my weekend

Spent most of the weekend sitting in the dark, surrounded by strangers. In three evenings and two days, we managed to catch three movies and two plays. The plays were not my cup of tea… two shorties as part of Stoppard Fest. Stoppard is not the problem. Both these were written for tv, so they were choppy and hard to stage. The acting in the second play was pretty poor as well, and neither of them were helped by the rattling sound the heat vent was making. Given the choice between heat and silence, I’d pick heat, and with a more absorbing performance, I probably wouldn’t have found it so distracting.

The three films were all variations on a theme. Saw Children of Men on Friday, and Last King of Scotland and Pan’s Labyrinth on Sunday. All very grim, all set in societies that were falling apart, all featuring terrible atrocities against minority groups. And there are many other interesting parallels. Children featured one scene with Picasso’s Guernica hanging prominently on the wall, while Pan’s was set during the Spanish Civil War. Two similar looking redheads, namely Julianne Moore and Gillian Anderson, had small but critical roles. James McEvoy, the Scotish doctor in Last, played a faun in a previous film, while Pan’s (of course) features a faun. All of them had action centered around a pregnant women in peril. And all of them made me want to know more.

In my opinion, Last was the weakest. Forest Whitaker deserves the accolades he is receiving, most definitely. He was amazing, as was James McEvoy. But I found some of the plot details a little hard to swallow. I didn’t understand the connection between the two men, and I found the doctors motivations for his irresponsible actions, make that his practically suicidal actions, to be inadequate. And though the movie was far less graphic than it could have been, given the atrocities committed by Amin, I though the other two films had a steadier hand when it came to the level violence. Not that I watched those bits. Eyes quickly shut on many occasions. Thank goodness for O’s shoulder and my scarf.

Pan’s Labyrinth… hmmm. I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ll simply say that I would highly recommend that everyone see it. And I’m very glad that I didn’t read anything about it before I went. I had no expectations, except that I’ve liked del Torro’s previous films and thought I’d probably like this one too. But it apparently isn’t for everyone. As the credits rolled, the young woman behind us said, and I quote, “That was the longest piece of junk I’ve ever sat through.” She then went on to complain about having to read the subtitles. Which makes me wonder what she thought she was getting into.