A listless, gloomy day. Am I ill? Or just mildly hungover?
I found myself in the company of three thousand unkempt warriors from Luton this afternoon. This is rarely an uplifting experience. We should have beaten them too, but they equalised with 15 minutes left. One of those games that must have been exciting for a neutral, but to be a participant (even a passive participant, as it were) was hellish.
This evening we made it to Lost In Translation at long last. What a very good film this is. It was a message from Nigel Platt on the forum that reminded me that we said we’d see it on the way back from London. And so we called into a desolate, neon palace of a multiplex off the M4 between Bracknell and Reading, and caught the late show.
I’ve just been reading some of the crits on the fabled Internet Movie Database, and have been interested (though not surprised) by the mixed reaction to the film. Some people call it a masterpiece, others call it pretentious twaddle (or they would if they weren’t Americans – but it’s what they mean).
As Nigel notes, some people are under the impression that nothing much happens in the film. "Nothing happens" is the usual bleat of the philistine, who can’t be happy unless there are plenty of tits on display, or a ready supply of plastic limbs flying from one side of the screen to the other. It’s true that Lost In Translation seems to offer a bleak portrait of isolation in a strange environment, but a recurring phenomenon in my life is that what others find depressing, I find moving and uplifting. Maybe I really am an optimist. And I find it easy to see detail where others see blankness. What is static and bleak to some, is often, to me, a fascinating mass of interdependent movement and interdependent lives.
I find this in running too. I can’t honestly say that I’ve never had a boring run, but they are rare. Even my standard, local 3½ miler is full of fascination, regardless of how often I do it.
Which, at the moment, isn’t often enough.
