journal features

movie review - Saving Grace

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Sydney, 2000.10.16

This is an English comedy I'd wanted to see. It's about a wealthy widow, who discovers that her husband (a philandering crook) had left her not only unwealthy, but deep in debt. Soon, the wolves are metaphorically at the door, and she's desperate for a way out. Meanwhile, in a another part of the village, her gardiner is having no luck with his marijuana plants. He waits until a moment when he knows she'll say yes, and proposes that the widow (a famous botanist) take over his meagre crop. She agrees, seeing dollar signs.

Everything goes to hell, of course, but it's a very funny ride. I'd rate this one worth a repeat viewing.

Recommended.

rand()m quote

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995)