Friday, August 01, 2008

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

REGARDING THE FILM, "EVENING"

I think it was last year--maybe a few months ago, that you told me to see "Shadows." As I try to take most of your advice, although not as in a timely a manner as you might expect, I did see it.
I saw it tonight with great appreciation for its painterly quality and for its final wrap-up-scene-and-summing up-theme which was that there are really no mistakes, that we each do what we must, that all is for the good, and that what seems to matter doesn't really matter.
As you will remember it takes place in the home on the Newport shore in which we all should have been brought up and in which we all should have lived out our lives, but the writer of the film points out that it wouldn't have made any difference; that the noble thing was to marry the wrong person for that was the right thing to do, and have children who are brought into the world to make the same mistakes (which don't matter in the end) that we did.
When you are very young and hotly in love it is better to choose a star for your lover than to write a note in philosophy class asking. "what's for lunch" --anticipating a coming lesson on Nietzsche (or was it my Grandfather? well, it was one of them) who said, "Food first, then Philosophy." -- No, it was my Grandfather, and he said it every year during the endless Passover productions that my Aunt Sylvia would put on. He also liked to shout out, while banging his fist on the table, "Too much food, not enough Vodka!" Poor Aunt Sylvia.
It was this Grandfather who taught me the only dictim I know, "Hate the bosses, love the Workers" and who had Patti, and my cousins hold onto our belt buckles while pledging to "Never cross a picket line,"
Another lesson from the movie: If you have two children then one can live the wrong life, the one you would have liked to have led, while the other can live the right life, the one you chose, but which was really the wrong life for you.
Whoops, was it "Shadows" or was it "Evening" that you recommended? But then did it matter?
mek