Noah's original post about Spellbound now seems eerily prophetic:

I didn't like the undercurrent of silly "only in america"-patriotism, I mean america's great and all, but its not really that much different from a lot of other places....The girl from Washington DC is the sweetest person ever, its hard to believe she exists, i hope she's still like that in 10 years and life in the city doesn't beat it out of her.

Sigh, again. It's clear that even before this article, I'd already discovered that Spellbound was one of those works of art, like Crumb or Gates of Heaven, that grow more complex and mysterious with every viewing. You can see how this movie, yes, took root and grew in my imagination by comparing my posts here, here, here, and here. (You can also see how Spellbound gradually rose in my estimation from an intermediate place in my list of the year's best movies to its current position, somewhere in the list of the ten best movies I've ever seen.)

Now, for better or worse, Ashley's story has made it impossible for me to watch this movie in quite the same way as before, without thinking in terms of class. For example, it's utterly ludicrous to imagine young Emily (who takes riding lessons, and debates whether to bring her au pair to the spelling bee) broke, homeless, and with a baby daughter at age eighteen. Or what about Nupur? Those ill-defined class distinctions suddenly become a lot more defined when you think of how far Nupur would have to fall to end up in that homeless shelter.