Keanu Reeves & Rachmaninoff: l'amour, les larmes

"Am I K in your book?" That is what Katherine wonders. Is she K in count Laszlo de Almásy's logbook? To those of you who can remember, the year is 1996 and the movie, The English Patient.

I remember going to the cinema not knowing anything about the film other than the fact that I would get to see the small, slightly pulled-up nose of Juliette Binoche. And back then, that was enough for me.

I never really imagined that it would make such a memorable impression on me. The story deals with topics that continue to fascinate me: history, exploration of the world, marriage, adultery, love and subsequently, loss.

This weekend, during the Oslo International Film Festival, I had the chance to see a couple of movies, one of them being the documentary called Side-by-Side, where Keanu Reeves interviews several movie directors (Martin Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh, Joel Schumacher, Christopher Nolan, James Cameron, among others) to discuss and debate the use of digital cameras versus film cameras. The film gives an excellent tour of how a movie is made and how digital technologies have made their way into the film industry. An eye opener for those of us who don't really know all that happens behind producing a movie.
And it was there, in the middle of the film, that I found out The English Patient was one of the first movies to be edited with digital technology (with a tool called AVID). No wonder those incredible aerial shots of an expansive desert, fading into the face of de Almásy, learning to speak with a Bedouin who describes a mountain the shape of a woman's back.
The debate is far from over but one stark conclusion is that film-based equipment producers have stopped research and development altogether.

To wrap up the weekend I saw the movie that won the 2012 Palme d'Or in Cannes: Amour. And I don't want to say too much except that it is a heartbreaking story about being human: loving, growing old together and inevitably, parting.
There is no background music to the film but there were grief stricken moments when, inside my head, I heard the melody of a piano piece being played. It was Rachmaninoff's Les Larmes - the tears.
And it continued to play on and on, without wanting to leave my head. 

Homage to Raymond Carver and Mikhails Tals

Mopeds buzzing by, waiters dribbling their way around tables and women trapping their skirts against the wind. This is what I will remember from the time I sat at Les Deux Magots in Paris. But why do we remember only certain images, certain moments, and not others?
"I have large blanks. But I can remember some things, little things" wrote Raymond Carver in his essay called Fires. I have also large blanks.
Recently, on a flight back to Oslo, I sat next to a young couple who had to chase their young son along the aisle until the three of them collapsed, exhausted. I almost felt sleepy looking at the way the young parents dozed away, knocked right out unconscious. And when I saw father and son sleeping together, his little chest up and down, I wondered about the first time I flew. Only one image came to mind. I am three and my father is on the window seat, his chin resting on my shoulder while I, standing up between his legs, point at the plane's wing. The rest is gone.
I like to talk to people on airplanes -if they are awake- and I often get to hear the most astonishing stories. This summer, on my way to the Edinburgh book festival, I met a retired Scottish engineer who had been an expert on windmills. He told me about the first time he visited Oslo, in 1966 - way before the oil years - and how different a city it was. But what I found fascinating was the recount of his chess match in Nice, summer of '74, against the once world champion, Mikhails Tals. I had been working on a short story, inspired by Tals, after my visit to Riga but this was, to put it mildly, better than Veuve Clicquot in first class.
Listening to the way this man, already a few years into retirement, could remember the coolness of the pieces, the hushed Russian whispering and the extreme mental fatigue, made me want to write about him. To keep our brief encounter in my thoughts. And in my memory.