In my past few days of convalesence, I have bided my time by watching dvds. My father returned from New York/Washington bearing the gifts of dvds and bags I had ordered online, and I greedily embarked on my quest for idle consumption. Unable to study due to an unrelenting headache, battered sinuses and a painful cough, I nursed myself with my movies.

I watched I Capture The Castle, which possessed some measure of loveliness, though not as much as the book did. I suppose the visual representation of most books, however able to connect with us on multiple levels, still falls shorts of the complexity that words promise. I moved on to Y Tu Mama Tambien. Finally! After so many years of not having been able to see it, due to age restrictions and unavailability and the like! I liked it, but not overtly so. I liked that in the end it wasn't all the sex romp everyone supposes it is. The thing I notice about Mexican movies is (to tell the truth I've only watched what, two) they seem to present a very strong sense of the country, of its culture and thinking and ways of life. Mexico's richness, in film, has always seemed so palpable and arresting. I really want to learn more about it, I shall make note of this and borrow books on it to read after the exams.

I also watched a bunch of other movies, but of the many I have had the opportunity to peruse, I liked Before Sunrise best. Its a very Richard Linklater movie, in that it seeks to depict the beauty of the everyday - the simple delicacies of conversation and physical expression. The thing I like most about Linklater is that his most commercial movie, School of Rock, was highly enjoyable as well! I watched it with Linda when she was in Singapore, and we were both mad for it. I confess that I do not abhor Jack Black at all. I watch him in High Fidelity, listen to Tenacious D, and laugh heartily and merrily, with no disdain at all for his mad slapstick humour. Anyway, I digress. For those who have not have the pleasure of viewing it, Before Sunrise is a movie about an American man (Ethan Hawke) and a French girl (Julie Delpy) who meet on the Eurail and decide to spend the guy's last night in Europe in Venice together, trolling the streets waxing lyrical about life, and memory, and understanding. The most beautiful thing, I felt, was when Julie and Ethan were sitting in an alley in the evening, and she looked at him and said something like "I think, maybe, God is not in us, but in this (hand moving back and forth between the two of them) - this space between us - in our attempts to understand one another." She said it in her French-accented English, and it was beautiful. I may not necessarily agree with all that is said, but I loved the idea of divinity in our attempts to find connection and meaning in one another, or through one another. I went to read a Popmatters review of Before Sunset, the movie's sequel, and the reviewer summed up what the two movies are about so eloquently : The film illustrates the beautiful and frustrating complexity of human hearts seeking love and meaning in a life we know to be transient.

It left me .. incandescent, almost.

I feel that this particularly blog of mine is morphing into my weekly commentary on movies/tv shows/books I read or watch. Perhaps this is an indication that I have no life, or that I am too involved in it by indirect means. I suppose I must cobble together a way of living my life proactively. I can only hide behind my pop culture for so long - though for me its always provided the most transcendent sort of access to my world, or to the world as I would like it to be. But for now, I can retire to my History notes with the warm romanticism of a good movie.