![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Walks and Writes and Watching
Nov. 19th, 2007 04:42 pmThe weekend consisted of walks, watching movies and writing.
Friday night, we saw Serenity which was good in an amped-up Star Trek sort of way. I liked the theme that the person who has belief is hard to defeat, no matter what that belief might be. I also enjoyed the hell out of the Joss dialogue. The triple-whammy of "I am a leaf in the wind" was just unbelieveable.
I have a spoilery question to ask, but I'll do it another post.
Saturday night we wasted our time on The Number 23 which looked great and was as empty as Dundas Square. The only good things were the Cardigan Corgi (source of the new icon that graces this entry) and the credits song by David Sylvian which blew my mind when I realized he had tied it to the numerology theme of the movie by writing it in alternating bars of 2 and 3. Good on you, David.
Last night, we watched an absolutely brilliant film called The Woodsman, featuring Kevin Bacon as a man just out of jail where he spent 12 years for molesting a string of 10 to 12 year old girls. It is an incredibly painful film to watch as this haunted man tries to return to life without reoffending. It is a film about empathy. It is about the people in his life who do and do not feel empathy for him as he struggles to change and about the empathy he must find for his potential victims in order for that change to happen.
I found the film incredibly triggering. As a gay man, I have felt the fear that my erotic gaze will land me in trouble and to watch him seeing the girls, trying to learn to be around them without molesting him, waiting for the abusive cops (Mos Def is horrifying as the policeman who invades his apartment at any given time and says things like, "if I threw you out that window right now, no one would care.") to show up and negate all his struggle... it was hard.
The film is remarkable because we fully sympathize with the offender and are made to struggle with him through his battle. There is a scene towards the end where he comes close to molesting another girl and then suddenly is given a chance to see the effect of actions before they happen. It is a moment of hope in a hopeless world.
Friday night, we saw Serenity which was good in an amped-up Star Trek sort of way. I liked the theme that the person who has belief is hard to defeat, no matter what that belief might be. I also enjoyed the hell out of the Joss dialogue. The triple-whammy of "I am a leaf in the wind" was just unbelieveable.
I have a spoilery question to ask, but I'll do it another post.
Saturday night we wasted our time on The Number 23 which looked great and was as empty as Dundas Square. The only good things were the Cardigan Corgi (source of the new icon that graces this entry) and the credits song by David Sylvian which blew my mind when I realized he had tied it to the numerology theme of the movie by writing it in alternating bars of 2 and 3. Good on you, David.
Last night, we watched an absolutely brilliant film called The Woodsman, featuring Kevin Bacon as a man just out of jail where he spent 12 years for molesting a string of 10 to 12 year old girls. It is an incredibly painful film to watch as this haunted man tries to return to life without reoffending. It is a film about empathy. It is about the people in his life who do and do not feel empathy for him as he struggles to change and about the empathy he must find for his potential victims in order for that change to happen.
I found the film incredibly triggering. As a gay man, I have felt the fear that my erotic gaze will land me in trouble and to watch him seeing the girls, trying to learn to be around them without molesting him, waiting for the abusive cops (Mos Def is horrifying as the policeman who invades his apartment at any given time and says things like, "if I threw you out that window right now, no one would care.") to show up and negate all his struggle... it was hard.
The film is remarkable because we fully sympathize with the offender and are made to struggle with him through his battle. There is a scene towards the end where he comes close to molesting another girl and then suddenly is given a chance to see the effect of actions before they happen. It is a moment of hope in a hopeless world.
