Queued this one for Building Things Which Are Worth a Damn because what a telling of it Alec Guinness gives.
We will build them a bridge which shows what a British soldier can do.
The single-minded purpose works all the good things Guinness anticipates but he can't walk away and he flips when he starts defending the bridge against attack. Realizing too late his mistake, he dies blowing it up.
The story is grand but through it all is the extremely high quality of a bridge built by men who can't take pride in too much else. They were dirty, hungry, and only wore rags yet they could do this. The film becomes epic through that grand scope and the character portraits within it but that bridge is what drives it all.
Making really good stuff is the finest thing humans can achieve it seems. There are many things we do but what of those activities achieves anything substantive. Those men built a bridge out of trees from the jungle and it would hold up a train. For any kind of achievement of that scale we're awestruck by it and the bigger it goes the more the effect.
It goes the same for small things as any kind of an intricate model draws oohs and ahs. We admire that sort of thing and maybe we're envious because we wish we were cool enough to make stuff like that.
Rich guy can talk about all the money he made but he still can't make anything himself. He's got money and power so he can get other people to do things and make stuff for him. We asked what they make and he said OREO cookies. We asked where and he said Mexico.
He doesn't understand why we do not admire him and he gets no oohs and ahs.
Singers, mothers, painters, jewel thieves, weavers, ...
(Ed: oy, oy, what Really Good Stuff does a jewel thief make?)
We love it when a slick and crafty jewel thief comes up with the cool plan to steal something really expensive from someone really rich. We imagine he lives like James Bond but we can't possibly know.
(Ed: he's probably a murdering thug!)
See, there you go, sucking the joy out of everything, even something so simple as admiration for a jewel thief.
We will build them a bridge which shows what a British soldier can do.
The single-minded purpose works all the good things Guinness anticipates but he can't walk away and he flips when he starts defending the bridge against attack. Realizing too late his mistake, he dies blowing it up.
The story is grand but through it all is the extremely high quality of a bridge built by men who can't take pride in too much else. They were dirty, hungry, and only wore rags yet they could do this. The film becomes epic through that grand scope and the character portraits within it but that bridge is what drives it all.
Making really good stuff is the finest thing humans can achieve it seems. There are many things we do but what of those activities achieves anything substantive. Those men built a bridge out of trees from the jungle and it would hold up a train. For any kind of achievement of that scale we're awestruck by it and the bigger it goes the more the effect.
It goes the same for small things as any kind of an intricate model draws oohs and ahs. We admire that sort of thing and maybe we're envious because we wish we were cool enough to make stuff like that.
Rich guy can talk about all the money he made but he still can't make anything himself. He's got money and power so he can get other people to do things and make stuff for him. We asked what they make and he said OREO cookies. We asked where and he said Mexico.
He doesn't understand why we do not admire him and he gets no oohs and ahs.
Singers, mothers, painters, jewel thieves, weavers, ...
(Ed: oy, oy, what Really Good Stuff does a jewel thief make?)
We love it when a slick and crafty jewel thief comes up with the cool plan to steal something really expensive from someone really rich. We imagine he lives like James Bond but we can't possibly know.
(Ed: he's probably a murdering thug!)
See, there you go, sucking the joy out of everything, even something so simple as admiration for a jewel thief.
No comments:
Post a Comment