A Cinematic Week

James and I both enjoy going to see films on the big screen, but seldom have I visited the cinema so often as I have in the past week.  It all started when we decided to reinstate mid week film night.  This is something that we used to do years ago when I was studying for my diploma in autism. I had to go to a lecture every Thursday night which finished at about 8:30 PM. So James would come into town to meet me and we would go to see a film.  It was great fun but rather late to go to the cinema when we both had work in the morning. I remember that one of the films we saw was "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", so it must have been in 2009. This time around, we decided that we would try going to our mid week film immediately after work, and eat later.
And so on Wednesday, we met outside the GFT and watched "The Post", a film about the Washington  Post's bold decision to publish government documents about Vietnam in the early 1970s, and the consequences thereof. It was a good film starring Meryl Streep  and Tom Hanks, and was very watchable considering that due to its subject matter, it was all talking and not much action. We then phoned Alasdair  to ask him to put the tea in the oven. However it turned out that he was still at the office, so he joined us for an impromptu dinner at the Red Onion.  Our first midweek film night was deemed a resounding success.
 I watched the next film by myself. Readers of this blog will know that I love French films, and I saw that "Une Vie"  was on at the GFT on Friday. However my attendance depended on leaving school sharp, and being lucky with both the traffic and parking if I was to make it on time. And indeed I was lucky!  I even got parked right across the road from the door of the GFT, and rushed to get myself a coffee before slipping into my seat just as the film began. Based on a novel by Maupassant, it is simply about the life of a woman. Our heroine, Jeanne, is naive and hopeful at first but becomes disillusioned over time. However it ends on a note of hope, and as her maid tells her, "La vie, voyez-vous, ça n'est jamais si bon ni si mauvais qu'on croit" (Life, after all, is never as good or as bad as we believe it to be.) It was a beautiful wee gem of a film.
Our final film of the week was on Saturday night. I was keen to see the film about Churchill, "Darkest Hour".  I thought it was awfully good. Gary Oldman was fantastic as Churchill, and the uncertainty and tension of the events leading up to Dunkirk in 1940 were very well portrayed. I hadn't realised that there was still a lot of support for appeasing and negotiating Hitler at that time, and it was fascinating.
So it was a very satisfying week of films - we will definitely continue our mid week film night!