BEFORE: I'll release my Oscar predictions tomorrow, because today I want to talk about Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. My first impulse is to treat this as another hokey made-up disease, like ADHD or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, for one simple reason: the weather sucks. And it's all right to feel down when the weather sucks, in fact I encourage it as a rational human response. Friday it was so cold that our pipes froze, and we had no water. I should have re-programmed the thermostat to make the heat come on during the day, instead of letting the house get cold while we were both at work, so as a result I had to play a plumber to hold a blowtorch to our pipes for an hour. Eventually something melted somewhere and our water was restored, but of course not until after we bought two big gallons of Poland Spring at the corner deli, for use in making tea and/or needing to refill the toilet tanks.
Should I be smiling during all this inconvenience? Of course not, getting frustrated would be a natural response, so it's allowed. When I had a doctor's appointment on Tuesday, I noticed some new boxes on the intake form, relating to depression. The first asked if I was often sad and listless, and the second asked if I frequently found myself disinterested in doing things. This is roughly equivalent to the form reading, "Do you want to talk about it? Check Yes/No". Yes, I am often sad, and yes, I'm frequently disinterested in doing anything - but I don't consider that depression, because I consider both of those reactions to be appropriate responses to my life, considering my age and job situation.
What I mean is, I believe that life is generally tedious, frequently disappointing, and ultimately pointless. For me to start each day with a smile, or whistle while I work, that would seem out of place and very unrealistic. Besides, for any medication that they could give me to improve my attitude, the side effects would be worse than the disease - they all list things like "suicidal thoughts" as side effects, and that sounds a lot worse than being grumpy and disinterested in things.
Keanu Reeves carries over from "Something's Gotta Give" -
THE PLOT: Two best friends living on the streets of Portland as hustlers embark on a journey of self discovery and find their relationship stumbling along the way.
AFTER: I'm also not having a good run with movies lately - nothing's scored above a 5 for some time now. Now, this may be partially due to the enforced romance theme for February, which has forced me down some cinematic roads that I might not otherwise traverse. It's also possible that I'm burned out on movies, having watched well more than my share in the last 6 years and 2 months. I've lost all my perspective, I can take in the basic plot elements of a film, but I'm having trouble seeing the deeper meanings behind things.
Or, there's another possibility - it feels to me lately like everything sucks because EVERYTHING SUCKS. Maybe I haven't lost my perspective after all, maybe I just don't like certain movies because they're not made well, or they're not aimed at me to begin with. Maybe I'm not seeing a greater meaning behind a story because it's not there to begin with. I remember last month that I enjoyed films like "Birdman" and "Moonrise Kingdom", right? OK, so they weren't perfect, but what films are (outside of the 2 perfect 10's I've discovered)? I'm usually able to see the bigger picture, but today I just felt like there's no "there" there.
This sort of echoes a problem I've been having lately with comic books. I've been a hardcore Marvel collector since 1983, and also have kept up with DC's Batman and Superman. But it's impossible for me to discern if I still enjoy reading the books, or if I'm just buying them out of habit. Frequently I've read books like "All-New Ghost Rider" or recent crossovers like "Axis" or "Original Sin" and afterwards I say, "I just don't get it." The reason may be that these books are aimed at teenagers, and I no longer have the mindset required to enjoy them. I had a good run, enjoying these comics into my mid-forties, but I soon have to face the fact that I've aged out of the program. They no longer entertain me, because they're not designed to. Marvel's upcoming "Secret Wars" crossover is promising to combine all their various alternate timelines into a new, coherent, focused timeline - basically, they're razing their continuity to the ground and most likely re-building it to match Disney's Marvel movie universe, so maybe this will be a good opportunity for me to cut myself loose. I started collecting with the original "Secret Wars" crossover in 1983, so ending with the new one provides some symmetry.
Anyway, back to the film - "I just don't get it." Maybe it's not aimed at me, maybe it was aimed at disaffected teenagers, and I am no longer one of those. Maybe I didn't see a larger meaning to the story because there wasn't one. At least with a disfunctional family wedding comedy I can point to things and say, "Ha ha, my parents are clueless too!" or "Boy, aren't weddings crazy affairs?" but here I've got nothing to relate to.
Maybe I just don't get Gus Van Sant - I remember having problems with the storytelling in his film "Elephant" also. The IMDB summary calls it a "Surreal character study" which seems to me like a veiled way of saying "Confusing film with no real story." This came out in 1992, when the independent film movement was in full swing, but why does that so often translate into "What the heck was this movie even about?" OK, so "Good Will Hunting" was an entertaining film, but does the guy have anything else even comparable on his resumé?
(I think I missed out on a lot of the 1990's "independent film" movement because I was busy, working on producing independent films. The irony of this is not lost on me. I got to attend the Sundance festival three times, in 1998, 2001 and 2004, and each time saw as many films as I could - the indie films that came out in other years, I simply didn't get to see.)
And how does William Shakespeare get a screenwriting credit for this? It's loosely based on "Henry IV, Part I"? Sorry, I'm not familiar with that one. If you're going to riff on Billy Shakes, why not pick a play people know, like "Hamlet" or "Macbeth"? I mean, I guess that explains why the characters here spoke in archaic, flowery language, but again, to what purpose? What does that even accomplish? I don't get it. Maybe it's a Portland thing, I had to watch a few episodes of "Portlandia" before I found it even remotely funny, and before that it was another head-scratcher, just like this film.
Also starring River Phoenix, James Russo, William Richert, Chiara Caselli, Flea (last heard in "The Wild Thornberrys Movie"), Udo Kier (last seen in "Melancholia"), with cameos from Grace Zabriskie (last seen in "Wild at Heart"), Brian Wilson, Jim Caviezel (last seen in "The Thin Red Line").
RATING: 3 out of 10 wheat fields
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