Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 10/22/24

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Momma's Man (Azazel Jacobs, 2008)

Matt Boren, Flo Jacobs, and Ken Jacobs in Momma's Man

Cast: Matt Boren, Flo Jacobs, Ken Jacobs, Dana Varon, Piero Arcilesi, Richard Edson, Eleanor Hutchins. Screenplay: Azazel Jacobs. Cinematography: Tobias Datum. Film editing: Darrin Navarro. Music: Mandy Hoffman.

A canceled flight leaves Mikey (Matt Boren), on a business trip to New York, spending a night with his parents in the apartment where he grew up. The stay extends into weeks as Mikey is drawn back into his childhood by the memorabilia crammed into the apartment. His mother (Flo Jacobs) is solicitous, constantly offering him food, while his taciturn father (Ken Jacobs) remains preoccupied with his own interests. Mikey sinks into his old collection of notebooks and comic books, and develops a kind of agoraphobia, becoming frozen at the top of the stairs that lead to the world below. Meanwhile, his wife, Laura (Dana Varon), is back in Los Angeles with their infant daughter, wondering why Mikey doesn't return her calls. Azazel Jacobs's movie is not only a story of a midlife crisis, but also a loving but slightly critical portrait of his own parents, who play Mikey's mother and father, filmed in their actual cluttered apartment where the director grew up. It's not like any other movie you've seen, being not a documentary and not quite fiction, but somehow real and touching and wistfully funny.