- John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
Last year, I made a New Year's resolution (I'm a sucker for these types of things) to go to 50 films (You know, about an average of one per week but a good round number. It sounded good.). I didn't do it. I saw thirty-one. I was impressed, or at least intrigued, to notice I'd seen movies in twelve different locations though. It seemed like a lot, but I had little to compare to, not that I'm interested in winning any awards. Ten of those locations were here in the New Orleans area, but I saw one film in Florida and one in California.
I went to Woody Allen's Cafe Society at the Vintage Los Feliz Theater in LA. I rode the train from New Orleans to LA over the summer. It took two days. At the end of the journey, I wished I had one more sunset on the rails. Cafe Society was vintage Woody Allen, complete with Jesse Eisenberg playing Woody Allen playing the character, Bobby. If you saw it, you know what I mean. It was a strange experience being where I was and watching that film. There were locations in the movie that I recognized from earlier in the day just walking around the city. That's generally what I do when I travel, just walk around, get coffee, eat local food, have a drink at a dive bar. It was about old Hollywood, and there I was in an old theater right on the edge of it all. Because of that experience, I probably rate Cafe Society higher than it deserves. But that's a large part of going to the show, right?
My grandmother always called going to the movies "going to the show." My aunt, her oldest daughter, still does. The experience is why we go, and it starts when you walk out of your door. Can you walk to the theater? Bike, bus, or streetcar? If you live in these united states, you probably have to drive. The theater experience to me is door-to-door, and by all means, continue it at the bar after the movie with the friends you just watched with. What did they think? Notice as you change each others' minds, or not. I feel this experience is still important, maybe even more so now. We can watch literally anything out there on our phone in bed, so why do we get up and go?
I saw Manchester by the Sea at Disney World in the days after Christmas. I did not visit Disney: The Theme Park or Disney: "the happiest place on Earth." I visited Disney: the small city of infinite mouse ears which happens to be near where my mother's two brothers and her younger sister live. There is a fantastic firework display every night. You can see it from my relatives' homes. It is a truly bizarre place. My grandmother lives there now too, near but not within the Disney city limits, though admittedly also in a bizarre place. I was there to visit her in her small world, after all. That is to say the alternate universe that is the Alzheimer's home in which she currently exists. It's such a cruel disease and yet no one can pronounce it.
My mother, who had been visiting her mother, a distraught, confused shell of her past self, all day for the past three days, proclaimed that Manchester by the Sea was undoubtedly "the worst movie ever." (sorry ma, the Star Wars thing and La La Land were sold out.) What she meant by that was that it was really fucking sad. I loved it, of course. I love sadness, if I can say that in a completely non-melodramatic way. I feel strangely comforted by it sometimes though it's not good to linger there longer than necessary. I loved every minute of the frigid, wet hopelessness of the film. And still, there is always a glimmer of hope. That's the thing about sadness.
I don't want it to go unnoticed that I've just talked about the work of two very problematic men, Woody Allen and Casey Affleck. It's difficult, separating the life and work of artists. I don't have a guide or a suggestion for you as to how you can deal with this yourself. I struggle with it. Here are some thoughts from someone more eloquent than I:
Please read Ruth Ben-Ghiat's full piece here if you wish. It's short.It's complicated to bring the personal into the picture, to think about whether our appreciation of a given work is changed by more knowledge about its creator. Some might see political correctness at work. Managers and others with financial stakes in a famous individual's reputation often obstruct it. And many choose to keep that firewall up so they can just enjoy the entertainment.Yet the continued explosion of social media, and the greater transparency and communication it brings to society, means that such revelations are likely to increase, posing the question of how we are connected to our cultural icons. Can we love their work even after we no longer love them? That's a question each one of us will have to answer.
It's important to think about these things and attempt to understand others' feelings. It's difficult. I don't know what the right answer is. I know that, for me, judging art is largely an impulsive, reactionary thing. Sometimes we are just drawn to a painting, a photograph, a song, a film. We almost cannot help it. We can, of course, attempt to avoid it, boycott it, protest it. There are surely valid times and reasons for any and all of the above. The 1915 silent film, The Birth of a Nation, is absolutely abominable and yet incredibly innovative and instrumental to the advancement of film as an art form. I recognize both.
It's 2017 now, which means I get a redo of last year's resolution. My favorite film that I saw in the calendar year 2016 was the final one I saw, Manchester by the Sea. Until then, it was the first film I saw in 2016, Embrace of the Serpent, which I believe is technically a 2015 release. I usually spend the beginning of each new year catching up on many of the critically acclaimed films from the latter part of the previous year, so when I feel I've watched a sufficient amount of those in which am I interested, I'll probably post a completely insignificant top-something list. Until then, go out to a movie and get more out of life.
