Busy Weekend

This weekend was crazy, between the carpet, IKEA, home depot and the holiday parties, I had barely any time to recharge my battery. I know that the urban legend says that I never ever stop and that I can go for hours at a time, but sometimes when all the activity starts to concentrate, I become tired. Well this weekend there was barely any time for that. I did manage to see 2 movies, both were a little disappointing, although one was much better than the other one.

On Friday I saw “Atonement” a story about a girl that commits a wrong and how that wrong affects her sister and her lover, and changes everyone’s life. The premise of the story is that a girl misunderstands an exchange between her sister and the ground keepers’ son, and accuses the boy of raping a girl This accusations sends the boy to jail and then to war (II W W) and to an estrangement from her sister and her family – this last was not very clear from the movie. The book got the Booker price I think, and it is a very good story. Very sad, but at the same time good, with compelling characters that are realistic and that at least impressed me very, very much. The ending of both the movie and the book is very dramatic, it takes the viewer/reader completely by surprise and it makes one ponder what was best.

The second movie, which I expected to love, was “The Golden Compass”. I read the book many, many years along and fell in love with the daemon concept and the complex story line that sets up this war between a little girl and the Magisterium (a stand in for the Catholic Church, or any form of organized and dogmatic religion). The book also explores truth and science and the triumph of the rational over the irrational, and in further books it explores more complex subjects such as the nature of God and the role we play in this universe as humans. One of the things that attracted me to the book was its use of fantasy and science in something that is more real than a Fantasy Novel, but not a crazy science fiction story. I had high hopes for the movie, well it was disappointing. Not only do they chop of the last two chapters, but in order to keep the story under 2 hours, it keeps bouncing here and there and never really explaining any of the details. I have to say that I enjoyed the creation of the world in which Lira lives and that at least when I try my hand at rereading the books it will make for a faster re read since I can put faces to the characters and buildings to the locations.

Regardless, I am still exhausted, and it is only Tuesday