Posted on: March 29, 2009
Rachel Getting Married
Are we the center of everything? Can we be the center without disrupting other centers? Smashing into each other, again and again. Ego against ego. Id against id. Timing is everything. Crashing into someone else’s time. Knocking that time off kilter like a shot blocker, like someone who moves the target, the goal posts, the field of drama, over and over again .…
March was an especially good month for DVD releases. Watched Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, and was knocked out by the realism, depth and honesty on display. It, too, dealt with the impact of pity (among many other things) on our lives and ties in well with Zweig’s book. There are also some faint echoes with another movie I reviewed here, I’ve Loved you for so Long
Two sisters. One with a tragic past. The impact…
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Posted on: March 25, 2009
Beware of Pity, by Stefan Zweig
A bit of synchronicity and chance today. About half way through Zweig’s excellent Beware of Pity, I decided to take a break and watch The Cake Eaters, primarily because Kristen Stewart is in it. Almost right from the start, I could see her role echoed Zweig’s story in some important ways. Stefan Zweig’s novel centers on a young woman who is paralyzed, and befriended by a young lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian army. Befriended, at first, because of his sense of pity, duty, honor, guilt. Because he had asked her to dance at a lavish party, not knowing she was too crippled to. She goes into hysterics and he flees from the house in shame. But comes back out of guilt. The book travels through the Hungarian countryside as well as the country of the mind, our phởbias, our fears, our…
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