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Several things have happened recently which just reiterate the fact that I'm a super-sensitive viewer.
A couple of weeks ago, Classicflix randomly chose to send me Crime School (1938) in the mail and I'm glad they did. It was such a wonderful movie and I can see why certain bloggers like the Dead End Kids. My beau Carlos found many correlations between this movie and Brubaker (1980) and encouraged me to watch the latter and compare the two films. The plots are very similar yet Brubaker has a lot more violence. In one part of the movie, the new warden played by Robert Redford discovers that one of the prisoners has been there a few years longer than his sentence required. Just as this older gentlemen is to be released the bad bad prison guards decide to kill him since he holds many secrets, including the locations of the graves of murdered prisoners. When I asked Carlos if the sweet old man was going to die, he admitted that he would and I burst into tears. We had to stop the DVD so I can regain composure. Needless to say, we had to skip over that part because I just couldn't deal.
On Saturday night, I was at some trashy bar and there were some 100 screens showcasing the UFC 111 - Ultimate Fighting Championship. My eyes could not avoid the fight. I would have to look down at the ground or up at the ceiling if I didn't want to see two guys beating the living daylights out of each other. We had seen 3 fights and when they were on the George St. Pierre vs. Dan Hardy fight, I had had enough. My heart couldn't bear seeing Hardy's eye almost pop out of his head and both his arms be almost dislocated. I just had to get out of that bar and away from that fight.
Please don't beat up this guy. He's got a nice mohawk! And he's from Nottingham, England.
On Sunday, by good friend Mark (super genius awesome author extraordinaire) wrote a post about the film Beyond Rangoon (1995). It's a film I could never bring myself to watch. I had caught a pivotal scene in the beginning of the movie on TV some years ago and I have been traumatized ever since. The scene involved Patricia Arquette's character arriving at her home only to discover that her husband and young son have been brutally murdered. I immediately switched channels and have not touched the movie since. That one scene still haunts me to this day.
A couple of weeks ago, Classicflix randomly chose to send me Crime School (1938) in the mail and I'm glad they did. It was such a wonderful movie and I can see why certain bloggers like the Dead End Kids. My beau Carlos found many correlations between this movie and Brubaker (1980) and encouraged me to watch the latter and compare the two films. The plots are very similar yet Brubaker has a lot more violence. In one part of the movie, the new warden played by Robert Redford discovers that one of the prisoners has been there a few years longer than his sentence required. Just as this older gentlemen is to be released the bad bad prison guards decide to kill him since he holds many secrets, including the locations of the graves of murdered prisoners. When I asked Carlos if the sweet old man was going to die, he admitted that he would and I burst into tears. We had to stop the DVD so I can regain composure. Needless to say, we had to skip over that part because I just couldn't deal.Do you remember when I told you that I hyper-ventilated the first time I saw Strangers on a Train (1951)? Yeah.
Something about an old lady being choked at a party just rubbed me the wrong way.
Anyways, Carlos tried to calm me down by telling me that these were only actors and this wasn't real. EXCUSE ME? For me at least, the whole point of watching a movie is to be swept away by it. Not to see it as something fake, but to momentarily be taken into another world, into other people's lives, into other experiences. Carlos likes to find goofs, bad cuts and other errors. He likes to figure out the plot as early on as possible. I like to find literary/cultural references and to ride the magical ride that the plot takes me on. So no. To me this isn't fake this is the real deal.
And guess what? Brubaker is based on a real story.
And guess what else? The older gentleman who was murdered in the story died in real life before the movie hit theaters. So no Carlos. This isn't fake. That man really did die. So yes, I have a real reason to shed my tears.
So for me this is all to real. I can't take the violence. Fake violence (Brubaker) or real violence (UFC 111), to me it's bad. Really really bad. I find it sad that most people are so immune to images of violence that it doesn't even faze them. I don't want to be immune. When I see someone being hurt, I want to be able to empathize. I don't want to be insensitive.
So when the character Bullen (played by the delightful David Keith) tells us about his unfortunate upbringing and the brutal murder of his twin brother, we should feel empathy. When the prison guards eletrocute him a bit to punish him, we should feel empathy. When Bullen meets his demise, we should be sad.
Isn't that the whole point of a story? That it should get us to feel something? It makes me feel too much because I am too sensitive but I worry about those who don't feel anything anymore.
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P.S. Carlos doesn't force me go to trashy bars, watch UFC fights or see violent movies against my will. He's a very sweet boyfriend, I promise!
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P.S. Carlos doesn't force me go to trashy bars, watch UFC fights or see violent movies against my will. He's a very sweet boyfriend, I promise!
