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May. 23rd, 2007 11:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alonewiththemoonStartling is leaning over the sink to spit out a mouthful of toothpaste and finding yourself nose to nose with a gigantic daddy long legs that you are quite sure had not been there just seconds before. I spat to the side and got the heck out of the bathroom. It was entirely too large a spider to deal with first thing in the morning.
Felt like I was being karmically rewarded for not smushing the spider later, though, when I saw a rather fearless rabbit hanging out alongside the bike path on my walk to Alewife later in the morning. It was a very handsome bunny, shades of gray and reddish brown, athletic but not skinny, and it looked softer than a cloud. The bunny looked carefully both ways before crossing the bike path and scooted off into the reeds. I suppose if a rabbit can overcome fear of people, then foraging during the morning commute would be a pretty good strategy, since coyotes, hawks, foxes, etc are likelier to stay away when people are around, and dogs are on leashes.
Watched the movie In This World last night. It's the story of two Afghan cousins who want to make their way from a refugee camp in Pakistan (the younger of the two is an orphan who had been born in the camp) to London, using the Middle Eastern and European equivalent of coyotes to get there. I had been putting off watching it because although I was sure it would be good, I was equally sure it would be very depressing and make me feel bad about the world. It certainly did have that effect, but I was surprised by how warm and human a movie it was. The director (Michael Winterbottom, who also did 24 Hour Party People) focused on some of the normalcy of daily life. People told jokes and ate ice cream and were bored on long bus rides. It sounds trivial, but there was something about the camera work that brought you into these moments, and the actors, some of whom played themselves, seemed to live in every moment. There was no overarching political point; occasional narration gave statistics about how many refugees there are in the world, in the Middle East, in Pakistan, but reasons why were never really given, just that these are people seeking a safe life for themselves and their families. The ultimate effect of Winterbottom's tactic made the Afghanis into ordinary people for whom the viewer has ordinary empathy, by which I mean non-exoticized empathy. And the horrible things that inevitably happen to a refugee or a smuggled human being become fresh in the narrative once you have reached this point of empathy, because to each refugee these things don't seem inevitable, there is always the hope that it won't happen to you, or even the assumption that it won't happen to you because you are doing all the right things to keep it from happening. So, surprisingly easy to watch for a movie that is hard to watch, and highly recommended.
(Of course I can't help but mention a scene of men and women dancing, together no less, in the Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan--very lively and beautiful. As you would expect, the dancing reflects Afghanistan's location on the cusp of the Arab and Indian worlds. Original fusion.)
Felt like I was being karmically rewarded for not smushing the spider later, though, when I saw a rather fearless rabbit hanging out alongside the bike path on my walk to Alewife later in the morning. It was a very handsome bunny, shades of gray and reddish brown, athletic but not skinny, and it looked softer than a cloud. The bunny looked carefully both ways before crossing the bike path and scooted off into the reeds. I suppose if a rabbit can overcome fear of people, then foraging during the morning commute would be a pretty good strategy, since coyotes, hawks, foxes, etc are likelier to stay away when people are around, and dogs are on leashes.
Watched the movie In This World last night. It's the story of two Afghan cousins who want to make their way from a refugee camp in Pakistan (the younger of the two is an orphan who had been born in the camp) to London, using the Middle Eastern and European equivalent of coyotes to get there. I had been putting off watching it because although I was sure it would be good, I was equally sure it would be very depressing and make me feel bad about the world. It certainly did have that effect, but I was surprised by how warm and human a movie it was. The director (Michael Winterbottom, who also did 24 Hour Party People) focused on some of the normalcy of daily life. People told jokes and ate ice cream and were bored on long bus rides. It sounds trivial, but there was something about the camera work that brought you into these moments, and the actors, some of whom played themselves, seemed to live in every moment. There was no overarching political point; occasional narration gave statistics about how many refugees there are in the world, in the Middle East, in Pakistan, but reasons why were never really given, just that these are people seeking a safe life for themselves and their families. The ultimate effect of Winterbottom's tactic made the Afghanis into ordinary people for whom the viewer has ordinary empathy, by which I mean non-exoticized empathy. And the horrible things that inevitably happen to a refugee or a smuggled human being become fresh in the narrative once you have reached this point of empathy, because to each refugee these things don't seem inevitable, there is always the hope that it won't happen to you, or even the assumption that it won't happen to you because you are doing all the right things to keep it from happening. So, surprisingly easy to watch for a movie that is hard to watch, and highly recommended.
(Of course I can't help but mention a scene of men and women dancing, together no less, in the Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan--very lively and beautiful. As you would expect, the dancing reflects Afghanistan's location on the cusp of the Arab and Indian worlds. Original fusion.)
