the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie

so funny. their consciences and the way they live so blandly and vilely. the manners! the "after you"! the drowning out of the truths about diplomatic relations with evil south american countries! that long talk about the lamb and infinite other nonsense at the very end is the ultimate nothingness. how can words be so empty?

i don't even know what to make of all the dreams, of the bleeding sergeant, of the sexy resistance fighter. AH the seizieme. the frenetic ugly sex, how ugly they all really are. how rafael goes from one person to the next at the party excusing himself. what hideous consciences those people have, what pettiness.

and then there are so many incomprehensible things, the military manuevers in the yard? the bishop, gardener? the soldier that dreams for everyone else with the blue eyes? everything was so messy and unfinished and scattered but so drily announced. what consummate manners. i want to read about this movie, i want to know what created this. that was hilarious

ah yes and reading through the wikipedia, just how everything is interrupted. how they deal so casually with the absurdity, how inhumanly unflappable they are. the dead man in the restaurant! how is it possible! there is such an ungodly focus on dinner itself that the bizarre episodes are just interruptions of that ultimate desire for that meal without having to say anything. such meaningless evil.

and all the fumbling, pathetic sex they want so desperately to have is also hilarious. what do these people want? why do they act the way they do? what do they fear? the answers to these questions are extremely banal and mundane. to drink a dhrrrryyyy martini properly. you have to respect the super drunk girl, she might be the only one who has thought enough thoughts to realize that their lifestyle demands a certain numbness

had something else to say about this after watching it like 3 times yesterday but it escapes me now. I JUST remembered -- how their voices are drowned out whenever something of great importance is being said, something that firmly contextualizes this movie, anchors it in the real and ugly politics of the world, is reminiscent of how in the play Mary Stuart, Elizabeth, and all the other characters, are deathly afraid of speaking, let alone writing down Mary Stuart's death certificate. it's kind of hilarious in this way, how circumspectly they must tread so as to always foist the guilt on others. right on down to the last man, who is forced to HOLD the signed sheet with no guidance whatsoever as to what he should do with it. or the noble jailer who refuses to kill mary stuart extra judicially. these are all things that cannot be spoken. and that sensibility is reflected in the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie, that hilarious propriety about not countenancing something by not acknowledging it even as you do it. that bull shit hiding, like not kissing the girl with whom you're cheating. these noble, slimy technicalities. so funny