I feel I must apologise for diverting from this blog’s supposed focus on Melbourne in all its visual glory and decay. In truth, this site was conceived as a way for me to express myself in another way than the raw cathartic form I had previously explored. I never intended to give away that style of writing – call it navel-gazing, self-absorbed, the thoughts and frustrations of an ordinary indebted Dad trying to make a better future; whatever you like. I’ll admit, it’s primarily for my benefit – but I hope to connect with you in some way in the process of doing it all the same. Which brings us to this post:
Valentine’s Day has passed for another year. Like many a male, I was never really a fan – favouring instead impromptu gestures of my affection, in keeping with my life philosophy of “first thought, best thought”. That all changed after my first Valentine’s Day with the woman who was to become Mrs H, when she arrived at my one bedroom flat in Prahran East with a big bunch of helium balloons, bottle of Amaretto and a card. Nothing was forthcoming from me in return. My excuse being something along the lines of my independent-minded non-sponsorship of the commercialisation of romance. Never again would I make that mistake. And this, our fifteenth Valentine’s Day together, was an especially enjoyable one for us. Seems things are turning for the better.
We had spent a good day together as family, and in the evening our neighbour came around to mind the girls, so Mrs H and I could make a rare outing as a couple again. We had decided to watch Up In The Air, and as we set off toward Carlton’s Cinema Nova, my co-pilot suddenly questioned our destination. She had thought we were going to Hoyts Norflands. So I pulled over a block from our house and consulted iPhone in vain for session times at that institution. Then, inspiration struck: I checked Palace Westgarth, and they had a 7PM session. Perfect.
We parked in Pearl St, parallel to High St, where I had to make a detour on the way to the cinema for a photo session motivated by the spectacle of a dumped Ford Festiva. Parking there on a Sunday summer’s afternoon took me straight back close enough to twenty years ago, when I first saw one of my favourite-ever films, Hal Hartley’s The Unbelievable Truth at the cinema formerly known as the Valhalla.
That fond memory made me think of other films I had enjoyed in the antiquated great hall of a cinema over the decades before its 2006 restoration and reincarnation as a Palace cinema… (I used to work with one of the daughters of the family which I believe still owns the building). Need I add that I never went there for the Rocky Horror Picture Show or Blues Brothers revivals (too popular for me, too cultish for elitist free-thinking serious young me…)
Quietly I found myself dreaming of a simpler time – the tastes of my formative adult years, simple joy over discovering the smell of coriander, watching Les Blank’s 1980 documentary Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers, basmati rice, wholefoods, henna hair dye, first exposure to feminism, existentialism, Jungian psychology, Naomi Wolf, indie pop (Clouds, Lemonheads, Falling Joys and Club Hoy, Club Hoy, Club Hoy), Glebe Point Road, drinking coffee black because I could, and more importantly, hope, self-belief, and determination to live a life without compromise.
As we bought our tickets and settled on a combo deal of two glasses of sparkling white and a large popcorn (even though I once worked with a former Village Cinemas manager who had begged me to never buy popcorn at the movies, on account of its grossly inflated margin) – well, the combo deal did save us three dollars – I quietly rubbed my foot on Mrs H’s calf as I gazed at the brunette with Chan Marshall bangs and a black T shirt serving us.
At a table for two we toasted our Valentine’s Day with plastic flutes, and Mrs H confirmed that she could see the attendant was my type, “She looks like she doesn’t want to be here, like she hates her life,” she smiled, and I laughed. On Friday night one of the parents from Little Miss H’s prep group had organised a family dinner at the Croc (Croxton Park Hotel) – most definitely not the kind of venue we’d normally choose to set foot in – and we’d had a good time there all the same. I had taken a photo of Mrs H, and I suggested she could use this photo for her profile picture on eHarmony.com.au. I suggested she could brand herself as a “newly single mum.”
“Newly bereaved mum,” she countered (and I hope she didn’t mean bereft)…
A friend of mine once observed that our exchanges are much like dialogue from a Hal Hartley film, and I took that as a tremendous compliment.
Time came for us to wind up our banter and we ascended to the first floor 150 seat cinema (site of the former balcony, where I had nodded off to narcoleptic late lamented River Phoenix in Private Idaho one lonely night in my misspent early days in Melbourne). No more creaky staircase up – I guess some would say the reincarnation of the Westgarth is uncalled-for; for me at least it’s not a Nando’s (there’s one of them newly opened over the road, regrettably).
So what of the film? Five stars for me. I’m very much one of the believers in George Clooney as the kind of star or actor who women want to watch and men want to be. I laugh just watching his expressions – and like I did when Mrs H and I watched Clooney teamed with Catherine Zeta-Jones in Intolerable Cruelty, I laughed so hard that I got told off.
This film’s story arc – of corporate downsizing specialist Ryan Bingham (Clooney), who finds himself thrust headlong into just the kind of life-changing great unknown he so masterfully positions his subjects – brings to mind the modern male mind’s overriding desire to control, to imprint, and leave behind something of permanence (other than children), to live without compromise, and to be alone, but to have access to a partner of some kind, for support at times of need. Like Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro)’s motto in Michael Mann’s Heat, “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner,” Ryan Bingham has his backpack, which he imagines stuffed with all the things we collect in life – starting with all the little material things, then the car, the home – then, heaviest of all, the people we trust with our “most intimate secrets…” He goes on to state that relationships are “the heaviest components” in our life – “all those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises.”
It’s true there have been many heavy experiences in the backpack I carry – and I have shared that burden with Mrs H by rights or not over the years. But the backpack is getting lighter.
Thanks for being here with me. I hope you enjoy the next instalment…
