Rear view mirror #8
Returned to work but it still felt like a holiday as everyone was still on leave and no urgent requests came in. It was a salvation from the holiday socialising and the pre-holiday rush. I sorted my filing and can really look forward to new challenges in the new year. New garden beds, introducing chooks to our new chook shed, new lawns, new house for the in-laws. And new commitments to keep old resolutions.
But in film world, the carry over from last year continues. There were some movies that were enjoyable but not really that resonant… as much as I loved the greater diversity and equality in the Star Wars films, the storytelling in the Last Jedi was a fall from the heights of Rogue One (which rose to semi-Greek tragedy heights) and the Force Awakens (nostalgic reimagining with interesting and complex new characters).
There were some movies that hit right at home, pulling your heartstrings but it did this so well and earned it so … earnestly that you felt it was well deserved. I wondered at Wonder to see what holes I could pick, but it was a perfect case of the film hitting just the right mark so that you leave the cinema quite joyous.
And then there are those movies that are a hotline to the heart that leaves you in shock as you leave the cinema, as you try to discuss your thoughts and feelings with your partner on the bike ride home, and as you read online reflections to try to process what you had just seen (my favourite articles so far are here, here, here and really anything from this blog about it) and which you only start to process when you go to bed. It is only upon the midnight hour of solitude and reflection as you attempt to close the day and drift off to sleep that such a film can bring back all your memories of first love and disappointment, of confusion and longing, of the shock of how deep you can go and how fast it can leave you like a steam train leaving the station.
It wasn’t until the lights went off, the credits sequence for the day, that I truly began feeling the effects of watching Call Me By Your Name, a film that may inspire a few introspective posts here. For now, suffice to say that is sublime, it is everything you expect from the director of I Am Love and A Bigger Splash, yet is also surprising about how it ultimately affected me. At the risk of sounding pretentious (but the love of the languages from the film inspires me so), I think that the final image of the film is the closest thing I have seen recently that amounts to punctum. That final shot pierces the audience, informed by what has happened before, but also filled with all the hope and longing for the future. It is here that it is the hotline to the audience’s heart, as a little bit of Elio remains the audience, and the audience embraces him, in recall of all those emotions they themselves have felt. Again, it is sublime, and I haven't even begun to discuss the exquisite filmmaking or the master class acting showcase that was Timothee Chamelet.
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