Tonight after The Pirate (bizarro 1948 Judy Garland musical at the Mich) I came home to Truly Madly Deeply on DVD. Glad I hadn't known it was the same bloke wot made The [Piece of Crap] English Patient, for that knowledge might have inhibited my openness to it. This Juliet Stevenson, and her face---wow. And now my head is also listening to "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Any More" while it floats back to the duet of the main players, in the true climax of the film, bouncing lines from what turns out indeed to be Pablo Neruda, but not one of the Twenty Love Poems. Yes: a movie with a poem for its dramatic peak; how about that.
I wonder how I'd have taken in the film, had I seen it when it came out, in 1991. What an entirely different life it was then. Even in this rubble I am so much stronger, sounder, fuller, more alive than 15 years ago, or 10. Or 20, or 30.
