Friday night's movie re-funked me deeper but also apparently defunked the muse.
Some.
Or just gave her the good funk we both needed.
*
She gave up the funk: I saw -leaving las vegas- and was moved nearly to tears; not especially for the booze and gloom, but for the desperate love and, well, romantic doom. That they were doomed by their vices is not remarkable or noble; that they were doomed by their love is gorgeous. I wish I were in love like that, really; the pain the whole nine yards of soul, it all came through hard:
In song: Sting's take on the standard pop repertoire. I'm sure they could have gotten a better pop singer for less money - dammit, I've always wanted would love to hear Tom Waits sings these songs; he'd have a perfect world weary tone, and his presence would hark back to another notable Las Vegas romance, -one from the heart-. But the Stingster held back on his usual angst-in-the-pants delivery and made a passable crooner, enough so that every time "My one and only love" came on, I felt the yearning inside.
In gesture and word: Nicholas Cage and Elisabeth Shue broke my heart. Their glance, their gait, stubborn yet in obvious pain. The poetry that would stumble from the mouth taking your loved one by surprise. A soul kiss. Touching without coming. Another drink. I cannot look you in the eye.
In image: The visual rhythm. I kept wondering to myself how did (director) Mike Figgis manage to crosscut so right and see all that going on: from the supermarket to the vegas skyline to the neon avenues and decay -- distant, parallell, but rhyming worlds.
Looking like a piano solo built with spare left hand commentary to enrich right hand exposition. The left hand of the heart beat of two lovers in and out of tragic sync, the right hand the world and the shit that happens to them (or that they make happen to themselves) again and again; a world that has the final word as a slow chord sounds out on the lens and fades over the memory of their long gone stride.
Pat