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An unintended work day
Oct. 14th, 2000 10:44 pmToday was one of those days where work-related tasks kept intruding, until before I knew it, I'd put in nearly a full day pounding on the cable.
It started with an early stint at the MCC, to relieve an interpreter during the first part of the day shift. Upon returning home, I began to edit a longish, repetitive document that I'd been hornswaggled into editing over the weekend, but abandoned that as soon as Galina awoke. We sat around some, watched a video version of Don Quixote, ate lunch, and then I went in to the office for a couple more hours to discuss upcoming assignments. Since coming home, I've put in another couple of hours editing. Unlike my usual approach (edit on the screen), this time I edited with pen and paper, so I'll have to make time tomorrow to enter the changes into the document.
Segue.
Cervantes' Don Quixote represents a "hole" in my education. Sure, I knew that the book spawned the incredibly successful musical Man of La Mancha, and I seem to recall reading a chapter in an anthology that has Quixote tilting at windmills, and I knew that his squire's name was Sancho Panza, but it never really went further than that.
If experience is any guide, the film falls far short of the book, but the film was maddeningly entertaining. The title role is played by John Lithgow, and Bob Hoskins plays Sancho. Lithgow does a fine job depicting a demented old man pursuing an impossible quest, but there were moments when - by a turn of the phrase or a wave of the hand - I felt I saw a little bit of Dick Solomon (Lithgow's character in 3rd Rock From The Sun) bubbling up, just beneath the surface.
What was maddeningly good about the film was that for a long while, it was painful to watch Quixote pursue something so utterly silly...and worthless...and impossible. And to do so with a rare gusto and vitality, matched only by a selective blindness that ignored everything he did not want to see. Windmills turned to giants, sheep turned to soldiers, wizards loomed here and there, and on and on. Galina sat and watched, and finally declared the character of Quixote to be "a pathetic loser." I must admit I had thoughts along those lines as well.
And that's what's so novel about this story!
In most tales that fall into the genre of "vision-against-all-odds," we are presented to someone who struggles mightily, yet in advance, we have been influenced in this person's favor. Maybe it's Jimmy Stewart playing White Sox pitcher Monty Stratton or Paul Muni playing Louis Pasteur, or fast-forward to the present day and consider Erin Brockovich. There have been a thousand films where a sympathetic character fights against great odds, against ridicule, persecution, vilification, and so on. But in virtually every case, we have no problem throwing our moral support behind the underdog.
But not in this film. Here, the old man's vision is way, way out there. So far out there, that even we think he's crazy, and we are not in his corner. At least not in the beginning, nor for a while.
We see his family try to "help" by destroying a prized collection of books on knight-errantry and chivalry, accumulated over a lifetime and placed proudly on the shelves of a library where he has spent much time. The door to the library is even walled over, to help the maladjusted Quixote get over his mania. ("Library? What library, Don Quixote?") The family priest goes further, calling upon an educated nephew who has studied history, and enlists his help to bring the old man around to "normalcy." And there is no malice here. It's not as if these people are trying to kill the old man for his money or anything; they really seem to care and worry about the old gent.
Finally, after a number of adventures, and past the point where we have begun to admire the guy for his vision (even if it is a little weird) Quixote is...well...finessed into giving up his dreams. A defeat on the "field of battle" forces him to keep a promise to return to his home and live quietly there until his death. He returns home, but sickens and soon dies, a "normal" old man.
The moral? (And yes, a tale like this must have a moral!) It is this:
We all need giants and wizards to struggle against; they give us purpose in life. But finding those giants and wizards, and learning how to fight against them requires vision. Quixote had such vision, and to the extent that we don't, we better exemplify the concept of "loser" than Quixote ever did.
Cheers...
It started with an early stint at the MCC, to relieve an interpreter during the first part of the day shift. Upon returning home, I began to edit a longish, repetitive document that I'd been hornswaggled into editing over the weekend, but abandoned that as soon as Galina awoke. We sat around some, watched a video version of Don Quixote, ate lunch, and then I went in to the office for a couple more hours to discuss upcoming assignments. Since coming home, I've put in another couple of hours editing. Unlike my usual approach (edit on the screen), this time I edited with pen and paper, so I'll have to make time tomorrow to enter the changes into the document.
Segue.
Cervantes' Don Quixote represents a "hole" in my education. Sure, I knew that the book spawned the incredibly successful musical Man of La Mancha, and I seem to recall reading a chapter in an anthology that has Quixote tilting at windmills, and I knew that his squire's name was Sancho Panza, but it never really went further than that.
If experience is any guide, the film falls far short of the book, but the film was maddeningly entertaining. The title role is played by John Lithgow, and Bob Hoskins plays Sancho. Lithgow does a fine job depicting a demented old man pursuing an impossible quest, but there were moments when - by a turn of the phrase or a wave of the hand - I felt I saw a little bit of Dick Solomon (Lithgow's character in 3rd Rock From The Sun) bubbling up, just beneath the surface.
What was maddeningly good about the film was that for a long while, it was painful to watch Quixote pursue something so utterly silly...and worthless...and impossible. And to do so with a rare gusto and vitality, matched only by a selective blindness that ignored everything he did not want to see. Windmills turned to giants, sheep turned to soldiers, wizards loomed here and there, and on and on. Galina sat and watched, and finally declared the character of Quixote to be "a pathetic loser." I must admit I had thoughts along those lines as well.
And that's what's so novel about this story!
In most tales that fall into the genre of "vision-against-all-odds," we are presented to someone who struggles mightily, yet in advance, we have been influenced in this person's favor. Maybe it's Jimmy Stewart playing White Sox pitcher Monty Stratton or Paul Muni playing Louis Pasteur, or fast-forward to the present day and consider Erin Brockovich. There have been a thousand films where a sympathetic character fights against great odds, against ridicule, persecution, vilification, and so on. But in virtually every case, we have no problem throwing our moral support behind the underdog.
But not in this film. Here, the old man's vision is way, way out there. So far out there, that even we think he's crazy, and we are not in his corner. At least not in the beginning, nor for a while.
We see his family try to "help" by destroying a prized collection of books on knight-errantry and chivalry, accumulated over a lifetime and placed proudly on the shelves of a library where he has spent much time. The door to the library is even walled over, to help the maladjusted Quixote get over his mania. ("Library? What library, Don Quixote?") The family priest goes further, calling upon an educated nephew who has studied history, and enlists his help to bring the old man around to "normalcy." And there is no malice here. It's not as if these people are trying to kill the old man for his money or anything; they really seem to care and worry about the old gent.
Finally, after a number of adventures, and past the point where we have begun to admire the guy for his vision (even if it is a little weird) Quixote is...well...finessed into giving up his dreams. A defeat on the "field of battle" forces him to keep a promise to return to his home and live quietly there until his death. He returns home, but sickens and soon dies, a "normal" old man.
The moral? (And yes, a tale like this must have a moral!) It is this:
We all need giants and wizards to struggle against; they give us purpose in life. But finding those giants and wizards, and learning how to fight against them requires vision. Quixote had such vision, and to the extent that we don't, we better exemplify the concept of "loser" than Quixote ever did.
Cheers...
