What's with Hillary's hands?
After Hillary finds out about her condition, in a scene at the beach house, she's desperately looking for a picture of her mother's hands.
Does anyone have a clue on why would it be so important?
Because her daughter was looking at her hands on the beach and said that their hands were the same.
shareYeah! Got that, but why is Hillary so affected by this that she starts looking for a picture of her mother's hands? And then she claims to be so scared. I don't understand why.
shareThis may not make much sense, but from personal and professional experience, I can tell you that two things matter most in the memory of a loved one, especially when a person is viewed in death. One is the mouth; the other is the hands. When my mother died suddenly at home one morning, the coroner came and covered my mother with a quilt so I could go in to see her. The one thing I desperately needed to see--an identifying factor, if you will--was her hands, so I lifted up the quilt and looked at her hands. They were HER hands, obviously. It's very hard to describe, but hands are a very unique identifying feature that probably stick out in the human psyche for a long time after someone is gone, just like certain memories of perfume do. And remember: Hillary's mother died when Hillary was quite young. Hillary needed to remember her mother and needed for her daughter to remember her. Hands are a strong visual trigger, and that makes sense in this way......our parents raise us with their hands, via nurturing or punishment. They're very powerful images in our memories.
shareTo alamay:
I was really moved by your post. I wish there were more like you on IMDB. How old were you when your mother passed?
I agree on this one. My mom died 5 days after my 21st bday and one of the best pictures I have of her is her hands covering mine and my sons(he was 10mo old at the time of her death). None of our faces are in the picture but it is my favorite.
shareMy perception was that Hillary was just in a very fragile state of mind, and fear overcame her when she forgot that small detail about her own Mother.
Knowing she was now facing certain death, she became panicked of the thought,
that her Daughter, too, may forget her, and small details of her.
It set her off in a panic.
I believe that in those circumstances, and under the stress a dying person must feel, it would be perfectly natural to panic about such a thing.
Oh that's interesting y'see I always interpreted it as Hillary being worried that it may have something to do with her illness and genetics. I think Hillary's Mother also died young and I thought she might be worried that if they all had the same genetics her daughter would also develop the same illness. When she found the picture I thought she discovered that her Mother had different hands, thus they wern't suffering from the same illness.
Yes, Sir I can boogie!
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Bryandemma, that's how friends and I have always seen it. We thought Hillary is in fear of her daughter having the same illness and dying young as well...the same as Hillary's mother--thus Hillary seeing if she had the same hands as her mom.
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I assumed she wanted to see if her mother had the same hands, maybe thinking that if their hands were the same that Victoria would end up with the same heart condition later in life.
shareits simple!
Hillary wanted Victoria to remember her after she was gone, every single detail about her.
Then she realized that she didn't remember her mother... and she died when Hillary was almost the same age as her daughter.
So, she was afraid that her daughter would forget her, as she did with her own mother.
That's what I got from it too. I thought maybe she was afraid her daugther was going to develop the same illness. I don't think it was ever said what Hilary's mother died of.
shareI always viewe it as her way to see just another genetic similar between herself and her mother (they both had the same disease) and herself and her daughter
(Victoria noticed they had the same hands, Hilary started thinking "If she has my hands, what else of mine --ie, the disease--will she surely inherit?")
Because by looking at the photo and seeing that her mothers hands looked differently than her own, she knew she did not inherit her hereditary disease from her mother or that it skips generations, so then she could not have passed it down to her own daughter.
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