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petty victories
Apr. 21st, 2005 02:29 pmGot paid.
Ordered My Own Private Idaho, which is finally out on DVD, and which is probably the most necessary and missing thing in my DVD collection -- there's a lot of stuff I want, but there's a logical purity to its inclusion (issues of commerce and Shakespeare seem to be a habit around here).
I first saw the film in university at some special screening put on by I think one of the queer student groups. An hour in, the film melted, and we had to go out to an art house cinema to find out what had actually happened.
Nothing in the film was a revolution to me, so much of it was naturally about the stories I wanted to hear and the way I wanted them told. It was a world where things happened and people didn't change, you just maybe didn't notice how they had always been in the first place. And it didn't romanticize awful things, but it also didn't say awful things make a life always awful. It said, everyone is sometimes happy, no matter their circumstances, but joy is fleeting, and leaves some of us more dramatically and tragically than others.
I'm no great fan of Keanu Reeves as an actor, but I love him in this film, and think his performance (and the decision to cast him) is inspired. And if you ask me what moments in film have made tremendous impact on me, it's that moment where he walks into the nice restaurant, returning to the world of his father, all stoney and silent and impervious to the pleas of his former friend. It's beautifully shot, and it's crystal clear. You know what it feels like, for each and every one of them, and Reeves' character -- you see him seeing himself in a landscape for the first time, this real power of removal from the self -- it's just blinding.
Kali said something convoluted to me last night that I can't remember well enough to repeat, but the gist of it was that I'm on this quest to become imaginary, and in the way that's true, and what a strange way to get closer to home.
Ordered My Own Private Idaho, which is finally out on DVD, and which is probably the most necessary and missing thing in my DVD collection -- there's a lot of stuff I want, but there's a logical purity to its inclusion (issues of commerce and Shakespeare seem to be a habit around here).
I first saw the film in university at some special screening put on by I think one of the queer student groups. An hour in, the film melted, and we had to go out to an art house cinema to find out what had actually happened.
Nothing in the film was a revolution to me, so much of it was naturally about the stories I wanted to hear and the way I wanted them told. It was a world where things happened and people didn't change, you just maybe didn't notice how they had always been in the first place. And it didn't romanticize awful things, but it also didn't say awful things make a life always awful. It said, everyone is sometimes happy, no matter their circumstances, but joy is fleeting, and leaves some of us more dramatically and tragically than others.
I'm no great fan of Keanu Reeves as an actor, but I love him in this film, and think his performance (and the decision to cast him) is inspired. And if you ask me what moments in film have made tremendous impact on me, it's that moment where he walks into the nice restaurant, returning to the world of his father, all stoney and silent and impervious to the pleas of his former friend. It's beautifully shot, and it's crystal clear. You know what it feels like, for each and every one of them, and Reeves' character -- you see him seeing himself in a landscape for the first time, this real power of removal from the self -- it's just blinding.
Kali said something convoluted to me last night that I can't remember well enough to repeat, but the gist of it was that I'm on this quest to become imaginary, and in the way that's true, and what a strange way to get closer to home.
