Tuscan Sun

I do not know why I like Under The Tuscan Sun. It isn't by any means extraordinary, but I feel compelled to watch it when it comes on the tele. It is even a lifetime movie for gosh sake. I can't stand Sandra Oh, it is a bit of a characterature, the acting isn't great, direction either.

Regardless of these less attractive facts, I still enjoy it. The idea of fate is nice, in some ways. Derrida always talked around this point, that we are fated...but we never know it because we never make our own decisions. Good point to some extent, difficult to, eh prove. But to the movie, the idea that one can just escape it all, that if you bury yourself, you might end up covered by the lady bugs for which you were previous looking. That is attractive, at least to me. I also liked the colours, the Felini references and the architecture/ landscape.

The message is still most striking. Life is tough we can get too drawn into it to the point we forget what we want or even worse we think we know exactly what we want. Take Vicky Cristina Barcelona as an example. Life has the ability to be finicky and at the same time beckons for a plan. How to mediate between the two? Can there be a medium, is there one? Assuming that a question presupposes its answer, then there is an answer, but I do not have it. Maybe it is hiding in plain sight.

I made the comment that the french have a unique way of taking a step back and seeing things for what they are. You see it in philosophy, poetry, literature. This is not to say it is completely a gift of the french, but rather they exemplify it. When I made the comment, a rather overweighted clemson trademark clad lad said "that what makes them so weird and backward." I not knowing what he exactly meant by the comment, prod further..."oh so you read rimbaud andBaudelaire, you find them odd...how about voltaire's wit...second to whom ayn rand? How about Maupassant and Moliere?" The response returned was "voltaire was weird." Sometimes responses are not even deserved.

But the essense of that little paragraph was to say that it isn't easy and far from common to step back, take a breath and view. Sometimes people get too worried about living---that they don't.