Grief is love persevering. During the loss of loved ones, time seems to halt and we cease to feel alive. We feel sorrow, we cry. We try to learn not to move on, but move forward with our lives—keeping loved ones in mind, carrying the past with us along the way.
But how do we let love persevere when we need to survive the day after? Within this system, people are reduced to forces of production and consumption. The logic of capitalism undermines the aching heart when it doesn’t benefit the economy. Grief defies every logic: it is not efficient, it is not linear, and it does not obey the clock. The economy moves in a constant speed, unable to stop for even one individual to process their mourning. Grief, an experience so deeply human and communal, has turned into something that has to be managed and not to be fully dealt with. Those who cannot keep up risk losing their jobs and their stability has no time for said stillness, for who could mourn when they have a family to feed?
Reading You (2023) is a memoir about grief in the time of late capitalism. Director Angeline Teh delves into the memories of her late mother—journal entries, old letters, and testimonies from family members—to make sense of the trauma and neglect her mother has imposed on her. In her own words,“When Pa passes away, I lost you too.” As her mother’s memories unfold unto Teh, so does her empathy. She learned how deep her grief was when she lost the love of her life. Amidst being inside body ceasing to function, her mother has to take care of herself, four children, and a failing business.
As patriarchy counterparts the heartless economical system, being a mother means to be within the pressures of the “good mother” mythos: to be selfless and putting one’s family above their own needs and interests. Losing a husband also means losing the breadwinner of the family. Being born in a lower economic status, her fear of going back into where she was before the marriage further forces her into a state of precarity—putting her in the position to simultaneously earn and be the guardian of her children. As she fails to nurture and provide for her nuclear family, her pains don’t only end with her but it also goes through to her children. One cannot live as society views them as a failed mother. At the end of her life, she wrote down a letter towards the people she owes money to. She begged those people to not come after her children by compensating her own life, all that is left of it, for the forgiveness of debt.
It is tragic to live in the times when taking time to grieve is too much to ask for—when to slow down and refuse the notion that we have to be productive while all is heavy is a privilege. Soon we shall take our humanity back from the system. Soon society will be embraced within the hands of empathy. One day, we shall let our love persevere. (Timmie) (Ed. Vanis)
Film Details
Reading You
Angeline Teh | 14 min | 2023 | Belgium, Malaysia
Official Selection for Spektrum
Festival Film Dokumenter 2025
