Pages

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Williamsburg (3/8/2013)

Went to Williamsburg yesterday to see a movie (The Great Beauty) at the Kimball Theater on Saturday (more about the movie later).  I purposely went an hour early to walk through Colonial Williamsburg to look around and take some pictures.  Naturally I can show pictures of old building, gardens, and the church; but Colonial Williamsburg is so full of small details that make is special.  Take this lock for instance.  Nothing special, but it just feels right.  I fell in love with this picture.  The simplicity, texture and color seem right to me.  I really think litle treasures abound in this town and you can enjoy the little stuff.

The Kimball is a great place, been there to see opera and to see more alternative (foreign/language) movies.  A nice place to go and have a little culture in the area.

Now about the movie: The Great Beauty is an Italian film that the newspaper compared to the modern La Dolce Vita.  I am a tremendous fan of that (6-hour long) epic movie, so yes I was looking forward to it.  I was definitively not disappointed, and now the day after I saw it I am still impressed.  To me it is a movie of loneliness.  It is about a famous author/reporter in Rome who turns 65 years old.  He lives the high life, has a lot of friends, debaucherous parties, etc but is surrounded by loneliness, people dying, empty people, lost love, you name it.  He seems envious of ordinary people and does not even realize his neighbor is a wanted criminal (just a insignificant sub-plot, but indicative of the movie).  I enjoyed it tremendously, but often wondered why the rest of the audience was laughing about very sad situations that try to tell a story.  Maybe their way of coping with it.



No comments:

Post a Comment