Pattern Recognition

Somehow, patterns have their own way of forming. Three weekends ago, it was classic Film Noir (Sunset Blvd, Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, etc.), two weekends ago courtroom dramas (Anatomy of a Murder, Judgment at Nuremberg, The Verdict….), last weekend was coming-of-age films (Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire), and this weekend too a pattern developed all on its own.

American Throwback
The pattern this weekend was ‘America as it used to be’. Lots of smoking. A peek into the social mores of ye olde Land of Dreams. In Revolutionary Road, that dream is still-born. In Changeling, dreams crash and burn amidst crime and corruption. And false dreams are created, in Mad Men season 1. As is advertising’s wont. And lots of smoking.

I recommend all three. Because beneath the veneer of Americana, all three have so much in common with us, and mutatis mutandis, something we all can relate to, in the here and now. Be it the couple in Revolutionary Road with its theme of settling for what is, in the ‘comfort of the familiar’. The truth that man always convinces that ‘there is always hope’ in everything, a Changeling would have us believe. Good stories, well told.