I have to admit that I've watched a lot of random stuff on Netflix over the past five weeks. None of it has made me want to run out and get a cable subscription so I can get movies or TV shows faster. In fact, often when I'm watching a movie, I have to remind myself that people view this as an art form... because what I see is so -- commercial.
But maybe that's what we've done to all fine works of art. Commercialized them. Most writers and painters that are now considered greats were relatively unknown during their lifetime. They had to die first. So we end up taking the "fineness" out of them. I guess in a way we've done that to meal time, too. For example, right now I've just enjoyed fettucini alfredo -- from a box -- that I heated up in 4 minutes in the microwave. We've taken something that should take time and effort and sped it up so that we could do other activities faster.
This morning I watched a film called "The Way." It stars a post-Jed Bartlett Martin Sheen as a father who lost his son, when he passes away while attempting to hike the El Camino de Santiago from France to Spain. When he goes to France to retrieve his son's body, he decides to take up the hike and take his son's ashes with him. I don't say this very often any more, but it was a grown-up movie. It wasn't all fake drama and special effects. There were lows and highs and a lot of beautiful scenery. There were a lot of baguettes and bottles of wine and sleeping in bunk beds.
It was a feel good movie about self-acceptance, the way life works and living a life where you get to see all of the differences in cultures in the world -- even with an American passport. :-)
I don't walk away from movies completely happy very often. Usually I'm able to guess plot lines as they develop and guess where the faux drama is going to go. I couldn't do that with this one. And it was a pleasant change of pace.
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