Check out the long, excellent essay "Alone at the movies; My days in the dark with Robert Altman and Woody Allen" by Mark Edmundson at The American Scholar (thanks GreenCine Daily for the link). Here is a paragraph from it:
"Might not this be a little like my own condition, or at least a condition I could aspire to? I could, maybe, give up questing for big and exciting things (Those connections! Those parties! That job!) and stop resenting the people who enjoyed them. I could amble and loaf and look around and perhaps store up a few impressions. I was low on cash most of the time, sure, but I had enough to get by. What I had in excess was what Altman and his camera seemed to have, time—time and a marvelous place to spend it, Manhattan, the greatest paradise for walkers and loiterers and trippers and ramblers ever created. Looking around—affectionately, forgivingly, gently—turned out not to be a half bad way of expanding the day. In this particular ambling mood, you don’t ask anything from the world because the world, in its sheer there-ness, is enough, or almost."
Read the rest here. Not just Allen & Altman fans who were adults in the 70's, but fans of certain indie films & makers (Jarmusch, Hartley, etc.) from more recent decades (80's, 90's) might also be able to relate well to Edmundson's perspective.
- Sujewa
"Might not this be a little like my own condition, or at least a condition I could aspire to? I could, maybe, give up questing for big and exciting things (Those connections! Those parties! That job!) and stop resenting the people who enjoyed them. I could amble and loaf and look around and perhaps store up a few impressions. I was low on cash most of the time, sure, but I had enough to get by. What I had in excess was what Altman and his camera seemed to have, time—time and a marvelous place to spend it, Manhattan, the greatest paradise for walkers and loiterers and trippers and ramblers ever created. Looking around—affectionately, forgivingly, gently—turned out not to be a half bad way of expanding the day. In this particular ambling mood, you don’t ask anything from the world because the world, in its sheer there-ness, is enough, or almost."
Read the rest here. Not just Allen & Altman fans who were adults in the 70's, but fans of certain indie films & makers (Jarmusch, Hartley, etc.) from more recent decades (80's, 90's) might also be able to relate well to Edmundson's perspective.
- Sujewa
