Editorial: Coppola exhibit cuts to the heart, and darkness of universal loss

Coppola exhibit cuts to the heart, and darkness of universal loss|

With the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art just around the corner from the I-T offices, I took a post-deadline stroll last week to check out the Eleanor Coppola retrospective, “Quiet, Creative Force,” on display at the Broadway exhibition space through Jan. 25.

The show is absorbing – different than many retrospectives, This is largely due to the variety of mediums at which the “Hearts of Darkness” director excels: filmmaking, costume design, photography and drawing, to name a few.

My visit happened to be on the museum’s no-admission day – a slow day, catering to students, seniors and journalists – and at that quiet afternoon in the museum, the attending docent caught me near the entrance, pointed toward the only two women in the space, leaned in and whispered, “That’s Eleanor Coppola showing a friend the exhibit.”

Well, not being one to simply allow two strangers to enjoy their privacy unencumbered by an interfering writer, I introduced myself and congratulated Coppola on the engrossing display. She and her companion, San Francisco choreographer K.T. Nelson, chatted with me a bit, offered some insights into the show, and Nelson asked if I’d “been in the next room” yet. Taking that as a suggestion, I left them to their discourse and walked over the interactive display titled “The Circle of Memories,” a large sweat-lodge-shaped structure built out of 200 bails of straw, and strewn with visitor-written notes honoring children who had died. “We’ll never forget you,” “rest in peace,” and “still love you little guy” were the lump-in-your-throat reading materials. Blank note cards and a bowl filled with pencils rested nearby. Inside the “lodge,” recordings of children reciting the alphabet in different languages looped on a sound system, while grains of salt fell in a direct line from the ceiling, marking the passage of time. It was a heavy way to spend a Wednesday afternoon during the holidays.

Coppola lost her son, Gian-Carlo, in a speed-boating accident in 1986. He was 22. In filmed interviews that screen simultaneously with the exhibit, she talks about Gian-Carlo’s death and how, after feeling so singular in her grief, she’d eventually come to realize that a mother’s emotions for a dead child are a universal suffering – a tragic part of the human condition that has gone on since Eve buried Abel, or something along those lines.

Countless notecards decorate the piece – “we’ll be together soon,” “I’ll never get over you” – and pathos is inescapable. Only the hackiest of hack writers would write that he wanted to go home and hug his kids. But I did.

After Coppola said her farewells, Nelson walked over to me and talked about the power of such an interactive exhibit. It isn’t just an examination of tragedy, Nelson said. “It’s Eleanor showing us her own, letting us into herself. She can do that now.”

Dwight Eisenhower, who lost his first son to scarlet fever at the age of 3, once said: “There is no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.”

Don’t suppose they do. But, if “The Circle of Memories” shows us anything, it’s that, while you can’t go back, you can go on. Coppola has – just as parents have always done. And hundreds of little notecards on display at 551 Broadway can attest to that.

– Jason Walsh

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