Since I moved to California, I’ve met many people who have left their homes and their families to come to Silicon Valley. These experiences and other developments in my personal life have had me thinking a lot lately about how people adjust to changes that isolate them from emotional support structures. This is why I found it somewhat appropriate that the independence/isolation tradeoff inadvertantly became the theme of the day today, as I headed to San Francisco to see a few films that were playing at the Kabuki theatre as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival.
I was at the Caltrain station by 8:45am, half-dozing in the sun and waiting for the 9:20am northbound to show up. A small asian girl seemed to be confused by the ticket dispenser, so I helped her get her ticket, and we started chatting idly. With a bit of difficulty, I was able to ascertain that she is a first-year international student from Vietnam visiting Mountain View and attending a local college until the end of term. She said that she was having a hard time with things because she lived in a house with an elderly woman, and I guess that between the language barrier and the fact that the Bay Area is a such a suburby place, she hadn’t really made any friends that she could hang out with after school. The conversation was comical at times — I was called handsome and very old in the same sentence, for example — but ultimately when my new friend got off the train, I was left feeling both impressed with her tenacity and empathetic towards her loneliness.
We arrived in SF at around 10:30am, and after a pleasant walk that was punctuated by an encounter with what I think was a very strung-out transvestite (I can’t be sure, I was following Tom’s sage advice of “Keep walking, don’t make eye contact”), we showed up at the Kabuki theatre with plenty of time to spare before the first film on my schedule, Into Great Silence. The movie documents the daily routine of Francescan Monks that live in the Chatreuse Monastery, which according to the film is “one of the most ascetic monasteries in the world.” I had purposely chosen this film to give me some insight on what made these monks actually desire complete isolation from civilization, and how they dealt with their constant solitude. The constent austerity was predictably depressing, and this was almost made worse by the director’s ham-fisted attempts to inject a few scenes of playful frivolity: In one scene, the monks are sitting around gossiping about how other monasteries implement the pre-mass hand washings; in another, an older monk heckles some cats with a giant teddy bear.
Oddly enough, the most touching moment of the film to me was one that delivered a very cliched message. Near the end of the movie, a blind monk discusses his outlook on life, which essentially boils down to “Be happy no matter what comes your way, and don’t fear death.” His message was marred somewhat because its delivery implies that the entire monastery is just waiting around counting the minutes until they can lay down and die, which is a concept I find distasteful. Nonetheless, the sheer depth of happiness that he demonstrated with his life of solitude was affecting, and it had me thinking for hours after I left the theater.
In between this movie and the next, we took a brief intermission outside of the theatre. In stark contrast to the theme of the day, there was a huge Japanese festival being held on the same block, called the Cherry Blossom Festival. There were at least a few thousand people piled into two city blocks as the tail end of the parade marched through. There was a large float slowly making its way up the street, carried by a hundred or so people. Apparently the degree to which the float was shaken up and down directly affects the luck that will be had by the celebrants in the coming year.
We were only out there for a half-hour or so before we had to head back into Kabuki to line up for our second film of the day, The Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela. This was a documentary that detailed the life of the stepfather of the director and eleven of his friends that grew up in a conservative region of South Africa in the 60s. These tenacious young folks were determined to dismantle the apartheid, and so they left the country and gradually travelled north across almost the entire continent, enlisting people to their cause as they went.
To say that these guys were strong-willed would be a profound understatement. As they travelled through Africa, and then to Europe and the United States, they were constantly having to learn new languages and rebuild their lives so that they could survive while simultaneously trying to make progress towards their ultimate goal of freeing South Africa from apartheid. Despite being constantly surrounded by people, they were about as isolated as you can get, since they were constantly adjusting to alien cultures and customs.
At the end of the film, the director actually walked up to the front of the theatre and took questions for almost an hour. This was a totally new experience for me, and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. Even without the director at your disposal, this is an excellent film to spend an hour and a half on, and I’d strongly recommend it.
On the way out of the second movie, I started up a conversation with someone staring at a poster for a HEAVY METAL movie that I’d like to see at some point. I was surprised to discover that she actually lived in Toronto, so we chatted about our hometowns and the like. It took a little while before she sort of casually mentioned that she was there because a short film of hers was showing in the festival! I thought that was pretty cool, and I was of course impressed by the Canadian modesty that led her to hold off making the admission until we had dispatched with the pleasantries.
It was at this point that we realized were weren’t going to be able to make the last movie we wanted to see while still being able to catch the last Caltrain home, so instead we shimmied over to Chinatown and had a real old fashioned Chinese meal in one of those huge, authentic restaurants where Chinese wedding receptions are held all the time. Tom and I were the only non-asians in the place, and there were about 60 or so people there. It was great.
After consuming about a month’s worth of calories in the space of an hour, we dashed to 4th and King to catch the 8pm Caltrain home. I had grand ideals of sitting and reflecting quietly about the films that I had seen that day on the ride back, but unfortunately fried rice is a potent sedative and I KOed about five minutes into the trip. However, I did end up thinking about them on and off over the next few days.
In the process, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is indeed possible to lead a very satisfying life even in the absence of close company such as a partner, or an immediate family; however, I feel that I personally would be infinitely happier in a situation where I could give freely to people that I am already very close to, which sort of ruins the solitary life for me. While I still take satisfaction from helping people that I’m not especially close to, and I try to take the time to do so regularly, that doesn’t make me as happy as doing things for those that I’ve gotten closer to.
Oh, and I also realized that movies don’t suck as much as I assumed. I guess I just have to stay away from family theatres. Here’s a list of the movies that were shown at the festival that I would very much like to get my hands on:
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