grand illusion

jean renoir loved people so much and so subtly and intelligently. grand illusion's got so much in it, many of the scene's are really vignettes about class and ethnicity, and they're all so GOOD! there's working class parisian marechal chewing the fat with the working german cow. there's that immortal clown, singing like my grandma  there's boeldieu, who reminds me a lot of my brother in law michael, with that impenetrable charm and nobility. one can't even say thank you to that guy. renoir the humanist! most exalted humanist!

and war! manmade war! one thing that really isn't in this movie is the ugliness of war, grand illusion is circumspect about it, refracting it through the monocles of great aristocratic talkers.

People ache to be kind. they give you harmonicas and never want to shoot -- what am i saying, this is a preposterous war movie, an exceedingly narrow slice of a war rotten through with sentimentality, but that rottenness, those contradictions that bog down victory or defeat in universal human love, are the only hope. put that way it sounds unforgivably soppy, but that's definitely my fault and not the movie's.



my father suggested i write something for the westview about world of video. i think it's a terrific idea, that place is my happiness in this neighborhood.