2B

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Lara Moehlman

Deputy Editors:

Yoshiko Iwai

Brian Kuang 

Photo Editor:

Alexis Rankin

Editor in Chief:

Emma Kinery

Design Staff:

Michelle Phillips

Hannah Myers 

Emily Hardie

Erin Tolar

Emily Koffsky

Managing Editor:

Rebecca Lerner

Copy Editors:

Elizabeth Dokas 

Taylor Grandinetti

Wednesday, October 25, 2017 // The Statement 

The picture stays in the kid: ‘Custody’

X

avier Legrand’s film “Custody,” which 
I watched this past weekend at the 
Chicago International Film Festival, 

centers around a custody battle in which two 
children, a boy who looks to be about 9 or 10 years 
old and a girl nearing her 18th birthday with 
one foot already out the door, feel threatened by 
their father. Their protestations fail to persuade 
a judge to avoid granting some degree of custody 
to the father.

We learn the father is a 

menace. He’s easily frustrated 
and feels insecure about his 
distance from his children. 
He takes his anger out on 
his children and essentially 
stalks his ex-wife. In the film’s 
conclusion, the boy is broken 
inside.

But in the film’s opening 

scene, the hearing to determine 
custody, 
there’s 
a 
degree 

of 
uncertainty 
about 
the 

parents’ respective parenting 
abilities. We get both parents’ 
perspectives 
(albeit 
mostly 

through their lawyers’ words) 
and we’re not sure whether the 
complaints about the father are 
valid. Not to mention, it seems 
rather unfair that a father 
would be all but barred from 
seeing his children.

But, of course, by the end, one can’t help 

but feel regret for even feeling a modicum of 
sympathy for the monster.

I wasn’t terribly surprised when my parents, 

in a nondescript Ann Arbor hotel room in the 
fall of 2015, announced their divorce, but I 
was still shaken. The informal discussion that 
followed clarified that I could spend my time 
with which parent I wanted to, that there would 
be no judgment.

I’ll give my parents all due credit: I’ve never 

really felt outward pressure from them to 
spend all my time with either in particular. 
Not to mention, since they divorced after I 
turned 18, I was not subject to the often-terrible 
proceedings of a custody battle. And I in no way 
mean to classify either my mother or father as 
in a similar camp as the father in “Custody.” 

But intra-marital disputes have a peculiar 
effect on children, and splitting the home into 
two separate circles of people exacerbates that 
tension, especially for children, regardless of 
intent.

It was easy at first. The realities of the suburban 

housing market trapped us in our house for 
about two years, but even then, it was easy to 
feel that my allegiance was being tested. Mom 
would work during the day and Dad would work 

in the evenings, so when I returned home from 
breaks, one half of each day would be dedicated 
to either parent. An invitation to join Mom or 
Dad to an event or to go to a museum or go out 
to dinner seemed like a ploy to monopolize my 
time, to breed loyalty.

When the house was sold and Dad moved to 

the city while Mom stayed in the suburbs, my 
ability to split my time between the two became 
more complicated. This was partly beneficial 
since Mom’s apartment had more room, and 
thus a room for me, staying in the suburbs made 
more logistical sense. But I hate the suburbs. 
Aside from the library’s large music collection 
and this one pizza place I eat at quite frequently, 
I find myself so restless in Northbrook. My 
friends have different breaks than me, and I’m 
often alone. Not that I know that many people 

in the city of Chicago either, but at least there’s 
a view and parks right outside.

When Mom and Dad lived together, even 

post-divorce, there was an appearance of 
responsibility for me to play an equal role in 
both of my parents’ lives. Now, I know Dad’s 
rental of a single apartment is mostly out of 
convenience and financial concerns — how am I 
supposed to not read some value, or lack thereof, 
into that decision?

This, I learned, is the 

cost of divorce: It’s not 
that your parents are not 
together, it’s that they’re 
separated. It’s that every 
interaction with either one 
of them is a reminder that 
you have to repeat the same 
information to the other, 
too, and pretend as if they 
were the one you called 
first.

Any bit of news they 

get 
from 
you 
about 

their 
former 
significant 

other 
is 
potentially 
an 

armament that serves to 
justify their decision, and 
you become complicit in 
their war. This is all a bit 
exaggerated; I doubt my 
parents consciously use me 
to air out their grievances 

against each other or to serve as a conduit to 
each other, so they don’t have to talk to each 
other, but it’s impossible to escape these feelings 
when you have to drive the pants that one parent 
mistakenly took from the house but waited to 
return them until you arrived so you wouldn’t 
have to see your ex.

The worst part — OK, not the worst, but 

perhaps the visibly irksome — is the assortment 
of old rugs and furniture that dots each parent’s 
new home. Our living room is in Mom’s. Our 
family room is in Dad’s. Visible reminders of a 
house that once was and a family that has been 
since split apart, ripped into pieces but sewn 
together to keep up the appearance that things 
are just as they were.

It’s not that I want the furniture to go away. I 

want it all back together.

BY DANIEL HENSEL, DAILY FILM EDITOR

statement

THE MICHIGAN DAILY | OCTOBER 25, 2017

ILLUSTRATION BY EMILY KOFFSKY 
 

