A Road Less Travelled

Usually when Seth and Crystal get back from being gone for a couple of days I get a day that I can run far and fast from the house and never go back. Until I’m ready to, anyway. Monday was this day for me and I had a grand day out going here and doing stuff and then going over there and doing something else. I rounded out my day by going to see Inkheart which is an adaptation of a kids book written by Cornelia Funke.

I was looking forward to this movie. I enjoyed the book greatly, though it was a lot darker than I was expecting. The villain of the book, Capricorn, was, well, villainous. He was cruel, wicked and darkly cunning. He was actually a villain from a book who’d been accidentally read into our world by Mo, a book binder, bibliophile and wonderful reader, who discovered at that point that he had this ability. Capricorn and his henchman Basta set up shop in Italy and make a very fine life for themselves by oppressing the local farmers and villagers.

It was the oppression that especially struck me when I read the book. Capricorn kept the local people in fear by threatening them, their farms and their children. If someone was getting a little uppity he would send one of his thugs to hang out around the school yard where that man’s children were. And if he didn’t take the hint Capricorn would send Basta to burn his house down, frequently with him and his family inside. Like I said, darker than I expected for a kid’s book. But because Capricorn was so evil it was so satisfying to see him brought down by the good guys in the end.

The movie was heavily sanitized. Capricorn was only a little bit scary and Basta was a joke. I was disappointed, but I suppose it makes sense. It was still a fun movie. Fantastical and charming, witty and sweet with all the good bits I wanted to see. I wasn’t complaining as I left the theater for home.

I got back just as Seth and Crystal were getting ready to go. One of our elders and his wife were taking them out for sushi so they’d have a chance to talk about the many recent happenings. So I put the kids to bed and decided to watch the movie that had come for me from Netflix. It was The Visitor which looked like a charming relationship movie. It’s about an economics professor in Connecticut named Walter who’s shut off from the world. He has to go to New York City to present a paper he co-authored where he has an apartment he keeps, but hasn’t been to in over fifteen years, maybe more. He finds a couple living in his apartment because of a mix up or scam or something. He lets them stay and becomes friends with the man, Tarek, an illegal immigrant from Syria. Tarek starts teaching Walter to play the djembe. They go drumming together at the park and all is going wonderfully. But then Tarek gets picked up by the police because of a misunderstanding in the subway and they put him in a detention center. From there the movie proceeded to break my heart.

I knew going into the movie that it would probably be sad, but I thought it was going to be more about Walter’s relationships than about post-911 United States immigration policy. But no, my sweet, friendship movie made me sad and upset.

What happened to my movies on Monday? It’s like they switched places. The one that was supposed to have darkness that would be overcome was fluffy and cute and the sweet, gentle movie hit me in the face. Hard. Maybe Monday was just a bad day for movies.