Fine and Dandy (The Movie Whore is Back)

Determined to be cheerful this morning, the above title just popped into my head. Quickly typing it, I determined to do a sort of chain-of-consciousness, let the old subconsciousness bubble up and become a stew of words. See what happens.

Yesterday afternoon I went to The Weather Man, with Nicholas Cage. Had I known the movie was so intense, I'd have probably chosen another, but it turned out to be just the right message.

The opening vision of churning fields of broken ice on Lake Michigan and the low-key slushy winter atmosphere throughout is an unrelenting humid backdrop for the target practice that is a theme in the movie. Cage, who plays Chicago weather man Dave Spritz, is the target of his father's blank questioning, he is the target of food (Big Gulps, soft tacos, Frosties...) thrown from car windows by his viewing audience, his daughter is the target of taunts from schoolmates, and his son is the target of a sex offender. At one point the distracted Spritz goes through a mental narrative where he tries to figure out why people throw things at him. Asking himself "why" and "who" would throw things at people, he suddenly realizes that clowns are the only people that get things thrown at them. But Spritz, embracing the sport that his daughter rejected, practices archery and ultimately takes aim at his own sense of failure.

I thought the movie was a comedy. I thought I needed a comedy, but the unrelenting tumult of Spritz's life (mirroring the icy undulations of the lake and the chaotic weathermaps on TV screens) and his inability to defend himself or be understood, is eased in the end by a father's understanding and by his ability to forgive and accept himself.

Whew. I really liked Nicholas Cage's character, a complicated mix of sensitive and offensive, loveable and abhorrent. Pretty normal, I guess. And just the movie I needed, it turns out. So the Movie Whore is back, and today perhaps I'll see Elizabethtown. Or maybe Shopgirl.