I don't see that many films in cinemas these days but somehow in 2008 I managed to catch both Mama Mia and Indiana Jones IV. Each was compellingly bad in its own special way, but they also had a dynamic in common agewise, pitching infantile, dull, irremediably pussified 20somethings against age 50/60ish actors who got to be wryly sage and exude dog-eared but 100% authentic charisma and moxy and get finally wed at the end. I guess it's a smart move to target a generation of moviegoers who for reasons of disposable income and net-illiteracy and misc. other demographic factors are much more likely to pick up (or be bought) the DVD/soundtrack CD/tied-in products.
So last nite I saw Looking For Eric, which also has a hero of a certain age - a postal worker who, under the tutelage of le King, finds within himself reserves of hitherto-untapped courage and facility etc.
I was struck by how far it followed the Totoro/Beethoven/Free Willy/E.T. 'kid meets creature which over the course of their necessarily and tear-jerkingly brief association teaches them key life lessons' paradigm. It's an evergreen model Fumito Ueda's upcoming PS3 game looks to be following, but having a grandparent in the role of the boy and a Gallic centre-forward (albeit a very creaturely, hirsute and kind of Totoro-esque one) as his figmental buddy put a different spin on it. While the movie kinda falls into the trap of painting women as saintly & innately forgiving if not especially au fait with life's grizzlier realities, what's more interesting is the way it transvalues the corresponding model of manhood - i.e. that men are outsize, incurably solipsistic kids.
It's pretty positive about a number of 'male' traits and behaviours - cultivating specialist knowledge, gadgetary aptitude, hero-worship, pack-style communality, mischief - that are normally seen as sad and suggestive of arrested development. Loach both allows Cantona to come across as all-but ad absurdum masculine and as an embodiment of humility, generosity, team spirit, improvisatory flair and acceptance of flux. As in one Corinthians thirteen, understanding as a man instead of a child = acknowledging you only ever see as through a glass, darkly, and should as such cultivate Loachly, bro'ly agape. I totally got choked up in a slightly socialistically-inflected version of the proper response to impossible kid/creature love story movies.
