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Isolation Diaries

Dispatches from Isolation: Day 4—Standing Still & Speeding Through

Isolation changes time. It turns into a wall. It turns into a river. It turns into a cycle.

This post is part of my Isolation Diaries. You can check the rest of them on the category page.

The day started with the is a increased back pain and sore throat. And things mostly went downhill.

Afternoon

I woke up late. The Brunch was ok. No French Onion soup. Simple goat stock. Delicious. My son barged in again in our distanced conversation. Almost entering the room.

I started having mild pain in the chest. The chest pains then went on to get worse. It was rather scary. I decided to take a hot shower to get mind off.

Evening

The shower worked. I was breathing better and the chest pains were mostly gone. I felt better.

I watched Billy Wilder’s 1951 Classic ‘Ace in the Hole’. Wilder was derided upon auteur theory critics. While some of their criticism were valid, most of them can be boiled down to ‘not flashy enough. Needs more Dolly Shots!’. Ace in the Hole is about a journalist who tries to capitalize on a man getting stuck in a cave. He manipulates the situation to milk the story for what its worth. It is a very cynical film, with razor sharp dialog from Wilder and Co., a great performance by Kirk Douglas. Wilder does manage to end the film with shot that the auteur crowd would call ‘dynamic’. A great film, even if a little bit too cynical for my tastes.

I followed that up by 1931’s ‘Trouble in Paradise’, directed by one of Wilder’s heroes Ernst Lubitsch. Unlike WIlder, he was a darling of the auteur crowd. For good reason. The movie starts with weird crane/tracking shot that would be impressive today, almost 90 years later. The script is early talkies era, so nothing impressive now. It was pre-code, so there is a lot of sexual innuendo and direct references. The movie knew Kay Francis was very pretty and spend a lot of time on her. I chose this one specifically because Slavoj Ziizek called it ‘anti-capitalist’. There are some references to the Depression, a hobo character quoting Trotsky, and the climax featuring a dialog describing the difference between a ‘self-made crook’ and a white-collar criminal. I’d say Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, is a better pick if you want to rouse your inner Marx.

Night

The loneliness is getting to me. It was very difficult to get to sleep. I am an introvert and prefer my own company a lot of the time. But introversion does not crave isolation. It feels like time has stood still and speeding as well. Life becomes a contradiction. These public diary entries are what keeping me from losing track of it.

A Note on Feedback

I don’t analytics on this blog. For personal reasons mostly, but also to protect my readers’ privacy. But I would like to receive some feedback. If you are reading this, drop a comment. Either down below, or any of the social platforms you discovered this link.

Which reminds me to publicly thank all the well wishes I have received from the Slackfilmcast and the Colony of Gamers discord.

Next: Something bad

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