Darkness at noon

In my head you are suffering...

-"A miracle" The Hidden Cameras

I am feeling better incrementally, day by day, and am more or less ready to resume leaving the house twice a week in the evenings and drinking two Newcastles with various drifters, low-lifes, and editorial assistants.

It was scary having these dizzy spells every evening. It makes you realize just how much of our lives depend on a certain amount of health and vitality. You feel all the more grateful for having it. When I think about just how hard it was to regain my equilibrium after my accident, my thoughts turn the 19 year olds returning from Iraq. If they are lucky enough to return at all, or return with all their limbs, what shape are their nerves in after watching and hearing and feeling bombs go off all around them for two years? It's a brutal world, and has been...I suppose since the beginning.

So I watched the following films in convalescence:

I Heart Huckabees: Enjoyed it a decent amount, but really enjoyed the directors commentary! Kind of like taking a refresher philosophy course. The two pretty people were better actors than I expected. Painted in slightly bold strokes, but I mean how can one not appreciate a rare Hollywood movie concerning with the meaning of things, and our connections to each other.

The Brown Bunny: Each individual who admits to watching this film must deal with the paranoia that the person he tells will immediately visualize him leering and foaming at Chloe Sevigny's famous bj scene. Yet I soldier on. I thought Vincent Gallo's Buffalo 66 was a special little movie, and kept an open mind about this one, despite Gallo's strange smug championing of right-wing politicians. The movie does have about 14 beautiful minutes of 'on the road' footage with Gordon Lightfoot playing. The rest is kind of The Sixth Senseless. But having said that, he has made a really really depressing movie, and the 17 year old nihilistic goth in me almost admires him for it. Either the best student film ever made, or the worst piece of cinema.

Batman Begins: Ok, after the, ahem, Brown Bunny I was ready for a popcorn flick. This was a fair choice. Nothing amazing, or truly dark about it...but for this old comic book fan, it managed to be remotely satisfying in parts. Mainly though I always feel ripped off after one of these blockbusters which just aren't very good. I'll exclude (for the most part) The Lord of The Rings from that...

Last Days: The Van Zant pic about the last days of Kurt Cobain. I had a friend tell me she needed all her will not to fall asleep when she saw it the darkness of the Sunshine Theatre in NYC. But at home while eating some pasta carbonara alla Grazia...I found it really beautiful and opiate-like...which was obviously appropriate considering the subject. Barely any dialogue, a lot of blue early morning wandering. Not a classic, but well worth watching. Bressonian in it's sparse shots and quietness.

Au Hasard Balthazar: after Van Zant's mildly Bressonian pleasure....I finally got around to buying the much discussed but seldom screened Bresson masterpiece Au Hasard Balthazar which has just been released on DVD. After finally seeing it myself...I can honestly say...it may be the most affecting, efficient, and transcendent work of cinema ever made. I can't even describe it, but to say its a movie starring a donkey. It functions both as a deeply affecting work of Christian allegory, and a probing existential analysis of man's distance from love. It is a reservoir of meaning and feeling, and it gives to you based on what of your soul you bring to it.

After all this I made the mistake of finally watching the criterion dvd for Hiroshima Mon Amour which a friend had gotten me last year. I haven't watched the movie since I rented it on Long Island 5 years ago while living with Andrea, and wrote Burning Hearts shortly after. Sigh. Tears. Sigh. Toblerone.

But it gave me an idea for an art/memory project called 'The Confrontations' which I will talk more about soon. I promise.

What does it say about me that these are the images a friend sends to cheer me up while I'm recovering?

Of course this is the friend...so what else should I expect?

Thank you Per! Thanks everyone for wishing me well after my accident. More from me soon.

xo

Mick Grace