The Only Living Boy in New York

I have not seen a movie for a while, quite uncharacteristic for me, but my local cinema has not shown anything interesting for quite a while. I am even wondering what is the reason for that. Change of ownership, lack of money, change of a person who selects the films?  I must say that lately I have not much ventured outside my suburb so I even did not know if the repertoire of other theatres has been any better. Recently my favourite occupation is bridge and the club, I play at, has developed its own social circles. One of them is the circle of movie goers. I have been asked a couple of times by one of the players if I have seen The Only Living Boy in New York. My answer was that I do not think it is on in the local cinema. It has not been, but the friend brought to my attention that there are other movie theatres in Sydney than the one nearby. Quite a revelation, one might say, so I checked and I found the movie some distance from my place, but even without a car quite easy to get to. My horizons suddenly expended and I have seen the film today. I am glad I did as I enjoyed it. Maybe the film did not have many situation  I could really relate to, but it is a good story even if a bit convoluted.

Does Callum Turner (left) look like young Richard Gere? 

                                   

I would describe the film as sleek. It was pleasant to watch the known good actors and young ones with a promise. I liked the elegant interiors and the New York scenery. The film is about literary crowd of people: writers and their disciples, publishers and critics. Consequently, the dialogs intended to be sophisticated and some of them are, but many are just trying to follow the intended mood not presenting much depth or originality.

The story is about a young man, son of a famous publisher and a neurotic, intellectual but very warm mother (played by Cynthia Nixon of Sex in the City, I liked her in this film). He wants to be a writer but his father's view is that his work is just "serviceable"  so he is confused and tries to figure out what to do with his life. Being very young he rebels and leaves the elegant home of his parents searching for  his own ways. He meets his neighbour who starts to play a role of his mentor and a guide through  maze of literature circles. The boy, Tom, sees one day his father with another woman and in defense of his too sensitive mother tries to stop the romance by demanding of the girl to stop seeing his father. Instead he also lands up in bed with the girl and here the real story starts leading to a surprising happy end. Maybe too much of meandering, but to me it was fun, even if I most likely soon forget the film.

My attention caught the question about a definition of love and reasons behind people thinking that they love another person. Apparently, the answers do not have to be romantic or idealistic at all. It can be to fix childhood traumas and created earlier needs, it can be just lust, it can be fascination with some parts of the character or abilities of the object of love, it can be sort of dependence and many other reasons based on needs of the “loving” person. I do not quite like this approach, but must say that there is something in it, even if not palatable to romantic souls.

Another “golden thought” that made me ponder and agree with is “anything good happens by accident”. Hmm… so what about living on purpose? Or planning our lives? On second thought, this is not a revelation.

I enjoyed my outing, I liked the theatre, as sleek and the film itself. I liked a lot about the film even if some of the ideas were a bit too contrived, like choices in the soundtrack. Song of Simon and Garfunkel “The Only Living Boy in New York” is about Tom, the same name as the young hero of the film. And Bob Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna” with Johanna being another film character. Good music though, so I really do not complain.