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Sunday, Dec. 15, 2002 / 7:41 p.m. ~Major Movie Recommendation, and Recovering Slowly~ "Far From Heaven" was amazing. It's deceptively simple, a movie as homage to movies of a period, to Douglas Sirk dramas from the 1950s, with the same musical composer scoring, one Elmer Bernstein. The details are incredible, vintage automobiles, vintage or reproduction furnishings, costumes, details, everywhere, details. Julianne Moore is excellent as the perfect housewife, mother, the wife of the big time Sales Executive at the big company that manufactures the TVs of the future, Magnatech. She and he even posed for the artwork that represents the product, the Mr and Mrs Magnatech picture which hangs throughout the corporate offices. Two perfect children, a boy and a girl, a perfect house, everything in its place, a 'colored' maid, a 'colored' gardener, ladies lunching, the local columnist doing a feature. Everything so repressed, so perfect. But, like in "American Beauty", you have to look beneath the surface, where you will find the secrets, most importantly that the husband, miscast I think, as Dennis Quaid, is homosexual, struggling with his identity, trying to deny what he feels, going to therapy to correct his 'sexual perversion'. And in her loneliness, her abject sadness underneath an exterior of perfect happiness, the wife falls in love with the educated and handsome son of the gardener who died, the son who takes over the dad's business, and charms her with his manner, his caring, his politeness, his attention to her (played by the beautiful Dennis Haysbert, of "24" fame - my favorite TV drama, in which he plays the President of our Excited States!). Beautiful movie, really simple, but stirring. And the cinematography is outstanding. The attention to detail is beautiful. There is one scene where the wife and her lady friends are standing outside the house, perusing the column about Mr and Mrs Magnatech in the paper, the article written about the perfect wife and mother, and her perfect husband and life, and they are all wearing these dresses, coats, scarves, hats in the matching colors of the Autumn leaves all around. Beautiful. Sandy and I really enjoyed it, we both loved it. He even said it was about to make him cry in parts. It's very emotional really. We went to get Thai food after, and for once the restaurant, my favorite Thai restaurant, was NOT packed on a Saturday night. It was a bit freakish, but we stayed, drank beer and wine and ate so slowly, we closed the place! Waitrons in silk Thai garb kept coming by, "Are you finished?", until, regrettably, I snapped at one, "NO!". Later, I apologized for being a slow eater, but hey, come on. We were talking, he ordered ostrich (my first time eating it, tastes like beef), I my favorite tofu. It took time. I told him the entire Listerine saga, the lynching photos left at my desk, the balloon stabbing incident, the march downtown in November, the bowling Friday night, how far we've come, and he agrees that she is still a freak and I should not turn my back to her! We laughed at that. Then to his beautiful house I love being in, with three dogs right now - he's keeping a dog just for fun, one that is the same breed as one of his other dogs. I hooked up his new cordless mouse for him, he'd had the connection through an adaptor and it wasn't working, so we fixed it, I downloaded Netscape 7.0 for him, which is weird looking I think, and we set up his email through his ISP so he can get rid of AOL. He's been paying for DSL through a local provider, yet using AOL for email and Interweb browsing. Got to put a stop to that wastefulness. Plus, he admits he's been ashamed to be associated with AOL, embarassed really. He's really used to it though, and it might be due to his age, but learning new tricks seems to be quite daunting to him. We'll work on that. He sent me email from the new/old account today.... Yay! We also shot billiards, in his living room! Three games, I lost 2 to 1. And listened to African music on his Interweb radio program. It was a good night, but I'm not sure we can be more than friends. Late in the evening (which lasted so long partly because his PC kept crashing, we had to run Norton and discovered four viruses - quarantined them, and it started running better, but things took a LONG time to happen), we began to talk of activism, protesting, the government, libertarianism, etc., and the young 'punk' anarchists, and what they're hoping to gain, if they're really just idealists like the rest of us, or if there is any practicality to their particular fight and anger. It was depressing finally, and I felt like I wanted to drop out completely. I know that wasn't his intention, but the way he talked..... I finally said there's nothing any of us can do, we might as well have our Nuclear Holocaust and get it over with, and he agreed. Except he'd feel badly for his son. I understand. Then we talked about "Deep Impact" and the end tidal wave scene, the silence that precedes the end of the world. The apocalyptic theme recurring dreams I have, that silence. He said Ram Dass equated it to removing a tight shoe. Yes. I went to bed around 6:00 this morning, slept all day, dreamed heavily, of moving back into my first apartment. It's not the first time I've dreamed that. It's becoming a recurring theme dream as well. Now, it's almost 8:00 in the evening, I've been up around an hour. This is insane. I dreamed I was late for work, I hope I'm not tomorrow. I take comfort in knowing we have Casual Dress at work until the end of the year. No struggling to find clean pants that are not jeans. I'm off to try to accomplish something now. Anything. Dishes, vacuuming, changing my sheets, watching my "GL"s on tape, and one "Felicity" from Friday night. It's been an unusual weekend for me, really really. Lots of socializing, more than I'm used to. I need recovery time. Cost of the War in Iraq
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