1227

 Tuesday, December 27, 2022

In bed around 9, up at 4, no toddy.  Woke up thinking of Steve's stopping smoking, Kitty's COPD, Pall Malls, thinking life's a blessing while able to function, to think even if not as clearly and quickly as once was the case, to experience delight at the beauty of trees and leaves and birds and music and so much despite infirmities, decrepitudes, diminishments, awareness of failings.  7 degrees outside warming up to 24, and winds at 8 mph out of the SW, leading to the much warmer weather we'll get this week.  Sunrise at 7:22, sunset at 4:23, a minute more of daylight.

Our friend, Jonathan Lawson for Colonial Penn & $9.95. Why is this guy permitted to hawk his products to elderly consumers on television?  He is selling not term insurance, but 'whole life' insurance with no medical exam required and guaranteed acceptance, rates 'starting' at $9.95 a month up to age 85.  No mention of any face value of any policy.  To quote Norm Crosby, this has 'an aura of reek' about it.  There's a 2-year 'limited benefits' feature, i.e., if the insured dies within 2 years of the policy's purchase, the 'benefits' consist only of a return of premiums paid, or some portion thereof.  Why would any sane 70 or 80-year-old want to purchase any whole-life policy, especially one with a premium of $9.95 cents a month?  They must be attracting customers or they wouldn't be advertising the product on tv as much as they do.  It stinks.  It reminds me of despicable Tom Selleck hawking reverse mortgages to elderly buyers.  "I trust them.  You can too."  Reprehensible.

The English Patient (1996).  I rewatched it last night and this morning though I'm not sure why.  Is it the story?  the fact that Juliette Binoche is in it?  the exquisite soundtrack by Gabriel Jared?  Roger Ebert wrote of the film: "It is the kind of movie you can see twice--first for the questions, the second time for the answers."  I've decided it's not the storyline that I liked, but my long-term crush on Juliette Binoche and long enjoyment of Jared/Yared's score.  I fully suspect that, in terms of the plot, the novel by Michael Ondaatje was more believable than the film.  Katherine Clifton falls in love with the cold Count Almasy and has a torrid affair with him in her first year of marriage.  Her husband Geoffrey is so devastated by her infidelity he tries to kill them both in a suicidal biplane crash.  Katherine actually loves both Geoffrey and Almasy or is it just friendship with the husband and lust with Almasy?  The brief love affair between the Sikh demolition expert Kip and nurse Hana, thrown together in the murderous circumstances of war, is easy to understand.  Not so with the relationship between Katherine and Almasy.  On the other hand, I couldn't understand the attraction between Dr. Zhivago and Lara the first time I saw that film.  I'm definitely not too swift in understanding complicated (or not-so-complicated) human relationships and I am probably simply too obtuse to find the Katherine-Almasy relationship believable.  I do have some comprehension of obsessive-compulsive, lust-driven or other-driven, and destructive love affairs (Madame Bovary, The Red and the Black, Anna Karenina) and I suppose that's what the story is really about, but for some reason on second viewing, the story struck me as kind of hokey, maudlin and mawkish, a melodrama and a disappointment.  I think I am doing a huge disservice to Ondaatje's widely praised novel, and probably also to Anthony Minghella's widely praised film.  The side barely-stated issues in the story are provocative.  Hana's engaging in euthanasia, Geoffrey's murder-suicide attempt, interracial love between Hana and Kip, a barely visible taunt of British imperialism/colonialism in Kip's description of the Brit's taking the Sikhs' cups and spoons to make cannons to shoot at the Sikhs, and issues subtly raised by Almasy asking Hana "Why are you keeping me alive?" and she answers "Because I am a nurse."

Kieslowski, Dekalog 2 contains a feature similar to The English Patient, a wife who purports to have a very good marriage, one in which she loves her husband, but is carrying a child fathered by another man.  She tells the husband's doctor that she loves 2 men at once, her husband and the father of the fetus within her.  If her husband will live, she will terminate the pregnancy.  If he will die, she will carry the child to term.  She begs the doctor to tell her whether the husband will survive or not.  He tells her that medical science says there is a 15% chance of survival, but the doctor has seen many cases with little chance of survival survive.  The husband has been infertile and this is her only chance for mothering a child.  She asks the doctor if he believes in God.  He responds "I have a God; there's only enough of him for me" and she says "A private God.  Then ask him for absolution."  She sees another doctor and schedules an abortion and tells her lover who says their relationship will end if she aborts and her husband lives.  Then she tells the doctor who tells her not to do it, that her husband is dying.  In fact, the husband is improving and survives, coming to tell the doctor joyfully that 'we're going to have a baby.'

Many commandments are implicated.  First, with the doctor playing God.  5th, thou shalt not kill.  6th, thou shalt not commit adultery.  8th, bearing false witness.  7th, stealing.  Didn't doctor steal woman's autonomy, agency?  Powerful scene of a wasp struggling to avoid drowning in a glass of tea.  The mysterious stranger reappears in this film, in a white lab coat instead of outdoors in front of a campfire.