A post in which I watch movies, and think

I caught up on credit flashes today at work, which is about as exciting as watching paint dry.

Oh, before I forget it, check out the coolest, snarkiest blog ever. So much fun. I had to get out of this at work today because I was laughing my ass off and was afraid I would draw attention to myself.

For some reason when I got home today, I was craving soup and a sandwich in the worst possible way. I think Justin has passed his other obsession on to me. Despite having half of that excellent calzone in the fridge, I ate soup and toasted cheese tonight.

I’m hearing from Angela these days. She’s been on my mind lately, and I’ve been meaning to try to get in touch, but dreading going through the numerous email addresses and cell phone numbers to find her. She is helpfully on Facebook now, which made things much easier. She’s a conspicuous early adopter (not that Facebook is a new thing) so she’s always looking for the next innovation. It was good to hear from her. She seems to be doing well, and has a new man. She asked me how I knew when I asked her about him LOL. Men just buzz around her like bees to honey. She gets that magnetism from her mother and father (however he misused the gift, he had it).

Thinking about Angela fed right in to my watching Monster tonight on OnDemand. Angela had raved about how good it was, and told me that I had to see it, but I was pretty reluctant. I knew it was going to be a hard movie to watch. It was. I tried watching it last year and couldn’t get through it, but I made it through tonight. It is wincingly unblinking and grim, but many aspects of it ring true, despite director Patty Jenkins’ notably sympathetic portrayal. I have read several different accounts of Aileen Wuornos, not all of them as sympathetic as Jenkins’. Charlize Theron is riveting in the lead. She completely deserved her Oscar for Best Actress.

Whether or not it was all true, it certainly felt that way. I know there are many people in this world so desperate for a little love that they’ll do almost anything. This was a woman with nothing at all. I can understand her killing to hold on to probably the best thing she had ever had in her life. How tragically ironic too, for that best thing to turn out to be untrue as well.

The scene that broke my heart, both times, was her hopefully primping for her date in a public restroom. I couldn’t help but juxtapose that scene against similar scenes in other movies, like Flower Drum Song, or Down With Love (which was kind of tongue-in-cheek about how such scenes are really borderline cliché), or Audrey Hepburn’s descent of the stairs in My Fair Lady. Somehow that bathroom scene set the tone for the rest of the story. You just knew that any happiness she experienced would be fleeting and contaminated by squalor. She seemed to be looking at herself in the mirror and saying “I look good.” And you just knew that she was right – that was as good as it was going to get. I think even if I hadn’t known how the movie was going to end, I would have somehow known from that scene.

Later on in the movie, a passage I read once in a Pearl S. Buck novel came to mind. A poor Chinese woman breaks a small bowl, one of their few possessions. She weeps over the pieces, and, unable to throw them out, buries them in the yard. I was reminded of that by Wuornos' increasingly desperate attempts to hold on to Tyria Moore. As broken as the relationship was, it was all she had to hold on to.

By the end of the movie, I was pretty sad. I was washing dishes afterwards and wishing I was rich. I’d like to endow a half-way house to help get women off the streets. I was also reflecting on how many throw-away people there are in the world, and how the differences between them and us are far fewer and more fragile than we like to think about. I thanked God for my good fortune in having a family that cares about me. Aileen Wuornos came from an abuse background as well. I've had my differences with mine, but at least they didn’t throw me out. Well not for good anyway.

After all that, I decided I had to watch something else to wipe that out of my mind before I went to bed. I watched Sling Blade for a while for dramatic renewal of purpose. It’s amazing how two movies about killers can have such completely different messages. If you can’t buy that, you can always be distracted by John Ritter's hair. I can’t imagine even a really small town homosexual would go around looking that bad, but I guess I could be wrong.

I still had a rough time getting to sleep tonight. I finally had to fall back on Sir David Attenborough.