Despite the fact that I’ve always been a bit of a
dyed-in-the-wool Englishman, I still have a soft spot for New York City. (I only ever went there once and
I was seventeen at the time. I expect it’s changed a bit since then.) I like
the energy, the characters, the plain speaking, the accents, the mix of
humanity in all its hues.
That’s what I like
about New York,
said one character. Everybody came from
somewhere else.
Not quite literally true, but who needs pedantry when you
can have poetry. New York
is an oddly poetic sort of place, even though I can’t for the life of me
explain why. And it seems to me to be probably the least American of any place
in America.
That’s because it seems to me that New
York doesn’t belong anywhere in particular. It has no affiliations,
or at least that's how it looks to an outsider.
And so I like New
York, but…
There was one scene in the film which lasted a mere two
seconds. It was a shot of a huge neon sign – or whatever passes for neon these
days – which obviously belonged to some big and self-important financial
institution. I don’t remember what it said because the actual words weren’t
important. What was important was the sense it evoked of the modern world and
the direction we’re taking. New York
suddenly became the fo'c'sle of some massive ship operated by a blind and deaf
captain and crew, heading on an unwavering course for the maelstrom.
The feeling only lasted a few seconds. The rest of the film
was fine.
No comments:
Post a Comment