Elephants can remember, can we?

A dvd on John McCain was lying on the shelf. A piece of paper taped to the shelf said "Free to take"...

I had gone with Bing to check out the Ann Arbor District Library book sale. Generally a good place to be. Anything from cheap novellas to the classics available for a dollar or less! Second hand (or worse) of course but who cares! Among the hundreds of, well, mostly unreadable books and cds/dvds is a shelf for free stuff. These are for things that attract so little attention that it is inconceivable people would be willing to spend even a dollar on them. This is where I saw the dvd on John McCain's life lying around. I felt sorry for him. No not politically but because here was the story of a man who fought for, arguably, the most powerful position in the world and came up second best. As a consequence, today, no one is willing to spend even a buck on him! Would a dvd on Obama's life be 'sold' for free (or even a dollar) anywhere? No way! and that's cos he won, bottomline! Are we humans, as a species, so unforgiving to those who are second best? Are people who come up second best not worthy of being remembered? Are we that critical of failure? I felt a tinge of sadness thinking how unfair this was to the 'runners-up'...but , then, on deeper thought realized that it is not necessarily true that we forget...

The first example that struck my mind were Puskas' Magical Magyars. They lost the 1954 world cup soccer final to a ruthless Germany. How many remember the 1954 dour German team? Not many. How many, however, still talk fondly of Puskas and his team of magical Hungarians?

Then I remembered another instance when the runners-up became way more famous than the winners. The Titans (of 'Remember the Titans' fame) won the State Football championship but were runners-up in the National Championship. How many even know the name of the team that won the national championship that year? Not many I guess. But how many remember, remember always the Titans to this day?

So, I think, its not that history only remembers the winners. I think history only remembers those who manage to capture our imagination. Perhaps Obama managed to do this and McCain didn't. That would at least rudimentarily explain the difference in price and popularity of their lives on dvd.

The Page Turner

I just watched La Tourneuse de Pages (The Page Turner in French) a 2006 psychological thriller by Dennis Dercourt. Absolutely amazing! Very rarely have I seen a movie pan out so effortlessly and naturally in the course of 90 minutes without being loaded in heavy dialogues. Just strong visual imagery, compelling music and gripping sexual tension.

Melanie Provoust's (played by the beautiful Deborah Francois) career as a pianist is nipped in the bud as a 10 year old kid when she fails to win a scholarship to a prestigious institution. Reason: Ariane Fouchecourt (played by Catherine Fort), a celebrated pianist and judge who decides to sign an autograph in the middle of her audition fatally disturbing the fragile child's concentration. Now, I have had this done to me during an elocution competition and I know how pissed off something like this can make you feel...for a day, maybe even two...but then you get over it obviously, right?...but Melanie never does!...and that is what the movie is about...

Years after the incident, Melanie grows up to be a beautiful, polite, reticent, woman who takes up an internship in a law firm with no clear future in mind. She doesn't even look like the type who wants a future...she still looks like the defeated and wronged kid at the audition whose world just ended. Anyways, soon she gets the job of a nanny at her boss's house. The boss's wife is none other than the famous Ariane who has been left a little nervy because of a car accident and is preparing for her make-or-break concert. Slowly Melanie becomes an important part of the household. Her knowledge of piano gets her the job of a page turner for Ariane. This is where I thought that the movie would proceed with Melanie wanting to screw up Araine's concert for revenge but would, in the end, not do so because she was incapable of hurting anyone. How wrong I was!! Not only was Melanie not the quite, good girl that she was shown to be but she turned out to be a cold, calculating woman whose only desire in life was to destroy Ariane and everything around her. By the time she leaves the Fouchecourt household she destroys the entire family - Ariane, her husband and even their little kid.

I took this movie expecting an Autumn Sonata (a quiet, reflective, mother-daughter Ingmar Bergman movie I really enjoyed). The movie turned out to be a fantastic, unpredictable thriller albeit cold and chilling!