Tragicomedy

Tall Guy and I went to the movies the cinema on the weekend. We went twice. Here’s why:

A few weeks ago when we went to see War Horse (SO good, by the way, AND they passed out vouchers for a discount on the book!), we saw a preview for Coriolanus, a film-adaptation of Shakespeare’s good-ole mama’s boy political tragedy, complete with full-blown betrayal and incestuous undertones. 

“That looks good” Tall Guy said, just as I was saying, “Hmm, we should see that!”

(The trailer opens with a close-up of Ralph Fiennes’ face covered in blood and quickly flashes around to scenes of bombed-out Rome, tanks rolling down the highway, and Gerard Butler leading a band of machine-gun wielding men, also all a bit bloody. Why did I think we should see it? I like Shakespeare set in modern times, I like Vanessa Redgrave and I currently love Jessica Chastain.)

I was surprised that Tall Guy was interested. 

“It’s a film adaptation of Shakespeare…” I said.

“Look at all that blood!” he said. Or something like that.

And so, without further comment, we went to see it last Saturday.

“YOU TRICKED ME”, Tall Guy hissed, not five minutes in, “this is not even in ENGLISH”.

(Flashbacks to Billy Elliot, which Spanish Sistah thought was in French - we watched it in Canada.)

“I told you it was an adaptation, and you saw the trailer…” I started to say, then realized that while the trailer featured a lot of blood, it did not feature much talking. Ooops. Tall Guy watched wistfully as a dozen people left the cinema during the next 15 minutes. I guess the gore had dazzled more than one movie-goer. To remedy the situation (it was a good movie, but not exactly entertaining…), we saw Underworld 3D on Sunday night. The exact opposite of Coriolanus. Definitely not a good movie, but it did entertain.

All's well that ends well...