Favorite Scandinavian films and TV shows

After writing yesterday’s post about my favorite films and TV shows (mostly American), I thought about the Scandinavian films and TV shows that I have seen and liked in the twenty years I have lived here in Oslo. Here are some of my favorites……..

Favorite films

·         Deilig er fjorden (The fjord is wonderful)--Norwegian

·         Hodet over vannet (Head above water)—Norwegian

·         Insomnia--Norwegian

·         Mannen som ikke kunne le (The Man who could not laugh)—Norwegian

·         Max Manus—Norwegian

·         Misery Harbor—Norwegian

·         Veiviseren (Pathfinder)—Norwegian

·         Flammen & Citronen (Flame & Citron)--Danish

·         Pelle erobreren (Pelle the Conqueror)—Danish

·         Smilla’s Sense of Snow—Danish

·         Den Gode Viljen (The Best Intentions)—Swedish

·         Fanny och Alexander—Swedish

·         Pensjonat Oskar—Swedish

·         Scener ur ett äktenskap (Scenes from a Marriage)--Swedish

·         Brúðguminn (White Night Wedding)--Icelandic

Favorite horror/fantasy/thriller

·         De dødes tjern (Lake of the Dead)--Norwegian

·         Fritt Vilt (Cold Prey)-- Norwegian

·         Skjult (Hidden)—Norwegian

·         Villmark (Wilderness)—Norwegian

·         Besökarna (The Visitors)--Swedish

·         Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In)—Swedish

·         Nattevagten (Nightwatch)--Danish

·         Sauna--Finnish

Favorite TV shows/series

·         Beck--Swedish

·         Wallander--Swedish

·         Forbrydelsen (The Crime)--Danish

·         Strisser på Samsø (A Cop on Samsø)--Danish

·         Ørnen (The Eagle)—Danish

Favorite movies and TV shows

(I'm updating this post as of 21 April 2013) to include Prometheus, Pitch Black and Oblivion under favorite sci-fi/horror films, and The Walking Dead under favorite TV shows)

One of my friends recently called me a film fanatic, and I have to say that she’s probably right. I’m not much of a TV watcher anymore (I used to be, but I hate reality TV and that’s all there is on TV these days), but you’ll never get me to stop going to the movies. I can’t think of a more pleasant way to spend a few hours than sitting in a dark theater with some candy and a box of popcorn, watching a movie. Movie theaters have changed—seats are very comfortable now (and they recline a bit), and each seat has its own plastic holder for water or soda bottles. Progress has been made for sure. The sound is exceptionally good, and the acoustics in the theater are too. You can now order tickets online and choose the seats you want. But that’s not why I go to the movies. I go because it’s a way to transport myself into another world for a few hours. I love being entertained; I love the fantasy, the magic, the escapism of movies. Always have and always will…….The following are some of my favorite movies, and while we’re at it, some of my favorite TV shows as well. If I listed all of the movies I’ve liked since I started going to the movies, the list would fill several pages for sure.

Favorite sci-fi/horror/fantasy films

·         2001 A Space Odyssey

·         2010

·         28 Days Later

·         Alien (all four films in the series)

·         Blade Runner

·         Bram Stoker’s Dracula

·         Burnt Offerings

·         District 9

·         Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (TV movie)

·         Don’t Look Now

·         Harry Potter (all the films)

·         House of Dark Shadows

·         I Am Legend

·         Invasion of the Body Snatchers

·         Lord of the Rings film trilogy

·         Men in Black

·         Minority Report

·         Night of Dark Shadows

·         Pan’s Labyrinth

·         Psycho

·         Stardust

·         The Birds

·         The Exorcist

·         The Last Wave

·         The Man Who Fell to Earth

·         The New Daughter

·         The Omega Man

·         The Sentinel

·         The Shining

·         The Sixth Sense

·         Twelve Monkeys

·         What Dreams May Come

·         What Lies Beneath

Favorite films

·         40 Carats

·         All That Heaven Allows

·         All The Fine Young Cannibals

·         A Perfect Spy (TV mini-series)

·         Basic Instinct

·         Body Heat

·         Brigadoon

·         BUtterfield 8

·         French Kiss

·         Hair

·         Hold That Ghost

·         It’s Complicated

·         Jane Eyre (TV mini-series)

·         Jerry McGuire

·         Julie and Julia

·         Klute

·         Light Sleeper

·         Love Story

·         Marnie

·         Night Sins (TV movie)

·         Out of Africa

·         Romancing the Stone

·         Romeo is Bleeding

·         Saturday Night Fever

·         Some Came Running

·         Something Wild

·         Strangers on a Train

·         Sunday in New York

·         The Accidental Tourist

·         The Age of Innocence

·         The Apartment

·         The Fabulous Baker Boys

·         The Grifters

·         The Hours

·         The Last Seduction

·         The Long Kiss Goodnight

·         The Mechanic

·         The Moon-Spinners

·         The Pursuit of Happyness

·         The Sandpiper

·         The Shawshank Redemption

·         The Thorn Birds (TV mini-series)

·         The Witches of Eastwick

·         When Harry Met Sally

·         Witness

·         Zee and Co.

Favorite animated films/TV shows

·         Bernard Bear

·         Bugs Bunny and all the Looney Tunes cartoons

·         Coraline

·         Courage the Cowardly Dog

·         Fantasia

·         Ratatouille

·         Scooby Doo

·         The Flintstones

·         The Pink Panther

Favorite TV shows

·         Alfred Hitchcock Presents

·         Bewitched

·         Bonanza

·         Cheers

·         CSI Miami

·         Dark Shadows

·         Days of Our Lives (soap opera)

·         Dick Van Dyke Show

·         Disneyland

·         Frasier

·         I Love Lucy

·         I Spy

·         Kojak

·         Leave it to Beaver

·         Mary Tyler Moore Show

·         M*A*S*H

·         Maya

·         Night Gallery

·         Remington Steele

·         Six Feet Under

·         Star Trek

·         That Girl

·         The Avengers

·         The Brady Bunch

·         The Donna Reed Show

·         The Night Stalker

·         The Prisoner

·         The Rockford Files

·         The Sopranos

·         The Twilight Zone

·         The Waltons

·         The X-files

Buying used and wanting new

Apropos yesterday’s post, I was reading a bit more about Stephen Cannell’s life and some of his philosophies. He was a pretty conservative businessman and seemed to have been very much influenced by his father’s way of looking at money. I found it humorous to read what he said about buying new cars--“My father was the guy who taught me how to think straight, not to delude myself and think I was larger than I was. I never bought a new car until I was 45-years old...I bought used because my father always said: 'why do you want to buy a car, drive it around the block and lose thirty percent of its value'? ...Don't get me wrong, I had great used cars: XKEs, Jags... But they were all used. All my friends were out leasing new Mercedes and other high-end cars...and there I was buying used; and writing a check for it! "There! give me the car"! Again this viewpoint resonates with me because this is my husband’s philosophy when it comes to buying a family car—the one that will get driven around the city, the one we’ll use for errands, the one that will get driven on vacations, and so forth. Come to think of it, it’s also his philosophy about cars in general. He owns a veteran Porsche at this writing. I also grew up with a father who bought used cars. My husband and I have never bought a new car in the twenty some-odd years we have been together; we have always bought used family cars and for the most part that has worked out. He says the same thing as Cannell’s father—why am I going to buy a new car when it will depreciate overnight once you take it home and drive it? In the beginning of our marriage I was more prone to want to buy new--for lots of reasons. My arguments were that it made sense from a safety standpoint—with new cars, you knew you were getting the latest safety features and that appealed to me. I also liked the fact that you could have more control over knowing what had gone wrong with the car, the types of repairs it had had, and so on. Additionally, and perhaps most important to me, I wanted to know that when I was driving it alone, it would behave and not break down in some out-of-the way place, leaving me stranded (this was before the cell phone era). I should add that my husband knows how to repair (or has learned to repair) most of the used cars we have had, otherwise I might have insisted more on buying new (or newer used). Being able to fix your own car is an advantage that most people I know don’t have, myself included. Of course, my wishes were a moot point because we simply could not afford a new car in Norway. Prices for new cars in this country are outrageously high. They have come down some but prices are still way over the top. This is something that has never made much sense to me. This country prides itself on being so environmentally aware, yet for at least the first ten years I lived here, I never saw so many old exhaust-spewing wrecks on the road as I did at that time. If everyone could have afforded a new and more environmentally-friendly car, Oslo would have had much better air quality during the 1990s and afterwards. But when I brought up that idea in discussions, I was always told that the politicians were aiming to get people to use public transportation and that was one way they could achieve this—by keeping car prices high with unnecessary taxes and fees. The idea sounds good on paper. I’m all for public transportation. But if I decide to ride the cable car down into town one afternoon after work, I pay 34 kroner for a one-way ticket, which corresponds to over 5 USD with current exchange rates. If I buy what is called a Flexi-kort, I get eight rides for 190 kroner, which works out to about 24 kroner per ride, again about 4 USD. This is not cheap. This does not encourage people to use public transportation. This is also what you pay on the buses and on the subways as well. I have a problem trying to figure out the rationale behind all this. Someone needs to explain how this is an environmentally-friendly policy. But anyway, back to cars……

So the discussion in our house was and is ‘how old should the car be if we are aiming to buy used?’ At present we drive a BMW 740 sedan from 1993 that we bought in 2003. It was a find. We bought it from a man who worked out on the oil rigs in the North Sea for most of the year, so that he only drove the car on his sporadic trips home. It’s a car with an automatic gearshift, comfortable to sit in and to drive, that has taken us through a lot of Europe. It does guzzle some gas. We’ve driven to Prague, Rome, Naples, Paris, Montpelier, along the French Riviera, up into the Swiss Alps, to Copenhagen and to Stockholm with the car. We’ve hurtled along the Autobahn in Germany, and the joke is that once the car came ‘home’ to Germany that it loved the high speeds. I know I didn’t love them but at least we got a chance to test the car’s capacity for speed. And here we are eight years later and the car is still mostly doing fine. The engine will probably keep on going, although the automatic transmission will probably give out eventually. Then we’ll be looking for a new used car. That will bring us to anno 2003 or so, and it will be interesting to see the ‘new features’ in cars produced around that time. The only way I ever really get to see what is ‘new’ in new cars is when I travel to New York and rent a car for a week or so. And I usually only learn to use about a fourth of what is probably available. Most of the time I have a hard time finding the automatic buttons to do this and that—open the gas tank, open the trunk. I’ve learned that the seats can be automatically adjusted with buttons and that’s fine because you get a driver’s seat that really does fit the driver. But basically, I’m guessing that most of the newer safety features are variations on a theme at this point. All cars have airbags now. It’s great to have automatic wipers for the back windshield but you can survive without them. So it comes down to this—that I just enjoy driving a new rental car for the week I am in NY, and then I go back to driving used. I’m quite ok with this now. Ten years ago I still wanted new. Now if you told me we had to buy a new car, I would argue with you about the wisdom in that. But I would still discuss how old is ‘too old’ for a used car.  

Ways of looking at the negative

I am always on the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) to read about new movies, old movies, classic movies, TV shows, actors and actresses, you name it. It’s a candy store of information and trivia for me. Whenever I don’t remember the name of a movie or a TV series but remember one of the actors or actresses and the approximate time when the film or series came out, I go to IMDB and nearly always find the answer. So recently I was reading the IMDB news and for some reason I discovered that I had missed the posting that Stephen J. Cannell had passed away in September 2010. He was, for all of you who did not watch the amount of television I watched when I was much younger, the writer and/or producer of shows like The Rockford Files, Baretta, Hunter, Silk Stalkings, 21 Jump Street, The A-Team, and many more. He was apparently a prolific writer who churned out hundreds of television scripts despite suffering from dyslexia. His dyslexia did not stop him. He also seemed to have been an ethical and fair man and that by itself is an achievement in Hollywood.  

I bring him up because of a quote I read recently that was attributed to him—“Whenever something unfortunate happens in my business dealings I never sit there and observe it as a problem... The first thing I do when something goes wrong is say: 'hey, I can use this!” It is not earth-shattering wisdom, it has been said in many different ways to me at many different times (if someone gives you lemons make lemonade, for example), but for some reason it stuck when I read that he had said it. Perhaps because he was successful and honest about his down times, perhaps because I have had some unfortunate workplace experiences of my own this past year—whatever the reason, it got me thinking. It’s a smart way to be. If one could understand from the start point that the negative that happens in one’s life is not necessarily directed at one personally, then perhaps it would be easier to bounce back faster, to roll with the punches, and to turn the negative into something positive. How great it would be if one did not have to suffer for months on end, trying to figure out where one went wrong, why a situation went wrong, and how to deal with it. Wouldn’t it be great if each negative experience could be fodder for personal growth and new ways of thinking in our lives, for positive experiences and outcomes? And wouldn’t it be great if the learning curve was faster for each new experience? His words resonate with me because I want them to. I am at a point in my life where I want simple approaches and simple wisdom. This approach is simple. It means I can choose to look at a situation in a way that will benefit me. I don’t have to look at it as one more depressing time, cursing the universe and wondering what I did wrong, feeling guilty, or second-guessing myself. I can choose to use the experience and make something positive come from it. Cannell used his unfortunate business experiences in his television writing. The Rockford Files is full of situations where Jim Rockford got cheated out of money due him, or got stood up or treated unfairly. I certainly enjoyed watching the show. It’s light fare and it’s presented realistically. That may be part of the appeal of the show. In any case, being treated unfairly seems to be part of everyone’s life at one time or another. The challenge is in changing how we look at the negative that happens to us.  

Patterns and light

This is a ceiling in a Paris department store that was spectacular to look up at. Very elegant, stylish, lovely. Love the patterns and the light coming through........

A New Yorker in Oslo on vacation reading The New Yorker

Just for fun......from a few summers ago. 

Pardon

Pardon my wandering toward the door

The light beyond it shines so

I turn my head, I hear a call

And see a past that won’t let go.

Pardon my gazing at the floor

While you speak of many things

My soul’s discovered it wants more

Than small ideas and earthly things.

Pardon my wishing for release

From this prison of daily grind.

What I know is I want peace,

Serenity for a weary mind.

Pardon my wandering toward the field

Of dreams and hope and light

I’ve reached the point where I shall yield

The frenzied floor without a fight. 

(copyright 2011 Paula M. De Angelis)

Talking about the hereafter

It is not often that society talks about what happens after death in any meaningful way. That topic is mostly left over to different religions to tackle, and is frowned upon in more pragmatic westernized cultures, like the one I live in at present. There is very little discussion at all concerning personal faith and beliefs about life or death. They are mostly ignored. Of course, the fascination with death as a process exists. There is no dearth of films or TV shows showing the deaths of one or many persons, the different modes of death, the fear of death and so on. Witness the popularity of TV series like CSI that dwell on the realistic aspects of deaths and autopsies and the science surrounding them. The goal of series like these is to get people to understand that science can help in crime-solving, and that is a good thing. But any real discussion (or attempt at one) of what happens to a person after death is almost taboo. So that the recent Hollywood film Hereafter is a welcome exception. It surprises me that it was made at all, and I’m guessing the only reason it was made was because Clint Eastwood directed it (he did not write it). I really enjoyed the film. It’s not a great film but it’s a very good film about very difficult subject matter. A few minutes into the movie, we are witness to a horrific tsunami that sweeps in over a vacation paradise, crushing much of what is in its path and taking many people with it. One of those people is a young French woman (Marie, beautifully played by Cecile de France) who apparently drowns and then is brought back to life by two men who rescue her. While she drowns she experiences visions of the hereafter, where she sees a world of shadow people (silhouettes) all walking toward her bathed in a kind of white light. She cannot let go of that vision and decides to find out more about it. Most of the people in her life—her boyfriend/boss, her colleagues—are cautiously supportive but ultimately move away from her, except for one man who puts her in touch with two potential publishers for the book she wants to write about after-death experiences. Her story is one of three in the film. The other one is about a real psychic (George, played by Matt Damon) who can contact the dead, who has retreated from that world in favor of a factory job that helps keep his mind off death. His story is poignant because you are witness to how his life can never be normal once people find out what he can do. They want to talk to their departed family members and friends, but when they find out what the dead are saying to them, they are disturbed enough by it so that it is not hard to understand why the psychic ends up mostly alone, with no friends and no girlfriend. The film does a good job of showing how many people view this kind of contact with the dead as a game. It is not hard to understand that either since most of what pass for psychics are probably fakers. The third story is about a young boy whose twin brother is killed by a car and how he wants to find a way to contact him. All three of these characters end up at a book fair in London—a kind of synchronicity of events that allows them to meet each other. The film is slow-moving, so that by the time you get to this point it is possible that some people have lost their attention span. But the film has to be slow-moving in order to build up credibility. We have to see that the psychic‘s gift is a real gift, that he suffers because he has that gift, that it results in his living a lonely life, and that his attempts to change his life are mostly half-hearted. He mostly always gives in to people who want him to help them, even though he has stopped contacting the dead as a job. I don’t know if I would call Hereafter a dark film as much as a searching one. All three characters are in search of clarity and hope. The psychic knows that the hereafter exists (he doesn’t question its existence) because he can talk for the dead, but he wants to live his life and not focus on death, the young woman is searching for answers to what happens after death because she had previously only focused on her successful earthly life and she has understood how fragile it is, and the little boy wants to talk to his brother who was his companion in life because his brother supported and protected him. The film doesn’t really provide any answers—how could it—since no one has come back from the hereafter to tell us what it is like. But it opens doors to thinking and talking about it and that is a good thing, even though there are no real answers. Perhaps there is some comfort in just talking about it at times. Talking about it doesn’t have to mean focusing on it obsessively. The message ultimately is that it is this life we are given and that we should live it and have hope, and that is what Marie and George find out at the end of the film. He changes his life by taking a definitive stance to not do any more readings, and he leaves California for a European vacation that starts in London. His path in London leads him to Marie, and by the end of the film you know that these two will somehow get together. Is it a Hollywood ending? Perhaps. In any case, it was an acceptable ending for this film (at least for me) because the characters had decided to focus on life and not on death. Perhaps because they no longer feared death, they could focus on life. But the film in no way diminishes their journeys, and that is one of the things I liked about it. It didn’t scoff or poke fun at their questionings and beliefs. I know that the film’s theme will either attract or push people away, and I’m guessing that is the reason that the reviewers are as divided as they are about the film. Nevertheless, I give Clint Eastwood credit for taking on the film, since the topic is not a simple one and opens the door to skepticism and rejection purely because of the theme alone.    

A poem by Wallace Stevens

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird                

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird

Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window

With barbaric glass.

The shadow of the blackbird

Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

Traced in the shadow

An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,

Why do you imagine golden birds?

Do you not see how the blackbird

Walks around the feet

Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

But I know, too,

That the blackbird is involved

In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,

It marked the edge

Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds

Flying in a green light,

Even the bawds of euphony

Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut

In a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him,

In that he mistook

The shadow of his equipage

For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.

The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

In the cedar-limbs.

-----------------------------

(one of my all-time favorite poems)

Remembering summer

Out on the Oslo fjord at sunset--a lazy day this past September when it was still warm.

Thoughts about New York city in summer

It’s never too early to start planning summer vacation. In fact, it’s smart to start around now because if you want to get together with people you need to check in with them now because they may not be around when you want to visit. Each year I plan a trip back to New York and usually I’ve been lucky—my good friends and family are around and we usually get together. I always look forward to going back to New York each year. I land at Newark airport and suddenly I feel at home. I know how to maneuver the NJ Turnpike, how to get into the city, what the quickest route is to get to Westchester—all those things. I have driven around the NYC metropolitan area for years. When I lived in NJ during the 1980s, I was always on the road, and was a pretty aggressive driver (just ask my family and friends). I have calmed down a lot, but that is mostly due to the fact that I don’t use my car here as often as I used it in NJ. It makes sense that the more you drive, the more stressful it is to drive. And in the NYC area it’s stressful to drive. There’s always a traffic jam of some sort to deal with. The worst road for traffic jams is the Long Island Expressway. I remember it used to be called the Long Island parking lot. There was never a reasonable explanation for why there was a traffic jam at any given time. The worst experience I can remember was driving a friend of mine to Kennedy airport so that she could get a flight to Germany. We made it with half an hour to spare. It was pre-9/11 so there were no real security delays. Nonetheless, it was not a pleasant experience. It took us four hours to get from midtown Manhattan to Kennedy, there was that much traffic. But somehow you deal with it and you even end up repeating the experience of driving out to the airport and hoping against hope that there will not be traffic. Hope springs eternal.

I usually fly direct from Oslo to Newark on Continental or SAS. Newark is a great airport, with its monorail that takes you from one terminal to another or to the car rental offices. It’s very efficiently set up and it makes dealing with the hassle of traveling a little easier. I take the monorail all the way to the end—to the Newark train station where I get a train into Manhattan if I don’t end up renting a car (I haven’t always done so the past few years). Every time I do this I think about how NYC functions. I mean, think about it. Over four million workers commute into and out of Manhattan each work day. That’s impressive. That is almost the entire population of Norway. It works, despite the traffic jams, crowds, delays, and aggression. Somehow it works. And when it doesn’t, it’s irritating but not chaotic. There is usually another way to get into NYC if the train doesn’t run. There is the bus, or a taxi, or a rental car, or a ferry. And when I am finally standing in midtown Manhattan, near the Grand Central train station, I take a look around me and soak in the NYC atmosphere, the NYC life. I love being in NYC in the summer time. It’s hot, noisy, and smelly; lots of people walk about, but there’s life around you. Life is always going on. It’s warm and humid. People pass you on the sidewalk, talking and laughing and having a good time—office workers on their lunch break. It’s nice to see them. It reminds me of when my brother worked in the World Trade Center; I would meet him for lunch and he would take me to a local restaurant where we would sit for an hour or two, then go to the river park and walk along the water. That was before 9/11. I haven’t been back to that area since except once, and that was to see Ground Zero, which was quite an emotional experience for me. My brother no longer works in that area, so there is not much reason to go there anymore. But it is a lovely area of the city and worth visiting if you have the chance. He and I visited Trinity Church once, which is in the Wall Street area. It is located at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway in downtown Manhattan. It is a lovely church and one of the oldest in NYC—the first church was built in 1698.

NYC is not an unfriendly place. No matter how often I’ve heard that or seen it portrayed as such on TV or in films, I’m here to tell you that it’s not like that. You will discover that people actually smile at you if you keep looking straight ahead and not down. I smile back. Sometimes I am the one who smiles first. I don’t feel lonely in NYC. I never did when I worked there. I feel free. There was always life, no matter the time of day. I remember taking the bus back to NJ (where I lived during the 1980s) at 2am and even though it felt a bit weird to be out walking on the streets at that time, there were still plenty of people out. That’s one of the reasons I love cities generally. NYC doesn’t ever really sleep. It is the city that never sleeps. I for one think that’s a good thing. You can always find an open restaurant or deli to get a coffee. I love going into Grand Central station and getting a train to Tarrytown where I grew up. How many times have I taken that train ride? Countless times. I love sitting near the train window, looking out at the Hudson River on my way to Tarrytown. I’ve written about this before. But it bears repeating. It’s a beautiful ride and a beautiful river.

So I am sitting here and starting to plan my summer trip and other trips as well. There may be some friends visiting Oslo this year, another friend and I are planning a trip in Europe, and my husband and I are also planning a trip in Europe. But there will also be time spent in Oslo, like last summer, and that’s always nice as well, because Oslo is another city that I enjoy spending time in during the summer months. 

'Quiet desperation'

I wanted to really really like the movie Another Year, directed by Mike Leigh. After seeing it last night, I ended up somewhat liking it. Loving it? No. In fact, I ended up a bit irritated—I’m not sure at what. Myself for sitting through it? The theme? The passivity in the film? The depressing aspects in the film? The real-life aspects? The ending? There are so many things I could find fault with. I wonder if I expected something different. The acting was superb. But I guess I wanted something more than I got. I felt a bit cheated at the end, because we’re asked to care about characters about whom we’ve learned very little.

To paraphrase Pink Floyd, “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way” from their song Time may actually be the clue to my feelings of irritation. The film is decidedly British from start to finish, and that is usually fine with me, as I am a real anglophile when it comes to most British film and TV dramas—such as the Jane Austen, Charlotte (and Emily) Bronte, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy tales made into films and series. It’s just that in this particular case, I felt like screaming a few times during the film and at the end—“do something”. I wanted some life to be injected into an otherwise rather dreary daily existence (non-life) for many of the characters. They mostly did nothing—lived life in the same way as they had done for years, passively waiting for life to change instead of trying to change it actively. This may be how some British people (and other people in other lands) live, but I am not sure it is how all of them live. I have read so many reviews of the film that talk about how blissfully-married Gerri and Tom are, and to be sure, their relationship is nice. They respect each other and are kind to each other after many years of marriage, but I found their relationship to be somewhat superficial. Perhaps that is what happens after so many years of marriage, but I never got the feeling that they were passionate about anything. They did what they needed to do but there was no real excess of feeling, either toward each other or toward their friends. There were a couple of instances when Gerri offers silent comfort to one or two friends, but otherwise I felt that Gerri and Tom kept their emotional distance. Emotional distance, or a kind of remoteness from the world around them, or efficient emotionality (just enough but no more) seemed to be the secret to their happiness. If this is true, it’s rather interesting, but nothing was made of this or of much else. As it was, so much in the film was understated, and that may be the British way. The presentation of the lives of their single friends was an exercise in slow torture. Mary and Ken (who was interested in Mary who rebuffed him) are single middle-agers who seem to have found no meaning in life whatsoever. Mary has a crush on Joe, Gerri and Tom’s son, who ends up with a girlfriend (Katie) by the time autumn comes and this sends Mary into a downward spiral. While the actors did an excellent job at portraying such lives on film, it was the most depressing depiction of single life I have seen up to now. Nothing in Mary or Ken’s lives seemed to work. They were unhappy, miserable, emotional vampires (especially Mary) who sucked the life out of most of the people with whom they came into contact. Perhaps there was some hope for Ken, I thought, since he seemed to be more jovial, but no, he was apparently close to being suicidal. If I was a single person and saw these types of portrayals, I’d be pissed as hell. I’d wonder, my God, is this how the world sees single middle-aged people—as a sorry lot of folk who are just desperate for happiness and meaning? Is that the only thing that gives their lives meaning—desperation for love and acceptance? What about their jobs? What about participating in charity work? There was nothing. While I know that some single people suffer from loneliness after many years of living alone, I know others who have made a lot of their lives. It is so unfair to peg singles in this way. I would have liked to have seen a middle-aged single person in this film that was happy, or if not happy, at least content with life. They do exist. It would have balanced out the misery. Tom’s brother Ronnie, newly-bereaved, was another silent stone-like personality. He didn’t seem to like his deceased wife very much, and he had no relationship whatsoever with his son Carl. Yet this is presented as though there is something very much wrong with Carl (who is a quite angry individual), when in fact this is the first time in the movie that there is any real life at all. I was interested to know why Carl was angry. How had he grown up? Did he have a good relationship with his mother? Why was his relationship with his father so awful? But none of these questions gets answered, and they are the interesting questions. It’s as though Mike Leigh is saying that in order to survive in this life and be happy, you have to dampen your feelings and your passion and live totally on an even keel. That would be impossible for most people I know. And if you do all this, you achieve balance and harmony, yes, but do you really know the people around you, the people with whom you are living? No wonder Carl was angry. There didn’t seem to be much honesty. And perhaps that is what I was looking for. Why couldn’t Gerri have said to Mary that she was hurt by her behavior toward Katie and Joe? Why did she save it all up for months at a time? Real friends would have talked it over. As it was, they were not real friends. So these are the things that stick in my mind. I guess you could say the film made an impression on me, but I think I would have been fine not having seen it. It did not really add any new insights to my life. And that is what I am looking for when I go to films like these. 

Learning empathy

I was thinking the other day about some of the children’s stories that helped shape my view of the world and my outlook on helping others and having empathy for others. Empathy (understanding, sympathy, compassion) is in rather short supply in the world today. I can’t help but think that if there was more empathy there would be less hatred and fewer problems, because if you can step into another person’s shoes and see how he or she lives life with all of the attendant problems, then you have opened your mind and heart to that person and it won’t be possible to ignore his or her sufferings. Empathy means putting yourself in someone else’s place. It’s not easy because it may mean suffering along with another person, shedding tears with them, grieving with them, and just being there for them without having your own agenda. The latter is hard at times because we all have our own agendas and we would like them to come first, especially if we have often put our own wishes and goals on the back burner. But sometimes the needs of others must come first.

The Lame Squirrel's Thanksgiving by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey is one of those children’s books that had a huge emotional impact on me as a child and that I remember all these years later. It tells the story of a little squirrel that got his foot caught in a trap which led to him limping about and being unable to gather nuts for the winter quickly enough compared to the other squirrels. So when autumn arrives he doesn’t have enough food saved for the winter. Thanksgiving comes and he starts to cry because he is alone and hungry. Mrs. Striped Chipmunk thinks about the little squirrel and wonders how he is doing. She puts together a basket of food for him and goes to visit him with her gift. As she is walking to his house, she meets the other animals in the neighborhood—the woodchuck, the rabbit, two field mice--who ask her what she is doing. When she tells them they all contribute some food item to the basket, so that it becomes so heavy that she needs help to carry it. The field mice step up to the plate to help her carry it. The little squirrel is overjoyed and grateful as Mrs. Striped Chipmunk sets the table for his dinner and the field mice help him to the table so he can eat. There is enough food in the basket to last him the whole winter. This little story is all about empathy—thinking about the plight of others, stepping in to help, finding help along the way from others who also want to help, and making someone happy. It may be a sentimental story that tugs at your heartstrings, but perhaps we need more of these kinds of stories in the world, as adults and as children. Parents and teachers didn’t need to pester us about the importance of empathy when this type of story presented the value of empathy so simply and so beautifully. I also remember my mother telling us about her own mother and some of the women in her mother’s neighborhood in Brooklyn—that they would feed the vagabonds who knocked on their doors asking for food. There was apparently some kind of innate civility and respect on both sides. The vagabonds did not steal from these women and the women did not appear to be afraid of them. It is such a different world today—one would almost never think of doing this out of fear of being robbed. The codes of conduct have changed. Yet there are still people who help the poor and the hungry in the ways that they can, apart from the official charitable organizations that are set up to do this type of work. The churches I attended in New York and New Jersey sponsored soup lines and food baskets and gift trees at Christmas-time—I remember all those attempts at helping others. They made an impression too and it felt good to be a part of them.

There are other children’s stories that made an impression on me as well. One of them—In the Great Walled Country by Raymond MacDonald Alden--had to do with a far-off land of children where there was a forest of Christmas trees that were covered with gifts at Christmas time, and the children could go to the forest and seek gifts for others from the trees. It was never the case that they picked gifts just for themselves. But one year a ‘well-meaning’ stranger to the kingdom convinces the king to issue a proclamation stating that each person could pick his or her own gift in an attempt to make the whole process more effective. There was a little boy named Inge who did not like this new arrangement since his sister was crippled and could not go into the forest to get her own presents. So he ignores the proclamation and picks gifts for his sister, filling his bag full with presents. As he leaves the forest he meets many other children who wonder where he got all the gifts, because when they entered the forest they didn’t ‘see’ any gifts on the trees. He tells them that he had no problems finding gifts, and they stand there, puzzled and unhappy. They go to visit Grandfather Christmas to ask why he left no gifts on the trees this year. He answers them “The presents were there, but they were never intended for children who were looking only for themselves”. The moral of this story is crystal clear. A steady diet of such stories and you end up learning that it is a good thing to think of others, to put others first. And you learn empathy—putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. And that’s a good thing.