My first Swedish film

I watched my first Swedish film this weekend - Let the Right One In. It was beautiful. Incredible. The examination and development of the relationship between the film's two protagonists, Oskar and Eli, two "children", set within a dark, cold, lifeless suburb of Stockholm, is so tender and moving, yet so tortuous, that you don't know how to feel about it. Eli overwhelms you with her loneliness; Oskar is alone too, but more fortunate than Eli. Not only is this relationship so beautifully developed, but the film is also aesthetically one of the most amazing I have ever watched. It's like every shot is one caught perfectly on a photographer's frame. Whether it's the bleakness of the estate-like housing development that Oskar and Eli share, or Eli sitting in her cold, empty room, hunched and staring at the wall common to her and Oskar's room. The film is not about vampires. In fact, the whole vampire theme I think is merely there to emphasize the emptiness and melancholy of the film's two protagonists. Also to emphasise the coldness, the bleakness of the suburb where they live. This film is pure art - and at its very, very best.

An evening well spent?

Haven't been here for a while. Thought it was time for some self-talk....

I watched '2001: A Space Odyssey' last night, and what a waste of time it was! I just never get Stanley Kubrick films. There's the metaphysical and the artsy...and then there's Kubrick. For me, he's just plain pointless. I don't get his films. Maybe I don't possess the subliminal intellect one needs to understand what Kubrick is trying to say most of the time, but jeeez...that was one completely pointless film !!

However, I did get a reminder of the sheer impossibility of the universe. It kind of made me feel like maybe there never was a 'big bang'...maybe the Universe has always been and will continue to be so...I thought this because I just had this overwhelming feeling (during the film) that it seemed impossible that the Universe, as we know it, could have been created in the normal sense of the term.

I think the Universe is infinite. I think that even if it was theoretically possible to do so, one could not measure the Universe from end to end. How is an infinite space created?

There must be physical proof of the 'big bang', and I don't doubt any natural explanation of the way the Universe is. In fact, I am NOT a Creationist. My thoughts above are more philosophical in the sense that I - and probably most - cannot comprehend or even get the mind to imagine the wholeness of the Universe. Even if I try, and that is a rare way to pass time, I always ask myself in what or where is the Universe contained? It's weird I guess but that's where the limitation of the human brain - not in an unintelligent sense, but in the sense of being unable to form even a basic sense of the 'problem' - really shows: I cannot imagine something not being contained in something else. I am in my room; my room is within my flat; my flat is within the apartment block; the apartment block is in London; London is in the UK; UK is an island on Earth; Earth is a planet in the Milky Way; the Milky Way is a galaxy in the Universe.....

And that's where it ends.