Snarky, Self-Effacing Blog Title

So yesterday I came home straight from work to view my newest Netflick, Barbarella.  (Yes, Robbie, I FINALLY got around to seeing it.)  My initial reaction as the movie got underway was: "Where are the three silhouettes on the bottom of the screen to give snarky comments?"  After Jane Fonda’s second nude scene my reaction was: "There’s not enough wine in this glass to get me through this movie."  I was right.  But there was enough wine in three glasses. And as the film progressed, I found myself utterly, utterly entranced by this fantastically epic space drama.  It is so delightfully opaque in its morality, and so completely quotable.  "Angels do not make love, they are love."  "Soon you will die…of PLEASURE!" "I have lost the will to fly." "Your goodness caused the Matmos to vomit!" and of course, my favorite: "De-crucify the angel.  I said, de-crucify the angel!"  There is only one way to truly enjoy a film like this (well, yes, the wine helps) but what I’m getting at is this:  you have to release all pretense and cleverness and simply accept the story you are being fed.  Upon doing this, you can appreciate its Greek mythic quality, its quest, its characters based in centuries of fiction, its stereotypical representation of a futuristic dystopic metropolis (not unlike our own faire citie) whose power source (the aforementioned Matmos) feeds directly on people’s negativity and darkness in order to provide them with light and heat, taking years off their lives in the process as its cruel price.  Hmmm.  Sounds a little like OPEC’s wet dream.  But can Barbarella’s sexual healing release us from our addiction to Arabic black gold?

Yesterday I read an interview with Darren Aronofsky regarding the conception, miscarriage, and rebirth of his latest film, The Fountain.  I can’t help but find what seems to be a huge correlation between the two movies.  Granted, the graphics surrounding Hugh Jackman’s bald man in a bubble are mind-bogglingly realistic (or what I imagine realistic is for a transparent space orb floating toward an impending supernova), whereas Barbarella’s floating fur-lined dinghy brings to mind effects reminiscent of the first season of Doctor Who.  However, they both have a common sense of earnest morality, a good-versus-evil, life-versus-death, man-versus-machine, science-versus-nature, love and time heal all wounds kind of message.  You don’t get that much these days.  It’s refreshing.  As Aronofsky said in his interview "I don’t know why people still practice cynicism." 

Without getting too divulgent, I will say that watching Barbarella with an open (and slightly inebriated) mind brought to the surface a swarm of long-buried emotions and memories; its story of struggle, imprisonment (both physical and psychological), and human endurance is surprisingly evocative.  I understand now why it’s one of Ma-maw’s favorite films.

Then again, the costumes are probably a bit of a draw.  That, and Jane Fonda is deliciously vapid (and probably high out of her mind) throughout.