The Weekend of Depressing Movies Musing

It must have been a weekend to crush hopes of happy endings ...

On Saturday night, I watched "The Departed" with ____.

"I have a feeling this isn't going to have a happy ending," I said as yet another person was bludgeoned and/or shot to death by Jack Nicholson's mobster character.

"I think everyone's going to live," ____ countered.

Sadly, I won that argument.

Then on Sunday night, I went to see "Pan's Labrynth" with Amber and her folks and Jolynne, and some church friends were there, too. I had no idea what "Pan's Labrynth" was about (or even that it was a Spanish film, which meant I spent the two terrifying hours reading what was going on), but it sounded a bit fantastical, and given the previous night's bloodshed on the mob-filled streets of Boston, I could use a little bit of fantasy escapism.

Oh, traumatized is me ...

Jolynne said that in the one review she read about the movie, the critic advised that if people took their children to see "Pan's Labrynth," they should also plan on investing in psychotherapy for their child, because they're going to need it. I almost needed it myself at the end.

The odd thing about films with subtitles, though, is that in remembering the movie, you remember the characters speaking in English (or whatever your native language is), rather that in the language the movie was filmed in. I remember lines from "Amelie" as though I had seen the movie in English; same thing with "Life is Beautiful."

I needed to watch something happy and pretty and with a known, happy ending. So I went home and indulged in "Pride and Prejudice," admiring Matthew McFadyen in all his brooding beauty ... without subtitles. Without wine-bottle bludgeonings. Without strange, sexless, white creatures whose eyeballs are in their hands. Without fear that the militia were really part of the mob. Without wondering if any of the Bennett family were going to meet a painful and untimely demise. Some people laugh at those of us who watch movies over and over, claiming it's a sign of insanity (doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result at the end); I see it as trusting the familiar. I'm not insane; I just like to have some idea of how things are going to end, and, usually, that it's going to be a happy ending.