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

Sandman

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

I agree, the writing style is quite different from his usual. But it's my second-favorite work of his (Sandman being my favorite).

I don't think that Sandman counts as only one work. And even though I loved Sandman, I thought it had long boring bits. The "End of the World" (?) storyline was mostly a loss, in my books. And "The Kindly Ones" took way too long, in my opinion. I really liked "The Doll's House" and "A Game of You".

(I'll also throw in my story about how I picked up Sandman off the shelves when it was first released. I knew Gaiman from having taken over Miracleman which was one of my favourite comics).

I think my favourite work of Gaiman's is Violent Cases -- there's a tremendous scene in it in which one of the characters changes appearance. I like the meditation on memory (it's a favourite topic of mine).

I'm also really fond of a short story he wrote (collected in Smoke and Mirrors) about a troll bridge.

Re: Sandman

[firecat]

I don't think that Sandman counts as only one work.

One could look at it that way, yeah.

I think I haven't gotten around to Violent Cases yet. Will let you know what I think when I do.