e's says, "it's monday!"

Let's start with a beaver. I like beavers. I like Mr. Beaver in the first Narnia movie. I like anything with innate ability to build a house... especially as it has to cut down the forest with its bleeding teeth to do so.

I also like Mel Gibson, despite the all-around angry guy he's become, or has finally allowed us to see. I've loved him as an actor ever since Galipoli, my first Mel Gibson film, a beautifully poignant and tragic historical epic.

I'd title this post as one in a long line of my "Pithy Reviews" but I haven't seen this film. I simply hope to. Judging strictly from the trailer alone it appears to be just what the doctor ordered for Mr. Gibson... both personally and professionally. I can only hope there is a lesson in the sets and dialogs of The Beaver that will give Mr. Gibson some personal clarity and, perhaps, a point in the right direction.

One review I've read claims this is not a drama... and is not meant to be comedic. I can only imagine how uncomfortable some might feel watching a man brought to this depth of depression and not be asked to laugh. The previews takes pains to make us want to laugh, so... how does that work? A drama that's not a comedy but asks us to laugh anyway. What is funny about a man who breaks down and struggles to find his way back? I hope I get to find out.

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Pithy Review
(a few years late)

The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke. The most depressing movie I've ever seen. I want to say it was also beautiful, but now that I think about it... many of the camera shots were beautiful; the imagery was captivating, but there was nothing beautiful about the story. In short, The Wrestler is a personification of personal despair and flogging loneliness.

I'm not even sure I liked it; I felt enthralled by something I couldn't pull my eyes away from, like a train wreck you see coming but can't turn away from. There wasn't even a Rocky fanfare at the end... not at the beginning, the middle... no where. It opened without a shred of discernible hope, and it died that way. Even at the end with the hope of a Talia Shire moment in the person of Marisa Tomei... Nothing.

Disaster porn. You don't want to see the blood, the tears, or the bodies as you drive slowly by... but neither can you turn away. I've always liked Mickey Rourke, and his performance here was stellar, but a more depressing film he could not have made.

In the end I was, perhaps, more impressed that I sat all the way through it without changing the channel. Which means I'll likely watch it again sometime in the future.

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Excerpts from:

The Trouble with Happiness
Alexander Green, Whiskey & Gunpowder, May 16, 2011

"Every life is lived between the poles of joy and sadness. Laughter and love are part of it. But so are pain and suffering. To deny the tragic aspects of the world is to suppress a large part of what it means to be human...

Great artists often try to awaken us — or stir our conscience — by reminding us of the more doleful aspects of life. In response to the 16th Street Church bombing in 1963, an attack by the Ku Klux Klan in Birmingham that killed four girls, saxophonist John Coltrane wrote "Alabama," an instrumental work that expresses anguish and sorrow more eloquently than words.

In 1890, Vincent Van Gogh, overcome by feelings of worthlessness, walked out into the southern French countryside and shot himself in the gut with a pistol. Just 37, he died from the wound two days later. Yet in the previous two years — and despite his bleakness — he completed more than 200 paintings, many of them masterpieces.

Handel, after years spent at the top of the musical world, fell into terrible poverty, ill health, and deep depression. Yet from the depths of profound despair, he completed his greatest work, "Messiah."

Beethoven raged against advancing deafness and his own finitude, yet created immortal works during this period, including his Fifth Symphony; his only opera, Fidelio; his late string quartets; and the Ninth Symphony, with its triumphant "Ode to Joy."

We all want to be happy. But life is also about education, work, courage, honor, empathy, and resilience in the face of hardship. Real contentment comes from a feeling that your life is worthwhile, that it is dissolved into something meaningful and great. That leads to gratitude.

And gratitude, it turns out, is an indispensable part of happiness.

It's worth a read, if you have time.