is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Good Old Ambler.
Well, I did go see Army of Shadows in Ambler, PA. Great film. You should go see it. And Ambler is a cute little town that reminds me a bit of Western Mass. However, if I am to go on the evidence of who I saw out and about and at the movies in Ambler, PA, I would have to declare that Ambler is a place where mostly OLD people live. You know, really OLD people, who have mobility problems and are so old that they will talk during a french movie because they don�t give a shit. Etc. Still, they did choose to go to Army of Shadows instead of The Illusionist, so I give them some props (heh). Ambler's a cute little town, and has restaurants that I might want to check out some time, what with the movie theater that plays the artsy movies and all.
The movie was great. Really great. Really complex and challenging and also beautiful to look at, despite its dismal setting. (It�s a movie about the French Resistance to the Nazi occupation of France, so it�s set in prison camps and hideouts, but also Paris and London and Marseilles, etc.) There are some really remarkable moments of dark humor in it, as well as some subtle digs at intellectual revolutionaries. And it also shows how war compromises everyone, no matter what cause you�ve taken up or opposed, or even if you stand by without taking sides. And it is all done in a subtle way, simply by telling a story, rather than by hitting you over the head with dramatic speeches that supply to you the "point" you're supposed to be getting so you don't actually have to "get" it (oh, hollywood).
However, at some point during one of the most tense moments of the film, about two hours in (it�s two hours and twenty minutes long), a bunch of additional OLD people walked into the theater and were confused by the darkness. So they stood there talking about it. Talking about the darkness. Even though the theater was clearly full of people in rapt attention to the screen. At that point even the old people who had been shushed within our theatre started violently shushing these octogenarian interlopers. In response to being shushed, the new old people started making their way into seats, even though the movie had been playing for two hours? So now they�re all un-nimbly hobbling over in front of everyone and trying to get seats and saying �excuse me� over and over again without whispering? Even my calm, calm self wanted to get up and start butting some white-haired heads together. And then, once they were seated, you could hear them starting to think, why is this movie in French? I came to see The Illusionist, and it isn�t even supposed to have started yet? Etc. O! great masterpiece of dire villainy.
Luckily they were frightened enough of all the violent shushing and annoyed aggressiveness that had come their way that they just stayed there in their impolitely-seized seats and lived out the last 15-20 minutes of the film with us.
I mean, when you walk into a darkened theater and a movie is clearly well underway in a foreign language, don�t you think, hey, maybe I�m in the wrong theater? That�s all I�m saying.
But anyway, in retrospect it all seems funny, though in the moment it did really seem like dire villainy. I am CERTAIN that they made me miss some key lines of the film.
I also learned that, though I still can�t speak French at all, apparently my ability to understand it when spoken swiftly was improved by my French classes over the summer. I do not agree with all the translation decisions made by the subtitlers.
In other news, if you�ve missed watching America�s Next Top Model, because you�re boycotting it because of their writers� strike, then try America�s Next Top Kitty.
11:43 p.m. - October 05, 2006
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