FOREVER
Film night last night was Jean Luc Goddard’s Strawberry Fields. As Michael R. commented, every shot in the film is a work of art, with lighting worthy of a Rembrandt.
I first saw the film in 1967, without subtitles, at a tiny, dingy, musty old theater that was later torn down to make way for a drive thru dry cleaning service, that was later torn down for a parking lot, and then became the East lobby of a local bank, which was later taken over by a multinational conglomerate, and will probably soon be shipped to China. That’s what I get for having sixty years of memories, and no subtitles.
And poor Professor! He has at least twenty years on me.
The story line is of a stuffy old doctor and his rather circular adventures on the day he is to be honored by his academic peers and betters. Demanding, rational, self-willed and absolutist, he stores all his feelings in an old pocket watch. His terrifying cadaverous mother keeps it for him, along with a box of old toys and photos. The watch has no hands, and it is made of gold.
Memories and dreams, like a crowd of over-aged children at the beginning of their Grand Tour, race through and around his day, poking holes in the shell of his self-satisfaction, until at last the whole crustacean edifice cracks and collapses. He is left wide-eyed and child-like, drifting through the scheduled form and ritual. He accepts the funny hat, the lapel pin of academic achievement, and the blank scroll of paper tied with a ribbon, honors to be taken to the grave. But as he is glad-handed across the stage, his heart is lifting, free and careless of the honored wreckage. He steps down from the stage, away from the light of the podium, his mind and heart filled not with honors, but with the jubilant, reckless everyman progress across the great stage, the procession, not of honored old men, but of joyful absurd frolicking dancing singing children.
In the end, he learns the value of kindness over rationality.
It is a great movie, not only for the Rembrandt lighting, but also for the plot of redemption and enlightenment. I got the lighting part when I was seventeen. All these years, all these years, and at last, I also have sympathy for the elderly. The honors mean nothing. It is all in the glow of loving eyes.
