I've typed up what pass for movie reviews in this space before; though the movies have been playing regularly, it's been awhile since my last film footnote. This weekend was cold but beautiful - sunny, blue skies - and three days long. How did I spend a good chunk of it? Trying to complete a computer upgrade four times. Why four times, you ask? Well, each successive attempt was different, quicker and more comically agonizing than the last. Three very colorful disasters. Number Four is a charm, it seems; it's holding up.
How did this all happen, you insist? Did I ever tell you about the time I walked into my college dormitory lobby late one Friday night just as a drunk began to shake 20-ounce, glass juice bottles out of a vending machine? A crowd gathered as he rocked the unit back and forth, then rushed the half-broken pile of swag in the kind of snatch-and-scatter bread line mania that nobody talks about afterward. I gingerly picked up Cran-Raspberry - sticky outside and room-temperature inside, but good at one in the morning. The next day, I passed through the lobby again and decided to make a proper transaction.
In went my dollar twenty-five. Out came nothing. I backed away, taking the hint.
I don't believe in karmic retribution, but early on God relayed to me the fact that whenever I cut corners a bit, he extracts his pound of flesh and we're even again. And then this weekend's adventure in computer twiddlings that go awry in ways so unlikely that even a compulsive gambler wouldn't touch the odds. Do the math.
I rented two movies. Shrek was the first. Funny, in a comfortingly mild way; but ever so happy. Lighthearted beginning; happy ending. The DVD included a three-minute musical with all the characters trying their hand at karaoke - even the bad guys who are, of course, just animated actors. Three minutes. It was not unlike mainlining good times and great laughs. Nearly too much happiness at once. But for Pete's sake, one damned happy sitting. That was Saturday.
Tonight I watched Seabiscuit, a movie one enjoys for exactly the same reasons as Star Wars: it's heroic fiction following the exploits of a delightfully stock cast, steeped in its own airtight mythology. Even the leads are close parallels, an obscure prodigy played by Toby Maguire and his eccentric mentor - in this case split into Jeff Bridges and Chris Cooper. There's the "thing" they do, around which three-quarters of the dialogue is wrapped: swinging lightsabers for Star Wars, racing horses for Seabiscuit. Technique, focus, discipline, and faith are what Maguire is taught. Quite the Zen appeal, especially when he's made to run a lap in pitch darkness. What's that, Mr. Cooper? He's supposed to "trust his feelings"?
Before the defining match race, our hero Maguire is incapacitated and a fellow jockey steps in to ride the horse. But as Maguire coaches his surrogate from a hospital bed, it's obvious that victory has nothing to do with whose behind is planted in the saddle. The ending is full of happiness and redemption, and considering the movie's Great Depression backdrop, we rise from our seats having been shown that America's deliverance came from Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal, and Seabiscuit. May the horse be with you.
Happy and heartfelt works. I keep passing Ran in the video store but I've seen it before, and it's artful precisely in its bleakness. Noir and cynicism is for warmer weather. What will my next encounter from happy cinema entail? Provided I can find it: The Tuskegee Airmen.