book one redone - Coldbacon

Scarface when they visit the palatial estate in the mountains of C. It’s in
The Godfather whenever they return to S, and there is the little burro, the
old ways, which bring such killing power, such hold over our imagination.
There is the scene in Blade Runner when she says, “We’re stupid and
we’ll die,” and Rutger Hauer smiles and says, “No we won’t.” How big
the room, and so baroque with ornate wood and blue light piercing
through vaporous haze. So full of toys now left behind. Relics of
happiness reminding of what once was and may never be again.
And ruins, of New York, in so many films both made and yet to be made.
Any and all ruins. The scene at the end of In the Mood for Love when they
drop visit Cambodia. Angkor Wat. This picture of Carthage I took on a
throw-away camera, which she made us buy. I don’t buy those stupid
things, though I’m glad we did. And by the way, Carthage was once “all
that.” And Cuba. The men, their cars, labor of love, colored laundry in the
streets, the slow draw of tight tobacco. There, “The Gold Room” is
hopping with little nine-year old ballerinas and beautiful Ruben Gonzales,
the white hairs on the back of his brown, leathery neck, quick fingers
dancing over the black and whites, never staying—all of this in true color.
But L’Avventura perhaps the most of all embodies the feeling of what
once was. It makes you ask if it is really like this, Southern Italy, could it
possibly be this—yes, yes it can. Emptied now but it wasn’t always.
Once-great city-states and the buildings they left behind. When Sandro is
a “tourist” in minute ninety-seven, in the town whose last tourists were a
French couple one year before. That town, those heavy buildings, that
expansive facade on what must have been some kind of palace. That is
exactly how it is. Go there. You’ll see.
And then there is the scene where Sandro knocks over the bottle of ink,
and the two men are near to fighting, when suddenly, from out of the
huge, gray building in which we know there is nothing for five hundred
years, bubbles forth a stream of small school children, dressed in black.
Wha—? Who would have—? And so as it is an epiphany, which stops
men from fighting, so too it releases us from our mental stagnation.
There is the jungle-tucked castle of her rich friends with its chessboard
marble floors and overhanging passageways like tunnels linking different
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