Date: September 14th, 2010
There are very few things that truly shock me anymore. After being caught off guard at the amazingness of, well, most of the world, this past year; I'm finding it harder and harder to be completely awe-inspired by things. Perhaps is that I've moved onto slightly less glorious pursuits than at the beginning of the year. Or maybe the shine's off the silverware, so to speak. Either way, I found myself truly expecting to be utterly and completely bored on Tuesday evening as I walked to Cosi to meet up with Tim, Christine and Ingrid.
Now, I love Ann Arbor, but there are some, let's call them artistic, folks in the city that aren't really my cup o' noodles. Oh, who am I kidding. Hipsters. The city is overrun by darn hipsters. Get a job!
In any case, while someone who's into that weird pseudo-interesting crap might've been super excited to see the line around the corner outside the Michigan Theater, I found myself stifling an eye-roll and remembering the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Justin made me buy him dinner after that debacle. No, seriously. Like, we wouldn't have stayed friends/dated if I hadn't.
I decided to take my cues from Tim and Ingrid at dinner before making up my mind completely though. They both seemed pretty darn excited about the movie and Ingrid had seen other works by the filmmaker who wrote it. After a quick dinner, we walked over to the line around the corner and took our place solidly at the end of it. Being at the end of the line meant that all the orchestra seating was gone; mostly because people weren't smart enough to understand how much a balcony in a movie theater rocks the world.
With the obligatory movie popcorn in hand and hopes set to realistic, I snagged an aisle seat (just in case) and settled in. The first thing that blew my mind (and yes, there were several) was that the live organist was simply incredible. I'd never seen a movie performed in front of me before. Each and every note was played live, by a real human being, as we watched. The timing and consistency required to pull that off is simply insane. The organist even knocked on the organ to simulate knocking on doors in the movie.
Because of the organist, I truly understood what was happening to the characters in the movie. I didn't expect to without dialogue, but it was so perfectly conveyed that my mind almost remembers speeches that didn't happen and conversations that never took place. Which brings me to the other thing; the ridiculous over-acting. Having heard about it before, I assumed it would be chock full o' laughs to watch people contort their faces in caricatures of true emotion, but it wasn't. Instead, with one or two notable exceptions, I found myself completely enthralled by their looks and gestures.
The last thing was that I found myself deeply impressed by the plot. I teased Tim a little because, well, I'm a career smart ass, but in all honesty, I found the plot to hold together pretty well. It was significantly more creative than anything I've seen recently (other than Inception, which was every kind of amazing) and the ending was delightful. There was an interesting allegorical purpose to the movie, though it was less than subtle about how it ended. I think that was partly a function of the lack of dialogue though.
In truth, I went in expecting to be bored and walked out feeling shocked at what a good time I had. Then again, that's been the way of most of the things that Tim has invited me to this past year. I've agreed to do them because Tim is awesome and they're new. Yet for some reason, I keep getting surprised when I assume I'll be bored and it turns out to be awesome. I'll learn that lesson eventually.
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