Sunday, February 01, 2004

Dream last night was about a cunning system of mirrors arranged around people's bathrooms to allow their private activities to be viewed in secret. I discovered one in my bathroom and felt strangely sure that no one had used it and any who might have noticed it had thought nothing of it.

The past several weeks, I've mainly been doing all my movie-watching in the evening. So it's only fitting that the first movie that I should watch at an unusually early time should be a movie called The Remains of the Day.

I'd seen this movie before a very long time ago. I didn't really remember it very well so it was an essentially new experience. I'd read the book by Kazuo Ishiguro upon which the movie's based . . . not very long ago. I have to say that in several ways, the book was better. The book's told in first person and the movie, rather than have Mr. Stevens narrate, chose to try and incorporate all the information within the action or dialogue. Occasionally there was a voice-over of someone's letter to another person, acting as a kind of narrative. Mostly, the attempts at reforming the narrative felt pretty artificial. And I know some, like perhaps Caitlin R. Kiernan, who would say that first person narrative is distractingly artificial enough. Me, I think I'd rather have the single big artifice--which worked well in The Age of Innocence--than a bunch of little ones. I'd find it less jarring.

Of course, the excellent performances by Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson made the movie well worth watching. The music was good, too.

And what else have I done to-day? I walked a bit and bought a sandwich.

No comments:

Post a Comment