The Sea Inside

It's a bit late and we've a whole office meeting at nine and two new girls starting (who are bound to be asking irritating questions all day) so i better not yawn through the second more intimate meeting at 11, but i just wanted to say.....

Tonight i got a text when i was just about to leave work and half an hour later I was watching a man break his neck diving into shallow water, survive, and then kill himself 28 years later. At Rialto. The Sea Inside won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film this year. I'm not sure what it is about subtitles, (this one was in espanol Kel) if it's just that the films are better than Hollywood, or if it's the need to concentrate absolutely that captures and carries me away and leaves me feeling utterly exhausted and enriched (in a cathartic way) . The other three girls were balling at the end. Even tough as ole boots me had a tear when realisation dawned on the nephew and he sprinted off after the van carrying the character playing Ramon Sampedro, (the Spanish quadraplegic whose public campaign to end his life is the basis of the story - true story) , to his suicide party.

I loved the bits where he flew out the window to opera. If I flew, (not in a plane you understand) it would be to opera. I don't even really like opera. But it is fitting flying music. And I loved the grandad's sad face. Broke my heart, nobody does a sad face like that grandad. I loved all the sexual tension when the central protagonist is lying in bed paralysed from the neck down. It's quite a long film, but powerful, powerfully beautifully sad. I wish you would see it.

I've seen something floating around work about the NZ Medical Association shutting down the euthanasia debate here. I am going to seek it out and read it closely tomorrow. I've never proactively analysed the issue to see what my own stance is, possibly because it won't align with my abhorrence of the death penalty. It's too late to start getting metaphysical, but however little institutional religion is in my own life, I have this devout respect for the sanctity of human life. If I had to do that final weekend in the hospital with mum for 28 years.....I just don't know how you could watch someone you love suffer for that long and not start to question the whole the Lord giveth the Lord taketh away absolute.

I'm not even sure if I'm making sense again, tired and waffly, for something a bit more upbeat laugh at the all the crazy people in the pics below.