Kensington Blues

Great little post over at Pullquote about how to rationalize adding even more Criterion Collection titles to your personal DVD library. Trust me, I feel this guy’s pain. When I was really a movie hound, especially when I started taking advantage of Deep Discount’s massive biannual sales, I would agonize over which titles to buy. To wit, I still haven’t purchased a copy of Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour because I felt it was too expensive for one disc AND that it would surely go out of print when a new print was invariably discovered. This is the exquisite pain that only truly insane observers of the DVD remaster market can feel.

Conversely, how stupid do I feel for having ever bought Equinox, which I watched exactly one time? I think I’d hasten to add a follow-up to Pullquote’s post: how many DVDs do you own that sit on a shelf or in a drawer that are untouched? I confess to more than my fair share of these.

I feel sheepish even taking part in conversations like this now. I used to eagerly await regular emails from Criterion about their latest titles and then make notes in priority order about which I’d buy when they went on sale. Now that I’m less bullish on buying any sort of physical media, they’re hardly a blip on my radar. I will admit that I nearly jumped for joy when I read that they were releasing Red Desert, which is possibly my favorite Antonioni movie, even though I always say it’s L’Avventura.

Wondered if it was possible for anyone to actually make a film that captures the soul-crushing hopelessness of war without delivering a hamfisted message that turns people off. The Hurt Locker did that for me. Granted, it hasn’t changed the fact that we’re still heavily engaged in both Iraq and Afghanistan, despite electing a President who promised to change all that.

Work harder, Obama.

Watched An Education recently. Wondered what Band of Outsiders would’ve been like with a happy ending.

My friend Eric tweeted late last night,” ‘Up in the Air’: politely misguided liberal fantasy, or egregiously clueless and downright offensive in parts Piece Of Shit?”

It made me think of the clip above. I watched Up in the Air earlier this week and wondered what the fuss was about. It tries to do a lot, but I’m not sure it accomplishes very much. It’s boilerplate romance-gone-wrong fare, freighted with a message about how our priorities are wrong and somehow the horrible economy will help us figure out what’s important. Sorry, Mr. Reitman, but the notion of making lemonade doesn’t work when you can’t afford the lemons in the first place.

For people who’ve never been laid off, it seems like the stuff dreams are made of. You’re freed from a job you probably hated anyway; you get some severance, or at least unemployment; and you can reevaluate things and move on. Which is the logic that informs this amazingly hilarious Onion article I read way back in October 2003, when I was about six months into what would be a 2+ year underemployment bid.

I felt that the testimonials that came at the end of the movie from folks who’d lost their jobs in the recent downturn echoed the hope the Obama campaign gave them. Their optimism and their reliance on family to support them in their time of need were both very poignant, but Reitman conveniently leaves out all the stories from the past few years about folks who’ve lost their jobs and have then gone on to violent attacks on their workplaces and communities.

Is Reitman the new W.D. Howells, that is, someone who puts a smiley face on realism? There’s but one “dead end” in the movie, the woman who follows through on her threat to commit suicide. Everyone else just goes on their merry way, for better or worse. Whether it’s finding a new job, or having an affair, or just running away from it all thanks to a nearly infinite supply of frequent flier miles, everyone can find an escape from the humdrum, if not outright happiness.

I think it’s that that people dislike about Reitman’s movies. The simple-mindedness. The breezy dialogue. The beautiful people. The whole ‘resiliency of the human spirit’ trope, which sometimes just seems a little more realistic than the way it’s presented here. Reitman’s youthful, privileged worldview makes it difficult to see things differently than he does, that is, through a lens of infinite possibility. The problem is that Reitman’s skies, like those in Up in the Air, are sunny and cloudless.

I’m sorry, but a Sam Peckinpah film with a happy ending is hardly a Sam Peckinpah film.