Mood is improved...

I don't know...Actually, I think I do know why I'm in such a good mood. It was having the translation flow yesterday snap back into its proper place. I didn't much mind going to the store this morning to help out with the report. Then too, it's nice to see checks in the mail, as all three accounts have been skating near that miserable edge.

Galina and I had a serious conversation yesterday about the next few years. She wants to sell the real estate we've got in Texas, which I think is a good idea. She also wants to put some money into this place, which I also think is a good idea.

From time to time, we've given thought to going abroad and living as expats somewhere. My personal preference is somewhere in Europe. Galina would like to see what life is like south of the Rio Grande. Neither of us knows enough about what we're thinking to make any good arguments pro or con, except for the tourist-y ones.

More later, maybe. It's time to tackle some more safety stuff having to do with driving trucks. Containing cargo, this time, instead of people. I trust it will resemble yesterday's material.

Cheers...

Netflix comes through... the movie doesn't.

The disk that came in the mail was Aleksei Balabanov's 1998 film Of Freaks and People (Про уродов и людей). The blub on the Netflix site describes the film as a:

...deliciously subversive, beautifully photographed film ... [exploring] the hidden passions and sadomasochistic urges underlying the charm and propriety of Victorian society. The sinister Johann and his assistant, who photograph the floggings of bare-bottomed women, maneuver their way into two wealthy families, involving them in their pornographic schemes. Darkly humorous and startlingly original.

The sentence starting "The sinister Johann..." is pretty accurate, but as for the rest of the description... I don't know. I guess you just have to be in a certain mode to enjoy a film like this.

And yes, I meant "mode" (and not "mood") and "enjoy" (and not "watch").

At the beginning, Johann arrives in what would appear to be blue-tinted, monochrome St. Petersburg of the early part of the century. A smile seems to play on his lips. The film cuts to a portrait photography session for a 5-year-old girl, then to a hospital where a doctor is adopting cojoined (aka "Siamese) twins.

To denote a 10-year gap, the cinematography switches to a monochrome sepia for the rest of the film. Johann, besides his proclivity for promoting porno, turns out to be a stone killer who whacks people with all of calm reassurance of a person who passes idle time nibbling carrots dipped in sour cream. His handgun, moreover, is quite the lethal toy... one shot is all it takes to kill, but the recoil would hardly bother a child, as is demonstrated when Tolya, one of the twins, puts a cap in Viktor Ivanovich, Johann's assistant. By the way, Viktor Ivanovich (played by Viktor Sukhorukov), besides playing a wonderful heavy with a skull-like physiognomy, reminded me tremendously - in his appearance - of an translator/interpreter I used to know.

The film, I believe, would have us think that we were looking in upon the origins of pornography (though the extent of what is shown on the screen is exactly what is advertised: spanking of bare-bottomed ladies). However, I recall once being told that one of the first fruits of Gutenberg's wonderful movable-type presses was, following the Bible, a volume of pornography that did not confine itself to buttocks and birch switches. Moreover, I'm sure the lure of the lascivious has roots that go back to the dim dawn of humanity.

I'm not at all sure about the humor alleged to be in this movie. I saw none. If I did see any glimmer of a theme, it was that the "freaks" in the movie (Kolya and Tolya, the twins) were the people, while most of the people - Johann, Viktor, the photographer Putilov, and others - were the freaks. Unfortunately, this theme is not exactly what I'd describe as "startlingly original."

In the end, nothing made sense. Not to me. Nobody is redeemed, except perhaps for Putilov and Johann. Everyone else is certainly a casualty, to one extent or another; only the freaks survive... for a while, at least. What does them in is having been exposed to the "people" in the film. In the final scene, Johann steps onto an ice floe on the Neva, and we see him drifting, slowly, toward the horizon right before the credits roll. It all made as much sense to me as the deliberate popping and hissing of the sound track from the blue monochrome part at the start of the film.

Cheers...