Inventive piece of Danish Cinema

Today I woke up late (at 10 AM!) and literally ran to the screening of Christopher Boe's Allegro". I felt like I was going to cough blood when I arrived at the Egyptian Theatre but was happy I had gotten there in time. Then the attendant reminded me that the screening for the movie I was seeing was at another theatre. Without responding, I summoned up the last bits of my lung power to run to the bus station. The lady on the bus told me that it would take ten minutes to get there. She was wrong and I will never forgive her for that. The uber-packed bus finally stopped at the Holiday theatre and I practically climbed on the heads of people to get off. Thankfully, they had not given my ticket away. I sat down at my seat with my frozen junior mints and tried to clear the last bits of metallic taste from the back of my throat. Then Nate came casually walking in and said "Ryan, you didn't save me a seat." I almost fainted.

Let me just take a minute to explain something. Even though one of my goals for these posts is to explore the actual process and meaning of criticism and talking about films in general, I WILL actually talk about the films I have seen and why I like them and what they mean to me.

"Allegro" is an insanely original film about this man who falls in love with a woman and she ends up committing suicide for some reason. Instead of trying to understand why it happened, the man forgets about it and moves away from Copenhagen. The consequence of this act of forgetting is dire. What happens is this: when he leaves, the area surrounding the spot where he decides to forget becomes enclosed by an invisible wall. The area which is inhabited by this wall comes to be known as "the zone" Years later, a man comes to find the lost lover and lures him back to Denmark to visit the zone. What he finds inside are his memories.

I don't want to talk much more about what happens but let me say why this film was important to me. This man is trying to escape from his past because he reasons that it would be too painful to remember. But this film is trying to say that there is always a consequence to such a decision... consequences which manifest themselves in the physical realm. By trying to escape his past, the main character had in turned forsaken himself, the woman he loved, and his city. When he finally remembers, he feels regret but we must believe that this will be a good thing for him. If we cannot feel regret for the things we do, we cannot evolve.

Anyway, keep your eyes out for that one. It is one of the best films I have seen so far at Sundance. I also saw a film called "Open Window" today. I guess it was okay. It was about this couple to whom a horrible thing happens. It was poignant at times but you know, I am just sick of watching films about the problems that face white suburbanite thirty-somethings. The disintegration of the quotidian in American suburbia is a theme taken to the extreme and I am sick of it.

But anyway, I will keep trying to keep this site fresh. I am getting into the groove of things and am having less trouble accessing the internet to update the site. So I will keep them coming and please, keep on visiting.

By the way, email any comments or requests to me at conratrc@eckerd.edu