Paradiso

Still making up for lost DVD time, watching a movie each evening. Bright Star by Jane Campion was okay for a period piece but really couldn't capture how Keats wrote such wonderful poetry; his Fanny comes across like a graft of a Valley girl and Coco Chanel. The Secret in Their Eyes was a suspenseful Argentine story beginning during the time of Eva Peron, making the entire Amanda Know Italian persecution look tame.

But the best so far was Cinema Paradiso ... or maybe I just needed a benign trigger for a good cry. The young actor who plays Toto at ten is terribly engaging, with the most expressive eyes and quick smile. He is counterpointed against Alfredo, the movie projectionist in a small Italian village just after WWII. It made me reflect on the importance of film to me, as entertainment, as stories upon which to project my life experiences. This one points out something missing in most of today's movies -- the entire neighborhood does not take in the show together. There is no chance to watch the audience as well as the screen.

Of course, the real plot of Paradiso is how one falls in love. This is classic red flame love -- no passion, almost like all the instances in the movie when the censoring parish priest rang the bell to mark those frames for cutting in which the stars kissed. Toto's love is unrequited and his life empty for 30 years until he finds his first love when he returns for Alfredo's funeral. Elena hides behind her belief that she is "old" now and reasonably comfortable with her life; they are together for only the briefest of reunions, trying to analyze whether Alfredo's part in their separation was too interfering or done from a nobler motivation. And so my tears flowed, for all those choices of my youth that were limited by family, immaturely measured against convention and still poignant. My 2011 lust list is a bucket list ... not of things left to see and do, but of refitting memories to see if love and passion looks different from the farsightedness of age instead of the blind spots of youth.