Coincidence

[bcholmes]

Last weekend, as I frequently do, I watched some movies.

I recently purchased a copy of My Dinner With Andre, which I've never seen before. And I rented Vanilla Sky just because the trailers seemed interesting. I was hugely surprised by Vanilla Sky, which was... quite a bit different than I expected. Not hugely reflective, but there was stuff about dreams that I found interesting. About sleepwalking through life.

In some ways, I was reminded of Waking Life where the idea of dreaming is the key concept in the film. The first lines of Vanilla Sky are, I believe, "Open your eyes."

And then there's My Dinner With Andre, in which Andre talks about us all being robots, and going through life as if we've turned off our capacity to live. And this reminds me so much of the "I don't want to be an ant" sequence from Waking Life it's all a bit surreal.

"I don't want to be an ant, ya know? It's like we go through life bouncing off each other, continuously on ant autopilot with nothing human required of us: 'stop', 'go', 'walk here', 'drive there'. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient, polite manner. 'Here's your change.' 'Paper or plastic?' 'Credit or debit?' 'You want ketchup with that?' I don't want a straw. I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be an ant y'know?"

Of course, as I usually do, I start seeing A Pattern. All these movies talking about not really being alive. In My Dinner With Andre, Wally says, "You seem constantly to be finding a significance in these things that to me are just facts." And I guess I'm like that a lot, too. It's one of the ways I'm hugely flaky.

Comments

My dinner with Andre

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

I watched My Dinner with Andre some years ago. Going into it, I was skeptical as to just how entertaining a movie about two people having a conversation could be. I found Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory (?) to be so interesting to watch and listen to that the two hours just flew by.

I highly recommend Vanya on 42nd Street, which is a film of a workshopped version of Checkov's Uncle Vanya, as scripted by David Mamet, that Shawn and Gregory were working on in New York City. I don't like either Checkov or Mamet overmuch, so I was once again surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

Nuclear Wessels

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

You don't like Chekhov!?!?! Eeeep!

(I'll look for Vanya on 42nd Street... thanks for the recommendation).

Re: Nuclear Wessels

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

Granted, my exposure to Chekhov has not been extensive, but my initial reaction to him was that his use of language was overly mannered and a bit precious. His characters seemed given to standing around and making empty, elegant speeches instead of actually doing anything.

OTOH, I found Mamet coarse and over-the-top. Having Mamet interpret Chekhov for the screen eliminated the elements that I found most annoying about each of them. Mamet's coarse edges were smoothed by the stylized nature of Chekov's writing, while Manet's straightforward style lessened some of Chekhov's preciousness.