I watched Lost in Translation, Closer, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind the way I watch most movies: succumbing to the pressure of either their marketing or a pushy friend who wants to see it with me. In the theater darkness, I gorge myself on the popcorn before even the previews, slightly ashamed of my buttery hand. The women next to me may be on their phone attending to time sensitive texts, talking about a roommate situation, or dumb boss, or just looking lovely, she an actress playing the part of a girlfriend in the script of my mind, but this Scorcese will go home alone. When Charlotte (Johansson) wears a wig on her sort-of-date with Bob Harris (Murray), she is able to play the part of someone who is not married and perhaps a little more age-appropriate; that she sings The Pretenders may be Sofia Coppola’s subtle slip of the character’s own pretending that night. Karaoke-ing, then, if I may, is a metaphor for the allotted fantasy in the film — of amateurs bestowing each other, for now, a judgeless small corner of the world for off-key singing, of a benign elevator peck before separate hotel rooms. When Bob beautifully stumbles around “More than this,” it is obvious that the “more” is what he deprives himself of, and what Coppola deprives the audience. It is the anti-porn that touches upon love.

I don’t exactly recall the plot to Closer (2004), only that it involved 2 attractive women and 2 attractive men, in opulent London flats, all lonely and single, so like please can someone tell me what happens? Love tri▲ngles are so boring. A love rectang█e will describe the shape of the mattress on which it all takes place, tiny new islands left by wet marks on the vast ocean of a dirty sheet. Natalie Portman’s wig is glossy compared to Johansson’s matte-like one, a lesson for book publishers that most prefer the latter, the former “feel” being rather cloying. She plays a high-end stripper, which is so boring I might fall azzzleep with my nose in her ass. I once put in 5:00 minutes worth of my crispest dollar bills into a slot which kept an inward facing window open. Behind the greasy fingerprints of other men, a bone thin woman with a trail of tattoos from neck to calf looked at me for a split moment, past the coke’d out shallow sheen of her cornea, with a kind sadness that made me tear. I looked down for more tears, but alas, ’twas only the thick white agent of human violence. To think I somehow involved George Washington in this may be my greatest American act.

I found it hard to take Kate Winslet’s depression, or whatever it was, seriously. Her erratic hair dye — an alinear rainbow from pink to hot pink to blue to green — may have served as intricate narrative cues/clues to the chronology, but I just thought it meant “oh, she’s like crazy n’ shit.” Aging asian men, completely void of the concept of “goth,” will dye their hair black to cling on to a youthful look. Self-hating asians, and sometimes blacks, and the occasional bored white girl, will all dye their hair blond, a sad concession to the idea of beauty’s relation to ethnic purity. The very unnaturalness of pink hair may tell the story of how we’ve given up on race — that the highest form of life may be something alien among, or within, us. I’ve realized I prefer to see movies by myself, at best the first 11:00 am-ish Sunday matinee, alone in a gigantic room made just for me, the ominous silent white rectangle in front as the mattress for every love▲ or █ or whatever lonely shape this world can come up with. If my heart were a green preview, it would contain a gratuitous explosion and Nicolas Cage leaving in 60 seconds. I always wind up alone. When a woman suddenly cuts or dyes her hair she’s about to break up with you. I’ve learned this the hard way. When a guy cannot stay hard perhaps all that porn has screwed the wiring in his brain, or the idea of intimacy, acceptance, is so foreign he is running away. She’s learned this the soft way.

Goodnight,

jc