The Importance of Being Self-Important

This summer, 11 years ago, awesome had a new name:

Max Fischer.




I'm a little giddy. This movie's made me happy. Made me smile inanely as only a movie can.

I'm not going to pretend too hard to be reviewing this movie. It's about a 15 year old painfully precocious kid whose life revolves completely around his attendance (by scholarship) of his elitist private school - not actually the studies, but all the politics and clubs and school plays - and his relentless pursuit after the unattainable affections of a 1st grade teacher there, and this ridiculously long sentence doesn't come even remotely close to describing what this movie is actually about.

Let's see if I can. First off, drop everything and rush off to see it. Not even my earth-shattering sagacity is reason enough to have this film (or even its themes) spoiled. Plus the following frothing gibberings would make even less sense than they otherwise might.

Oh well.

It's curious how whenever I'm beginning to consider an idea, some work of art comes along and highlights and emphasizes the point out of any doubt.
The magnificently, flabbergastingly awesome thing about Max Fischer is how unabashedly head-over-heels in love he is with himself.

Realistically, he's probably an arsehole. He actually destroys a guy's car brakes at one point in the movie, so realistically he's an attempted-murderer. This isn't a realistic kind of movie.

Max realizes that if something's important to him, then it's important. The word "pretentious" does not feature in his considerable, wildly over-elaborate vocabulary. That's a good thing. I realize I just had a go at whoever translated The Count of Monte Cristo for pretty much the exact same thing, but I guess this is the flipside. Hell, I myself am the flipside. If "pretension" serves not to cultivate our feelings of superiority over others but instead to allow us to plunge head-first into whatever gets us excited, fuck what people think - then instead of disgusting it becomes something closer to heroic (in continuation of my My Left Foot thesis).

It's not just Max. This whole movie is saturated with this. Max's young protégé Dirk being a prime example. These guys have no sense of humour whatsoever, and this enables them to not observe how ridiculous they look. How ridiculous they are, I suppose. Nothing would be easier than ridiculing these dudes. But they're amazing. They are forces of life. They put us all to shame. They realize fully the importance of being who they are.


This is a little long (6 minutes), but it's too on-topic and astonishingly brilliant to not be posted:

Pomposity

It's probably not quite reasonable to assume that you will find this as amusing as I did, but I'm going to anyway.

I am currently trying a little harder than I should be to read The Count of Monte Cristo. The context is that my writing sometimes seems to me a little unnecessarily and obscurely verbose. So it comforts me to know that I'll probably never sink to the level of this translation's glib pretentious assholery.

Exhibit A:

"'...Am I not right, Villefort?'
'I beg your pardon, madame. I really must pray you to excuse me, but - in truth - I was not attending to the conversation.'
...
'Never mind, dearest mother,' said a young and lovely girl, with a profusion of light brown hair, and eyes that seemed to float in liquid crystal, '`tis all my fault for seizing upon Monsieur de Villefort, so as to prevent his listening to what you said. But there - now take him - he is your own for as long as you like. Monsieur Villefort, I beg to remind you my mother speaks to you.'
'If the marquise will deign to repeat the words I but imperfectly caught, I shall be delighted to answer,' said Monsieur de Villefort."


Otherwise known as "Sorry, didn't catch that."

That's actually been one of the highlights of my day. It's almost funny enough to not make me want to punch the translator in the face.

I suppose Dumas just might actually write like this, but if so, fuck him too.