Am???lie

Today, in honor of Laura‘s new haircut, we went to see Am???lie. My recommendation: ignore its French-ness. Ignore its subtitles. Go see this movie. It’s worth your while. Am???lie is the rarest form of film: funny without being stupid, smart without being pretentious, visually deep without requiring a Beowulf cluster.

True, there’s no girl out there who’s quite as ingenuous as Am???lie, but the movie does a good job at playing on my need to believe that there’s someone like her in the world. Sometimes, like at 3:45 on a Sunday morning, it’s important to have such beliefs.

I don’t understand how some people can go through their lives holding onto their bitterness, obsessing over it, polishing it so it shines like a river-worn stone. A friend of mine once said that what frightened her the most about <a href=http://us.imdb.com/Title?0185937">The Blair Witch Project was not the Witch herself, but what the Witch did in the woods when there was nobody around to torment. My thoughts are that the Witch obsessed. The Witch seethed with hatred and rage, could live with nothing else, and slowly became fond of its obsession, polishing it, honing it, taking it out each day to fondle as one would fondle a most treasured possession. There is a power in possession, twinned with the power of obsession. I wonder what happened first, did Obsession beget Possession, did Obsession beget Witch, or did Witch beget the other two? I wonder what it would be like to be such a tormented soul, so filled with rage that each day was marred by the constant need to caress the old wounds, to fondle the old hurts, to kiss the events said and done years’ past like a familiar lover.

So tell me, if you had a choice, who would you be? Am???lie, or the Witch? And if you were one, could you become the other?