Monday morning, 7:30 am, Victoria Day.

Streets are deserted and finally, it’s raining. Dire Straits’ Private Investigations is on my MP3 player. A few people rush by in the morning grayness. My coffee is warm and soothing. Somebody behind me is messaging online to an unknown party who could be anywhere in the world. Time is such a relative concept. While Vancouver is still lingering in the mists of a long night, the streets of Patong Beach in Phuket, Thailand, must be bursting with animation. The market for cheap copies and vice never sleeps.

Speaking of vice, I just watched Crash for the second time and must say it ranks way up there with the best movies I’ve seen recently. A superb cast gives great performances; the storyline is split into mini-slices of life that end up relating to each other, proving that our lives are forever entwined with thousands of others.

The drama feels real and characters aren’t exaggerated super and anti-heroes. They are down-to-earth people dealing with their daily routines in the all-too-racist L.A. society and crashing into one another randomly - or maybe not? Quite a strong film. Must see.

And then there’s Bloody Sunday. Except that in this case, I didn’t know much about the actual events that took place in 1972 in Derry, Ireland. So I went to the IMDb web site looking for more info about the movie and the events, and ended up spending awholotta time reading user comments that had turned into a venomous exchange about N. Ireland, politics, etc.

Then I realized that the movie is probably only pouring fuel into the fire, a fire that still hasn’t stopped burning, and that presenting the 1972 events as a mere civil rights crowd massacre by the British troops was just too simplistic. It’s like talking about the concentration camps without explaining the whole political process that lead to them. Of course, it was wrong. But why did it get to that?

In the end, I’m just not qualified to judge the N. Ireland situation. I’m not even sure the protagonists are themselves qualified. But in any case, the killing of innocent civilians was, is and always will be the worse of crimes. Movie watched, note taken.

And finally, I gave What’s Eating Gilbert Grape a try. Surprise! Very touching movie, with Johny Depp in a pre-megastar status and Leonardo Di Caprio proving that he could actually act before he became « King of the world ». Talk about a small town disfunctional family! And yet, the movie is not about sensationalism, nor is it attempting to make us hate or love the protagonists. They simply are there, they go through their lives dealing the best they can with the cards they’ve been delt, and learn along the way, as we all should... Sad and heart-lifting at the same time.

2006-05-25 23:33 • Posted in Reviews: & Schtroumpfissime: