Article Contributed on: 9/17/2008 9:50:07 AM
Last Thursday, Steve and I headed down to the Esquire Theater for a free screening of Burn After Reading. We got there at about 7:20 for the 7:30 show, and after standing in the beginning of a rainstorm for about five minutes, we heard the theater was full.
We turned back up 6th Avenue toward our car. "What should we do?" I asked. We tend to be homebodies, so once we're out of the house, we like to stay out for a while. Halfway back to the car, in front of the self-serve dog wash, I had an idea. "Let's go back and see what else is playing."
Steve doesn't like to admit that he likes indie movies. "Here? Really?"
"Yes, here. Comon. We might be surprised."
The other show playing was Elegy, based on the Philip Roth novel "The Dying Animal." It stars Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz. We paid $19 for our tickets and headed upstairs to the small theater. Rarely do we see a film without knowing what it's about first. That's my problem--lack of spontaneity. I'm working on it (counterintuitive, I know.)
Turns out, spontaneity is a beautiful thing. Elegy is one of the most heartwrenching stories I've seen on the screen in a long time. David is an acclaimed New York professor and author, the kind who gets interviewed by Charlie Rose. Consuela is his student for a semester. She is from Cuba, and she is "beautiful, and she knows it, but she doesn't quite know what to do with her beauty yet." (paraphrase)
David is worried that his life is over, especially his sexual life. He lives a hedonistic life, looking for the next pleasure around the corner. We get to know what yearning feels like, especially yearning for something you can't name. David understands lust--he's had a 20-year, sex-only relationship with a woman who used to be his student. Consuela is emotionally unavailable to him, keeping much of her life secret on the screen. The mystery of her, combined with his lust for her, confuses David and makes him feel alive.
I've thought about this movie over the past few days, about how often I catch myself looking for the bigger, better deal--which in some ways is what I think David was doing. Instead of putting my heart fully into my work, I think that the time is coming when I'll have the job that will completely capture me. Some days, I'm not very nice to Steve or to my daughter. We all get into this place of utter self-absorption, where what we want is so paramount that we can't possibly think of anyone else. We get controlled by the obsession-of-the-day, and when we wake up, months or years have past. And often we're so blinded by what we think we want--or perhaps by the fear of what we think we want--we cannot see our heart's desire when it's standing right in front of us.
Like David, I used to live my life unconsciously. It took an affair and a divorce to wake me to the fact that I only get one chance at this particular life. Now, I find myself sleepwalking less often, easier to self-rouse.
In the end, it takes a series of losses and crises--not the ones David initially fears, but perhaps ones he didn't dare think about --to awaken him. He realizes that he's lived his life as if he were a teenager, when that age passed him a half-century before. The elegy is for all that David lost along the way to his awakening, a bittersweet rhythm of light and words and music to mourn what he didn't dare dream.