Finalium Films

Watch it: Waking Tall

I don’t know much about Dwayne Johnson, aka ‘The Rock’. I know he has scary looking muscles, he used to be a wrestler and he is now a celebrity / actor of sorts. Until last week I didn’t much care, either, and I had no intention of seeking his films out. I didn’t rate him as an actor (his new profession of choice after apparently every single other) and I didn’t expect to be seeing him on the screen any More

The Dreamers

One of my favourite films of all times is the Dreamers, a movie by Bernardo Bertolucci that pays humble homage to Bande à part, an equally great film by Jean-Luc Godard. It is centred around a group of cinephiles during the 1960s, in particular the ’68 student riots. Our heroes and heroine (played by the ever lovely and pre-famous Eva Green) are forced to come into very real contact with their ideals, sexual identities, and personal strength at a time of civil unrest. At the very beginning of the movie our main protagonist Matthew speaks about sitting close to the screen.

I was one of the insatiables…

the ones you’d always find

sitting closest to the screen.

Why do we sit so close?

Maybe it was because we wanted

to receive the images first…

when they were still new,

still fresh…

before they cleared the hurdles

of the rows behind us…

before they’d been relayed back

from row to row, spectator to spectator…

until worn-out, secondhand,

the size of a postage stamp…

it returned to the

projectionist’s cabin.

And in my opinion, that’s how films are supposed to make you feel.