To Be Purist or Not To Be...

When you watch movies with friends, it can get to different levels. It can be laid back, having a good time, no pressure on the movie, we are here for entertainment... or... become a contest on who is going to say the smartest thing, with the most relevant reference (preferably unknown by the rest of us), and the lowering of any possible feeling of having had a relaxing time.
First, choose the movie... Of course, you can forget about any blockbuster, since none of them would be highly recognized by the cinema purist. Therefor it has to be preferably in Danish, with no one you could possibly have seen in any other movies. It has to be indie, as well as an intellectual drama. Still, the movie has to have had good reviews in the "Cahiers du Cinema" or other publications of the same prestige.
Second, watch the movie. It might actually be a great journey, with very interesting nuances, a different paste, an original plot, an unexpected ending, who knows, a masterpiece (although you should never use that word lightly).
Third, dinner, after the movie. I am starting to think that perhaps a dinner before and a lot of drinks after might be far more entertaining. My last dinner was quite undigested, with a long and superior debate we entered soon after ordering the appetizers. First, whether we liked or not the movie. If some indeed liked it, then we enter the horrible subject on what makes it a masterpiece, compared to  what is considered a mainstream movie, take for example "The Reader", which (to my humble opinion) was actually really good. How the richness comes from the love of art, the negation of the conventions. I even might have liked the movie, but at that point, I am detached. If the movie wasn't likable, it would be that the filmmaker has been too arrogant, or not enough skilled, even really bad goes. But therefore, it ends up being compared to mainstream movies anyway.
If you happened to have seen something of interest, perhaps good to the opinion of the purist, we might enter another type of conversation: who is the original creator of the style, of course someone you don't know. It is no longer about what this may have brought upon its predecessor, but how well we know. At the end of the day, the conversation will fall into a monologue, with what is the right thing to like, how much we know about things, and how narrow the way to success in the purist world.
Finally, on the way back, the questioning of all what has been said, with the only person you can actually really share. Is that the right way of thinking? Enjoying? Yes, knowledge is everything, and the more we know, the more we understand. It is good to know our classics, the indie ones, but perhaps the mainstream ones, the movies that have created history with new techniques, new languages, new narrativities, and the movies that are creating history because of the moment we are living in. But if the Oscars winners never match the Sundance or Cannes or Berlin ones, perhaps it is because it is a matter of perspective too. So much for purism...
So, my next movie is probably going to be a mainstream one (despite the way it has been produced), "Cloud Atlas", in the meantime, I think I am going to avoid purism for a while...

Cinema is growing old

When you see someone in a painting from the previous centuries, you do not think about whether they are dead or alive, they have a timelessness to them that freeze them in time. Nevertheless they are. I usually watch contemporary movies, movies for the oldest from the 80's. Recently, I came to discover more classics, even going to the black and white ones. You see the life of characters in motion, with their youth, and in a way, it only looks like a period piece, played by comtemporary actors. Well, perhaps they speak a bit differently, perhaps the style is sometimes odd, the lighting artificial, the technology poor. But still, they remain very much alive.
Then there are those actors we all know died, in tragic incidents, or getting older, they are separated from their role, and become these persons, with lives of their own, and they happened to die, just like everyone else.
Lately, I have been watching intensively the whole retrospective of the movies staring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. I think I've already watched five of them. They were in chronological order, so I saw them evolve, both in their acting, but also how the cinema industry was evolving as well. And then it stroke me. They are growing up, growing older, and eventually, all these people in the movie died, they all did, it was too long ago. But they are so alive, still, almost like the painting from the previous centuries. But this is a first, a document that is as alive as you and me, with people speaking, moving, laughing... Cinema is growing old, the first generation is already dead, so is the second one. We are creating those memories, documents of our past which seems more and more palpable, as if we could finally travel in time. It is beautiful, and sad at the same time. They gave their emotions, we feel attached very much to them, as if they were alive, close enough, growing old, but slowly, reachable. I would have loved to meet Katharine Hepburn, she looks like she was a wonderful lady, very creative, very devoted to cinema, with ideas that belong so well to our present time, almost as if we all were born too late, she was early, but she belongs here, now.
But all this is a fading image in a screen, it is the magic of cinema, the feeling for an hour or so that you are traveling, sharing, loving new people in a very intimate way, all characters of a bigger and longer story, humanity.