Purely by coincidence, this turned out to be a death-themed post. Sorry about that. Here's a picture of a puppy and a kitten.
Life Itself
Roger Ebert is to the amateur movie blogger as Big Papi is
to the beer league softball player.
Life Itself, a biographical
documentary about the man and his declining months, doesn’t tell us much
we don’t already know from watching his shows, reading his reviews and his
blog, and following his career.
Nevertheless, it makes us part of the celebration, makes us witnesses to
the man. It’s an insightful,
touching film, and I think Roger would have given it a thumbs up.
All is Lost
I watch a lot of movies on the installment plan: 20 minutes
on the elliptical here, half an hour in an airport lounge there. Do not watch All is Lost on the installment plan.
The movie’s about a solo mariner (Robert Redford) sailing
his yacht across the Pacific Ocean.
When the yacht collides with a floating shipping container which smashes
a hole below the waterline, the mariner handles the situation calmly and
competently. When faced with more,
compounding problems, the mariner handles them in the same fashion. Sometimes, however, life throws more at
you than you can handle, calm competence or no.
In a way, All is Lost
works as a metaphor for life.
We sail along in our prime, with the wind at our backs and the sun
overhead. Then something goes
wrong, then something else, then another thing. We handle it all as best we can. We fight against the dying of the light. But the light is temporary; it’s meant
to die. And calm as we remain,
competently as we handle one health scare after another, we degrade, and fail,
and sink beneath the waves.
Heavy stuff, I know.
So heavy, in fact, that I found All
is Lost rather hard going. I’m
currently in the apogee of my own life, and contemplating my inevitable decline
isn’t really my favorite way to spend a couple of hours. Still, I’m glad I saw this film. It’s ambitious, and it executes on that
ambition. If Robert Redford was
once the perfect embodiment of death, he’s now the perfect embodiment of the
process of dying. You could do
with a worse guide to inform you that all is lost.
