The Lost Daughter

It's strange how much time I used to spend going to the cinema. In fact it's not strange at all, it was perfectly normal, everything about pandemic existence being strange, but it's been going on for so long that it's starting to feel normal.

That's depressing. And even with the vaccines, there's no end in sight.

Ah well, no use in dwelling, that's counterproductive, and at least we have vaccines and boosters available in Canada and Québec, and the risk of hospitalization is greatly decreased if you get them, I recommend getting the vaccine, getting it soon, I suppose it goes without saying but vaccines help prevent you from getting sick, especially if you get the virus, which is still spreading rapidly, and isn't showing any signs of letting up.

But I used to spend around 8 hours a week carefully or carelessly choosing films in cinemas and travelling back and forth to see them, sometimes while stopping for lunch, it was a great way to pass the time.

Now I've got all the time in the world just to choose two films a week and watch them on my computer or television, and it still seems like I have to find the time, how did I ever come up with all the extra hours?

It's certainly much less engaging watching films at home although there's an endless supply available, still, films are meant to be seen in theatres, and it's kind of lame always watching them on a smaller screen.

No end to the variety, however, and I'm super happy there's a Criterion channel, Criterions used to be really expensive films that you had to buy, if you really wanted to see one and couldn't find it at the library. 

I'm not sure if Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Lost Daughter has resonant artistic flair, but it certainly leaves an impression, and is like nothing else I've ever seen.

It's about an unappealing dull grouch who decides to go on vacation, during the off-season in a resort town, as locals celebrate liberation (Olivia Colman/Jessie Buckley as Leda).

Her ornery disposition and assertive dismissals ensure she doesn't make any friends, she's also generally annoyed when people talk to her, no matter how harmless or well-meaning.

She's plagued by haunting remembrances of the daughters she left behind to pursue her career, the surrounding carefree families at play only serving to vex her further.

She proceeds to steal one of their dolls and even buys it a new fancy outfit, and refuses to return it or just leave it on the beach even after a campaign is launched for days to find it.

The Lost Daughter's total lack of utility and uncanny investigation of gloomy self-obsession, lugubriously generates pathological charm through disorienting morose unabashed stern vision.

It's like a campy intellectual film that leaves you free to discern and judge, is it critiquing cantankerous agency or oddly celebrating unattached dysfunction?

Does she feel bad about not feeling bad about never having tried to cultivate feelings?

I think there's Criterion potential.

Resort towns are fun in the offseason. 

The Grand Budapest Hotel

One of the most well-written/presented films I've seen, Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel eclectically and photogenically entices his audiences to cerebrally strap themselves in, inexhaustibly affixing literary liaisons to his rambunctious gentleman's club, scriptual guardrails, amphetamines, and incisors distilled then disseminated, meticulously tidy and neat, lead character and director functioning as one, the details, the details, the details, affluence aplombed, in a duty-bound celestial amazement.

To serve is to rectify.

Young love, friendship, greed devotion admiration jealousy deflection prison-breaks swathed in a flame forsworn to its adversaries.

Retreat.

Contours convened on a swollen strap eased into vertical environed retinal eschews.

Pause.

Consented entrapping pursuant cavalcades.

Mentors and mendicants flossed in the grip.

Critical high-level catered expenditures.

Horizons harassed and danubed.

Treachery, intransigence, vertigo.

Withstanding any attempts to halt its progression, The Grand Budapest Hotel epitomizes g(u)ilded prestige, hostages lacking ransom, taste without snobbery.

Envisioned, exercised, and executed, I hesitate to say, it's my favourite Wes Anderson film yet.