Dreams, dreams… they are the wonder of my mind. A collection of events, places, people and time frame that are roughly sewn into a patch-work quilt of impression. Lacking a clear beginning or end. Fact spiced with fiction, or fantasy encasing reality. Or, just alarmingly unreal. Take your pick.
There are dreams that amuse and give me a degree of joy. And there are dreams that scare and give me anxiety. Regardless, it’s a fascinating exercise to see how these dreams relate to what’s current in my life. Ideas that traced a path thru my mind. What happened today or a couple of days ago.
On Sunday afternoon I finished reading Nechama Tec’s book Defiance. It’s a book about the Bielski Partisans in Poland during WWII.
I needed a break. I flipped on the TV and began scanning for a film that would be a good diversion… Lifetime? That’s the Channel with those drippy movies that Suzy and Sandy could watch two or three in a row! No thanks.
OK… Shakespeare in Love. That’s more like it! One of my favorite films! “Good sir? I heard you were a poet… has the poet no words?” I love it. Love every line! “This is not a life, Will. It is a stolen season.”
Another Channel has Titanic. Not a real favorite of mine… although I will always watch the first 20 minutes or so… ‘til the scene in steerage when Jack and Rose dance. And there are good lines. “That’s one of the good things about Paris: lots of girls willing to take their clothes off.”
And here’s one I haven’t seen for an age! The Mouse That Roared. Peter Sellers plays three different roles: Tully Bascombe. Prime Minister Count Rupert of Mountjoy and best of all… The Grand Duchess of Fenwick Gloriana XII. “There isn’t a more profitable undertaking for any country than to declare war on the United States and be defeated!”
Oh… and something from my present vocation… wine. Russell Crowe’s A Good Year. “In France it’s always the landowner who makes the wine, even though he does nothing more than supervise with binoculars from the comfort of his study. No, I enjoy making wine, because this sublime nectar is quite simply incapable of lying. Picked too early, picked too late, it matters not – the wine will always whisper into your mouth with complete, unabashed honesty every time you take a sip.”
The pages of Defiance lurk in my mind, yet each of the films just noted possess many memorable things I so enjoy… actors, settings & lines. Even the unlikely appearance of Sellers dressed in royal raiment as the Grand Duchess!
And to my dream…
It’s a village that skirts a series of walled vineyards thick with ripe fruit. The village is mostly deserted. Doors hanging from hinges. Shots heard, from deeper in the village, and from the wood beyond the vineyards. Must be partisans. Behind the crumbled wall of the Clos Leonardo Di Caprio looks left and right, and then casts an eye upward towards the church steeple. A sniper? Even in my dream I know that this isn’t real! This is a movie set! I can see a boom mike! A rumble of trucks coming from the wood. Into the small a vacant square in front of the church, the trucks stop and unload fully armed soldiers. Shouts. Shots, screams. Di Caprio considers his next step. He hears soldiers coming from thru the vineyard rows. He lifts Gwyneth Paltrow over the wall just as a soldier is about to bring his rifle butt crashing into her skull…
And the director shouts, “DOUBLE!”
