Of course, you can't just jump right to the '80s; we spend a lot of time on what came before, and how greater social changes shape modern cinema. Certain themes are timeless, like a children's animation featuring a political dissident crow in a top hat trapped in prison, saved from a pride of savage lions by the music of a blind organ grinder. Some characters, on the other hand, sprout from a particular era's malaise, like a '70s anti-hero who badgers an underage prostitute into joining him for long drives through ramshackle suburbs, endless and manic grandiose speeches, and one of the most sloppily executed murders ever. It's not just another crime drama, and the director's bold deviation from, I guess, any sympathetic characters is exemplary of the nihilism of the times.
Probably my favorite film was the 2016 stop-motion "Ma vie de Courgette" ("My Life As Zucchini"). It's the redemptive story of a young orphan learning to process grief and find happiness in the present. In the first ten minutes, our main character (nicknamed Zucchini by his late alcoholic mother) has nowhere to go but a surprisingly homey and well-run orphanage. After a tough start, he begins to make friends with the others, including a new cute girl. Courgette and Camille bond during a weekend ski trip, where he makes a toy boat for her out of his mother's beer can (his most treasured momento). The kids have a snowball fight, dance to German techno in their chalet, and cleverly expose Camille's would-be legal guardian as a fraud and jerk.
There's no sugarcoating of the bleak circumstances that led to each kid's orphanhood, but there's a genuine, organic development of kid alliances. Everyday banalities like cafeteria lunch and being tucked in at night mark the slow but sure passage of time and the innate evolution therein.
We've also studied how the French government subsidizes the film industry and urges people to go to the theater. They support theaters, or at least projectors, in almost every small town; fund all kinds of discount tickets; and limit movies broadcast on TV. This might be the most French part of cinema -- reinforcing egality and fraternity by "liberating" people from their couches and incentivizing them to go out and bask in the warm glow of their culture.
a still from "Fantasmagorie," probably the first film animation, 1908
Garden update: we dug a trench to put up a fence against the rabbits.
I got a rug and a desk, and am searching for just the right milk-crate seat
The lilacs just started!
