Film-making distinguishes itself from other art forms in it's ability to confront us with a living, breathing, angry, joyous, stoic or miserable human being. Even the stage, where physical intimacy is more immediate, cannot draw us into a character or writer's world in the quite the same way. There is too much artifice involved; how should I dress?... should we drive or take a cab?... the curtain mechanically rising and falling, actors scurrying into the wings for a quick smoke.
And, unlike a novelist, a great film-maker takes you into his world from the opening shot.
A great writer can describe all he wants yet when I read his book, and this is only true of the world since cinema arrived I suppose, I will picture the lead character as Lee Marvin while another imagines Lloyd Bridges.
In Tom McCarthy's "The Visitor" there is no doubt who Walter Vale is from the very beginning of the opening shot. Bright afternoon sunlight streams through the window Walter peers out of- as if waiting for something. Middle-aged, balding in back, dressed a bit stuffily in sports coat he turns as we hear a car pull up outside and approaches the camera with a big ole glass of Dago red in hand.
Off camera you hear him set the half-full (second round?)16 ounce goblet down as he approaches the front door.The doorbell rings just as he gets there, now empty handed, opens to a woman somewhat older than himself. Sunlight backlights her figure, but not the hard and sharp light of afternoon, a soft and downy morning light...early morning at that...
Don't worry, I will not tell you of Walter's loss or how and with whom he finds joy, "The Visitor" is just too damned good to play spoiler.
But as someone who has experienced great personal loss, the deaths of two siblings in a matter of months - and fairly recently - I will speak of loss and joy, of living on the boundaries of the two, of hope and hopelessness, of trepidation and abandon.
And, along the way, perhaps we'll figure out why while I drink, I drink rarely in the morning.
The first thing one must realize about loss is how lucky you are to experience it. To lose something precious you must have possessed something precious to begin with. Hundreds of millions in this world go to the ground having never mourned a great love or admired a profound work of art, experienced succor or compassion, the savor of freedom and choice, having not even the cold comfort of acquired wisdom to inform them why their young bodies are racked by hunger and disease.
Where loss is possible, joy can be found.
In the movie Walter is lucky enough to stumble into joy, though, to his credit, he has been casting about to find it and, again to his credit, having only seen a glimmer of it in a photograph mistakenly left behind, he is alert enough not to let it escape.
We cannot all be so fortunate. Joy must sometimes be pursued and hunted down, even when the pangs of loss and hopelessness feed off of and weaken us, when a drink in the morning sounds really good, when the memories of the good things lost beckon us like Odysseus at the mast.
As individuals possessed of the gift of being able to experience loss it is, I believe, our charge to live our lives in expectation and pursuit of joy, to do otherwise is an affront to the thousands who will die tomorrow without any hope of obtaining it, a comfort to the millions who, unfortunately, live amongst us who wouldn't know joy if it bit them in the ass and guard zealously against the possibility that any will experience it.
And, yes, it is a slap in the face to all we have stepped over and on, cheated, murdered and lost to build a place where loss can be felt so bitterly.
If you cannot leap, bring a ladder. If you cannot swim cling onto one who can. There is too much at stake. Only you can keep loss alive. The prospect of a world without it is just too terrible to contemplate.
As a nation and a people- if something so large, contentious, rollicking and heterogeneous as America can even be described in such a way- we have lost much since that fateful morning in September seven years ago. But life is not a movie. No black-screen will appear to tell us that it is over. If you can right even a small wrong do it. Play nine innings, leave it all on the field.
Now I must resist boring you further... my two year old twin great-nephew and niece expect their grand-uncle over to dinner.
Where loss is possible, joy can be found.