high, because he is a PROFESSIONAL JUSTICE SEEKER. They sit down to have a lovely outdoor breakfast on a spring day, and Kylie and Antonia realizing that Gary is the man Sally cast the love spell for throw the banishing potion they made into the ocean, promptly afterwards, a frog barfs up Jimmy’s ring. Gary realizing that he was about to break bread with two people he’s actively investigating for murder, tells them to get a lawyer and storms away.

Inside Gillian and Sally fight about Gillian creating problems Sally has to solve, the magic that Sally is so skilled at that she has abandoned, Sally’s desire to be normal, and Gillian’s brokenness. Sally decides she’s going to tell Gary the truth without a lawyer, and after he starts recording their conversation she proceeds to absolutely not confess to the murder she actively participated in, and instead asks about the letter she wrote that he read. When he again asks her if she committed this murder and she admits to it in the most explicit of vague ways, he TURNS OFF THE RECORDER, tells her once again to get a lawyer, asks her to trust him so he can protect her and then pushes her against the wall and THRUSTS his tongue in her mouth. [Not actually, while it is very romantic and feels like we’ve gotten to the peak of what we’ve been waiting for, they are doing the closed mouth kissing only seen in movies] They fall onto the bed on which Sally notices that Gary has one green eye and one blue, so she promptly runs away because FUCK LOVE AND FUCK GARY THE TWO COLORED EYES HAVING BITCH. [Shoutout to my friends who are pretending to read this because they love me why are you doing this]

Sally arrives back at her house to her children crying and her sister possessed and writhing on a bed. Gary shows up with a gun and Jimmy Angelov rises out of Gillian’s body and takes on a mostly physical form. He tries to attack Gary but his, I guess adamantium star shaped badge, stops him and he disappears in a cloud of smoke. We still have 22 minutes left of this movie. Outside Gary is freaking out which is really fair, and then admits that he loves her basically [move fast much, Gary?] and she admits she cast a spell on him and that’s why he loves her, not because of his own actual feelings. Gary said he doesn’t believe in that HORSESHIT even though he almost got his heart pulled out his body by the spirit of a Transylavanian Draculian Cowboy, and says that he wished for her too. Basically their parting is the equivalent of “If we’re still alone when we’re 40.”

Plot twist, Gillian is still possessed and the Aunts arrive after Sally has rocked Gillian’s shit into unconsciousness. They say that in order to banish Jimmy they need nine women, twelve being better, to cast him out. Sally activates the phone tree and tells everyone she’s a witch, which two seconds later the movie cashes in on a “coming out” joke that I’m sure killed in 1998. The Aunts, the kids, and Sally all prepare for the spell with a jaunty montage that includes a shot I’m only mentioning because of how Sandra Bullock looks, Sally blows on a candle until it lights, and the way her hair, neck, jaw, lips, eyes, look, Jesus Christ, stunning. All of the women arrive and they joke about meanwhile Gillian is WRITHING IN PAIN IN THE OTHER ROOM. It’s a tonal shift even the movie acknowledges because the women walk in the room and everyone’s face falls. They start chanting and Gillian seems to be in a lot of pain that makes Sally make them stop.

The two of them lay on the floor, a circle of brooms separating them when Gillian tells Sally to let Jimmy have her. I will admit, even now, this brings me to tears. Sally says. “Don’t die on me Gilly Owens, please. Because we’re supposed to die together, remember? At the same time you promised me that. And this is not that day.” [Margo Martindale steals a moment by executing a brilliant sobbing face] Sally comes up with a plan and opens up the broom circle to taunt Jimmy to come out. When Possessed Gillian tries to attack they hold her down while Sally cuts her palm and Gillian’s palm and hugs her. We see images of hands clapping together, a bright white light blowing everyone across the room, and Maria’s surprised face. Jimmy is blown out of Gillian’s body and they sweep his ashes outside and pour what looks like tomato sauce on them.

This is almost over I promise. We cut to some point in the future, and Sally gets a letter from Gary with Jimmy’s ring and a letter that says Jimmy’s death has been ruled as an accident and the investigation is closed. We cut to further in the future and Gary shows up, and they kiss. The movie ends on Halloween night with Sally narrating about love, how their joined hands broke Maria’s curse, and they jump off the roof of their house with the townspeople watching and cheering, and of course one final kiss between Sally and Gary.

ANALYSIS:

Hi, nice to see you again if you did skip ahead, if you didn’t then that greeting seems weird. So this movie is bananas. I’ve read some actual reviews, not just Rotten Tomato and Letterboxd ones, and they critique the complete tonal switches of this film, of which there are plenty. This movie is not the witch movie for kids a la Hocus Pocus, or Sabrina the Teenage Witch, at times, it has real teeth. This movie shows us abuse, and real violence, which is often at odds with the light jaunty tone it wants to have, even when, for example, we’re watching a murder via frying pan after an attempted strangulation. In short, this movie doesn’t seem to know who it’s for, and how it wants to make you feel.

Despite this, I feel like this movie has a lot it wants to say, and honestly, if you examine those attempts singularly, some of them are successful. When you look at the whole thing together though, it quickly starts falling apart. The cast is mostly women though as noted in the plot recap this is an entirely white movie. Bullock and Kidman despite it all are magnetic and work excellently together. It has 90’s slapstick humor but intense visual abuse towards women and domestic violence, there’s romance, there’s grief, there’s examinations of love and what it means, talent and what we do with it, and sisterhood.

One of the things I overlooked about this film as a kid, and almost as an adult, is that the cast is primarily women, all of the main characters are women and not only that but it focuses on three generations of sisters. And I wondered about why my brain was tempted to skip over that fact, I mean, if you care about this sort of thing, Pratical Magic does indeed pass the Bechdel Test. And I think the reason is because despite very few male characters being present, all of the characters lives revolve around the presence and absence of men. Sally and Gillian as a pair are defined by the different ways they react to love and men. While the other characters in the movie seem to empathize with and care for Gillian, there is this ever present idea that she is silly, or she isn’t a grown up because of the way she behaves, that there is this inevitable time when she will actually have to settle down and be a woman more like Sally. When she ends up in an abusive relationship, it feels like the movie’s attitude is almost, well of course she did, this is what happens to women who do this. There’s even what is supposed to be a heartfelt scene where Kylie, Sally’s daughter, echoes the words of her Aunt Gillian, saying she can’t wait to fall in love. We as the audience are supposed to be afraid for Kiley, not just because of the red hair she shares with Gillian that I guess wasn’t enough of a visual parallel marker, but we know what has happened to Gillian, the abuse she has undergone and the lack of stability her life has as a result of her chasing romantic love and going from man to man. Sally meanwhile throughout the movie is fearful and avoidant, she’s overprotective and cautious, she has a deep desire for ‘normalcy,’ which of course leads her to finding a good man, and a good relationship and her happy ending. The Aunts seem to make money and a living on casting spells for women in town to aid in their heterosexual love lives. Sally and Gillian’s mother, in fact, dies from a broken heart at the loss of her husband. Frany mourns her poor Ethan, Sally mourns Michael, etc. It is kind of fascinating to me that all of these women seem to so desperately yearn for a love they don’t have, or for a love gone. Especially because, they seem to already have that love in their lives, just not in the way they believe they should.

Sally in her letter to Gillian says she just wants to be seen, and it’s interesting to me that she thinks it can only be filled by romantic love or that it would take a man to see her. Because, in the scenes before and after, we see the ways that her sisterly love allows her to be taken care of and preform care more than we ever see in her romantic relationship with Gary. That could just be because Gary enters into the movie at almost an hour into an hour and forty minute film and we don’t see their relationship develop, but the source of the movie’s tender love comes from these sisters. I have a sister, and I love her very much. In fact, I think there’s few people in the world who understand me in the fundamental way that she does. And it makes sense. The two of us have spent our entire lives together, we shared a bed for most of it. From my emo phase, my cardigan phase, being class treasurer, smoking weed in the garage when I visited home, all of the people I’ve been, she’s witnessed. Whenever we talk, we are reminded of the way that we don’t have to explain ourselves like we have to do with other people. Because with other people, you didn’t spend most of your life aware of the way the other eats, sleeps, plays, loves, fights. In my case, I used to count my sister’s breaths when she was asleep, she has sleep apnea, and I would nudge her awake if I felt like she had gone too long without breathing. There is no intimacy like that of siblings. And this movie gives this to us, in amazing detail. When Gillian goes to see Sally after Michael’s death, Sally does not have to give Gillian any introduction. She can begin their conversation with, “I was really really happy,” and then sob. And Gillian listens to her, and comforts her, and let’s her talk about the plans they had that now will not be realized. They can be honest with one another. Gillian tells Sally that she has to get out of bed, to care for her children and brush her teeth because her breath stinks. Siblings, more than others, are allowed to witness your vulnerability, and then make fun of you for it. And how does the romantic love of a man you don’t even know that well begin to compare? These sisters are so attuned to each other, they can sense when the other needs them. When Sally tries to help Gillian leave Jimmy, Sally at no point does not believe Gillian has been abused, she does not try to get her to stay, she does not blame Gillian, she just shows up for her. She helps. Gillian uses her magic to get Sally to be the top of the phone tree, because it’s something that Sally wants, and it’s within Gillian’s power to provide it. And this is not even a big moment in the movie, Gillian just does this because again, they are constantly providing care for each other, they’re trying to make each other happy. In Sally’s own words, she is being seen by Gillian. And Sally and Gilly are not the only example of this. Kylie and Antonia, Frany and Jetty, all have these relationships. Despite their differences, they make space for the other to be who they are, without judgement.

And it’s because this movie manages to render the relationship between sisters so well, I am annoyed at it’s incapability, to render the importance of these relationships. Practical Magic can recognize those bonds as significant, but asks them to take a backseat to some other kind of mythical and more important love. For example, when Sally loses Michael, she is on the kitchen floor begging for her aunts to bring him back [which by the way, Sandra Bullock must have gotten an eviction notice right before filming that scene because she was SELLING IT and I was BUYING]. For the rest of the film while we are understanding Sally to be in grief, she never goes to the aunts for counsel. Frany and Jetty both understand it, we know because they have lost men to this curse, but Sally never thinks to ask how they got through it, or how they managed. We are supposed to believe the aunts cruel, in their dark clothes and make-up, in their refusal to enact their magic this way, but in reality, the aunts are the only ones who really truly understand what she is going through. And probably wished they could bring their loves back from the dead! When the aunts are telling Sally that they cast a love spell on Michael, they are looking at each other! They are using each other as a source of strength! They can understand that they’ve committed an act of betrayal against “their own flesh and blood,” as Sally calls it. But they are using their flesh and blood to get them through this tough experience. Could any of the men, that any of them have supposedly loved, have done this? I don’t think so. I don’t think that anyone can help Sally overcome her grief other than the women she’s loved and that have a history of supporting her. And if I am supposed to believe that this love spell is a betrayal that is so deep, why is there no scene with them discussing this? Why by the end of the movie is this not hashed out? My only explanation, is because we had to have Gary take up some of the runtime. Because in 1998, if a movie that centered women didn’t have a romantic plot, well then that was not a movie that got funded or made.

So let’s get to the men and the romance. Michael, the initial man that Sally marries. Michael is introduced so soon after the curse that we know we’re going to lose him. We don’t know about how he is as a father, or as a husband. Sally is happy, but what we know is that she desires normalcy. So what did Michael really have to provide other than a home and two children? I’m going to make a lot of assumptions in this next bit of analysis, but the movie almost requires it of me because we just don’t have the information to know for sure. When Michael dies Sally and her children move in with the aunts, Sally is unemployed, and despite Michael selling produce in their small town, apparently that was enough to live on. What Sally really loses when he dies is an idea, a symbol. She loses access to the American dream, to be a family with a house, the ability to fulfil the feminine role as is prescribed to women by society, something that Sally wants. And importantly, after his death, we never learn what specifically Sally misses about him. Not if he’s funny, charming, knowledgeable, nothing. When she’s talking to Gillian, she talks about how they talked about opening up a store where Sally could sell all of the products she was making just for them, but whose idea was that? She does eventually open that store, but is that more to honor the memory of what and who Michael was, or so that Sally can have something specific and solid to remember the ethereal man? Or was that her dream? We don’t know about Sally’s dreams, and so I hesitate to say she did. In the scene that breaks my heart that I’ve mentioned before, when Sally is begging the aunts to bring him back, they say if they did what they brought back wouldn’t be Michael, it would be something dark and unnatural. Sally says she doesn’t care what he comes back as long as he comes back. Which is to say that she’s comfortable giving up any part of what she loved about him for his physical self, for their lives to go on as they were, when she felt like she had won the game. Part of Sally’s arc for me is realizing and accepting and loving that she is not like other people, and that she can be loved for those differences. So in part, Sally and Michael’s relationship, because she’s in the early part of her arc, hinges entirely on the fact that Sally is desperately clinging to the idea that if she is good enough, a good enough woman a good enough mother, one who doesn’t dabble in the darkness that is witchcraft, if she pushes away her heritage and who she is, she will find comfort and happiness in what is left and life will reward her for her good behavior.

Which brings us to Gary. He is the relationship that is on the other side of this arc for Sally. He is also the one she cast the spell for, so we have these expectations of him being the perfect man, in the movie’s own language he wasn’t even supposed to exist, that’s how perfect he was. And it was what Sally was banking on, otherwise we can imagine she wouldn’t have cast it. Revisiting the impossible elements of the impossible perfect man, Sally wished for a love who: will hear my call a mile away, he can ride a pony backwards, he will whistle my favorite song, he can flip pancakes in the air, he will be marvelously kind, his favorite shape will be a star, and he’ll have one green eye and one blue. Reader perhaps you will notice that this list of traits does not even begin to approach impossible. But part of me understands how it could be to a child, especially to a child who has witnessed such unkindness, and an ignorance to the kind of care of not only her but to women generally. In the scene before Sally casts this spell, she watches a grown woman puncture the heart of a bird with a needle in order to get a married man to leave his wife for her, to need her. It makes sense to me that she would wish for someone kind, someone to understand her grief, the loss of both of her parents, the grief of not fitting in and having rocks thrown at you from other children when all you want is to be able to belong with them. It makes sense to me that she would cast for a man who can hear her a mile away, who can be kind, because what she’s really wishing for is a man who can be attentive, someone who can help her carry the emotional load she is already saddled with, even as a child. And his other traits, this mythical man, all have to deal with the fact of patience. Learning to flip pancakes or make them into funny shapes, to learn to whistle or ride a pony backwards, only someone with the patience to practice and perfect something could do those things. Ideally, in a relationship, your partner is patient, and devoted, to all manner of things, but especially you. To have the favorite shape of a star means that you appreciate something about oddness, you have enough love for the world that you regard even the shapes with a sense of wonder. [Though here I will be a downer and say that Gary never says his favorite shape is a star, the characters in the movie fulfill this component of the list but assuming that it is based on the fact that his badge is a star, which like, my vibrators are vaguely cylindrical shape, that does not make it my favorite] Everything that Sally wishes for makes sense to me. And also, I think there’s something fascinating [and perhaps I want to give the movie too much credit where it does not deserve it] about the childish desires for love and expectations of love that Practical Magic explores. I had many ideas about what my future would look like when I was a kid. I thought by the time I was 30 I’d be married with a house, I wouldn’t have a job and I’d already have at least my first kid that I was full time taking care of. Of course I had dreams about a career and a fulfilling life, but I thought I would get those things out of the way before I lived the life that was truly meaningful, the one with a husband and a 401k. I don’t imagine many people leave their small conservative towns in Texas without those dreams. And sometimes I wonder if young Indya would be disappointed with herself, with who I am now. A gender confused, pansexual, unmarried and not dating, broke, childless, atheist, working two jobs. I am nothing like I thought I would be. But I’m happy, mostly. The one thing I know she would be proud of, unabashedly, in a way that might forgive all of my other sins, is that I’m a writer. Like she always dreamed she would be, but never thought she had the talent for. She’d be happy with that. And so when I wonder what she would’ve wished for in a partner, I know that she wouldn’t have wished for anyone that wasn’t a man. She was too afraid of the feelings inside of her, of what it would be like to tell her mother that she was in love with a woman, or anyone else. Even though all she wanted in the world was to marry her first love, a girl, and who she yearned for all the time. She would’ve wanted to marry rich, because the easiest way to transcend your class is to marry into another one. I don’t even know if kindness would have been in the top ten. She would have wanted someone funny, which is still true now. All this to say, I think it’s interesting to compare our desires then to our desires now. How satisfactory would we find the person who wished for when we didn’t know any better? We know that young girls are socialized to think about a domestic future, a romantic life, play house and think about their future wedding days [perhaps now this is changing? And young children won’t be made to think about this], but I don’t think the quality of that person is really taken into account. We assume by virtue of having done what we were supposed to, get married and have the family, that we will have found “the one”. But of course, some people choose wrong, or they chose right but then things changed, or they choose to not have just one person at all, or they chose no person, or all the variations of a way relationships can look like and be, that perhaps we couldn’t envision and therefore didn’t know how to prepare for. I saw a TikTok the other day where a woman described how she when was younger she wanted to be in denial about her being a lesbian because it meant giving up on the fantasy of a “Prince Charming”. And that made me sad for her, but I understand and know exactly where she was coming from, it’s hard to imagine a love that would exist outside of a lot of our romantic representations in media and the stories we tell ourselves about love if we didn’t grow up with them, or we didn’t have examples. So Practical Magic I think brings up an interesting question that poses a lot of tension. Can Gary satisfy Sally, both the adult and her incomplete and childish list? Unfortunately in the movie’s case, we just don’t know. Gary can ride a horse backwards and flip pancakes, does have one green eye one blue, but we don’t know if he can whistle, if he is kind, if he can hear her a mile away.

What do we know about Gary? He’s a detective investigating the death of Jimmy Angelov, he shows up to New England after finding Sally’s letter to Gillian, reading it, and feels a compulsion towards her. We also know that Sally feels like she can’t lie to him, which is why she lets certain things slip about their involvement with Jimmy. It’s never confirmed but I assume this feeling is a component of the spell and that Gary feels the same way. Gary suspects Sally and Gillian specifically of murdering Jimmy from the start it seems, and it feels like he would have more than enough evidence to actually get them arrested if he wanted to. From the fact that they have his stolen car when he arrives, he finds Jimmy’s ring on the property albeit it is delivered to him via frog, Sally admits to a certain extent that he kidnapped them and was being violent towards them, but he only seems to want to accuse Sally of doing something, he tries to get her to admit but she doesn’t until he sees Jimmy’s ghost crawl out of Gillian. Eventually he and his department I guess rule his death on an accident, despite never finding a body and only finding evidence of foul play. Now, I guess we could interpret this as him being kind to Sally and Gillian, but it doesn’t feel kind. It feels like he’s so wrapped up in his own emotions and his own compulsions towards Sally that his lack of action is more about being able to spend more time with her, making sure that she doesn’t get to prison means they can explore a relationship together. I could be wrong about this, and am willing to hear a differing opinion. For me though, his motivation is wrapped up in gratifying the feelings he has for her. We also know that he wants to protect her, he says this explicitly when she’s admitting very very slightly that she had something to do with Jimmy’s disappearance. And part of me thinks, why? Immediately, my mind goes to the idea that Gary is a man, and Sally is a woman, and what do women need? Protection. This is the kind of thing that men offer and provide. And Sally has proven that she wants these traditional values, and so I can see why this would be attractive to her, but does he know that about her? I don’t think so. What Gary knows about Sally is that she may have done a crime, he feels compelled to her, he is attracted to her, and he knows that everyone in town believes her to be a devil worshipping evil witch. And if I were try to lend Gary some interiority that the film does not provide for him, I’m sure it would be incredibly compelling to hear from this entire sleepy oceanside town that these women scale from evil to chaotic neutral, and then to find a very loving family that just seems a little odd, and especially to find a widow like Sandra Bullock who seems to be adorkable but also incredibly beautiful and charming. And of course, the letter. He’s read, over and over he claims, Sally’s letter to Gillian where she is fully just yearning to be cared for. Perhaps if I were a valiant man, knowing that I could provide her what she was yearning for, and I had these feelings I couldn’t explain, I would also pursue her. But here is where I have questions. Has Gary ever been in love before? Does he know the difference between love born of magic, and love born of something else? Sally sure doesn’t, the only way she’s known romantic love, was through magic. And I don’t think I would mind that if specifically Sally didn’t describe it as a manipulation of her emotions with Michael, and of Gary’s emotions pertaining to her. So again, how am I supposed to feel about the fact that this seems like the relationship that matters more, that this is completing Sally’s arc, when I actually don’t know if they will operate in any way that is different to the cishet norms that she had with Michael, or if being with him makes her feel closer to her practice of witchcraft or the women in her life with whom she actually broke the curse.

[Sidebar, I’ve been reading All About Love by bell hooks lately, it’s taken me some time to even get where I am in it because every couple of fucking pages she drops something I have to spend like a week thinking about and examining. But, in the first chapter, she talks about having a shared definition of what love really is. And it’s stuck its way into my brain. She says, “To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in which anyone using the word in this manner automatically assumes accountability and responsibility. We are often taught we have no control over our “feelings.” Yet most of us accept that we choose our actions, that intention and will inform what we do.” She states later on, “When we are loving we openly and honestly express care, affection, responsibility, respect, commitment, and trust.” Since having this definition, and it is one I really like, I’ve been thinking through romantic plots of novels, movies, stories, love in my daily life, with how specifically partners show up for each other. In terms of Gary, there is no opportunity for him to show up, express care, show respect, none of that. This movie relies on love as a feeling, this sort of unknowable and ethereal aspect that is wild and illogical. I just wanted to note that.]

And this idea, of Sally being close to her witchcraft is an important one that I want to spend a little time on. Throughout the entire movie, the entire time we’re learning about Sally’s character, we know that she is a good witch, and that she’s really skilled. She gives up magic after Michael’s death, and forbids her daughters from being taught. She still does use it, in small ways. She lights candles and stirs coffee with it, and I relate this to myself in a very specific way. I am an atheist, but I used to believe in God. I no longer go to church, but sometimes, in odd moments, I find myself praying. I don’t know why, and I don’t even use God’s name while doing it, I occasionally wonder who exactly I am trying to reach anymore, but I still do it. Hands sometimes still folded. It’s an unconscious thing. I think praying must be so hardwired into my brain, that I just do it, without thinking about it. Sally never really abandons her magic, but she distances herself from it. As I said before Sally’s desires are to be normal, a normal woman without this gift, a woman with a stable life, a specifically American life that conforms to the patriarchy and capitalism. And there’s this kernel of an idea that I think this movie is trying to contend with, but it exists on such a subtextual level that I don’t even know if the movie is even aware that it’s there. That idea is that Sally is letting parts of herself, parts that are fundamentally important to her, wither away, and they are withering in her home, in this domestic role society has said women should have, this role she is bending over backwards to fill. Now, this is not me saying that I think all stay at home mothers are unhappy, some are of course, and some are not, but I do think this movie is hinting at the idea that Sally is giving up something really important to her emotional self, and that everyone can see it, by trying to fit into this role that is not for her. Her children are frustrated at her for not using her magic, because they are hearing from the Aunts how skilled she was. Gillian and Sally in an argument discuss the fact that Gillian wishes she was as talented as Sally but Sally is wasting that talent. I think the annoying thing about this aspect of the movie is that it is incomplete. It does not actually try to critique the why of this societal role, or why it doesn’t work for Sally, and what she does to change it, or show us an attitude shift that she understands what was driving her to stay away from her magic. Like, acceptance from the community is the end goal for Sally, she never explicitly states that but part of why her relationship with Michael makes her happy is because “nobody stares” anymore. I think the movie trying to bring in this idea of talent and “wasting it,” was an interesting and good impulse, but I also feel like more time than needed to be spent on the idea of the compromises that women make that cause them to “waste” their talent, and that Sally wasn’t doing this in a vacuum. If acceptance was what she wanted, if it was a big part of her character desires, we needed more than one scene of Sally in a PTA meeting, sitting in the back not talking to anyone, to show that she was trying to actively belong, that she was “wasting,” and conforming to the desires of societal femininity, for a reason.

At the end of the movie, Sally and Gillian have even more female community, Sally has a store and a job, and strengthened the relationship between herself and her family and her sister, her relationship with magic, the aspect the movie wants us to be the most excited for is the big kiss, the new romantic relationship with the Gary. And that’s SO ANNOYING! I mean Gary was not the one writhing on the floor, GARY did not break the MOTHER FUCKING CURSE. If we needed a final kiss then sure, let’s have it, but the last image should’ve been of Sally and Gillian, hugging and laughing each other.

God this is so long, I can’t believe I had so much to say about this movie. I honestly have more but if you want to hear it buy me a drink at a bar or something. Thanks for reading. <3