:: anne in the attic ::

Create Your Own Countdown

:: Thursday, May 25, 2006 ::

One of the things that draws me to certain movies is this: that it lets us in to the intimate, private lives behind otherwise closed doors. We are granted omniscience to regard the defining moments of another's experience, albeit fictional-- but these perspectives mirror our own, the stories are those taking place in and out of our lives every day: witnessing an untimely death, surprising another with our presence, discovering truths and lies, working out our stories and how we wish them to end.

Ah, endings. In every story, our characters have to decipher what and how much is theirs to change. Or stop. Or begin. Is our existence wrought only by chaos? Of course not, but where lies the control? We have made our world, our own little worlds within that, and so on. In movies, we watch as others discover this, push up against such boundaries, and fight natural forces for control. Some discover their truths later than others; some never do, the foils in many a story. (Show me a woman who is deep in discovery in a film and I'll show you her best friend who is as oblivious as a box of rocks.) And so I posit that once we wrestle for control, we can pretty much choose how our stories end (within the bounds of natural forces, and foregoing an untimely end). It's just that sometimes, I think we don't realize the impact of what we believe to be our smallest decisions until we experience the snowballing repercussions of them later.

Films illustrating this particular concept (for me, anyway) include:

1. The Ice Storm
2. American Beauty
3. Ordinary People
4. Imaginary Heroes
5. Laurel Canyon
6. Closer
7. High Art

I'm sure this list is incomplete, but I placed "The Ice Storm" at the top of the list not out of favoritism-- indeed I loved the next four quite a bit more as stories go-- but for what it EVOKES. T.S. Eliot coined the term "objective correlative" to describe a writing style in which the author employs words to bring forth a feeling that is not so much written in black and white, but a tension felt, without speaking of it, between the lines. If that term can be applied to the screen, I believe Ang Lee has mastered it in "The Ice Storm."

Such things heighten my senses and put me on the lookout for the surreal in the real world. A good film and an engaging story leave me with an exquisite sense of something missing and a longing to experience that which I have not, to know and see the things that make our lives real to us. I believe Walker Percy immortalized that feeling in "The Moviegoer" as being "onto something."

Two of my favorite Walker Percy quotes:

"The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair."

"I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself."

And on that note, good night.

:: Anne 8:00 PM [smartass remarks] ::
...