John and Mary - (1969) Directed by Peter Yates
Starring Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow
As a month passes by; one that began with a birthday and a girlfriend has ended with a developing beard and a heart that isn't as broken as it is loosened, I have gone through a flash flood of thoughts. Merciless thoughts, un-silenced thoughts, restless, questioning, oppressing thoughts. Endlessly haunting, staring at a reflection that stares at you as if you were the one in the mirror, displaced, unsure, identity as thin as your patience, as thin as your nerve endings and what suddenly makes them spark and sizzle like cooking oil.
As a month passes by and Scott Walker sings, and Beach House fits me like a glove, and everything is a living code of itself. And instead of seeing things as they are, I only see the code. I spend my days deciphering, cross-referencing, running the answers in my head, vividly observing as they, like a subtle metamorphosis, become questions. The period stretching into a line and curling into a question mark as a new period parks underneath it.
What good does a film like John and Mary to this tenuous condition? The impressions absorbed through this ripe fidelity towards romantic melancholy. Almost like a mirror played as moving pictures, with a story that stands there like a body, showing you yourself. But its one of those funhouse mirrors, it has to be--Because everything looks slightly nicer and works out better, its memory the way a memory is usually kept, with bias. If its a bad memory, you focus on the bad; if the opposite then the opposite. John and Mary took all the good and made me a body song. Something to look at and hum along because I don't know the words but the melody is so familiar.
