Broken Embraces

last year Jache and i spent Christmas together pretending to be Jewish, eating Chinese food and watching an especially bad Tom Cruise film. (apparently) the experiment tapped into a far stronger mojo than we had anticipated, because two nights ago i found myself at the movies with both he and my yin - this time watching an especially good Almodóvar film - in the shadow of a chuppah.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that my last encounter with the man from La Mancha (not to be confused with the other man from La Mancha) found me retching and left me poetic, and i walked into the theater at 9:40pm with high expectations - i was not disappointed.

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Jache asked me what i thought of the film's motifs and meanings, and i heard myself regurgitating just as i did fifteen months ago about Volver. this time, however, my viewpoint was skewed neither by nausea not endorphins. i told him

(approximately):

the film was textured darkness, wonderful and nearly noir, full of drugs and sex and film and film and film. it wass like watching a sculpture built by a blind clocksmith, and it brought up for me the problematic nature of reliance upon artifacts for the reinforcement of memory. how much of what we remember is based on nothing more than photographs and journals?

and

if one were to lose his sight (as does the film's protagonist), she would be left only with memory, a memory falling forever further from the experience of living.

as the shutters close, what remains?