Zen and the [Heart] of Good Movies
I fell off my bike on my way to see "I [Heart] Huckabees" this weekend. I was on Clinton Street in Manhattan, sliding I thought slyly onto a low curb to avoid traffic. I and my bike fell to the side and my chain came off, in front of many, cars and people. I was embarrassed.
I picked my bicycle up and walked it to a nearby fence; I fingered the chain, fighting it back into place, oiling my fingers and hands fully. I had on a white sweater and new jeans and I was late for the movie and worried about marring myself and everything on me with grease.
But then I stopped, with an epiphany. Who cares if I get grease on the sweater; it's just a sweater. Hole in the jeans? Who. Who gives. My hands are all greasy which will get on my handlebars when I get back on the bike which will then get on everything I touch including my face and bag. So. It's just grease. Grease on the money I give through the ticket counter loomed ominous but then settled into a comfortable ... meaningless.
Grease me sweater bike concrete fence jeans face ... it's all the same. Let it all run together. These thoughts all before the movie.
I smiled then, when, in the theater, the first lesson in Really Understanding Reality for Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) -- a passionate but troubled young'un searching to understand a recent trio of coincidences in his life that he believes to be portentous -- is about The Blanket. The Zenish Blanket of Reality in which all things, Albert and The Eiffel Tower cited, are of the same material, running together and knocking off each other all atoms all the same. This is Albert's first lesson from the perfectly disheveled Reality Tutor Cum Detective Bernard (Dustin Hoffman), and I couldn't help thinking of my bike and my grease and that maybe my accident and my subsequent thoughts were a *coincidence,* in conjunction with my attending the movie.
But beyond my bike, beyond coincidences, beyond reality. The movie is surreal and absurd and a bit funny, as Albert sidles through his quest to Really Understand and encounters sparring tutors, other students (including a riveting and hilarious anti-petroleum-possessed Tommy Corn [Mark Wahlberg], bedecked always in his fireman boots), his parents, the subject of his Coincidences (a mysterious tall Sudanese refugee), and his co-workers at the Open Spaces Coalition he heads to stop suburban sprawl. On his bike throughout (Hoh! Another *coincidence*?), Albert is always rather unaware and dizzy, which I guess, after all, is kind of the point of reality. Or of trying to understand reality.
Ultimately, though, the movie doesn't really leave you very enlightened. I saw it more as a vehicle for the director, David O. Russell, to express some disjointed existential thoughts he has that he just thinks are kind of cool. None of them really came together to make sense -- no thematic blanket, if you will.
Although maybe that's the point. Reality and life are partitioned and bizarre and can be blocked apart and melded back and you're best knowing about them at a level above knowing. Not really understanding, or trying to.
I thought one of the funniest lines in the movie is in the very beginning, when Bernard begins rattling off deep Zen ideas to instruct Albert and Albert impatiently shakes his head and says, "Sure sure sure sure sure sure sure, I get it." That's kind of how I felt after the movie. That I just wanted to gloss over really understanding it, thinking instead about how awesome it was that anti-fuel Tommy Corn rode his bike in fireman boots. Thinking about how I wanted to ride my bike in fireman boots. Although, I'd probably fall off again. But who cares.
Read Some Other Existential Reviews
I picked my bicycle up and walked it to a nearby fence; I fingered the chain, fighting it back into place, oiling my fingers and hands fully. I had on a white sweater and new jeans and I was late for the movie and worried about marring myself and everything on me with grease.
But then I stopped, with an epiphany. Who cares if I get grease on the sweater; it's just a sweater. Hole in the jeans? Who. Who gives. My hands are all greasy which will get on my handlebars when I get back on the bike which will then get on everything I touch including my face and bag. So. It's just grease. Grease on the money I give through the ticket counter loomed ominous but then settled into a comfortable ... meaningless.
Grease me sweater bike concrete fence jeans face ... it's all the same. Let it all run together. These thoughts all before the movie.
I smiled then, when, in the theater, the first lesson in Really Understanding Reality for Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) -- a passionate but troubled young'un searching to understand a recent trio of coincidences in his life that he believes to be portentous -- is about The Blanket. The Zenish Blanket of Reality in which all things, Albert and The Eiffel Tower cited, are of the same material, running together and knocking off each other all atoms all the same. This is Albert's first lesson from the perfectly disheveled Reality Tutor Cum Detective Bernard (Dustin Hoffman), and I couldn't help thinking of my bike and my grease and that maybe my accident and my subsequent thoughts were a *coincidence,* in conjunction with my attending the movie.
But beyond my bike, beyond coincidences, beyond reality. The movie is surreal and absurd and a bit funny, as Albert sidles through his quest to Really Understand and encounters sparring tutors, other students (including a riveting and hilarious anti-petroleum-possessed Tommy Corn [Mark Wahlberg], bedecked always in his fireman boots), his parents, the subject of his Coincidences (a mysterious tall Sudanese refugee), and his co-workers at the Open Spaces Coalition he heads to stop suburban sprawl. On his bike throughout (Hoh! Another *coincidence*?), Albert is always rather unaware and dizzy, which I guess, after all, is kind of the point of reality. Or of trying to understand reality.
Ultimately, though, the movie doesn't really leave you very enlightened. I saw it more as a vehicle for the director, David O. Russell, to express some disjointed existential thoughts he has that he just thinks are kind of cool. None of them really came together to make sense -- no thematic blanket, if you will.
Although maybe that's the point. Reality and life are partitioned and bizarre and can be blocked apart and melded back and you're best knowing about them at a level above knowing. Not really understanding, or trying to.
I thought one of the funniest lines in the movie is in the very beginning, when Bernard begins rattling off deep Zen ideas to instruct Albert and Albert impatiently shakes his head and says, "Sure sure sure sure sure sure sure, I get it." That's kind of how I felt after the movie. That I just wanted to gloss over really understanding it, thinking instead about how awesome it was that anti-fuel Tommy Corn rode his bike in fireman boots. Thinking about how I wanted to ride my bike in fireman boots. Although, I'd probably fall off again. But who cares.
Read Some Other Existential Reviews
