the flame

[dominika_kretek]

I saw a lot of movies on my birthday, two I've seen before, but which mean so much to me, reminding me how to live: Synecdoche and The Passion of Joan of Arc. And also Malick's Days of Heaven. We also rewatched Ink, which I continue to love, and The Muppet Movie, which I'll talk about first.

Comments

[fennel]

That's a great point about The Muppet Movie's mistrust of certain goals-- I love the movie but had never looked at it that way before. It also throws an interesting light on The Muppets, which I saw this weekend and mostly enjoyed.

[dominika_kretek]

Does it ever. Mostly enjoyed is what I thought too, but it surely did not have the resonance the original did.

[thelican]

She was supposed to embody the principle of detachment, but I could never forget that any day now she would become vulnerable to the difficulties and constraints that had ensared her brother's girlfriend. I couldn't tell whether Malick intended that or not, whether that threat is intended to highlight Abby's detachment, or whether Malick is trying to say something about sexuality and prelapsarian innocence.

The latter? I'd say that's what makes it (made it, for me) so cutting: How detached we are from other people's realities, until it's happening to us. And I'd say that he means that in a way that's not limited to pre-sexual innocence. That's what socked me in the gut about it, anyway.

Now I'm trying to remember other movies where we first see just one, insidious locust.