I went to Brooklyn, Wellington to have dinner at Burger Wisconsin, (which I'll talk about more in another post)and afterwards go to the Penthouse Cinema, where I saw Prince Avalanche, as part of the New Zealand Film Festival. What a fantastic movie!  |
| More examples of the retro style in NZ in the cinema |
There was a 15-minute short film beforehand called "Helmut Makes a Quilt". A prime example of black humor, the film is about the exchange of letters between a quilting lady, Marion, and Helmut, who works in a prison laundry. Marion sends Helmut quilting patterns and they send each other hand-stitched presents. (Apparently the hand-stitched presents used in the movie were made by New Zealand volunteer crafters and stitchers!)
They get to a point where they'd like to meet, but Helmut is unable to leave the prison. So Marion devises a plan that Helmut agrees to implement, and from there the film takes a bizarre turn, and eventually ends leaving the viewers with a funny feeling, part wanting to laugh, and part intensely creeped out.
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| Art-deco style writing |
The feature film, Prince Avalanche, was another of those films that focus on two characters, which is one of the reasons I chose to go to this one from the Film Festival. Two men, Alvin and Lance, are highway workers who paint the center lines on the roads. Lance is the younger brother of Alvin's girlfriend, Madison - Alvin has employed him as a favor to his sister. The pair have utterly different views on life, and even a bit of initial contempt for each other, but eventually they come to a sort of friendship which emerges when both are faced with relationship issues and want to help each other out.
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| Plush couches to sit on while you wait for your movie! |
Prince Avalanche is funny, heartwarming and very realistic and consequently, a very effective film. The music, done by Explosions in the Sky and David Wingo, was great and a lot of the times quite simple, with sparse but enchanting acoustic guitar melodies during some parts of the movie and expansive, slow-moving harmonies during others. The music is worth listening to on its own (doing so right now here: http://music-mix.ew.com/2013/07/30/explosions-in-the-sky-prince-avalanche/...wow, that theme, so subtly powerful, and check out the changing meters in "Passing Time" if you're a music enthusiast like me!). The footage itself was beautiful and really showed off the majesty of American nature (set in Texas), which was great to see, being in New Zealand - good to see we're holding our own.
Seeing America on film like that made me feel a bit...well, nostalgic, I guess. And I realize that I don't really know where "home" is for me anymore. I haven't been back to America in four years, and for me that's a fifth of my life. I don't know how it'll feel the next time I set foot on American soil. If I'll feel welcomed or an outsider. I haven't lost my cultural identity, it's still "my country" I still introduce myself as an American...but all I know is, New Zealand does not feel like home to me. I do feel like an outsider here. Maybe I'll travel to Europe or somewhere else and find my home there, but I guess for now I'm at a bit of a loose end...and maybe that's not a bad thing.
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