Thursday 16 September 2010

Watched some of The Hire again... The Madonna one, obviously, because it's so funny, but I can't help, ever, to go around the Powder Keg. It's one of the most powerful things ever filmed. Even if my dad was not a war photographer once, when he was young, having to suffer for it, his dreams enslaved by the horror he witnessed, and reported , as he got older and the mind chose to the remember the ugly, but because this is such a well well done story. Perhaps not even the first part so much, even though it's super sad and righteous, but the last half: when the Driver comes back to the 'real world', with that song playing in the back : "The words are saying nothing...", to the mother, *failing* to say to her he was with her son when he... ...And *failing* to say the man won the Pulitzer, because he can see it couldn't mean less to her... And then surrendering the dog tags, in Braille, highlighting the entire absurdity of the whole thing, that this man, who only had a blind mother, was a photographer - and a photographer of things he was only to happy his mother could never see...
         I cry like a goldfish every time. A bowl-worth of tears just for this one minute of footage. It is probably one of the rarest sad things I willingly watch. But I do it so I would never look down on that kind of grit.

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