Blow
2004 04 04
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Separating the film from its factual base, and looking at the film as a story in its own right.
I should never watch movies like that in the middle of the night - they leave me feeling ... full of a woe I cannot put a name to.
A victim of his own greed, stupidity, and shortsightedness, and a victim of those who were more greedy than he was. He loses friends, family, and his child. His own fault? Certainly.
When you're playing dangerous or foolish games, if the thought "just once more and then I'll stop" crosses your mind and you follow through on that once more, you're a fool. Flirting with danger is an excruciatingly powerful narcotic, but if you embark upon a course wherein there are too many variables that you can have no control over, no input into, then it's more than danger you flirt with, and that too makes you a fool.
Some purists will tell you that drama has no power if it's experienced in any form other than the purely theatrical, that if you're not sat in front of a stage with live actors, then you get nothing. I don't believe that. I think that, like with almost everything, it is a very personal experience and effect, and that sitting alone in the middle of the night watching something with power will have a grander effect on you than if you'd experienced them with hundreds of other people. I think it's something, at least in part, to do with safety - there's safety in numbers, there's a security blanket there that keeps you comfortable and cozy, and that's a blanket that doesn't exist when you're solitary. So, things hit you more directly, and, perhaps, more profoundly, certainly more deeply.
As much as it is enjoyable to go to a play or to the theatre to see a film with friends, I prefer watching movies alone a great deal of the time, particularly dramatic films, and then discussing them with others who've seen them. I'm not altogether certain why - though it's likely that personal experience, that individual thing, that I am protective of, perhaps even jealous of, that effect which - no matter how terrible - is something I can't have if someone else is around.
While I rankle at that last, what I find most amusing about it, is that they're all right. We act for all sorts of reasons, including the animal. We are animals.