Watching movies

Isabella's birthday bash was a success in every way... so what if I stressed out all morning, hurrying everyone out the door to pick up the cake...

I set up the community center and M.'s insistence upon buying a case of Pacifica for the adults was admittedly a really good idea. He also insisted on buying pizza which turned out to be a good thing too, all guests seemed very happy, and the weather held out for us to let the kids play in the playground and the serendipitous valentine's day decorations made it seem like we were super organized...

I swear she is the happiest child in the world. With the arrival of every guest she was thrilled and every present was "exactly what she wanted". Now we are watching one of her presents... Ice Age... one of the more palatable animated movies and a present from one of her "grown-up girls that are friends". As is customary, most of our friends (not the New England crowd sadly) were there, partaking of the beer and pizza along with the parents that we have been getting to know after the several weekend parties... I did have to switch the pizza order to have at least one cheese pizza so Isabella's best friend could eat - she only eat's halal meat and obviously never ham or pepperoni. Isabella has this really funny habit. She only ever wants pepperoni pizza but then precedes to remove all the pepperoni and discard it. But god forbid you should give her plain pizza. I guess I am not the only neurotic one.

So, while I decompress from my three-hour catch up visit to the office Sunday (it's like a party on the fourth floor everyone is there working away...) and I got sucked into translating a letter for Juan.

So since I am half watching a movie, I thought that I would reflect on some movies that I have seen of late and failed to comment upon.

At the theater upon Laura's recommendation, we went to see
"Finding Neverland" (2004)
Directed by Marc Forster, Written by Allan Knee (play) adapted by David Magee.

I loved this movie. It was beautiful and Johnny Depp is always a pleasure to admire. How Peter pan was born. This is the one that broke my heart several weeks ago. I think, though, that the saddest part wasn't due to the movie's inherent tragedy (of which there was sufficient) but rather on my own personal interpretation.


"Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran" (2003)
Directed by François Dupeyron based on the novel by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt.
This was also a gorgeous film, the coming of age of an unwanted child and the love of a childless man. Omar Sharif played the part of the spiritual guide, a teacher in the true sense, not a moral guardian but a practitioner of faith in the way that it should always be practiced, to love and care for others.


"La pianiste" (2001)
Directed by Michael Haneke based on the novel by Elfriede Jelinek.
Prize winning performance by Isabel Huppert (who I love) aside... this movie left me feeling nauseous and deeply disturbed. Now, I can usually stomach sexual perversion, and am not bothered by voyeurs in the least, the violence with which this character unravels is overwhelming and unpleasantly so. The acting was fabulous, and perhaps this is a tragedy in the Greekest sense. The fatal flaw of the pianiste was her need to control everything, but as we wish and pray that this truly dispicable character will be redeemed in some way by love (hey, I wasn't hoping for Hollywood happy ending) that is, that we won't feel such a violent rejection of her, but it never happens. Instead she infects everything that she touches with her sickness and the scene in which she callously crushed glass and places it in her student's coat pocket so that she will slice her piano-playing hands is truly wretched. The catharsis comes (does it come?) when her lover beats and rapes her while her obsessively controlling mother listens, locked in the adjacent room, just as she had asked him to do, but not in the way she would have wanted. The movie ends with her piercing her breast and the crimson moving so slowly that she can still leave the concert hall with us behind. Beautifully filmed, amazingly acted but really awful.

So, now it's time to go back to an essay by Virginia Woolf on the question of characters (for the French translating class that we will be visiting for the next two weeks). All this so that tomorrow there will be ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE to avoid working on the Dario paper. Blah. Off I go.