At the movies...

I've been watching, thanks to Hulu and Netflix, rather a broad spectrum of cinematic art.  At one bright, funny end are the gorgeous comedies of Pedro Almodóvar; at the other (fading to black) antipodes are such inadvertently barbaric, self-conscious  ideologically gay dreck as I watched last night, called Eating Out.  And in between have come a couple of rather wonderful Japanese films, Footloose in Tokyo and Like Father, like Son (both charming; the latter exquisite in many, many ways, not the least of which is its perfect adaption of the "background" music to the mood and temper of the action, with the precise, quiet placement of the slowest of the Goldberg variations just before the dénouement, to describe the breaking of a child's heart, which is absolutely shattering).  Not to mention a workmanlike French evocation of Le Misanthrope de nos jours, Alceste à Bicyclette, stamped all over with traditional, oh-so-French adoration of la Culture, but convincingly made central and relevant to the Modern Age--by the same fellows who did Les Femmes du 6ième Étage which I liked so much a few years ago--but of course one can scarcely get enough of Le Misanthrope just as Molière wrote it, recited, and re-recited, to show the different, complex layers of meaning and characterization beneath the dazzling polish of those glorious alexandrines.  Frankly, it makes the tormented heart of a woman, of which we get so everlastingly much in Racine, seem somewhat tedious--even slow-witted (dull?)--in comparison.  I said as much to my favorite prof at UO, Alexandre, a profound Racinien, anent Bérénice, and he snapped back, like un coup de fouet, "Vous avez un coeur de pierre!"  

But getting back to our sheep, the awful, terribly sincere, vulgar and tedious little movie, Eating Out, contains the most astonishing revelation of the vast cultural disconnect (between themselves and Western Civilization) that young, half-educated barbarity have arrived at  in its by-the-way depiction of "Classical Music":  Four misshapen, leering freaks seated at two pianos, who play, together, from printed music, at breakneck speed, a kind of Souza march with polka elements--calliope, hurdy-gurdy music.  That, I do believe, is what they see and what they hear in the music they call "Classical."