OK, really. No more posts about the gay marriage debate and how it’s just like the legalization of divorce, or birth control, or what have you. Let’s talk about, oh, movies. Apparently, some musicians are consorting with and doing business with adult film stars. There’s a surprise. No, really, a real topic. Something serious, not the usual crap banter.
I saw Lost in Translation, finally, and I realized two things: one, Bill Murray really deserved that Oscar. Sean Penn can play a hardass eight days a week without breaking a sweat– that’s just him being himself. Remember when he would beat up journalists for fun? Mystic River was a great movie, and he did a great job in it, but Bill Murray’s role was deeper, and required greater range and expression, was more of a reach, and I think he got shafted when the more popular picture won.
Two, I now understand my reluctance to see the movie, and to see a lot of other serious movies recently. The anomie expressed in the movie is my entire day-to-day life. There are brief instants when I glimpse life through my own eyes but for the most part I spend my days behind a shield of ironic detachment, foreign to actual living. Yes, this is overblown, but I do feel insulated from reality to a disturbing degree. I didn’t want to see that movie because it would remind me that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. I’m all too familiar with the feeling of being surrounded by signs and voices whose meaning I can only guess at: watching the expats in restaurants, streets, subways. The worst was the sex: the strip club, where he’s watching these women contort themselves; the unexpected arrival of a call-girl he can’t understand; even the pointless sex with the expat lounge singer, all represent sex at its least intimate, least arousing, least satisfying extent. Yeah, there’s a redeeming connection and a kiss at the end, but they just serve to highlight how miserable the rest of existence really is.
Since I saw the movie I’ve felt completely hollowed out inside.
Secretly Ironic 