I planned to go to a movie last night. I like doing this - I like getting lost in the lives of fictional people for a few hours. And I like doing this alone. There is a certain kind of comfortable solitude that can only be found in the anonymous company of a movie theater. However, a friend from work ended up coming with me, and her insights into the movie definitely overpowered the benefits of going alone.
Anyway, we saw Closer. What a nasty-assed movie! I mean I loved it, but my god brutal honestly is hard to swallow sometimes. I guess we all like to think we are nice people capable of real love, but geez, it's not as easy as the movies usually make it out to be. What you have in this movie are four extremely flawed, emotionally dysfunctional, fatally human characters. Throughout the film we watch them interact with each other as they struggle with love, partnership, infidelity, self-worth and self-definition. It's just nasty. Anyone who's honest with themselves will see parts of themselves in these characters. This movie was just full of irony - a total delight for the film buff! At one point, one of the character expects forgiveness for admitting the truth about his infidelity. My friend asked "Since when does truth equal justification?" Excellent question.
Of all the things from this movie, this is what I've thought about the most. We (or at least I) tend to place a huge amount of importance on truth telling, honesty, openness. I've always believed that there are also some things that are better left unsaid, not in the name of deceit or secret-keeping or dishonesty, but because sometimes there is truth in silence. Sometimes silence can say more than words ever can. You know those moments of intense connection that occur in silence? Well, that's a certain kind of communication that transends vocabulary. I love you can mean anything, but that feeling you get lying in the arms of the one you love speaks the true meaning of those words.
But yet there is sometimes something rather manipulative in honesty. Well, not in honesty itself, but in the way it is used. The way you can make a stupid mistake, but then assume that being honest about making it gets you off the hook. Or the way your words say one thing, but you actions say another, and at the end of it all you save yourself by saying "I've always been honest with you, blah, blah, blah, I've always TOLD you how I felt." Honest words do not justify dishonest actions.
You know how sometimes you feel like you've been misled, deceived, lied to, yet you know that the person in question has been honest with you? Well I think this explains some of that. There is so much communication that goes on beneath the words....I'm talking about body language, energy, the whole eyes-are-the-windows-to-the-soul thing. There is choice in words, there's not necessarily choice in those other things. And because of that we place more importance on that verbal communication. It's more concrete, it's more conscious. But it's not necessarily truth!
But whatever...that was a whole lot of nonsense...
On another note.....I want to be a photographer. I keep coming back to this idea, and I know that it's something I need to pursue. So, as soon as I finish my fucking pain-in-the-ass thesis, I think I'm going to look into night photography school. I don't want to do baby portraits or weddings necessarily, but rather artsy stuff as a hobby. I've got all these great ideas in my head, but don't really understand the technology enought to make it happen. :)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment