Tuesday, December 25, 2012
How can life be so cruel even on the silver screen,
THE SUM OF US – 1994
A comedy, one
more, in this life that is so little comic indeed. We start with the promise of a revolution
coming through and we end with a request or piece of advice that you better be
home soon, and in between, love, romance, tragedy and a lot of empathy and
misery with a little bit of happiness sprinkled on top, at times angry
happiness because of the silly decision you took and it broke the potential
happy development you were hoping for and looking forward to getting on a
silver platter. You just got Saint John the Baptist’s head.
We are dealing
here with grown up men and women all in strange situations. A young gay man
living with his parents and the father behaves as if he did not know and he
turns ugly when it becomes news stuff on TV. Another gay man living with his
widower of a father who is not gay but accepts his son the way he is though he
is invasive, maybe an intrusive voyeur, and in a way blocks his son’s way to
happiness.
That same man
gets in touch with a lady through some meeting club and the two fall for one
another but the night when things were going to go through, New Year’s Eve, at
his place, the son being out for his own fun, she comes across some gay
magazines and cannot accept the fact that she had not been told before, and if
she had it would not have changed anything because she just does not want to go
across this line.
Just minutes
after she drove off, when the fireworks start celebrating the New Year, he has
a savage and wild heart attack or stroke and he will remain paralyzed on one
side and without the capability to speak any more. In other words she broke his
heart and that is not a metaphor, she literally did break his heart, boom.
That is sad,
very sad, but it is a comedy, so there must be a happy ending and life will
take care of some haphazard meeting of the two young men and then life will be
on tracks again. But gosh it is not easy to build your own happiness when you
are not a photocopy of the standard middle of the way unoriginal model imposed
by ethical and moral norms in our society, even when things have changed
legally. Between the law and reality there is more than a simple Strait of
Malacca: there are thousands of hostile pirates with weapons everywhere up over
their heads ready to raid your life to prevent you from being happy.
Enjoy the
details.
Dr Jacques
COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:53 PM 
