Where viewed: DVDs on the couch
Experience with Film(s): none, except an echoing clamor about the “classic-ness” of the latter somewhere in my brain
LIBERAL ARTS
Writer: Josh Radnor
Director: Josh Radnor
Principal Actors: Josh Radnor, Elizabeth Olsen
HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR
Writer: Marguerite Duras
Director: Alain Resnais
Principal Actors: Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada
Let’s be upfront here: I didn’t finish either of these movies. I saw about forty minutes of LIBERAL ARTS and about twenty-five minutes of HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR. So this paragraph isn’t about a total viewing of either. This paragraph is about not viewing. It’s hard to get a total viewing (a term coined out of convenience, at this moment) when you’re on the couch and any number of distractions could do their distracting best: text messages, the need to join in hurling sarcastic comments at the screen with girlfriend, seeing a squirrel out the window, etc. The convenience of home viewing doesn’t usually yield the best viewing experience. Not only because of the aforementioned distractions, but also the distraction of choice. The next (presumably) awesome movie is only a brief buffer away! And the next! We don’t have the internet where we’re currently staying, so we can’t even drown in the Netflix/Hulu choice whirlpool, but we still have a hair-trigger DVD eject button. And we use it. But I ejected these movies for completely different reasons: LIBERAL ARTS wasn’t challenging enough and HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR was too challenging. The first forty minutes of LIBERAL ARTS holds no surprises, nothing to chew on, no sense of wonder. The plot line as follows: unhappy main character (crap job/breakup) returns “home” and meets quirky character that shakes them out of the doldrums. Main character resumes joy of living. Etcetera etcetera with gentle indie rock music over a montage, probably. Yawn. Does this film not exist in endless iterations already? Perhaps something amazing happens after the forty minute mark–perhaps a chariot race or a Bollywood dance number or an attack on the Death Star. But why wait around to find out when HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR is right there, glinting with promise and artiness in its Criterion packaging? I didn’t. And I was rewarded with all the artiness and challenge I could handle. A long opening montage of documentary scenes of devastated Hiroshima post-Little Boy interspersed with shots of a woman’s hand clutching a man’s back. Cryptic and repetitive dialogue. In French. My phone buzzed intently: an out-of-the-blue text from an old friend. The hour was late. The girlfriend was asleep. Dialogue floated past my uncomprehending ears while my eyes were occupied. I called it a night. Eject. Will I give HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR another shot? Yes. And with a better effort. Some movies demand an effort, and I suspect I’ll be rewarded with this film. LIBERAL ARTS drifted too firmly into ManicPixieDreamGirl/QuarterLifeCrisis Land and, unless I use it for my Indie Road Trip Movie Drinking Bingo game, it’s going back to the library.
FADE OUT 