Saturday, April 07, 2007

Dancing light

I am laughing hard.
Who knows why, it doesn’t happen too often but I just cracked up.
Been dancing around a flat listening to ‘These Are Days’ by 10,000 Maniacs.
I am sat on my own and from where I am I can see Centre Point in the distance.
It’s an ugly bastard but it has its place.

Laughing at the candles, at the air, it is all making me smile.
A friend of mine left a few hours ago.

There is nothing like the company of a good woman to chill out the mind. And with no disrespect to any girl out there, the world is hardly swarming with them. Then again, the world is not exactly swarming with good men either. All in all people often suck pretty badly.

This of course explains the sheer quantity of Romantic Comedies instead of serious love stories produced as films per year. Imagine if, instead of Rom-Coms, there were troublingly deadly and rather realistic love stories put out en masse. Imagine the taglines on the tube. Opposed to “You’ve never seen love so funny”, or “The most touching film of the year”, your eyes would pass over “He probably had it coming”, “She was screwed from the outset” or
“Why’d they even bother? It was never gonna work”.

Haagen-Dazs would have a sales fallout due to blatant realism, Blockbuster would never again be able to get a weekend ‘friendly-looking-films’ deal going.

It would be fantastic.
So if anyone is wondering what to do this Easter weekend, for those who had all those plans but are now predictably curling up on the sofa to watch a film and think about why they are not outside… hire Dancer in the Dark.

A truly beautiful piece of cinema released in 2000, set Stateside in 1964 and written and directed by Lars Von Trier (though Björk might tell you otherwise). Following the pursuit of a better life and basic human dreams, it follows the fading sanity of a lovely, quite blind Czech girl called Selma Ježková (Björk). Selma moves to Washington State, works herself to exhaustion in hope of saving her also quite blind son’s sight and sings a lot. Whilst the average film about happiness, desire, passion and lust work on the grounds of the blindingly obvious, Dancer in the Dark mixes up some chilling-out on top of trains with an utterly moving prison-set based scene climaxing the films fade-out. Go watch this film. Please.

Watch a plot that relays life, with a character who totally has it coming, does not deserve it and like everyone else you pass in the street on the way to where ever it is that you are going, finds their own happiness (in an otherwise deeply hideous world where everyone is out to get her and nothing makes any sense). A film about just shutting up and embracing those unexpected moments that make you laugh out loud in your own silence, and dance around the room, even though you know you are going to wake up, and it might not be pretty.

My cd player is skipping… it had "Friend of the Devil" (written by Robert Hunter, sung by Jerry Garcia and released by the Grateful Dead in 1970) playing… it is stuck on the line “…might get some sleep”. Might take it up on that.

Also, I'm trying to track down some P.A. systems, six speakers, a Sub and a generator for the Cannes Van, so if anybody want to help out with that, sweet. Drop one of us a line. In exchange we will pimp you and love you forever.

1 comment:

gail cullen said...

How phylisophical are you!!! Not a bad thing in a guy.

In the cold light of day not all people 'suck pretty badly' as I am sure you discovered next morning when you awoke.

You made me laugh when I was reading your interpritations of seriously funny love stories, they are very funny.

Found you as I was looking on the 'Cannes in a van' site. Might even send you my short film. Pretty much expect it to be sent back to me tho, not good enough I don't suppose. Alas we can but try.

May be able to help with some speakers or P.A. system, can't promise anything, got some friends in a band. Looking for donations I expect or really really cheap.

Cheers for now
Gail