« When the PSC wont let me be, wont let me be me • Main • I Told You So »

December 06, 2003

The Safety of Objects

supposedly the kicker is that, well, they're not.

But before I get to that, last night was Anne Ammons, wife of Slammin 'Ammons, birthday. So April and I (after an amusing drink or two at Town n' Country with Andy), headed over their house for her b-day party. Gotta say, it was a Dennis Kucinich lovin' Hipster fest. Enjoyable.

Today I watched the Williams kids while April & Jennie headed out to do some Christmas shopping. Payton was workin' on the house they're building, so it was just me, Kayla, Marin, Josiah, and Asa. Kayla more or less did the babysitting, I just provided that strange figurehead of authority that kids need to be motivated to do what they're told. Really, I was just the Queen of England and Kayla was Prime Minister all the way. I just nodded and re-afirmed whatever she said. Sometimes I waved.

Tonight April & I watched the IFC film The Safety of Objects. I was a bit dissapointed with the narrative structure of the film, especially through the early and middle stages of the movie. I felt it waited too, far too long to explain certain aspects of the characters which I thought were definately, definately necessary to pull off the emotional punch you were to feel when connecting with them at certain key moments.

The movie also seemed like it was built around one key conversation between Glenn Close' & Dermot Mulroney's character where she mention's God having a vicious, wicked sense of humor in lieu of how certain events came to past. Unfortunately that scene was positioned, I felt, in a place that weakened it from exercising the narrative import it was meant to. You're supposed to feel angry. The events having occured to all the characters in the film are suppose to frustrate you, to make you feel anger at the hand you're dealt. Unfortunately by that point the film-makers had already seemingly made you feel that these folks where far too vested in the material, so at best Glenn Close emotions re-inforced that point, instead of pulling you the viewer into their emotions in that moment.

But enough over analysis. It was still a film I feel is worth seeing. It ends on an apparent community/relationship note: even with a cliche'd backyard picnic. But even then, and this is something I really respected, they didn't try to hit you with a feeling of intense release or resolution; instead it approximated something more, and boy, how's this for a reference to a completely different genres, "Scouring of the Shire-ish." Even though all the characters had gone through horribly painful events and found something nearing peace in the end, there still was an enormous sense of loss and incompleteness.

now off to bed