Mar adentro
Nowadays, TV shows don’t only keep me up from watching movies, they also keep me from blogging. I am itching to blog about TV shows as well, but I just don’t have the heart to do that. There is something enjoyable about not blogging about things, but especially with Game of Thrones (and now also Arrested Development), it would be desirable to just jot down some thoughts sometimes. I think that Arrested Development is very sophisticated and its writing just as interesting as before, if not even more so. But it’s necessary to spend some time thinking about all the details, and blogging would have helped. I am so going to rewatch the entire show one day.
I have another reason not to blog TV shows. Recently, I have been reading Poniewozik’s column religiously (though I still ignore the TV shows he watches but I don’t watch), catching up with his Game of Thrones, Mad Men and Breaking Bad postings. I even forgive him for stopping to blog Mad Men because of Game of Thrones. Poniewozik is my idol. I wish I could write like him. When there is someone like Dostoevsky it makes me not want to write a novel because I couldn’t stand the shame of comparing myself to it. The same goes for Poniewozik and TV shows. Nevertheless, there is one thing I would like to do: Adopt his “hail of bullets”. I realize that a lot of things I write about are just random tidbits which are not relevant enough to be in the actual review, and I have a feeling that this re-organization of my postings will help the review. I will probably only do this for shows I thought were particularly remarkable, but unfortunately “Mar adentro” is not one of them.
Pip said awhile ago that he wants to see all the Foreign Movie Oscars, especially since “Departures” and “The Lives of Others” were so great. Well, now we saw another one and in comparison to those two it was definitely disappointing. In fact, I found the movie almost so disappointing that I don’t want to blog about it. Strangely enough, the disappointment only came in about 20-30 minutes into the film. Before seeing the film, I only knew that Shii saw the film many, many years ago and I wanted to see it because of Javier Bardem. So the topic of the film was a surprise, and at first it was a pleasant surprise. I thought the premise of the film was very intriguing, and the visuals were poetic. Little did I know that the intriguing story does not make a great plot (in fact, the film pretty much lacks plot) and the poetic visuals turned into terrible kitsch. I disliked the flying scenes, and not even my favorite aria of all times, Nessun dorma, was able to make me enjoy or even feel touched by them. The meaningfulness of the movie was mostly lost when I realized that it’s another one of those “disabled men with two women in love with him based on real life” stories. I am aware that “Le scaphandre et le papillon” came out later, but having seen it first made me realize how much I dislike this setting. Just like how the “white men save far away colonies with non-white (or blue) people” is racist, we are dealing with a not-all-that-subtle version of misogyny here. Needless to say that the main character has a blossoming love relationship with the pretty female, whereas the “lesser” woman both in appearance and career success is in love with him – one-sided of course.
Luckily, Javier Bardem saves it all. I loved his acting here and was thoroughly and appropriately creeped out by his smile. Thinking about it, we don’t see him smile very much in his other films, in which he is either depressed (Biutiful, Los lunes al sol) or evil (No country for old men, Skyfall). Maybe Vicky Cristina Barcelona is an exception, but I just don’t remember it too well. This is a great addition to his long list of unusual roles; to see how this smile is not a “real” smile but actually masking deep sadness is wonderfully devastating. I think that alone made the film worthwhile to see.
It’s been a long time since I have seen a Spanish film, and I realized that I actually love the sound of Spanish-Spanish (which, incidentally, reminds me of Pete’s “Spanish from Spain” from this week’s Mad Men episode). It reminds me of my childhood. Unfortunately no beautiful memories of lost youthfulness can make a boring film interesting, and it is unfortunate that I felt about it this way despite its awesome premise. I cannot recommend the film unless you are a Javier Bardem fangirl like me.
PS. I have begun to use Evernote more extensively, mostly to “transfer” links of articles I am interested in to my phone, so I can read them there later. Now I have also added a to-do list. It’s just very convenient this way.
PPS. In other completely unrelated news, I am looking forward to After School’s new song, but I fear that it will absolutely terrible.