movies

Two weekends, two movies. This never happens! Last Sunday it was Finding Neverland, with Mariah, her friend and her friends' mom, who is also my friend. Mariah's friend liked it for Johnny Depp, and--while I'm not above that--I also liked it for the way it worked. I liked the mixture of realism and fantasy, the way the film moved from seemingly realistic depictions of a world outside JM Barrie's head, right into his imagination. I like films that actually use the way film can, say, depict one's imaginings as real--why not, after all? You can't do it in a novel--bring something to life like that--so why not use the ability when you have it? I also thought the film really got something fundamental about Peter Pan, which is how death-haunted it is. It is a creepy, sad little book, and it's somewhat astonishing to me that the character has become synonymous--at least for some people--with a kind of happy childhood. The way both Peter Pan and Alice (from Alice in Wonderland) have been detached from their contexts and turned into icons of childhood innocence reflects both a fundamental misreading and, I think, a sort of wish-fulfilment. We want childhood to be about happy innocence, these are stories about childhood, ergo they are icons of happy childhood innocence. Well, they may be about childhood innocence ( in fact, I think they are), but it's pretty destructive and aggressive. Which is an interesting take on things, and surprisingly honest from writers who a) didn't have children of their own and b) lived in a time when (so we now say) children were idealized. Not as much as now, I think.

Then today I got a call from another friend who wanted to see Sideways this afternoon with me. I had planned to spend the afternoon grading--and there's certainly plenty to do--but this seemed far more important. It's a pretty depressing film, one in which it's hard to find anyone to like, but well worth seeing. The scenery is fun--both my friend and I are familiar with the area, up around Solvang--and the characters are well acted. It's not that one would really want to spend time with any of them (maybe the women, who seemed far more appealing than the men), but they were interesting to watch. And the whole thinking/feeling dichotomy gets a new twist here, in some ways. The main characters, an actor and a writer, epitomize the split, but the film resists any easy choices: you can't really say one is better than the other.

There's still grading to do, however.