327 Market

Even More Men Who Write

Everything I am reading this week is so heady. A quick scan of my e-mail conversations with R, Ariel's blog, actual conversations with Eleven (we commuted tuesday and sat in the car after we arrived home another 40 minutes just talking), theology class on Weds, reading Buechner's Wishful Thinking and even Jeff's blog (he usually just writes about the movies he's seen) reveals the same themes. Is it the rain? Is it just becuase its suddenly December and people are thinking deep thoughts in the dark? Even the beloved Peanut Gallery is bursting with insight.

I wanted to comment on Jeff's entry today, but he doesn't allow it, so I am going to comment here.

He writes: This modest seventy-five minute film from 1959 purports to be a meticulous examination of the education of a pickpocket, from first desperate attempts to assured mastery of the arts, but is really a study of a man lost in a spiritual crises, wondering, “why go on living,” and maybe finding the answer. One thinks often of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, though the scale here is much more modest. The tone is almost always calm (or flat), just as the thief must keep his cool to be successful. The film is all careful eyes, and hands going quickly in and out of pockets. The film is waiting. Race tracks, streets, trains, bars and bedrooms. The betrayal of trust. The hope of forgiveness?

He hits on some wonderful truth here. Between the waiting and the hope of forgiveness lies a beautiful paradox.

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Now I feeling guilty, so much to be unpacked, and I have a lunch to prepare and eat and comics to draw and coffee to drink. But I am just going to leave it at that. Thanks, Jeff.