Metaphor, Schmedaphor

It’s been two weeks and I know you’ve all been eager for a shower update. All’s well. Shortly after my last post, we received a helpful message from our friend Rick who explained that on-demand systems depend on just the right amount of flow. Simply by adjusting the flow to the shower head, not asking the water heater to heat too much water at a time, we’ve managed to have quite nice showers.

Now, in all fairness, I have to add that Jack insists he’d already told me this and I’d dismissed it. Maybe so. We all know about the prophet in his own country.

Last night, we went to the movies. There’s a cinema club here and a few times during the winter there are films every night for a week or two. Mostly, they’re “foreign” films—ie, neither English nor Spanish. When they are English we (I at least) am thrilled. When they’re Spanish, we both stay home since even Jack’s Spanish isn’t up to that. With all other languages, we read subtitles with varying success. I find French the most difficult because I understand a little French, so my brain is trying to read Spanish and understand French at the same time, not succeeding very well at either.

Last night’s was our first film of the year: Jean-Luc Godard’s Adieu au Langage. Now, we are not cinefiles. Not by a long shot. We rarely go to movies except when we’re here, and we never seem to get around to downloading movies to watch at home. We have just acquired netflix, so maybe that will change. Somehow, I doubt it.

When other people get chatting about who was great in such-and-such a film, my eyes glaze over and, if possible, I wander into another room. I rarely recognize the names of actors or directors.

It should be no surprise, then, that when this particular film came to an end, I sat stupefied and wondering if I’d lost all my mental faculties. Or if, had I been able to read all the Spanish subtitles fast enough, I might have felt somehow enlightened or enriched. Instead, I felt a rush of relief when Jack—who could read all the subtitles—turned to me and said, “What did we just watch?” At least we are mentally deficient together.

“I think it was a metaphor,” I said.

We tried to talk about it over supper and on our walk home. But we didn’t know what to say. We ended up discussing Downton Abby instead.

When we got home, we googled, hoping to have an aha moment. “Of course! Now I see! How could I have missed it?”

Here’s what we found: a synopsis in Godard’s own words from the film’s Cannes press book:

the idea is simple
a married woman and a single man meet
they love, they argue, fists fly
a dog strays between town and country
the seasons pass
the man and woman meet again
the dog finds itself between them
the other is in one
the one is in the other
and they are three
the former husband shatters everything
a second film begins
the same as the first
and yet not
from the human race we pass to metaphor
this ends in barking
and a baby’s cries

Of course. I knew that.

The film was meant to be viewed with 3-D glasses, which weren’t available. It was obvious that some of the cinematography would have been spectacular in 3-D, perhaps partially compensating for my lack of metaphoric sophistication.

Next up: Blue Run (in English!) and Leviathan (in Russian with Spanish subtitles, of course…).