You'll probably question me, a bit impatiently, about how I could complain of having so much time on my hands in order to read, be with my beloved friends, being catered by a sweet carer, being able to watch movies and all the tennis championships on TV. Well, the truth is, and you probably already know that, staying home is so good for being a kind of transgressions against all the rush in this world. Coming home, locking the door, silencing the phone, being alone or spending the night with a good story...it is heaven. However, when you're obligated to do so, the scenery is entirely different.
Sorry, I'm not complaining. I'm finding ways to enjoy this kind of house arrest and all the changes in my routine, that has being showing me how I'm not the absolute loner I thought I was. One of the many ways to enjoy this time without putting my feet on the ground is to be real with movies, and in this sense such an addendum is helping me a lot. Take today, for an example: a lazy Sunday morning, a grey sky out there, the Away we Go soundtrack on (Alex Murdock, you're saving my days), seating at the table to write gave a great meaning to my day. So, all is OK, actually.
But...
But there are days I'm not in the mood for thinking. My head is like immersed in formalin. As had happened during my year with Omad, there's days I want to do anything but watch a movie, or think about choosing one. The difference is that, with painkillers, this disposition is more frequent.
So, Friday night found me staring at the many and many lists of Netflix, praying for the gods of the magic shuffle for someone delightful, easy, endearing sweet to take me out of a foul mood. The problem is I over abused the lucky browsing during Omad, and I'd probably had watched most movies like that.
In a Word... seemed to fit the bill, though, and so I'd chose it for this day.
And it was worthy it? Well, I don't know.I think it was. It is with a bit of aloofness that I think about this movie now. It didn't grab my attention immediately. Lake Bell, an actress who we cannot situate in a specific movie is directing here, and she does an OK job. She is also the writer, and her intentions are clear and solid. The deliver is the problem, I think. There's nothing extremely wrong here except a lack of empathy at first.
The characters are good, a kind of caricature, but even with that Bell gives a much appreciated lesson on prejudice - we keep expecting things from those persons based on their external image, and we see how prejudiced we are when they don't correspond to our expectations. This is always an amazing feature on a story, Unfortunately, here, it lacked more strenght. It is cute, but not endearing as expected .
There's an intention of a powerful message on feminism, however I'm not sure about that either. A dialogue between Lake Bell and Geena Davis, in a brief cameo, let me a bit uncomfortable. Because I've being noticing how some essential fights in life, as gender and race equality, are being dealt with a lot of manipulation. I'll enter sensible ground here, and I ask your help in order to clarify this for me. Do you remember the Oscars last year and all the controversy about the predominance of white nominees? This speaks directly about the lack of opportunities - with there's no roles for minorities, how they can compete fairly? So, this year it was very different, a lot of nominees and winners were not white - all of them deserving and wonderful. But, for me, it is not an evolution or a change of thinking, despite its unquestionable importance - because in a way or other things must change.
The Geena Davis dialogue gave me a bad taste, though, when she says that the reason why a woman was chosen to do a voice over on a movie trailer was not because she was the best candidate, but because there's a need for strong female voices in the world. I'm not sure if it was proposital, and I don't know if it is just me, but this double standard worries me. On one hand, it is indisputably the truth, but on the other... Well, I hope real equal times are ahead of us, even if the start is very bumpy.
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| In a World.. Directed and written by Lake Bell. Cast: Lake Bell, Tig Notaro, Michaela Watkins. USA, 2013, Dolby, Color, 95 min. |
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