pressing matters
January 09, 2007.
I can't begin to describe the difficulty of trying to be functional in depression. It's all I can do to stumble through an ordinary day, propped up and propelled along by routine. Through a monkey wrench into the routine, and I feel as paralyzed and unable to function at all.
I didn't have a huge list of things to accomplish today, and it shouldn't have taken from 8 am to 6 pm to wash a few dishes, clean a very small bathroom, pick up the dry cleaning, and run to the grocery store. But for some reason, it did (Of course, the biggest hurdle was getting myself clean and dressed). Somehow, curling up under a blanket and watching a DVD seemed to make much more sense.
And I still have to switch over my purse, shave, and iron the clothes for tomorrow.
Since I hate ironing with a passion so hot I could use it to press clothes, it isn't any wonder that I've yet to manage that chore. But I need to get it done, dammit. I wish I could find a workable carrot to dangle in front of myself.
Ironing is one of the worst chores I can think of. It hurts my back and it bores me and I don't do it very well so it ends up being pointless. But I think I'm caught between the overwhelming sense that it is what is done before a funeral, and the equally overwhelming sense of its futility. Damned Iowa Protestant upbringing. I can recognize the futility, but I'm driven by the guilt to do it anyway.
The film that had me happy to curl up in my chair today was "Sense and Sensibility".
After watching the travesty that is "Pride & AND Prejudice" (Miss Jane Austen did NOT put an ampersand in that title, thank you very much!) last week, It was a lovely comfort to sit down and view "Sense and Sensibility" again. And I came to a strange realization. There is very little of Miss Austen's dialogue in it--far less, in fact, that that more recent excrescence. And yet, I find it to be a vastly superior film. Maybe that was key, though. Emma Thompson�s script managed to be true to Austen, while also keeping faithful to the purpose of making a good film.Of course, a vastly superior cast didn�t hurt either. No offense to Dame Judi Dench or to Brenda Blethyn, but frankly, everyone else was rather disappointing. Darcy seemed less �proud�, and more burdened by the expectations of others. While swinging him that way over the story arc is fine, we should not be allowed to see him in a sympathetic light until Lizzy does. And Donald Sutherland�s Mr. Bennett was less sympathetic than I liked--a legitimate portrayal, but that character is a balancing act, and Sutherland seemed to be missing it by just a hair.
I�ve heard that Thompson was one of several writers that contributed to the P and P script. Whatever her contribution, it wasn�t enough to save the film, but perhaps the blame for it lies with the direction and the cast, as well. The pacing was horrid, spending cutting well-beloved scenes in favor of wasting valuable screen time on tedium. It seemed jarring, abrupt, and oddly cut, and the two principals had no chemistry. In the completely ridiculous finale, Knightley reacts to her husband�s ardor with all the enthusiasm of a wet towel.
You know that whole last section was a desperate attempt to put off the ironing for yet another hour, right?
Reading: �A Salty Piece of Land�, by Jimmy Buffett.
Listening: Emma Thompson's commentary track (with producer Lindsay Doran) on "Sense and Sensibility"
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