Going to the pictures. Feminist stuff. Some thoughts on Christmas starting too early and Hallowe’en nonsense..

 I went to the cinema the other evening. It’s a while since I saw a film on the big screen rather than on television.  Probably the last time was  a couple of years ago when Granddaughter Number Two and I went to see Spielberg’s reworking of West Side Story, a rather brilliant reworking in my opinion. This latest cinema visit was to see an Italian film, Mia Madre, directed by Nanni Moretti, which I went to see as part of a course on Significant Women in Italian Cinema which I am taking at the moment. 

It’s the story of a female film director going through a crisis for a variety of reasons:

• Her mother is dying in hospital, with heart and lung problems and moments of dementia interspersed with moments of clarity when she rails against her own decline
• At the same time she’s making a film about an industrial dispute and it’s not going quite according to plan
• Consequently she’s having a bit of a crisis of confidence which makes her occasionally bossy and snappy
• And she feels guilty for not taking more responsibility for her ailing mother but letting her brother bear the brunt of all that
• Her teenage daughter is going that stroppy that teenagers do so well
• The American actor flown in to play the industrialist in her film is a pain in the neck, sometimes understands Italian and sometimes doesn’t, forgets his lines, charming but loud

All in all it’s a sad but sometimes funny story. John Turturro, playing the difficult American actor steals the scene on occasion, the brother, played by Nanni Moretti is going through something of a midlife crisis of his own but most of our attention is on the film director, played by Margherita Buy, breaking down a little more each day. A look at a woman being pulled in all directions at once. 

At next Tuesday’s session we get to discuss the film. Interesting stuff. 

After the film, walking back to the tram stop at St Peter’s Square, next to Manchester’s lovely round central library, my friend and I chatted about the film but also about other stuff. He remarked at one point that he can’t understand people getting worked up about the shops being full of Christmas stuff already. After all, he said, it allows people to budget, buying Christmas stuff now little by little and putting it away. A food theory, I responded, but what about mince pies? Are people really buying them a few at a time and putting them in the freezer until closer to the big day? 

Besides, we have to get Hallowe’en over and done with first of all. I am already heartily sick of the sight of carved pumpkins and houses and gardens bedecked with scare-crow-like witches and ghosts and, even worse those pretend cobwebs that apparently are death traps for birds! My friend told me he and his wife only bother about Hallowe’en for their grandchild, who is about 2 years old if I remember correctly. Surely that’s a bit young for trick-or-treating? But then, a friend and former student of mine has been busily posting pictures of her 2 month old, dressed as a pumpkin and “enjoying his first Hallowe’en!!” No further comment on that!

Then today I found an article about an English tradition that predates Hallowe’en: 

“English Heritage is this weekend reviving the medieval tradition of souling, in which people go from door to door, singing and saying prayers for souls in exchange for a small round treat called a soul cake, or soulmass-cake.”

Apparently it might go back as far as the year 1000. It gets a mention in Shakespeare’s “Two Gentlemen of Verona”and somewhere in the late 17th century  a man called John Aubrey noted it was the custom in Shropshire, “and not just among the Papists”, to pile a “high heap of soule cakes set on a table and visitors would take one, with the rhyme, ‘a soule cake, a soule cake, have mercy on all Christian soules for a soule cake.’”

But I bet that in the 17th century they didn’t drape their gardens with ghoulish decorations.

And I still think it’s too early to be eating mince pies! 

I’m off to make a big pan of vegetable soup. That’s what autumn weather makes me do. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!