Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Lines Of Force Surrounding Joan Cusack




... When Oliver refuses to call off the bomb, Faraday has to stop it before it's too late.

Faraday forces his car into a secure parking garage of a federal building, only to discover that he has followed the wrong van into the parking garage. Attempting to calm Faraday, Whit informs him that he is the only person not cleared to be in the garage. Realizing his mistake too late, Faraday rushes to the trunk of his rental car, opening it to reveal a hidden bomb just seconds before it explodes, killing Faraday, Whit, and 182 others. Posthumously, he is vilified as a terrorist seeking revenge for his wife's death. The Langs get away, and Grant, now orphaned, ends up living with relatives, not knowing of his father's innocence. After the Langs decide to move out of the neighborhood, Cheryl suggests that they should go "someplace nice, someplace safe."


Arlington Road
at Wikipedia



The tag-line for the film “Arlington Road”
is Fear Thy Neighbor. At the trick ending
when the troubled academic works out
what’s going on, the man runs to his car
and the camera zooms in on the car
and the whole impact of the trick ending
was lost on me because I only saw
the make and model of the rental car
because it was the same make and model
as a car owned by somebody I feared.

And I wondered why the movie’s “hero,”
who does nothing at all to save the day,
was named after one of my favorite
scientists who really was a great man.

It was a bad movie although I like
Joan Cusack and she was raised around here.

So there’s the car and “Michael Faraday”
and Joan Cusack grew up in Evanston
and the story of the film is about
a troubled academic working out
that someone he knows who seems pretty cool
in fact might be pretty bad with a plan
the troubled academic won’t survive.

It’s a bad film built on a trick ending
but it made a big impression on me
just because of its associations.

But I’m not of course an academic.

The rest was all close enough to scare me
because I do see myself as “troubled”
although more in a slapstick kind of way.

I have no idea what it all means
but I remembered all this stuff today
because I saw a small car, deep-sea blue,
that was the same make, model and color
as a car owned by somebody I liked,
and that made me think of the other car,
the car that was the same make and model
as the rental car in the trick ending
of “Arlington Road.” And I realized
the make and model of that car has slipped
out of my memory although I spent
a lot of time being afraid of it.

Having forgotten the make and model
of that car makes me smile and I’ll never
watch “Arlington Road” again. It’s been fun
thinking about the associations
but I’d rather keep them academic
so they can never blow up in my face.

























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