Thoughts on two films

Excuse the long absence - other projects have taken much of my time. Hopefully, I will be able to link to them here sometime...

In any case, I just finished watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - I watched Slumdog Millionaire a couple weeks ago (for the record, I very much preferred Button, for reasons I will not go into now).

What I did want to mention, though, is the interesting theme of time - and film - running backwards in both, and the opposite way in which this motif is handled by the movies - in one, it is the successful private reversal of past pain, gained at the end of a long journey, the other is the hope for a reversal of a very public and shared pain, at the beginning of the film's journey, and treated with a very public reverence.

It is a curious exercise to relate these moments, and why we are drawn to them in film - perhaps they are simply an expression of our hopes for a more innocent time, or for the work of mercy, forgiveness, and an ultimate redemption. Perhaps they are a misunderstanding of redemption, which must come, rather than against time, through time - which reminds me of something in Eliot's Four Quartets. It does seem, whatever the case, that two major movies coming out with such scenes in the same year may be a little more than coincidence.

In any case, I hope this has given you food for thought.