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So we’re standing at the video store on Sunday, after a long day in the sun from building Frank’s garden (OMG gardening is hard work).  We were all clueless as to which film to get, and it came down to two choices: The Transporter 2 or The Cup.

The choice was made in the civilized method of paper/rock/scissors.  I won and so we rented The Cup.  I had heard about it in a review a few years back, and it was given a big thumbs up.  On the jacket were award patches from the Cannes film festival, and even the synopsis on the back warned me that we were in store for an art-house-esque movie night.

The movie is set in India, in a monastery full of young novice monks, all of whom are religiously addicted to soccer.  The austere life of the monks get interrupted as the World Cup finals approach and the young monks try to flesh out a way to watch the game without getting chastised by their guru.  The plot slowly unfolds and there’s a ton of character development along the way, as well as insights into life in a Tibetan monastery where the children “monks” are really no different than normal children.  The humour isn’t flashy, but it’s damned witty.  The plot is slow and there isn’t much going on, but it paints a very realistic portrait of the children.

I could see Frank getting fairly bored with the flick halfway through, and I myself had some trying times keeping up with it.  I’ve always had a taste for art-house flicks, but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen a movie that required a bit of sitting and thinking.

I think what happened is that I let myself go and gave into the ADD inducing information age that we live in today.  There’s way too much information readily available, and only so little time to consume it.  So we end up getting fed bite sized morsels of fluff and sound/video-bites to keep us momentarily entertained, before moving onto the next morsel.  Instead of building a coherent and thoughtful story we’re given a candy necklace to chew on one nutrition-less chunk of sugar at a time.  Sure it tastes great, but it’s never filling and you end up rotting your teeth.  After awhile you kind of just get used to eating sugar, and forget how great a full course meal is.

Anyways, I shut off the movie midway through to spare Frank the torture and watched the rest on my computer.  I was a bit restless, but I knew having the patience to sit through the thing would be rewarding.  Don’t get me wrong, the movie’s pacing was fine… it was just the subject matter that was different.  The movie doesn’t give little quips of slapstick humour or “action-packed” scenes, but instead paints a human portrait of life.  I’m glad I sat through it though, as I felt nourished and full after my “meal”.

I think I’m gonna have to go renew my membership at the Bytowne for some more art-house flicks.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 at 7:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.