Finally, to relieve the tedium of idleness at my daughters' home, I found and loaded a DVD of the subject film. I did not discover what all the shouting was about. My boredom was unremitted and, as a matter of fact, overburdened by absolute disgust.
That puzzled me. Could my aesthetics be so unevolved as to not "get it" as Roger Ebert so empathically did? Or am I in error for looking for art in film, intead of some other abstraction (a lesson, an allegory, a demonstration) meant somehow to edify? It only bothered me for an instant, until I remembered that I am (or try to be) my own person. and that particular person watches movies for one reason; an emotional experience that has, in the main, positive elements. I'm not talking about happy endings, but stories that exalt the beauty and passion of another's struggle, or (and) offer me such.
Specifically, this does not include the gratuitous tableau of a little boy falling over his head into a full latrine hole and, for goodness's sake, emerging from it.
