secondlina | Four pink bunnies outta five!!!! (Reply)

Yesterday I watched two new movies as I was drawing. The first was an old one called Erin Brocovitch and the second was a new french movie called "Odette Toulemonde" (translates to "Average Odette" or "Odette who's like everyone else"). What I liked about both movies is that they opposed everyday people to rich, cultured people. In Erin Brocovitch, that opposition is a lawsuit regarding contaminated water in a small village of middle class to poor americans. In Odette, the opposition was between cultured people and their art versus average people and the artists (often looked down upon for being commercial or mass-pleasing) that make them happy. Odette shelters in her home her favorite writer while he's down on his luck and about to kill himself after a destructive critique by another writer who is very cultured and sleeping with his wife.

The writer gradually learns from Odette that being a "sellout" artist that pleases "little homemakers, stewardesses, sales clerks and hairdressers" is not a bad thing, that you need both types of artists in our world and that people should not look down on him because what he writes is accessible and happy. I like the idea of happy and accessible art being seen as good, because nowadays, complicated, depressive things seem to be getting all the spotlight.

Sometimes, you just need a little happiness to fill up your batteries, which is why movies like that one, that is not special, that is not incredibly deep, are needed and popular and have a wisdom all their own.

Anyways, if you can find it in english, rent it. It's a mix between Mary Poppins and Amélie Poulain (another really good and acclaimed french movie available in english!)