Pink, Peep and Prime

Saw a total of three movies yesterday which is my excuse for being late. The first one was Pink Saris, a documentary about a woman who brings her own brand of justice to the streets of Ultar Pradesh, India. It's difficult to describe the main character. She's a young Vito Corleone played by Robert De niro in Godfather 2; tough; gets things done; all about helping people. She's India's equivalent of Betty Friedan, blaming the role of women and the society that created it. She's Gloria Steinem in a sari. Come to think of it, she's me on a very bad day.

Next up was Peep World, the story of four siblings and how the youngest writes a bestselling novel exposing the dysfunctional family’s most intimate secrets. There were some great lines in this movie like "family is where you go to lose your self-esteem". Sure to be a classic. It stars Michael C. Hall from Dexter; Rainn Wilson, a.k.a. Dwight Schrute from The Office; comedian Sarah Silverman whose character is described as "more fucked up than Amy Winehouse", if that's even possible; and Benjamin Button's mom Taraji P. Henson, the only sane one in the bunch. While only 89 minutes in length, it is totally time well spent.

Last but not least was the Italian film, The Solitude of Prime Numbers. The writer of the bestselling novel explained it as every fear he held as a child all coming to fruition. The director routinely referred to it as a horror film which in fact it was because horrible things happened to two young people and these traumatic incidents affected them for the rest of their lives. The main characters "twin primes", like the numbers 11 and 13, or 17 and 19, are lonely individuals that are forever linked but forever separated. They are damaged; crushed and destroyed. Not the way I would have chosen to end the evening. Think of the movie Ace Ventura and then its total direct opposite.

If I may borrow a quote from The Last House on the Left, "it's only a movie."