Rainy Days And Mondays

Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On!

I cried a river over Truly Madly Deeply.

Actually that's a lie. It did not engage me one iota. It was an English middle class Ghost without the raw sexual magnetism of Patrick Swayze, the most beautiful man who has ever lived, the epitome of raw, animal, male manliness. Alan Rickman? Give me a break! I'd like to see Alan flaming Rickman lift a woman over the threshold and get a good old manly sweat going on top of her, muscles bulging like fuck.

But didn't I cry over Juliet Stevenson's grief? No I bloody didn't. It was hardly Breaking the fucking Waves, was it? Not that that made me feel anything, either.

Hard bastard, aren't I?

So we come to Distant Voices, Still Lives which I hadn't seen since it was originally out.

"Classic film," I said to Betty before watching it. "A real tear-jerking working class story. Made all the more poignant because the writer and director, Terence Davies, died tragically young."

"What did he die of?" said a morbid Betty.

"Cancer, I think. He was famous for his trilogy, you know. Known as the Terence Davies Trilogy. It's recently been released on DVD."

So we watched the film.

What I'd found unbearably beautiful twenty years ago I now found unbearably mawkish. Had I changed that much? What had happened to that sensitive young man?

Still, poor Terence Davies. When did he die? Was it the big C? Let's look him up, shall we?

Nope. He's not dead. That's Bill Douglas. Of Bill Douglas Trilogy fame. Now he was a great film maker.

******

Later, we watch a documentary on The Carpenters. And the tears come.

I'm sensitive once more.