Early Saturday afternoon last, I watched Tár in a cinema screen that smelled of vomit, as director Todd Field intended. I exited in the late afternoon exhilarated. Giddy. Great movie.
The next day, I watched the documentary Fire of Love on the telly, as the grey sky of a January Sunday bled into a navy night. The pavement outside was shiny with light rainfall and spilled streetlight. No longer that orange because those bulbs are on the way out. Oh, it was a lovely movie. Fire of Love tells the story of a volcanologist couple, the Kraffts, using their own footage. The narrator, Miranda July, drawls out facts about tectonic plates and observations about relationships - between people, the earth. Some of the clips sparked memories of my having seen them before - an egg fried on a pan held over cooling slowed down lava, a human running away from a cloud of ash. It is on Disney+, if you’re interested.
Before bed that same night, I turned on Planes, Trains and Automobiles and my heart felt everything good and bad available in this land when Del told Neal: “I like me. My wife likes me.” Then, on Monday, the latest episode of The Last of Us turned me into salt. It was not a movie, but it could have been. I won’t spoil it, but I will say it could well destroy you.
I adore films. They are my favourite art form. To give hours of your life to a contained story with moving images, music, words, and acting is to me as nourishing as sitting down for a good meal. As Carrie Bradshaw said of her precious Vogue, yes I like her and I’m not asking for your forgiveness, I feel it feeds me more. I have a list before me of big names I’ve managed to miss: a nineties mob movie for my mains, a horror set amid the snow for dessert.
Other works, so familiar I replay them in my brain when I’m bored and stuck in a situation where the only way out is for time to elapse, also await: a flinty Hitchcock blonde meets a man in a suit, a soft romantic drama unfurls in an American city, Rock Hudson waits for a woman to realise he’s perfect for her. Easy recipes I can rely upon to comfort me and remind me what is good in the world while I escape from it.