The Movies (and their occasional treasures)

Through what was really random chance and marketing fate, I (and one or two others) caught a session of Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone at the Westgarth last night. In one of those delightful moments, it turned out to be the only thing about the day that went right.

A summation - I didn't get to sleep til about four in the morning the night before, through no fault of anyone's. I then had to get up at eight thirty to find my way to a session of Babel (sullied, though I enjoyed it, by the fierce disenjoyment of those around me) and bookended by the life-sucking greyness of one particular cinema studies teacher who lost his passion for people around about birth. Not only does he loudly shush the sparest of whisperings, he actually separated two people. Moved them to different seats, as though we were primary school students.

After all this, there was a fair bit of waiting around, boring for me and Morgan, but I imagine far worse for Martin, who had to rewrite an already written essay. We were not alleviated by one iota of sunshine from dawn til dusk, by the way.

Once this was all done, a haphazard planning wound us up at the cinema much too late - we had intended to get there early in order to photograph the beautiful view for purposes that may or may not be legal. Suffice it to say, we weren't interested particularly in the movie we were watching, it was only an excuse to get inside the theatre. Once we got there (late, fucking peak hour), we found that the movie we were watching was in entirely the wrong cinema.

The interesting part of all of this, however, is that Gone Baby Gone was a really great movie. And I don't mean "great" in the popular, flippant, I-liked-it-a-lot-in-despite-of-my-appalling-taste sense of the word. I mean it was a really well written, well directed, well structured, well acted piece of cinema with a message that hadn't been pedaled to death by a million other far better films. Some how the Affleck clan have created something genuinely great.

I won't go on, but I will say that, not unlike The Departed and Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone is a very unique and rich portrait of Boston, a town which seems infinitely able to harbour characters and stories worthy of Shakespeare - and attractive to filmmakers that can treat them with the respect they deserve. Casey Affleck's almost childlike persona resonates strongly here, where he becomes an ambassador for the not-yet-bitter but still grown-up generation of Boston and its social catastrophe, a man with morals and principles struggling to assure himself of them while their practicality is being severely undermined. It's a film where that which is inarguably right is also inarguably wrong.

Yet none of it ever becomes abstract - very wisely every politic and motive relates firmly to the issue of a child that is in danger. The town which seems so eager to swallow up children and spit out damaged goods is also eager to save the innocent from itself. It's a simple story, and one whose twists actually serve it well, rather than seeking to simply be surprising and keep things fresh. It's a film that could satisfactorily end at almost any time, and yet that we are pleased to see keep going. And its ultimate end is, in this viewer's opinion, immaculate. I came out of Gone Baby Gone with faith renewed in contemporary cinema.

When we left, someone had dinged my car and the driver's door wouldn't open.