Amélie pas jolie

It may be too “ha ha” to say that it took me 100 years to finish 100 Years of Solitude, but it sure feels like it. I remember starting it about a month ago, under a certain emotional tingle I don’t necessarily want to relive right now. All I can say for certain, though, is that the final 40 pages are absolute dynamite. I tore through them like it was my job. Hell, tonight I tore through the final 80 pages. For a book that kept such a slow hold on me, something snapped once the penultimate Aureliano came on the scene. I think, ultimately, that I didn’t really like the character of Fernanda at all–and it ruined my enjoyment of the novel.

So what dos it all mean? What does an aspiring critic like me have to say about the book? Well, don’t nail your family members, I guess. Also: I should go back and do some serious Borges reading. Finally, oh boy am I ready to plunge into some Machado de Assis I bought special for once I finished this century of depression and loss. Reading 380 pages over 30 days makes it difficult to have much intelligent to say. But if someone wants to engage me, I can try to sound a bit smarter.

Additionally, Sam today, upon hearing of my plans to go see Chicago this weekend with my ersatz little sister, remarked that “Musicals fucking suck.” In fact, he then went on to assert that the above epectoration of bilious spittle was not only true, but the truest thing he had ever said. Even truer than “objective directions” he gave people about getting from one place to another. Now, granted, Chicago may suck. I may be the only straight guy in the US going to see this flick with interests that are neither related to Ms. Zeta Jones nor getting pity-action off my date–I’m actually eager to see the flick. Yet it if is anything like Moulin Rouge, then, well, it will definitely suck. Moulin Rouge, you will recall, was so terrible, that not even Kylie Minogue as Tinkerbell the absinthe fairy could save it. In fact, if anything, Moulin Rouge was just like absinthe–way overhyped and pushed forward by unsuspecting agents. That is, in order to drink enough of the wormwood to start tripping from absinthe, a person is going to be so rocked off the booze that they’ll be having their whole own set of hallucinations going on. Similarly, in order to excavate enough good from Moulin Rouge to deem it worthy of a second visit, you’ll have been committed to the Baz wing of a Detox clinic for overdosing on garish colors.

Yet Chicago, like MR before it, is supposedly a small salvo being thrown into the firestorm known as the upcoming Bollywoodisation of Hollywood. I don’t buy it, though, at least not until I’ve seen the product in question. Right now, in preparation of both-end-candle-burning by watching Australia v. Pakistan, I’m scrolling through choice scenes from Lagaan. Was Moulin Rouge really supposed to be an American version of this nuanced, epic yet sedate, gem? Or did Luhrmann imagine it only such, a windmill for him to chase after in a film career becoming more wildly irrelevant with time? Maybe Chicago will be an heir. I don’t know. but I’ll hasten to add that last night I saw O Brother, Where Art Thou? again–a movie the Coen brothers themselves explain is the closest one can get to making a musical without making a musical. And surely Sam won’t begrudge that finer gem among the Coen mine.

Speaking of musicals and/or rampant Orientalism on the part of the author, I watched Asoka last night, as well. The movie was rather bogged down by the plot–which managed to be more or less endlessly fascinating. Similarly, the production values sort of slipped away from Conanish camp to engrossing, which I found fascinating. yet at the same time, the musical numbers were also a bit lacking. I mean, there’s a certain tingle associated with K4r33n4 K4p00r dancing in a waterfall for some six minutes, but the musical elemnts seemed tacked on–not inspiring, like “Chale Chalo” or others are in Lagaan.

Have I gone on enough about how great Lagaan is? Are people around here seriously watching the derivative dreck that is A Beautiful Mind and then going on to explain that it is, somehow, a better movie? I mean, what was Nash’s heroism–his decision not to take medicine? Compare that to Bhuvan, who surmounts absurd odds to create a sense of tolerant and balanced India that continues to elude the nation to this day. Sure, some may remark, I’m being unfair, as, well, Nash is real, and Bhuvan isn’t. But, seriously–how perverted is Nash’s story by the time Opie gets it onscreen? Ultimately it’s just the implicit mist-making of “based on a true story” that keeps the thing moving. (A trick, by the way, beautifully exploited by the Coen brothers for Fargo.)

Am i basically saying that musicals can be good flicks and using Lagaan as an example? I suppose. Of the movies getting Academy nominations last year, Lagaan was definitely one of the best (yes, even better than that fascist propaganda dancing about as some sort of “cute, French movie“) and it showed, more than any other tired wandering through Paris either of this centry or last, that one can make lush, epic movies with songs that are still not ridiculous or “fucking suck.”

Sam, have you even seen this flick?