Too much of a good thing

Meeting with a professor the other day, he referenced a book Women who love too much which I recall hearing about perhaps 20 years ago? It was a socio-psychological study of women in dependent relationships, which was apparently a cross-over hit (into the realm of tradebook) given the fact that its title still rings familiar to me. Apparently, it turns out, that the study was done here, in the Santa Ynez area. Curious indeed. Some things come around to haunt us, it seems, like ghosts that linger long past their welcome.

Loving too much. Once upon a time in the recent past I received a request for some sort of explanation about the difference between love and need, or a treatise on loving too much. I was, at the time, unable to articulate my thoughts in a cogent manner (as is wont to happen), and more likely than not, I am still equally incapable. Nevertheless... nevertheless.

Is it possible to love too much? Or to need too much love? Are they the same thing, inverted back in on themselves? Is it the same thing to love one person too much or to love too many people (but not enough)? Is that even possible? Where does dependency on another person end and actual love begin? How does that feeling of fear of loss correlate to some kind of mutual understanding? Does knowing another person's idiosyncracies inside out and (presumably) forgiving them provide sufficient substance on which to base a life? Where do the universes that we each carry with us go when we learn that they are not acceptable within the framework of another's image of us, and our own image of how we should be? Is there really a way that we should be?

No, no answers, I am not paid to give answers, just to raise questions (and that in and of itself is rather poorely remunerated)... but these were a few that popped into my head under somewhat disquieting circumstances. Some of us like danger. Some of us prefer comfort. And still others of us prefer the guise of danger under the umbrella of comfort, or the guise of comfort in the eye of the hurricane. No need to mention who we are, most of us know the answer. Last night's film, though strangely discomforting , was less uncomforatble than certain extenuating circumstances... Like the umbrage that was taken because I was speaking with a stranger who dared to be male... or like the woman to my right who was shooting me death-looks because I hit her with my hair (it would seem) several times prior to the commencement of the film, as I turned to talk to not one, but two co-incidental movie-goers. Sometimes one sets out to do things on one's own and collects baggage along the way. It was a beautiful film, but slow and hard to watch, and at the end credits, we two, who know eachother so well, stood almost simultaneously and headed towards the door.

Noticias lejanas Dir. Ricardo Benet

Beautiful camerawork. I loved the color pallette of the film, a dusty opaque heavy on the yellows and green-blues. It was a story, of so many, about misery, true rural isolation in a Mexico that is oft forgotten in light of the slick new Mexican cinema of fast paced urban beat music and microbuses. I didn't know what exactly to expect, and it seemed to borrow heavily from the starkly contrasting early photography work of Modotti (I say this because of the images of the indigenous women). There was some creative flashback and forward that sort of fell apart about halfway through the film. The actual narrative line was relatively simple - Boy returns looking for the place of his youth, but is complicated by the intervention of his brother's memories and perceptions. It was slow moving, which, in and of itself is not a crime, but in this case its pacing failed to ever pick up... and the moment of climax had no real build-up, nor denouement.

(Aside: the guy I was talking to in line about the Italian film actually liked what I had to say about it, but was joking that the director might well say, "make your own movie and then tell me about it." Agreed, it is very comfortable to be a critic, and much harder to actually do, let me state for the record that I have the utmost respect for anyone who can pull off a project of such magnitude, and, I still have a right to opine (or as a certain person I know likes to say: "opinions are like assholes, everyone has at least one" and as I like to respond, "I seem to have a collection of them.")

Gorgeous images of the windmill, out in the salt flats near Veracruz (we thought). Interesting development of the character, Martín, who leaves his family because there is literally nothing for a young man there, no industry nor agricultural prospects, he is unwelcome by his step-father, and plagued by guilt over the death of his younger brother when he was a child, but so terrible, overwhelmingly depressing. Not that life isn't, at times, an eternal beating, but, what I felt this film lacked (that, say, the last did not) was a touch of humour. Even the most miserable human beings still find pleasure, if briefly (and often in bad taste), but they find it nonetheless. Here there was not a hint of joy, not one. There were only two places in the film that even ellicited a chuckle on my part (and I think we three may have been the only ones in the room that found them funny) where the indigent man at the shelter explains the obvious failure of Martín's quest to find his long-lost father because he needs to add a 5 - which, come to think of it, at the time I didn't notice, but after the end of the film, I realized, was either an unmistakeable anachronism (or perhaps a sly wink at DeFectuosos everywhere?) - based on the fact that the character Beto was a child when Martín left - and then a middle-aged man in present day Mexico - the issue with the 5's is from about 6 years ago as DF expanded its telephone-user base) or else it was a failed attempt at demonstrating the elliptical nature of time and history (as in Milcho Manchevski's Before the rain which actually did acheive what it set out to do).

The unrelenting misery is often too much to digest, the character is practically desexualized, robbed, then abused (or disabused of) his trust. He finds a woman, briefly only to be tainted by her own infectious mental malaise, perhaps analagous to the eternal desire and movement towards the center of a falsely constructed modernity. It was an interesting take on D.F. simply because it unfolded the city through the eyes of a person who had never seen it before, but, in my humble opinion, the strangeness could have been heightened and deepened, and there could have been a little less wide-panning back history of the endless and unchanging salt flats... or at least a better balance between the two distinct locales could have been struck for the purpose of contrast. Was it worth the watch? Clearly, few movies are not (at least after the requisite pre-sifting is done). Would I run out to see it again? Not so much. Some times too much, is simply that: too much.