Tuesday should not have been any better of a day to conclude with a movie. I followed up moving day with a day in the office, meaning a five-minute bike ride to the train station, a 25-minute train ride into the city and then a 15-minute walk to my office. I'll fine-tune as I go, as there are multiple options for how to do this. But with the uncertainty, and sleeping in a new bedroom for the first time, I was waking up every 15 minutes to see what time it was. I ended up finally getting out of bed around 6, a full 90 minutes before I needed to leave the house.
At least there was no plot synopsis to check for my second movie, Summer of Soul (... or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). Maybe my third won't contain an ellipses.
It was time for the latest documentary alternate Tuesday, and I'm proud to say I haven't missed one yet since I kicked off this initiative back in August.
My first choice was The Rescue, the latest film from Jimmy Chin and his wife Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, who made Free Solo. I swear I searched this up on Disney+ a few days ago and saw it there. I know it is there. But I could not find it last night. At this point, with my cumulative physical and mental exhaustion, I may never know whether thinking I saw it originally or being unable to find it last night was the error.
But my first choice was only my first choice because I didn't know my second choice was available. When Summer of Soul came out earlier this year, I knew at the time -- or at least thought at the time -- that it was not available on any service I had. But this may be a good reminder that the streaming service where something is available in the U.S. does not necessarily match up to where it is available in Australia. Or maybe it's just change hands since then.
Anyway, it was the fruitless search for The Rescue that showed me that indeed, Summer of Soul was playing on Disney+. Having been reminded of my need to see this due to its mention on year-end movie podcasts, I leaped to press the play button.
What a lovely, celebratory movie to usher in my new living arrangement. And to usher in the actual summer, or what should be the start of the summer.
I mentioned the winter solstice in my title for this post, but that's because I imagine I'm writing primarily to an audience in the northern hemisphere. And because even in the southern hemisphere, December 21st is not actually the start of summer.
I won't get into it at length. But Australians, and I imagine many others in this hemisphere, don't like to split months between seasons. Therefore, summer "officially" begins on December 1st, even though the longest day of the year doesn't arrive until yesterday. (And ends on February 28th, in case you were wondering, or February 29th every fourth.)
In a way I get that. Shouldn't the longest day of the year arrive part way through the summer, not on its first day? It's a symbolic landmark that indicates peak summerness. In terms of symbolic value, it would be like the 4th of July kicking off summer in the U.S.
But I'm really digressing, and even though you may not be as busy as I am this holiday season, it's the holiday season and you are definitely busy.
So my new home and my American's interpretation of the start of an Australian summer were both kicked off with this glorious found footage of the Harlem Cultural Festival from the summer of 1969.
I have to say, I wasn't sure that critics were all praising Summer of Soul for the right reasons. It's just the type of film a woke white critic would embrace as an attempt to prove how enlightened he or she is. I personally wasn't exposed to a lot of soul, gospel and blues growing up, but I cynically suspected that a lot of white critics would gush about how they had "always" known and loved this type of music -- and, while they're at it, would slip in that they have "tons of Black friends."
No cynicism required. Actually, I was familiar with many of the songs shown here, likely because Questlove selected the songs the most people would know from all the available footage. And what versions of these songs they were.
I also noticed something that I was noticing in the week leading up to Christmas last year. About exactly a year ago I watched The Young Girls of Rochefort, which reminded me of the popping colors of Technicolor and how they have disappeared from the landscape, as discussed in this post. Summer of Soul was shot two years after Young Girls, and it's full of the same impossible neon pinks, oranges and especially greens. Even if the passion and musical genius of the performers were not enough to carry me through, the neon greens would have been.
There's also something weird, and wonderful, about seeing old footage for the first time. There's so much rich material in this film that you feel like you should have already seen most of it reused a hundred other places in the last half century. Nope. This stuff is just seeing the light of day now. Twenty years from now, it'll feel very familiar as I suspect it will be reused in the future. For now, it's sparkling and new, even 50 years old.
I've gone on long enough today. Just know that I found this movie a joy ... and even if I dozed off once or twice, I didn't miss any of the plot.
Now, for a day of work at home, where I pay 25 percent attention to actual work, and 75 percent to preparing the house for our first visitors tonight.
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