Rues of Roo

 

It is a funny thing when you are offered the choice between two things that are complete opposites. For example, would you like to eat a cockroach, or a sirloin steak. Or would you perhaps enjoy a holiday in KL, or London? Would you, say, like to spend the night with me, or Patrick Dempsey (if you are a girl)? Would you like to sleep at the Fullerton, or at Hotel 81. The list goes on. And so, my question to a friend on Friday night who requested a choice of only two movies, was a contrasting: ‘Flags of our Fathers, or Open Season?’. Which upon reflection was truly a bizarre option of choice. But that beside the point, she chose the former. (I realise that direct comparisons with aforementioned examples are unrelated as the movie choice does not relate to a decision between something horribly grotesque and something incredibly beautiful but that is beside the point and I doubt you noticed anyway, however, in case some of you did then at least I have partially vindicated my anal-ity.)

On hindsight it was obviously the better choice. Watching a bunch of computerized animals do their thing really seems rather immature now, and analysing the social behaviour of Americans is always much more entertaining in general anyway. To some extent the movie is as predictable as any, in the sense that if I told you that it was basically about how one of the world’s most famous war images was actually the result of a farce of decisions from U.S. army generals, and how that image therefore unwittingly created heroes out of three soldiers who each in their own ways, rightly, and wrongly, knew that they were anything but, - well, then you could map out where it drives itself. That is, through the road of confusion, guilt, of true heroism, and the detest with which the wronged view the wrong-doers. Yet even if it was something you could quite easily manufacture, it was interesting nevertheless, to see the much beloved Ryan Philippe play, excellently I thought, the quiet, unassuming, but central character of the movie. Heroism, in essence, is relativity. It’s exactly like humility. The moment you admit you have it, you don’t, and that theme resonates through every frame of this moving picture.

It is rather contrasting, then, that two weddings and a wedding dinner later I sat down to watch the rather adorable ‘Mumble’ tap his way through life in ‘Happy Feet’. Yet in its own strange way the movies had parallels that only someone with enough time and desire to get away from work could muster to come up with. Happy Feet, like FOOF (what an interesting acronym) is about the journey of an individual at a loss with how to cope with his own surroundings. His experience, his differences, whether with the colour of his skin/feathers or his talents sets his apart from the rest of society in a way that only he can understand. And so it is that one can only deal with that circumstance in how they know best, whether it would be to turn to alcohol, depression, or whether it be to never give up, and instead, to stride towards and try to find their own ‘heart song’.

Happy Feet would have been a wonderful movie minus the last 15 minutes where it becomes somewhat of a farce of an environmentally preachy bizarre cgi-cum-reality mix of cinematography. But the first hour or so will have you laughing quite a bit.

All I can say is that now, I want to learn how to tap-dance.

So whether you decide to watch FOOF or Happy Feet this week, remember, it’s all the same anyway.