Life versus Art
I've seen a lot of movies in the past week, inspired, no doubt, by the recent Academy Awards and all the buzz surrounding the eight or so movies deemed worthy of every single nomination to be had. On Saturday I saw Milk; on Tuesday, The Wrestler; and last night, Slumdog Millionaire (or, as it's known in Mexico, Quisiera Ser Millionario). I liked all three of them quite a lot, for vastly different reasons.
(If you've not seen any of these movies, don't worry: I won't give anything away that might ruin the dramatic tension for you.)
I don't see a lot of movies here, mostly because I'm feverishly attempting to pay off my debts in Canada with the rapidly-plummeting Monopoly-money peso, but I enjoy going to the movies immensely due to how clearly it casts Mexican passion into light. A movie in Mexico City is not a movie, it's an EXPERIENCE.
Canadians tend to treat movies like we treat live theatre or dance: we enter, find our seats, chatter quietly until the film starts and then sit like stones until the film ends, at which point we pack up and leave. To talk during a movie is considered extremely rude. To have to pee during a movie is also remotely rude, as it involves standing up and briefly obstructing the sightline of the person behind you.
(Oddly, however, leaving your popcorn and drink behind to spill all over the floor? Commonplace. We Canadians are apparently wound up tight about noise pollution but general sanitation is not worth the effort. It's a bit weird, really.)
Mexican lives, in comparison, do not freeze for those sacred two hours. Last night, during Slumdog Millionaire, a guy's cellphone rang melodiously. He answered the call without shame: "Bueno?"
There was a short hiss for silence from elsewhere in the theatre.
"Yeah," he explained to the caller," I'm in a movie right now."
Damn right you are, I thought to myself, Canadian righteousness blazing. So why are you answering your cell, idiot?
"Slumdog Millionaire," he answered the caller. "Yeah, it's good."
I briefly contemplated what I had in my purse that could constitute a makeshift lethal weapon.
"I'll call you when it's done," he concluded and he hung up. The movie continued. We all moved on from the moment.
Actually, in three years here, I have yet to see a movie in which at least one cellphone didn't ring. Normally it's several. Sometimes the owner shame-facedly ignores the call; more often they answer and explain to the caller that, yes, sorry, can't talk right now. Every ring makes me marginally hostile but I've gotten over it, accepting it as just a part of living here.
But ringing cellphones are the annoying side of the Mexican joie de vivre, let's be fair. And the lovely side is really quite lovely indeed.
The peak moment of Slumdog Millionaire (again, working really hard here not to give too much away) occurs when the main character is faced with the 20,000,000 rupee question, for which the audience knows from a long string of hints throughout the movie that this kid does not know the answer. There is great tension as he contemplates his options. The Who Wants To Be A Millionaire music pounds, the blue spotlights flash up and down. There are shots of people across the city watching, breathlessly, fingers crossed, hoping hoping hoping.
And, behind me in the movie theatre, a women softly, plaintively whispers the answer.
Beside me, a middle-aged man and his wife/girlfriend clutch hands frantically.
In front of me, a young gay couple shake their heads in horror at the question. One says out loud, "Ay, no!"
It's incredible, isn't it, to live a movie like that? While I sat there contemplating the storytelling craftwork that brought us to that moment, these people around me were FEELING the movie. I'm sure there would have been tears if the guy did not get the girl in the end, so invested some of these audience members were.
I wondered, to skip backwards a few days, how the audience was going to react to Milk, given the rampant nervousness towards homosexuality apparent in the mass populus. That we were seeing the movie in Zona Rosa - the "Pink Zone" - was only marginal comfort, as I'd seen a movie there before that involved two men drunkenly kissing, and the audience moaned their horror. So how would the masses react to Sean Penn and Diego Luna rolling around naked together? Can a movie about gay rights go over in a country where young gay men feel compelled to flee to foreign countries and plead refugee status?
As it turns out, while the snogging twosome was marginally upsetting (perhaps because it was the trespassing of two straight men, and therefore more of a threat to the Mexican machismo?), Sean Penn's flamboyant, giggling, unapologetic Harvey Milk won the audience over without question. We cheered out loud when he won office finally. We sighed and muttered when he faced hostile discrimination. There were visible tears and audible sobbing at the end. And, as the credits began to roll, perhaps half the theatre broke into loud applause.
I love it, I just love it. I never realized how pent up we Canadians are until I came to this intense, vibrant country. There's an important lesson in all this.
(If you've not seen any of these movies, don't worry: I won't give anything away that might ruin the dramatic tension for you.)
I don't see a lot of movies here, mostly because I'm feverishly attempting to pay off my debts in Canada with the rapidly-plummeting Monopoly-money peso, but I enjoy going to the movies immensely due to how clearly it casts Mexican passion into light. A movie in Mexico City is not a movie, it's an EXPERIENCE.
Canadians tend to treat movies like we treat live theatre or dance: we enter, find our seats, chatter quietly until the film starts and then sit like stones until the film ends, at which point we pack up and leave. To talk during a movie is considered extremely rude. To have to pee during a movie is also remotely rude, as it involves standing up and briefly obstructing the sightline of the person behind you.
(Oddly, however, leaving your popcorn and drink behind to spill all over the floor? Commonplace. We Canadians are apparently wound up tight about noise pollution but general sanitation is not worth the effort. It's a bit weird, really.)
Mexican lives, in comparison, do not freeze for those sacred two hours. Last night, during Slumdog Millionaire, a guy's cellphone rang melodiously. He answered the call without shame: "Bueno?"
There was a short hiss for silence from elsewhere in the theatre.
"Yeah," he explained to the caller," I'm in a movie right now."
Damn right you are, I thought to myself, Canadian righteousness blazing. So why are you answering your cell, idiot?
"Slumdog Millionaire," he answered the caller. "Yeah, it's good."
I briefly contemplated what I had in my purse that could constitute a makeshift lethal weapon.
"I'll call you when it's done," he concluded and he hung up. The movie continued. We all moved on from the moment.
Actually, in three years here, I have yet to see a movie in which at least one cellphone didn't ring. Normally it's several. Sometimes the owner shame-facedly ignores the call; more often they answer and explain to the caller that, yes, sorry, can't talk right now. Every ring makes me marginally hostile but I've gotten over it, accepting it as just a part of living here.
But ringing cellphones are the annoying side of the Mexican joie de vivre, let's be fair. And the lovely side is really quite lovely indeed.
The peak moment of Slumdog Millionaire (again, working really hard here not to give too much away) occurs when the main character is faced with the 20,000,000 rupee question, for which the audience knows from a long string of hints throughout the movie that this kid does not know the answer. There is great tension as he contemplates his options. The Who Wants To Be A Millionaire music pounds, the blue spotlights flash up and down. There are shots of people across the city watching, breathlessly, fingers crossed, hoping hoping hoping.
And, behind me in the movie theatre, a women softly, plaintively whispers the answer.
Beside me, a middle-aged man and his wife/girlfriend clutch hands frantically.
In front of me, a young gay couple shake their heads in horror at the question. One says out loud, "Ay, no!"
It's incredible, isn't it, to live a movie like that? While I sat there contemplating the storytelling craftwork that brought us to that moment, these people around me were FEELING the movie. I'm sure there would have been tears if the guy did not get the girl in the end, so invested some of these audience members were.
I wondered, to skip backwards a few days, how the audience was going to react to Milk, given the rampant nervousness towards homosexuality apparent in the mass populus. That we were seeing the movie in Zona Rosa - the "Pink Zone" - was only marginal comfort, as I'd seen a movie there before that involved two men drunkenly kissing, and the audience moaned their horror. So how would the masses react to Sean Penn and Diego Luna rolling around naked together? Can a movie about gay rights go over in a country where young gay men feel compelled to flee to foreign countries and plead refugee status?
As it turns out, while the snogging twosome was marginally upsetting (perhaps because it was the trespassing of two straight men, and therefore more of a threat to the Mexican machismo?), Sean Penn's flamboyant, giggling, unapologetic Harvey Milk won the audience over without question. We cheered out loud when he won office finally. We sighed and muttered when he faced hostile discrimination. There were visible tears and audible sobbing at the end. And, as the credits began to roll, perhaps half the theatre broke into loud applause.
I love it, I just love it. I never realized how pent up we Canadians are until I came to this intense, vibrant country. There's an important lesson in all this.
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