Before computers, I read a lot. Joseph Campbell thought that stories are vital to human beings because they teach us about our own lives, and I’m definitely a learner. Since, I’ve gravitated to film and television as my primary story delivery method and I realized watching Bill Rose’s This Dust of Words, that I have forgotten the importance of the written story. Watching the film, I was transported to times in my life when books helped free my imagination.

The film is about Elizabeth Wiltsee, a free-spirited author who lived a full but tumultuous life. Having taught herself to read at age 4, she was extremely intelligent and a voracious learner. She learned languages like ancient Greek in her teens, math, physics and was an exceptional student. Her own writing is read by a female voice with a British accent, which brings to mind exceptional writers like Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Bronte. We also hear from Elizabeth through her journals and family movies.

The title of the movie is taken from Wiltsee’s Stanford University senior thesis about Samuel Beckett, “full of minted thought” her then-professor recalls, but quite unlike anything other students were writing. It’s amazing to see Elizabeth in her Stanford days in a student film with David Chase (The Sopranos) and to wonder how high she might have soared. She was a stunning woman with amazing talent and admiration from those around her.  But even at that time, a dark cloud of mental illness was looming over her.

The film also follows Wiltsee through the stories and remembrances of friends and acquaintances, and it is  the unspooling of her story that helped me recall those days of imagination and books existing in and amongst the realism of daily life. Like in his previous work The Loss of Nameless Things, Rose brings the life and work of a writer into focus with exceptional cinematic poetry and keen sensitivity to the complexity of how imagination and realism exist at the same time. Both films are sad stories on an individual level, but they are sublimely human experiences.

I think the best movies help unleash the viewer’s imagination, thoughts and feelings, and this film, like Rose’s previous work, achieves that. Because it reminded me of things I’m glad to remember and because it is impeccably constructed and photographed, it was a true pleasure to watch.