Departures

My father died suddenly. I found out some days later via email, from a distant relative who had no other way of getting in contact with me. My father and I had not been close in recent years. I loved him, but he could be an impossible man, and we simply didn't know how to reach across the divide old wrongs had created and relate to each other. This made saying goodbye difficult.

In the days and weeks following his death, memories I didn't know I had came to me like things dredged up from the depths of the ocean. Some of them were trash, some were treasures. Amidst these memories, I finally found my closure. But if I could have, I think I would have availed myself of the services of the NK Agency, whose work is at the core of the lyrical Japanese drama, Departures.

I begin with these personal details not to elicit sympathy or to make this about me, but rather because I think Departures is a film that, more even than most, we see through the lens of our own experiences. It makes us reflect on our own feelings about death, and about life. I certainly couldn't help but see profound echoes of my own life in Daigo's experiences.

Daigo has always dreamed of being a cellist. But after his orchestra in Tokyo is disbanded due to a lack of funding, he must put his dream aside and get a practical job to support himself and his wife. Responding to an ad in the paper for what he believes is a travel agency, he is greeted with the world's shortest job interview.

“Will you work hard?”

“Yes.”

“You're hired.”

What he doesn't know at that point is the boss's gift for sizing people up. The boss later tells him, “You were born to do this.” I had the feeling he'd known this since he'd first laid eyes on Daigo. When confronting people at their most vulnerable is a part of your job, it helps to be perceptive about them.

For as it turns out, NK is not a travel agency. They are an “encoffinment” service. They perform the ritual of preparing the deceased for departure from this life. The ritual is a kind of performance, and it is of course not for the benefit of the dead, but for the living. We see Daigo and the boss perform the ritual for a number of families, each grieving in their own very different way. One man pushes his grief at his wife's death down deep inside him, and struggles to maintain a facade of stone. But during the ritual, Daigo and the boss add that perfect detail the man needed to recognize his wife, to grieve and to say goodbye. In another, the encoffinment ritual offers the parents of the deceased a last chance to make up for past wrongs to their departed child by finally acknowledging the identity they had always denied her. (Yes, this hit me pretty hard.)

As Daigo and the boss went about their work, I was powerfully reminded of the pair of casualty notification service officers played by Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster in The Messenger. Their unenviable role is to deliver the shattering news that begins the grieving process, while the NK Agency offers a chance to start bringing it to a close, but both pairs see people at their most
vulnerable. Casualty notification is a terrible duty, but also, as Harrelson's character describes it, a sacred one. I think the same is true of the encoffinment service in Departures. Not everyone sees it that way, and much of the film's drama lies in Daigo's struggles to accept his new occupation, and in the ways he is shunned by some for what they view as shameful work.

Of course they don't understand the dignity in what he does. They haven't seen it. We have. And crucially, during scenes of encoffinment and throughout the film, the camera is typically still, drinking in the events in long takes that transport us, without distraction, into the homes of the bereaved, and the film's other lovely locations. At the disused coffee shop that once belonged to Daigo's father, old records line the walls, and the stillness of the camera lets us absorb the place so completely, we can almost smell the musty air and feel the weight of memory.

All of this may sound terribly serious, and in many ways it is. But just as in life, humor sometimes emerges from the most serious of circumstances, and I was repeatedly impressed by how deftly and naturally the film followed up its most heartbreaking moments with moments of quiet, honest humor.

I was surprised, after viewing the film,to see it criticized by some for its sentimentality. I have a strong distaste for calculated sentimentality, for musical flourishes during sappy moments to create a pull on the heartstrings where none has been earned. Yes, Departures is a sentimental film, but it earns its sentimentality. Its tugs on the heartstrings—and they are numerous and powerful—are rooted in truth, and the musical flourishes that punctuate one of the film's most memorable scenes come straight from Daigo's heart.

Memories of murders at the movies

Lately, I've seen three films that I've found deeply absorbing, all dealing with the consequences of corruption in systems of justice. Seeing them in close proximity to each other has had a profound effect on me, and they've grown into a kind of trilogy inside me, the thematic relationships between them increasing their power in my subconscious. I can't find the words to do them justice by half, but I need to try to process them.

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Memories of Murder, 2003, directed by Bong-joon Ho

I'd not heard of this film until I saw it listed among Cinema Scope's best films of the past decade. Bong Joon-ho had also directed the great creature feature The Host, and I love a good crime film. I had to see it. I was not quite prepared for just how good it was.

Memories of Murder is a police procedural inspired by the investigation of South Korea's first known serial killer. In the provincial area where the murders are taking place, police procedure often involves trying to coerce confessions out of suspects who may or may not be guilty. A cop from Seoul, Detective Seo Tae-Yoon (Kim Sang-Kyeong) shows up to help with the investigation and his determination to get it right and to not just wrap things up by squeezing a confession out of an innocent man leads to a lot of tension between him and the local cop at the forefront of the investigation (Song Kang-ho, at least as valuable here as in The Host). Also making things difficult is the lack of forensic technology available in South Korea at the time, requiring DNA evidence to be shipped off to the U.S. for processing. In this corrupt and deeply lacking environment, the standards of Detective Seo may prove unsustainable.

Song Kang-ho's character initially seems like a sad and unredeemable excuse for a police officer. But there are situations in life that can change us. There's a final scene and a final image here that belong to Kang-ho, and that, for me, make up one of the most perfect and unforgettable conclusions to a film that I can recall seeing. It's a powerful evocation of how moments long gone can continue to haunt us forever, of how, as it's phrased in the film Magnolia, "We may be through with the past but the past ain't through with us."

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The Secret in Their Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos), 2009, directed by Juan José Campanella

A very different film with a lot of very similar themes, this Argentinian movie won the Oscar for best foreign film. Some have criticized it for being too conventional, but I admit, I love its conventionality. It is a film in the classic tradition, deliberately paced, expertly directed, confident and beautiful.

Jumping between the mid-1970s and the late-1990s, this is a story of a retired legal official (Ricardo Darin, whose eyes speak volumes) now writing a novel that's inspired by a murder case that continues to obsess him, some 20-plus years later. His efforts, and his long-burning feelings for his former superior, lead him to seek her out, and we are privileged to sit in on their intimate conversations.

The film works both as an absorbing love story and as a compelling crime thriller, and like Memories of Murder, it's also a criticism of corrupt systems of justice. It finds humor in unexpected moments and is gorgeously photographed, cutting loose from its mannered confines for one exhilarating scene at a packed soccer stadium, strung together as one long take, a shot made no less ingenious by the certain use of computer effects.

Some films with hefty political messages to convey can't balance their agendas with the human factor. This one absolutely does. I really feel I came to know the two central characters who, in the looks they share, say "I love you" again and again even when decorum prevents them from saying it aloud.

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The Thin Blue Line, 1998, directed by Errol Morris

And lastly, a non-fiction film that explores a miscarriage of justice in the United States. This documentary is about the murder of a police officer in 1976 and how an overzealous district attorney, obsessed with maintaining his conviction/death penalty rate, had an innocent man put on death row for the crime. It's been described as the first film that actually solves a real-life murder mystery. It's also credited as the film that popularized the use of dramatic reenactments, but what I love about Morris' recreations is that they're impressionistic and dreamlike, much more haunting than the typical straightforward crime reenactments you often see on television. They confuse the actual event more than clarify it, which is only appropriate, as we hear wildly differing eyewitness accounts and interpretations of the moments just prior to the murder. While the facts of the case are compelling in and of themselves, Morris turns them here into something deeply cinematic.

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When systems of justice fail the people they are meant to serve, when they persecute the innocent and let the guilty go free, everyone suffers.

Greenberg: "Hurt people hurt people."

I expect that some people will come away from the new Noah Baumbach film Greenberg disliking the movie because they dislike the main character. Disliking Ben Stiller's Roger Greenberg is understandable. He doesn't earn our admiration and he doesn't deserve our sympathy. He's really quite an asshole. He lashes out at everyone and everything, penning vitriolic letters to American Airlines over seating conditions and to Starbucks for the Starbucksification of culture. Mostly, he lashes out at the person who deserves it the least: Florence, his brother's family's 25-year-old assistant, who is far more patient with Roger than he deserves.

But Florence understands what many others don't. She knows that not everyone has the skills necessary to function like a normal person in society, that what is absolutely effortless for most is downright impossible for others. “Normal things are hard for him,” she says in Roger's defense to a girlfriend who wonders why she puts up with him at all. At times, we can see that she asks herself that, too. But she must understand that in some way, it's not really her he's tearing to shreds when he launches into rant after rant, but himself.

He certainly has reasons to be angry at himself. At 25, he was in an up-and-coming band. With characteristic self-absorption, he made a decision on his own that affected the fate of everyone in the group. Though one of his former bandmates, Ivan (Rhys Ifans), makes an effort to maintain a friendship with Roger, they've never really forgiven him for it. They (and we) are flabbergasted by how, for so long, he still fails to outwardly take responsibility for his actions. A conversation late in the film is fascinating for the way in which this finally shifts for Roger, and for how, even in the midst of acknowledging that he behaved poorly, he still directs his anger outward at Ivan, who has made peace with the normal family life that replaced the rock stardom he once dreamed of, the sort of normal life that would be so impossible for Roger.

Greta Gerwig is great as Florence. It's a natural performance that conveys the complexity of her feelings about Roger and about herself in subtleties. She doesn't know what she wants to do with her life, which perhaps is why she gravitates to the 40-year-old Roger, who, after a nervous breakdown, is just “trying to do nothing for a while.” I still found it hard to accept that this rather wonderful young woman would get involved with such a neurotic misanthrope as Roger, but he certainly has no chance with a responsible woman his own age, at least not yet. Perhaps his relationship with Florence will help him grow into a man who does. At the very least, he should come away from it being a bit less of an asshole.

I didn't like Roger. But as someone who sometimes feels like I'm fumbling my way through life while everyone else has all the answers, I did see a bit of myself in him, and I did like this film.

7/10

Green Zone: Perhaps a bit too satisfying

Note: This commentary contains "spoilers." It won't spoil anything if you've seen the trailer for the film (which, like most trailers, gives away way too much) or if you've been paying any attention to news for the past seven years, but if you want to go into the film knowing as little as possible, see the movie before reading this.

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Green Zone, the new Greengrass-Damon collaboration, feels like a natural extension of the Bourne films they made together. Damon's hero is a smidge less far-fetched, though he still gets his Bourne-like action movie moment, and the political concerns are a bit more prominent, though they're still couched in a movie that is concerned first and foremost with being entertaining. And it is entertaining, even when the guns aren't blazing. Greengrass creates a sense of heightened activity and unrest in Baghdad, demonstrating again, as he did in the Bourne films and United 93, his talent for immersing us in locations that feel real. When action does break out, it's thrilling and visceral. But it was the political concerns that drew me to the film. I expect that some comparisons to The Hurt Locker may be made, but the two films actually have little in common in my view. Locker is set during the Iraq war, but it is about the psychology of its central character. Green Zone is about the war. Damon's character is just the tool the film uses to raise its questions.

Green Zone takes place in 2003, and Matt Damon's Roy Miller is on the ground in Baghdad to search for the WMDs that were Bush's excuse for sending us there. In location after location, Miller and his team come up empty. Miller starts to get frustrated, and to ask unpleasant questions about the source and quality of their intel. In doing so, he's clearly standing in for many of us who remember the frustration of those months, the sense that we as a nation had let ourselves be duped. He raises the questions with his superiors, with government officials and with Lawrie Dayne (the always excellent Amy Ryan), a Wall Street Journal reporter whose stories have supported the administration's claims about WMDs. Her stories make repeated reference to an Iraqi informant named Magellan. Miller's pursuit of Magellan leads both to the film's biggest and best action chase sequence, and to Miller discovering the truth we now all know about the existence of WMDs in Iraq.

The film smartly takes its title from the heavily protected zone in the heart of Baghdad that is depicted here as a luxurious area of babes and beer. It's appropriate because life in that zone betrays none of the tumult going on just outside, because the administration's policies were foolhardy and hopelessly out of touch with reality. It may be that in years to come, this will be one of the films that helps define our view of the war. But it's just a bit too ham-fisted in its handling of the questions that drive it to be the film the Bush administration's manipulation of the American people deserves. At one point, Miller confronts the smarmy government official who, in the film's version of events, seems to be single-handedly responsible for engineering the WMD deception, and yells, “The reasons we go to war always matter!” It's too precise in its confrontation of an issue that made many of us feel misled and deeply unsatisfied. Trying to vicariously deliver the satisfaction we'll never get from that situation feels a bit like cheating here.

7/10

A detective, a drug dealer, and a man who fires people for a living walk into a bar...

Reviews of three movies: Up in the Air, Sherlock Holmes, and 25th Hour.

Up in the Air

“Bird in a flying cage, you'll never get to know me well”

-The Police, “Man in a Suitcase”

There's a great scene early in Up in the Air that reminded me of those scenes in action movies where the hero suits up for battle. (Here's the quintessential example of that.)

But instead of preparing to combat an overpowering enemy force and emerge unscathed, Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is preparing to speed through the airport and get on his flight faster than mere mortals like you and me can even dream of. He is a travel commando.

Getting through airport security quickly is just a manifestation of his philosophy: moving is living. He preaches a no-strings-attached aloneness as a way of life. “We are not swans,” he says. “We're sharks.” He gives seminars to other traveling workers in which he instructs them on how to lighten the backpack of life, reducing the burden of all those unnecessary things so many people carry, like a home. And family. Clearly, this is a movie figure who, like Jerry Maguire and any number of other freewheeling men before him, must reassess his priorities and learn some valuable life lessons about connection and family before the credits roll.

But while I was a bit disappointed that the underlying meaning of the film is so predictable in that regard, the path it takes toward Ryan's change is unpredictable and delightful. It's a change that's set in motion by a chance meeting at an airport bar with Alex, who seems to be the perfect candidate for the occasional motel hook-up, appearing to be as committed to a lack of commitment as he is. Their first meeting evokes the famous scar comparison scene from Jaws, only Ryan and Alex show off the various accoutrements of a life committed to traveling for work. Alex is played with irresistible charm by Vera Farmiga, and it's easy to see why she has such a dramatic effect on the normally unwavering forward trajectory of Clooney's Bingham.

Equally vital to Bingham's journey, in its own way, is the connection he develops with young go-getter Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), who plans to save Ryan's firm tons of money by enabling them to do their jobs over the internet. But Bingham fights this, trying to demonstrate that face-to-face interaction is a necessary component of the job. Perhaps it is, or perhaps it's just that constant travel is a necessary part of his identity.

Clooney is exceptional here, playing Bingham as a man with depths he isn't even aware of, or has made a deliberate effort to deny. Perhaps that's necessary, given his line of work. Companies hire him to come into their offices and fire their employees. Clooney's glossy sheen is invaluable, helping him come across as both sympathetic and implacable in response to the emotional outpourings of the terminated employees.

Director Jason Reitman nails the tone, finding humor in sadness and sadness in funny situations so that the film never feels less than honest. And maybe it's just that I know so many people who have lost their jobs over the past year, but this film seems to come at just the right time, to reflect something important about where we are as a country right now, about the uncertainty of what's ahead. When Bingham fires people, he presents it as the opening of a door, the first step of the next great chapter of their lives. Perhaps he even believes it a little. And perhaps there is no harm in that.

Rating: 9/10

Double feature suggestions:

In Good Company (The evolving workplace of the 21^st century)
Lost in Translation (Connections between older men and younger women that don't involve sex)
Jerry Maguire (No matter how committed they are to being single, all men secretly want to settle down)

Sherlock Holmes

This movie has about as much in common with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories as the Tom Hanks-Dan Aykroyd Dragnet movie had in common with its source material, but this is at least a spirited reinvention. The production design is great, creating an alluringly grimy and gray vision of turn-of-the-century London. And like its protagonist, the whole movie is an awkward but interesting mix of brains and brawn.

Like most Guy Ritchie films, it's brawly and feels a little pleasantly drunk. Sherlock Holmes isn't as ideal a fit for Downey's tremendous charisma as Tony Stark, and so this film is not the truly terrific entertainment that Iron Man is, but he's still fun to watch, and he and Jude Law (as sidekick/live-in companion Dr. Watson) are surely one of the great gay couples in the history of the cinema. Also, it has Eddie Marsan, the crazy driving instructor from Happy-Go-Lucky! You all remember him, right? Right?! And hey, there's a great Dubliners track that plays over the end credits. So there ya go.

Rating: 7/10

25^th Hour

"Be on the lookout for the amber waves of grain
The green lady moved away and changed her name"

-Greenskeepers, “Vagabond”

Here's my timely review of this 2002 Spike Lee film.

It's a masterpiece. One of the very best films of the last decade.

Monty Brogan is spending his last night of freedom with friends, before being jailed for seven years. As played by Edward Norton, he comes across as affable, like a friend who was too clever by half in high school, saw a way to start earning some very good money dealing drugs, and quickly found himself in over his head. He is not without blame, and yet if we knew someone in his position, we'd probably feel a bit sorry for them.

We all commit transgressions, large and small, yet Monty is singled out while most of us enjoy impunity. In his own, perfectly legal way, Monty's friend Frank (Barry Pepper) makes huge amounts of money off of the misfortune of others. And English teacher Jacob (Philip Seymour Hoffman, in yet another incredible performance) finds himself on that line no teacher should cross with his student Mary (Anna Paquin). He's not unprincipled, you see. It's just that the drinks are strong, and she's oh so lovely...

The events of September 11^th are a constant undercurrent here, as the film opens with stunning images of the Tribute in Light, and Frank's apartment is on the very edge of Ground Zero. It's a time when perhaps as a nation we felt we were being punished and didn't know why, or felt that we as individuals had escaped punishment while others had not, and what had separated them from us, really?

I'm not sure what I was expecting going in to 25^th Hour, but I sure wasn't expecting a film that is so entertaining, a film so powerful and so rich with meaning that is nonetheless funny and simply a joy to watch. But it is, thanks to the screenplay, which takes its time with these characters, letting us just observe them and listen in on their conversations rather than forcing the machinations of a plot on every moment, and thanks to the fully realized performances, which make these characters so fascinating to observe.

I need to give special attention to the film's ending. It's a transcendent and unforgettable ten-minute sequence in which Lee's indelible images and the poetic lilt of Brian Cox's voice (as Monty's father, driving him to prison the day after most of the film's events) combine to create an impression of a life lived. I watched it over and over again, trying to absorb every ounce of its beauty, but came away with only the ability to imitate Brian Cox saying “My bar?” (“My bah? Jesus, my bah?”) Which is still pretty cool.

Last year, Monty Brogan would have been released, if he'd survived his time in prison. I hope he emerged unbroken, able to enjoy the rich promise of America that the film's ending suggests. But I doubt it.

Rating: 10/10

Watchmen

Watchmen is a very good film, if not an outstanding one. The film adeptly adapts the epic graphic novel into a comprehensible 2-hour-and-40-minute film, and there are enough delightful little touches (Lee Iacocca! Pat Buchanan! Robert Palmer videos!) to make its chilling alternate-reality 1985 feel like a possible extrapolation of our own. Strong casting helps considerably, particularly in the cases of Patrick Wilson, who is so extraordinarily ordinary as Nite Owl, and Jackie Earle Haley as the simmering Rorschach. And perhaps it helps that I'm old enough to remember the Cold War and had, at one point in my childhood, a very real sense of terror about the possibility of global thermonuclear war (Thanks, WarGames!), but the constant sense of dread over the possibility of just such a crisis in the film resonated with me pretty deeply.

There are times where the film, despite all this good stuff, feels constrained. There's a section in the graphic novel that deals not only with the origins of Dr. Manhattan, but also with the unique way in which he perceives time, with every moment existing concurrently. I consider it one of the most remarkable things I've ever read, comic or otherwise. I think much of what helps drive its power and helps the reader relate to and understand Dr. Manhattan's existence is the fact that the panels for each moment do exist concurrently, and so we exist outside of them and can behold several of them simultaneously. The film, of course, is by necessity linear, and so I was a bit disappointed with this aspect, and never felt a very strong connection to the nude blue superdude, though I don't think the film could have possibly measured up to the comic here. On the other hand, the much-ballyhooed change to the story's climax for the film is, I think, an improvement.

Watchmen has moments of inspiration, such as its terrifically theatrical opening credits sequence. On the whole, however, it lacks the spark of passion required to make a cinematic adaptation truly take on a life of its own (I'm thinking particularly of The Lord of the Rings films there), and ends up feeling like more of a companion piece to the graphic novel than something worthy of deep consideration in its own right. But regardless, it's a fascinating, goofy, often thrilling film that's true to the spirit and the ideas of the graphic novel. 8/10

Michael Clayton's GPS is busted.

And I don't mean that just in the literal sense. I mean that this is a man who has lost his way. But the good news is that he's starting to realize it. In an early scene, we see Michael Clayton, perfectly played by George Clooney, listen to a hotshot lawyer try to explain why it's not his fault that he just committed a hit-and-run, and you can sense that after years and years, Michael Clayton has finally fucking had it. He's just sick and tired of dealing with these morally bereft people, and of being one of them himself.

In my last post I compared Michael Clayton to Jerry Maguire, and I wasn't entirely kidding. Both films are about men whose professions have required them to put their ethics aside, and they each, in their own way, reach the breaking point. But that's pretty much where the similarities end. (If I was gonna put a double feature together with Michael Clayton, I think I'd pair it with the superb The Constant Gardener, another thriller which deals with a man taking on a corporation that puts its own profits ahead of human lives.)

The catalyst for Michael's change is the breakdown of another lawyer, Arthur Edens (played by Tom Wilkinson). Is Arthur crazy? Maybe a little, but in fact, considering how long he's been forced to subjugate his moral sensibilities in the representation of an agricultural conglomerate called U/North, his sudden snap seems like a step on the path toward being a complete human being again.

Of course, taking on a company that doesn't value human life brings with it certain dangers. Part of what makes Michael Clayton such an exceptional film is the way in which the very real ethical issues it's dealing with are so seamlessly intertwined with its function as a sleek and compelling thriller. It's also a terrific example of economical storytelling. It comes in at just under two hours, which is pretty remarkable considering the complex amount of information about this case, and these characters, that the film communicates. Writer/director Tony Gilroy's dialogue tells us a great deal about these people in a very short amount of time, and makes us see the decency in Clayton, obscured as it is by his actions.

Of course the cast is also crucial, and in addition to great work by Clooney and Wilkinson, there's also the always outstanding Tilda Swinton as Karen Crowder, U/North's chief counsel. We see her rehearsing responses to questions repeatedly in front of the mirror, and stressing out in a bathroom stall, but when it's game time, she busts out her game face and has the perfect non-answer for every question. She has also lost touch with her moral center, if she ever had one, and may be in too deep to have any chance for reclaiming it. At one point she is asked about her work-life balance, but there is no balance. Her work is her life, and it's a miserable one, but she has nothing else, and that's what makes her so dangerous. She has everything to lose.

Michael Clayton was thoroughly entertaining and satisfying while I was watching it, but its true power is in the way it has stayed in my head since then. It's a kind of horror movie, really, because the reality is that people and companies like these are all around us. They are part of our society now, and they are growing and spreading like a disease. Things are pretty bleak. The only hope for the human race is, of course, more outstanding politically and ethically charged films starring George Clooney.

Just Like Starting Over

I think one of the most fundamentally appealing aspects of games is the fact that if you royally fuck things up, you can always give it another shot. You can hit the reset button, or load a saved game, or make your way back to your corpse. You may need to play through a little or a lot to get back to the point of your colossal screw-up, but you can do it. In this sense, games improve upon real life.

My most recent job was a seasonal tech support gig that I was led to believe might very well have turned into a permanent position. It didn't, despite an outstanding performance by yours truly, and so I find myself, at 31, once again needing to do the whole job hunt thing. In a sense it's a new beginning, a fresh press of the start button, but I'm stuck with my current hand of cards, my age and experience, my successes and failures. In a game, if you're good enough, you can always rewrite the whole story. Not so here.

Now of course it's entirely possible that the fact that I didn't get a permanent position at this last place will end up being a blessing. Doing tech support doesn't exactly set my heart on fire, and my next job may well be better. But any way you slice it, searching for a job is kind of a drag. And it seems like every time I find myself in this position, I start noticing these articles all over places like Yahoo! about the importance of finding a job that really makes you happy. And hey, that's all well and good, and I would love to do just that, but really, what is that, exactly? Writing about games? Sure, but that's a tough field to get into, and while I think I'm decent at it on occasion, I'll be frank and say that reading the writers I have admired for so long has made me feel a bit like a Salieri aspiring to join a field of Mozarts. Which isn't to say that I won't keep trying. Who knows, maybe even at my age, if I try hard, maybe someday I'll be good enough.

Or maybe I'll just stumble into something that I never even gave any thought to before, but that winds up being a perfect fit. Or maybe, like the majority of people out there, I'll find another job that is simply that, a job, tolerable for the most part, occasionally frustrating, occasionally enjoyable.

I saw Michael Clayton yesterday. I recommend it. It's a lot like Jerry Maguire, except where that's a heartwarming romantic comedy, this is a slick, engaging thriller with deep-seated ethical concerns. (Go, George Clooney, Go!) There's a point in the film at which Tilda Swinton's character is asked about work-life balance. This, by the way, is a character who has no work-life balance whatsoever. Her life is work. And so she sort of laughs politely and says something like, "When you love what you do, there's your balance!" But the thing is, she's miserable! She hates what she does. She may not even realize it, but she does. Everybody in this movie makes tons of money and every one of them hates their jobs. And despite the fact that they make tons of money, they still worry about money constantly. So I'm pretty sure if I made more money, I'd still worry about money sometimes too, only in larger sums.

Really, I'm not sure what the point of all this is, except to say that I'm daunted by the prospect of finding a job again, and that I don't care that much about making lots of money. I'd rather make less money and enjoy my work more than make more money and hate my job. (Though I'm not about to take a job for nine bucks an hour or anything.) And while I'd like to have a better "life-work balance" than Tilda Swinton's character in Michael Clayton, I'd also rather have a job that I'm driven to work hard at because I love it and believe in it than a job that I'm just thankful to be done with after eight hours every day.

Well, at least by now I've had a bit of practice at this game. Here's hoping I do all right on this press of the start button.