We've been making a few more trips than usual into the city recently. Every time we do, I'm left wondering why we don't go more often. There's a world of activity and culture only 90 minutes from us, but we're well into the advanced stages of Cape Cod Disease, where even a fifteen minute drive to two towns over seems a pilgramage of biblical proportions.
Our first trip was to the flower market for D to pick out flowers for a special funeral. An early morning trip, with the heart of the city rising just before us, only so we could load up on flowers and turn our backs on it to return to our jobs. Saturday, though, for our day off together, we tooled in to Boston like we owned the place, parked in Brookline, and did something so decadent I only conceived of it on the drive up: watched two art films in the same day.
I have never watched two movies in the same day before.
The Triplets of Belleville: This was the reason for our trip, and it more than repaid my hopes and expectations.
My enjoyment of a movie, at the highest levels, is measured by its ability to choke up my throat and make me cry. I'm not sure why this happens. It's not always during a sad passage. It happened to me a bit during the first Lord of the Rings movie (and not so much, for some reason, in the second two); the end of American Beauty hit me with it, and the movie adaptation of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five was perhaps the first time this reaction floored me. I think it's when the film does something genuine, when a line of dialog or a gesture communicates something we've all experienced but never put into words, when you feel you're not being sold a product, or wowed with special effects for their own sake, that this happens.
I loved that the heroes of Triplets were four ugly old women and an overweight dog, and that the love of a woman for her grandson was so strong that she rented a paddle-boat with her last sou and used it to cross the atlantic. This is tall tale and fable stuff, of course, but it makes some of the noblest and most beautiful human emotions much larger than life and delivers it directly to me. And all with maybe three lines of dialog. It didn't need dialog. I watch the dog sleeping, or the women cooking frogs, or the old man rolling a cigarette, and think, "Yes! Yes! This is the absolute essence of how these things happen! And I'm truly seeing it for the first time!"
Needless to say, I could barely breathe through most of the picture and D thought something was seriously wrong with me.
Lost in Translation was a soft and understated counterpoint to the day's first picture, and while it didn't give me the same extreme reaction that Triplets did, it left me happy and satisfied with carrying out my double-movie plan. All the nice things you've read about Bill Murray's expertise at conveying a wide range of emotions with his face are true and I can't really add anything. But I also like the way the film captured the sense of absurdity we feel when bombarded by all the technological gizmos which try, today, to solve problems nobody has. Do we really need downloadable ring-tones? Or window-blinds that open automatically in the morning? And yet--and yet! Those Japanese arcades look like they're a blast, and maybe Karaoke is more fun than I (who've never tried it) ever realized. I credit Bill Murray for showing bewilderment in technologically dazzling Tokyo, and not a fuddy-duddy condemnation of it. And for conveying also, of course, the desperate need for human contact which arises as we are further and further isolated amidst all this plenty.
Ah, what our world needs is more Saturdays like this!
Yours,
Nate
Comments