Reading between the lines

Jenny absolutely loves movies. Me, I don’t care much for them, reason being that the plots inevitably hang one or more of the characters doing something stupid. We borrowed a couple DVDs recently – The Descent, which featured a group of girls being as irritating as possible and making irrational decisions at every turn so that their friendship dissolves into bitter enmity; and The Reader in which a character allows herself to be incarcerated for life because she’s too ashamed to reveal that she’s illiterate.

Kate Winslet in The ReaderWhile The Descent did nothing to improve the thriller/horror genre’s standing in my books, I did find myself being somewhat affected by The Reader (and not because Kate Winslet is naked in half of her on-screen appearances). There’s a lot of tension as Michael Berg (played by David Kross) grapples with his conscience as to whether he should keep silent and see his unrequited love go to jail, or speak up against her wishes and shame her in front of the court (and presumably, country). While Jenny was weeping by the end of the movie, the whole time I was going “is it really worth being sentenced to prison for life, just to hide the fact that you can’t read and write?” while secretly choking back a tear.

This probably reveals just how much of a geek I am, which is to say completely out of touch with my emotions (feelings that can’t be expressed with an emoticon don’t exist :-P) – but maybe like the cliché about the speck of grit being the source of great beauty, flaws are necessary for the telling of great stories, and it’s only by allowing yourself to ignore these flaws that one can connect emotionally. I blame my inability to appreciate this on being exposed to too much awesome.

So where does that leave The Descent? The oyster must’ve gotten a mouthful of dirt, choked and died.