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I watched "Pleasentville" on tv tonight. I'd forgotten what a beautiful film it is. It speaks out against sexism and puritanism and racism, but it's just so...gentle. Delicate. Sensitive. I don't see how it would be humanly possible to watch it and retain fundamentalist predjuice. The use of "colored" as a pejorative term is especially arresting--on one level its meaning is just that, but it harks back so elegantly to the racism of years past, the segregation of black people within America. "No Coloreds."
It's a film that doesn't demonize anyone. The sexist, conservative husband's genuine and rather childlike confusion at his wife's desire to be a person is both touching and understandable. It's scary, when things change. Doesn't make it right to stop them, but it is scary. And even the anger of the mayor is passion, transforms him, makes him real and vivid and alive.
And the sexuality...This may be the hottest movie I've ever seen. No, it's not porntastic, but it perfectly captures the wonder and amazement of it, that earth-shattering shift and storm of sex. The flowers, tinged pink along grey branches, the red red apples on black trees, the thunderstorm--that's what sex is. It's transformation, breaking apart and becoming something new. It makes me remember first kisses, first touches, the heady passion of being completely enveloped by love and potentiality. It makes me want rainy langorous Sunday mornings in bed, starry nights when it's warm enough to lie on the grass and look up and talk about eternal things.
But the one moment in all the film that catches me most is the book of paintings. Picasso, Matisse, Caravaggio, Van Gogh: I know the paintings, some nearly by heart. I've chalked them into the pavement downtown at Friday Night Live with my mother and the other painters, I've studied them in class. I grew up in a housse bursting with books and paintings and blank canvases. But this scene makes me stop, makes me look at them through the eyes of someone who's never seen color, never seen a painting before. And then they are utterly heartbreaking in their glory and joy and sexiness and sorrow. They take my breath.
Everything is so much more beautiful than our remembrance of it, if we stop remembering and open our eyes. "Anthropos" means "the one who looks up."
It's a film that doesn't demonize anyone. The sexist, conservative husband's genuine and rather childlike confusion at his wife's desire to be a person is both touching and understandable. It's scary, when things change. Doesn't make it right to stop them, but it is scary. And even the anger of the mayor is passion, transforms him, makes him real and vivid and alive.
And the sexuality...This may be the hottest movie I've ever seen. No, it's not porntastic, but it perfectly captures the wonder and amazement of it, that earth-shattering shift and storm of sex. The flowers, tinged pink along grey branches, the red red apples on black trees, the thunderstorm--that's what sex is. It's transformation, breaking apart and becoming something new. It makes me remember first kisses, first touches, the heady passion of being completely enveloped by love and potentiality. It makes me want rainy langorous Sunday mornings in bed, starry nights when it's warm enough to lie on the grass and look up and talk about eternal things.
But the one moment in all the film that catches me most is the book of paintings. Picasso, Matisse, Caravaggio, Van Gogh: I know the paintings, some nearly by heart. I've chalked them into the pavement downtown at Friday Night Live with my mother and the other painters, I've studied them in class. I grew up in a housse bursting with books and paintings and blank canvases. But this scene makes me stop, makes me look at them through the eyes of someone who's never seen color, never seen a painting before. And then they are utterly heartbreaking in their glory and joy and sexiness and sorrow. They take my breath.
Everything is so much more beautiful than our remembrance of it, if we stop remembering and open our eyes. "Anthropos" means "the one who looks up."