To Film or Not to Film

I’m dabbling in a movie love affair. I say dabbling because I’m only, like, flirting with film. Watching the There Will Be Bloods and the No Countries for Old Men, the Little Miss Sunshines; waiting to relax and sip a drink with the Junos and Atonements; catching up on the Magnolias and Requiems for a Dream; DVR-ing the Chinatowns and Tsotsis; avoiding the Mans of the Year. I’m no movie connoisseur. Still drinking bargain merlots with the bourgeois eyes of someone who hasn’t yet taken in the Godfather and who fell asleep watching Amelie.

Although, my maturation level has reached new heights: Now I turn on the subtitles of EVERY MOVIE just so I can soak in every single word. In fact, my husband has said that I’m every deaf man’s dream. Meanwhile, I dream of movies.

I dream of my Flirtatious Movie Love Affair progressing into something more. I dream of intimate knowledge. I want to learn about its angles and sideways glances and cameras. I want to learn the ins and outs of screenwriting. And, fittingly, somewhere within this affair is my frivolous life Dream, a Dream that I haven’t yet begun to attack, a Dream that is still very much only a dream. (Probably because I won't go public and subject myself to a friendly dose of accountability.)

My move toward movies actually began with my infatuation with words. Books, etc. Once I started reading about film regularly, I began to see it differently. I began to see it as an art form that has the capacity to possess not only beautiful, witty, smart, emotional language (like a book!) but also drama, cinematography, music … You get the idea. It’s a whole team of talents.

I automatically feel a sort of bond with someone who likes the movies that I like. Case in point: While filling out the below survey, I knew that I was missing some key movies. Movies that, after I watched them, left me sitting on the couch satisfied because I had participated in an experience rather than an entertainment. But, since I’m now 25 and experiencing an inexplicable memory loss, I looked up (thanks, Facebook) a couple of close friends’ movies. Divinely, there were my missing pieces. There were my friends – people who I feel really, truly know me – holding my pieces. I didn’t know specifically what I would find when I looked up their movie lists, just that their movie lists would undoubtedly connect with mine.

My preferences within media – specifically within writings, books, films, sometimes music – are like little manifestations (thesaurus, please give me a less scary word) of what inside me threads me to other individuals. And I think that thread is a shared interest in the human condition: why we do what we do, why we feel what we feel, why we hide what we hide and why we expose what we expose. It’s the raw presentation of human emotion/love/sin to which I’m attracted.

Because when we understand what’s most deeply inside of us, then we can understand what exactly it is that God is healing. And in that I find security. I find security in knowing that there are others out there who aren’t afraid of a little mess, and that there are others out there with whom I can do a little cleaning up.

Scripted

1. Pick 20 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search/other search functions/looking at my profile or whatever to see what my favorite movies are.

1. I can't believe you deceived Miss Miller for a package of Tutti Frutti, Theodore.

2. So that was Mrs. Lundegaard on the floor in there. And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Brainerd. And for what? For a little bit of money. There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don't you know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well, I just don't understand it.

3. I thought Tristan would never live to be an old man. I was wrong about that. I was wrong about many things. It was those who loved him the most that died young. He was a rock they broke themselves against however much he tried to protect them.

4. Dear Baby:
I hope someday somebody wants to hold you for 20 minutes straight and that's all they do. They don't pull away. They don't look at your face. They don't try to kiss you. All they do is wrap you up in their arms and hold on tight, without an ounce of selfishness in it.

5. I let you keep the femur, but now, now I want my skull. Or perhaps, I might just take yours. Hans!

6. And there is the account of the hanging of three men, and a scuba diver, and a suicide. There are stories of coincidence and chance, of intersections and strange things told, and which is which and who only knows? And we generally say, "Well, if that was in a movie, I wouldn't believe it." Someone's so-and-so met someone else's so-and-so and so on. And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that strange things happen all the time. And so it goes, and so it goes. And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."

7. Everywhere I travel, tiny life. Single-serving sugar, single-serving cream, single pat of butter. The microwave Cordon Bleu hobby kit. Shampoo-conditioner combos, sample-packaged mouthwash, tiny bars of soap. The people I meet on each flight? They're single-serving friends.

8. You know what I like about Restaurants? … You can learn a lot, watching things eat.

9. I'd like to dedicate this to my grandpa, who showed me these moves.

10. You were just a little girl in a flannel night gown. And you were shovelling snow from the walk in front of our house. And I was the snow, I was the snow. And everywhere it landed and everywhere it covered. You scoop me up with a big red shovel. You scoop me up.

11. A man who wouldn't cheat for a poke don't want one bad enough.

12. I try and shoot one a day, if possible, before noon. How 'bout you, Coop? I figure it's their fault for being on our land before we got here.

13. This was my son. Notice how I said was? That's because he's dead. Relegated to the past tense. Went from an is to a was before he had his breakfast.

14. I brought you flours.

15. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist. And like that ... he is gone.

16. Your own father said that artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.

17. “Your fans are church folk …. Christians. They don't wanna hear you singing to a bunch of murderers and rapists, tryin' to cheer 'em up.”
“Well, they’re not Christian, then.”

18. I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.

19. This isn't a conversation about this being over. I'm not like, putting a period at the end of this. I'm putting like ... an ellipsis on it.

20. Are you the kind of person that takes time to get to know, and then once you get to know them ... they're fabulous?

Never fear

I love a good dystopia: Big Brother, barren women, bald Natalie Portmans and Brave New Worlds. Social restrictions stifle, and I quiver on the couch while clutching my Mexican blanket, fearful of doom and all its inevitabilities. My husband sits beside me, cheerfully eating Blue Bell ice cream.

"Don't you KNOW that the world is going to be one giant Oppression? Probably tomorrow? And that I won't be able to have CHILDREN?"

"You don't even like children."

"True, but the government is going to start watching us through our TELEVISION."

I'm not sure when I took on such a dismal mind-set, but working at a newspaper certainly heightens it, as does life in general, sometimes. For instance, even a lost, gentle golden retriever isn't enough to spur goodwill nowadays.

Who knows how long Macy meandered through our friends' neighborhood, gazing at neighbors with confused eyes and a wagging tail. And who knows how many of these good neighbors thought, "Oh, I have to get to my pedicure in 10 minutes, so Nancy down the road will surely help the dog, who looks like the epitome of tenderness." And so Nancy becomes Bill, who becomes Josie, who becomes Niles, who becomes the unforgiving Ford Explorer. Then a family mourns, and those who should be ashamed aren't.

One by one, neighbors become a bit more callous and scoot even closer to the center of their islands. Would I have helped Macy? I don't know, but I hope I would have.

Luckily for me, I live with someone whose life-giving optimism pushes through bleakness, someone who deserves to enjoy a big bowl of his favorite ice cream. He's the hero of the dystopia film, the human equivalent of this: