Strange Days Have Found Us
December 3, 2008
I said yesterday that I would post today about taking Clem to Doggie Arena, but I am too spacey. I haven’t gotten enough sleep in three nights now, and my creative powers, modest to begin with, have become diffuse and hard to muster. On the plus side, I am benefiting at the moment from a big upswing in my mood. I was pretty depressed yesterday morning, then for no reason, even as my work day slid steadily downhill from drab to agonizing, I began feeling cheerful and content, and I got a lot done.
Last night was my weekly gaming night with the fellas, and it went pretty well. We’re starting a “dark future” cyberpunk game, so last night we watched Strange Days to get in the mood. I’ve always loved this movie, if for no other reason than its protagonist, Lenny Nero, is one of my all-time favorite characters. I’d tell you why if I wasn’t having trouble stringing words together all of a sudden, but I am, so I guess those of you who haven’t seen it will just have to check it out if you want to know the score.
Whoa
November 16, 2008
Due to my recent inclination to lay on the couch moaning all day, I have finally had time to fit in a couple of hours of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Decalogue. For those unfamiliar with this (moderately obscure) film, perhaps some brief background info. Over ten weeks in the late 1980′s, Polish television aired this series of ten one-hour films, each one of which takes as its theme one of the ten commandments. Quite possibly a foreign language film about Christian spirituality sounds pretty unappealing to some of you, and I understand that. At first, I was afraid the films would turn out to be preachy or predictable, but I was in for the most pleasant surprise of my career as a watcher of movies.
Instead of tracing out some exercise in dogma, Kieślowski and his co-writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz take each film to some place raw and intimate, finding creative and sensitive ways to probe the underlying conflicts that shape and shatter lives. Again and again, I find myself brought face-to-face with the essence of human morality and struggle in the kind of confrontation that only the very best art can provoke. I read somewhere that Stanley Kubrick considered Decalogue the only cinematic masterpiece created during his lifetime, and in the afterglow of watching an episode, I agree with him; it feels that important.
Of course, I’ve just finished watching films eight and nine, I suppose the tenth could ruin the whole thing 
P.S. Thank goodness for Netflix, without which I might not have discovered or ever gotten my hands on this film, which doesn’t seem like a strong candidate for either TV or the shelf of the local Blockbuster.
