A weekend in SF and BRIEF ENCOUNTER (76)

This is what a weekend in SF looks like I think most times:

1. Friday: I work for the record label in the morning. I dilly-dally about on the interwebs developing kinks in my slouchy back and continuing steadily older contacts with people I've never seen in cities I may never visit. In the afternoon I help Alex take her liege, a precocious young lady named Firefly, to a cooking class at an Urban Playground. Children eat colored pudding and I realize that any child within ten feet of me almost instantly makes me tired. For our efforts in corralling young Firefly we're awarded a car for the evening. We drive to the East Bay (a foreign and exotic place full of steel structures and magical beings) for what Alex refers to as an "East Bay Adventure". We eat gigantic slices of Zachary's pizza and drink Indian lager in a hybrid Honda. We pay ten dollars for all you can play pinball at a hole-in-the-wall joint with over a hundred machines and a "pinball museum". I fall asleep tipsy and outstandingly happy.

2. I work, early. Tourists are beasts, evil, non-tipping beasts that wear dowdy sweatshirts and demand things in tones that make my skin crawl. I fight the urge to throw hot beverages in their faces, on their North Face parkas, in their poorly did hair. Alex suggests we make a "mint-themed" dinner. In the world of cooking titles, we are sous chefs, choppers at best, and our executive chef menu design skills are lacking. We plan a meal rife with veggies and mint and rice and invite over a crowd. Dinner starts cooking at 9:30. At 11:30 we finally eat a meal of crunchy rice-filled peppers, mushrooms and rancid cucumber sauce. Somebody retches at one point.

3. I work, early. Tourists are beasts, and my tip jar, regardless of the volume of customers stays near-empty through out the day. I put on a fake smile and fight the desire to leap across the counter and strangle a wrinkly-faced geriatric. Alex, the roommates and I attend a "Hunky Jesus Contest" in celebration of Jesus Day. It is like a rock concert, a huge gay rock concert, and I am surrounded by half naked Jesusii and strapping men in platform shows and nun make-up. Everyone is drinking, everyone is smoking, everybody must get high. It is unlike any Easter I've ever celebrated. There are no dyed eggs, no chocolate bunnies, just a general celebration of this crazy life we've all been given. It is refreshing.

That was my weekend, and I believe every weekend from this point forward will be a variation on this. This town is amazing, crazy, ridiculous, overwhelming, and I am almost bursting just from being here.

Brief Encounter (76) is at times compared to the sultry foreignness of Casablanca and I think in the sheer brilliance of the film, it deserves that comparison. That and the fact that both films are about ill-fated romances. Aside from that I think I'd compare this film more so to the noirs (I know I said this yesterday, I'm trying to fucking make a point here) of the early 40s. There's a saying that describes film noir, "Anybody can do anything if put in the right situation" and this ably describes the collapsing world of Laura Jesson. She falls in love with a suave doctor in a far off town that she spends hers days in, and when there's even a hint of trouble, Mrs. Jesson, a mother of two, a loving wife, a dutiful housekeeper, turns quite rapidly in to a deceiver of the highest regards. All of sudden she's creating situations, lying to her family and friends, drawing others unwittingly in to her web of deceit. She's forced in to a situation she doesn't want to abandon, and she'll do anything to keep it. If pushed further, I believe Laura Jesson would kill or maim or kidnap, like any good femme fatale, to make this love work.

The films noir underminings continue through out, including the depressing, almost suffocating nature of the ending of the film. Laura Jesson loses her man. He disappears to South Africa and as the camera twists and turns in classic noir dutch angles, Laura Jesson's only respite is suicide. A path she doesn't take. And as she sits in her home with her chattering husband, staring in to the fire, the crushing realization that she's experience truly what life is and that she'll remain on it's exterior forever is heart-breaking. Brief Encounter (76) is the best sort of movie, a film that touches on genres - romance and noir - but doesn't feel trapped within there bindings. Instead it uses them to bolster its story of love and loss and the desperation of living a life you weren't cut out for. Absolutely a must see.

Here's an awesome essay about the film as well, that you should certainly read.

Thursday: And God Created Woman (77)

Moving pangs and BRIEF ENCOUNTER (76)

My move to SF has been almost entirely seamless. I found a way to get down here that did minimal damage to my bank account, I scored a job in the weeks before I got here, I have a place to live and a wonderful girlfriend that has been a huge part of the move feeling so easy - I consider myself quite lucky.

But, no matter how perfect everything goes (and it has) there are, I assume, always wee bits of moving pangs that come along with this sort of large-scaled transition. I worked all morning from home, stuffing envelopes, contacting blogs, semi-boring stuff that involved a lot of me staring at a computer and wishing I was outside doing something warm and exhausting. I'm done now though with all the hum-drum aspects of my morning and I'm excited to be out doing something, but all of sudden I've realized that, I don't really have that many people in SF to do anything with.

I know, I mean I've only been here for two weeks, but the sudden come-to that to a certain degree I'm a bit limited in my social interactions was a bit of a shock. All of sudden, I'm keen to get out in the sun and you know, be hanging out, and I'm struggling to find someone to do so with. It's okay though, this will get better, and I'm lucky enough to have Alex and my awesome roommates and Good Man Freytag to hang out with. This is just a momentary pang, it'll fade.

What I love most about Brief Encounter (76) is how it's a romance film enclosed in the wrappings of noir. It's dark and steamy and cross-cut with these crazy silhouettes. It creates this sort of sinister mood that helps mirror the internal battle the lead character, Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) faces in her slowly brewing romance with Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard). Also, the film is told in classic C-A-B format, with the final scene being shown first, and then the story unravelling along with Celia's taut narrative. It's classic noir stylings, and it helps the film move along, ably transcending the romance genre.

Also interesting in the film is the way that as soon as Celia meets Alec, she starts seeing the world entirely different. She's no longer just a happy wife and mother, she's fallen for this man and in the process her world view changes. She can't help but see her guilt and her passion reflected in the films she watches and the relationships around her. Her love for Alec is too much, it consumes her in a way, and it's awesome the way David Lean portrays it.

I'm halfway through the film, just at the moment where Alec and Celia confess their forbidden love or the first time, and I'm completely engrossed. I implore you guys, if you like old films at all, please check out Brief Encounter (76) it is well worth the hour and twenty-two minutes.

Tuesday: Brief Encounter (76)

Learning to ride a bike and an intro to BRIEF ENCOUNTER (76)

When I was little I used to be kind of a terror on a bike. I had this tiny little red-and-white checkered Peugeot that I would just bomb all over my neighborhood with. There was a particular fence and a particular bank of mailboxes that I must've crashed in to hundreds of times. For whatever reason though as I got older I stopped riding bikes, or wheeled things in general. It wasn't because I was infatuated with driving (hell I didn't get a license until three days before my college graduation"), it wasn't because I was scared of the things (that came later), it wasn't because of, hell, I don't know, bikes and I just parted ways.

Now I live in San Francisco this city swarmed with bikes and bike culture and I'm getting a bike. Ask Good Man Freytag, he'll tell you, I was impressively imposed to the whole bike thing for years and years and years. Aggressively opposed even, but something about this city and Alex's love for bike riding and the fact that waiting for the bus at 4:30 in the morning sucks like testicle punching I'm buying one. I'm going to move past my fears and my qualms and I'm going to buy a fucking bike and I'm going to ride that two-wheeled monster like it's my job. It gets my heart beating a little fast even thinking about riding with or alongside traffic, but if I didn't do all the things that made my heart beat fast, I'd be a sad little man.

I saw Brief Encounter (76) a long time ago in a depressed state when I lived by myself in Portland, OR in a tiny, empty apartment, jobless and without many friends and for some reason, even though it's sort of a British version of Revolutionary Road it cheered me up. It made me love movies and Criterion and David Lean and the inky blacks of a romance steeped in film noir traditions. It took my mind off the fact that I was consuming canned soup for every meal and that Top Ramen had started to taste like rubber.

I've yet to crack it yet for this go around, but I thought I'd give you at least a little back-up history on the film. This is a David Lean movie, he of Lawrence of Arabia and a slew of relatively big-budget Charles Dickens adaptations that I thoroughly enjoyed in the early days of my quest. He also did Bridge on the River Kwai and a whole sit ton of other interesting flicks and this little gem was the last in a series of films he put together with the famed playwright Noel Coward. This is a famous film, the type of movie that people compare to a British Casablanca and is still sighted by many as one of the great films of the day. It's also a downer of a flick, but beautifully shot, and beautifully acted, and there are still scenes in the misty shadows of the train station that pop up in my dreams.

The story follows an adulterous romance that forms in the brief encounters had at a restover stop at a train station. I won't ruin anything, but I'll say this, it doesn't end well.

If you're looking for a film to join up on the Quest, which I'm sure absolutely none of you are, this is a good one.

Monday: Brief Encounter (76)