Roman Holiday

Last night I couldn't sleep so I decided to watch the movie Roman Holiday.

For those of you unfamiliar with the movie here's a little break down:

The movie came out in 1953. It was Audrey Hepburn's first major role and the only film for which she ever won an Oscar. It's a romantic comedy from the Golden Age of Hollywood and a fine example of the postcard genre (a film shot on location capturing the beauty of some exotic place).

The story is about a princess who is fed up with being a princess so she takes a break and runs away. She gets picked up by a reporter played by Gregory Peck. He takes her around town hoping to get a story...and the rest you can probably imagine.

Now, I realize that runaway princess stories are overused. In fact, the princess market might be the only market more saturated than the vampire market...but luckily Roman Holiday isn't your average princess movie.

(Oh, and be careful cause I'm going to spend most of this post talking about the ending so if you're gonna see it you probably shouldn't read much more)

At first the story is very formulaic: the jaded journalist (Peck) sees dollar signs when he meets the princess. But, after a a few scenes of Audrey Hepburn being her incredibly charming and lovable self, Peck's character's interest shifts and becomes more than financial. This is, of course, very formulaic and it leads you to expect that the film will continue in the stagnant romantic comedy genre: 1) secret in relationship 2) relationship secret revealed 3) fight over secret 4) post fight regret causes realization of feelings for other 5) reconcile with new insight into love for other (usually through some thoroughly romantic gesture that depicts the uniqueness and fun of the relationship....then rinse and repeat.

Roman Holiday is a great movie because it gets derailed from this genre at step 2 and it never makes it to step 3. The two begin to care for each other, they eventually kiss (all of this according to the painfully predictable romantic comedy formula)....but then they share a sad parting and walk away from their magical day together. Their lives are both changed and invigorated because of their time together...but they're practical enough to know that their time together, as magical as it was, was just a day and that they now gotta get back to their real lives.

So, he drops her off at her place, they tearfully say goodbye, and they walk away with neither of them expecting to ever see the other again...but of course that's not the case (this may be a twist on the romantic comedy but it's still a romantic comedy) and they see each other the next day.

The next day Peck goes on assignment to a royal press conference. When the princess enters the room she sees him with his fellow reporters and her face pinches with concern. In front of everyone she realizes that she spent the previous day with a reporter who now has the makings of a very salacious story(a princess in a fist fight, spending the night in a strange man's apartment, getting arrested etc.).

Gregory Peck can see that she's shocked and a little scared when she sees him, but he's on the job so he can't tell her that because of his feelings for her he won't use their time together to sell newspapers, so he tells her that she can trust the journalists and he places extra emphasis on the word "trust." She looks relieved (she acts this very well and somehow looks relieved while also looking like she never lost her princessly calm). She walks up and meets the members of the press on the first row and shakes their hands. When she gets to Peck they share an extra warm handshake and she is given the pictures that he was originally going to use as evidence for his article. She smiles to herself when she sees them, tucks them away, and then moves on.

It's such a bittersweet ending. The last scene is amazingly acted. When they shake hands you know they want to say so many things to each other, but they can't cause of everyone else around them. Somehow both actors convey everything they'd want to say to the other beneath the surface: through tension in the eyes, a set to the jaw, a half smile. It is really impressive.

Roman Holiday is a great movie because the end doesn't give you what you want, it gives you what you should want. Both of the characters know that there are two many things separating them. They both know that they can't throw their lives away on a whim. They both know that they can't throw their lives away because of one special day--regardless of how magical that day may have been. And while they both know these things, we as viewers don't. We're so trained to want and expect a relationship to overcome anything, even if the result is damaging.

We enjoy watching a guy throw his career out the window through a bold declaration of love during a board meeting. We enjoy watching a woman spurn all suitors while she wastes the best years of her life waiting for a soldier that might never come home...

But these stereotypes are a little bit different from the love in Roman Holiday, because hopefully, at the very least, these relationships were older than a single day.

The ending to Roman Holiday doesn't attack love, it attacks whim. It attacks the idea that the course of an entire life should be abandoned because of what feels good rather than what one knows is right. It attacks the idea that love can exist between two people who act so selfishly that they'll allow the other person to become something less so they can be with them. At it's most fundamental level Roman Holiday attacks the idea that love exists outside of virtue rather than through virtue.

Anyway, back to the movie. So, they both say goodbye. Bound by their respective duties they part and we as viewers assume that the parting is permanent this time. Both of the characters have grown for their meeting. The princess is more possessed. She's more affirming. She is willing to take risks she never would have before. The reporter is now softer. He now sees that the value of another person goes beyond what he can get out of them.

And I think at heart this is what makes this a good story. Love should, ideally, make you a better person. The stamp of approval that we have for the love between these two is that at the end of the movie they are both better people. But this wouldn't have been possible if they'd been together at the end.

Because if they were together at the end then the princess would still be a whimsical girl who never took control of her life. And if they were together at the end then the reporter would still be a selfish man profiting from the princess's misfortune. But separate...letting the other go...that shows that they really did have noble feelings for the other. That shows that they did really fall in love in a single, wonderful day.

So, this single wonderful day, and the love it fostered, is why this movie is a classic. If they'd gone for the happy ending they'd have changed this movie from a classic love story to a forgettable fairy tale depicting forgettable fairy tale love. It would have removed the feeling of realism and forced a suspension of disbelief.

We'd all have gone along with it I'm sure. We'd have been happy and feeling all warm and fuzzy inside....but we'd also have known that that isn't how it would really have happened. We'd know that in our painfully realistic lives it wouldn't have turned out that way. We'd say "Oh, if only life were like a fairy tale, then I could have something magical like that happen."

So, while this hypothetically happy ending forces resolution, it also leaves us with the sad thought that the sort of chemistry and excitement we just saw only works out in a world where practical considerations are suspended....but Roman Holiday with it's slightly sad ending gives you something so much better than that. It depicts love outside of a fairy tale. It shows love happening in a real world where circumstances can take it away from you...and it reassures us that love can still be magical despite its brevity. Roman Holiday elevates cinematic love to something believable.

Roman Holiday is a beautiful movie because it shows the power and immediacy that love can have in spite of the frustrations and complications of life. But beyond that, and perhaps even more importantly, it shows how love makes people better, even when it's only for a day.

Triceratops

Today I read that some paleontologists in Montana are saying that the Triceratops might not have ever existed.

I need to vent a little on this.

I mean, when I was a kid I loved The Land Before Time, and while the "3 horns" were never as courageous or as kind as the more noble "long necks," they were contributed to the community..and I'd be lying if I said that Sarah never helped Littlefoot out of a scrape.

As a kid I'd spend hours pouring over dinosaur books...trying to figure out who would beat up whom. At the top of my list of pre-historic tough guys was the triceratops. I figured that the triceratops, along with the Tyrannosaurus, were the top dogs of the Jurassic world. I liked T-Rex way more than the triceratops, but I figured with Rex's puny arms and Trike's defensible armor made them a pretty fair match up.

(My plastic dinosaur toys re-enacted this battle many times. According to my scientific battle re-creations, in ancient times the T-Rex usually won the fight by picking the Triceratops up in its jaws and then throwing the Triceratops out of the planter and onto the sidewalk).

Anyway, all I'm saying is that this animal captured my imagination (and I'm sure the imagination of a whole bunch of other kids).

So the question is who do these childhood attacking scientists think they are? What gives them the right to take the triceratops away?

It feels sorta like a betrayal when they try to.

I mean, well, look at it this way. Dinosaurs are fascinating to a kid because they're like science-based dragons. When you're a kid anything big and tough and monstrous (as long as it's not hiding in your closet when you sleep) is awesome. And while it's fun to imagine a dragon, you always know in the back of your painfully pragmatic childhood brain that dragons don't really exist outside of stories.

...But Dinosaurs? Scientists in respectable lab coats tell us all about them. They tell us how big they are, what they would eat, and they give us bones to look at and point to so we can say "See! That existed. That's a fairy tale monster with scientific support!"

Anyway, given that dinosaurs are basically fairy tales that we were told we could believe in, and given that they keep telling us that some dinosaurs never existed....it's sort of destroying one of the things that make dinosaurs so fascinating...that they're something we can believe in.

Dinosaurs are amazing to kids because they're horrific and real.

When you're a kid and you're told that a dinosaur that was accepted as fact never existed, it puts a hole in the imagination. That hole creates a vacuum of cynicism that sucks the rest of the dinosaurs down the ontological toilet.

You can't say "Dinosaurs are real, oh, except that one we told you about... our bad. So, all those daydreams about that dinosaur...yeah, might as well have been about a unicorn."

Also, to make matters worse, we're being told the awful truth about the Triceratops right on the heels of losing Pluto as a planet....this is just too much.

Is there some sort of trend now to take away beloved childhood science? It's like scientists in the exploratory disciplines like astronomy and paleontology can't find anything groundbreaking and new so they're trying to create excitement by attacking iconic things with redefinition.

Well, I say let's get ahead of the game and beat them to it.

Did you know that the big red "eye" of Jupiter really isn't a storm?

Yup, it's just a huge crater because, unlike Earth, Jupiter doesn't have a crack team of oil drillers in space suits lead by Bruce Willis to protect it from rogue meteors.

The pterodactyl? Yeah, it couldn't fly. Take all those daydreams as a kid of soaring through the air held up by the leathery wings of a huge dinosaur and toss them out the window...cause the pterodactyl's wings were used for swimming.

In fact, lets just throw dinosaurs out entirely. The bones we find were actually buried by angels to test the faith of biblcal literalists.

Now that I'm re-reading what I just wrote it's beginning to seem like a rant, so I'm gonna go back to the Triceratops now.

So, here's my problem with these wacky childhood attacking scientists, and their new position on the Triceratops...

What they're saying if I remember right is that the Triceratops is actually the Torosaurus. Supposedly, the Triceratops as we know it is just a Torosaurus in the early stages of development.

But here's the problem I have with that: even as I type Torosaurus my spell check is trying to tell me that Torosaurus isn't a word....this is cause everyone knows about the Triceratops but no one knows about the Torosaurus.

So, why do we have to lose the Triceratops? If there really is only one dinosaur being referred to twice, why are we losing the iconic dinosaur? If the Triceratops is nothing but a nascent Torosaurus, can't we just make the Torosaurus an aged Triceratops?

That compromise could have been made just as easily...only problem is no one knows what the heck a Torosaurus is so no one would care to lose it and the scientists that decided to attack our childhood wouldn't get research money for destroying a dinosaur no one cared about.

So I guess what I'm saying is this is how the conversation should go if someone wants to discuss the loss of a dinosaur:

"Did you know the Torosaurs never existed?"

"I've heard that "

"Yeah, scientists just discovered that it's just a geriatric Triceratops."

"Awesome. Never heard about a Torosaurs before, but I like the Triceratops so it must be cool too."

See? No waves. No controversy...just enlightenment.

We need to fight these scientists. They're the real ones that killed the dinosaurs.

If we don't let them get away with this nonsense we can get them out into the plains of Montana making real discoveries. They could find something like Superomegasaurus--a dinosaur that eats rocks and breathes fire. That would be a discovery that I'd be happy to read about. Yeah, do that...and leave Sarah and Littlefoot alone.

As far as I'm concerned The Land Before Time is an historical document.

Well, that's about all I feel like ranting on today.

In other news today is my dad's birthday. Happy birthday, Dad!

Also, a cool word is brobdingnagian. It means enormous and huge.

Here's a sample sentence: The Triceratops was a brobdingnagian beast.

Anyway, hope you all have a wonderful day.

Random Stuff

First off, here are two words that I've been thinking about lately...

Jehu: this words just means a crazy driver. It's the name of a crazy king and charioteer in the bible.

Pulchritude: this word is great because it sounds nothing like what it means. A girl in my ward asked me how she looked and I told her she looked "pulchritudinous." She almost cried before the dictionary saved the day.

Oh, and the word means "beautiful." Honestly, I don't see why we're so fascinated with Latin. That's an extremely ugly word and it's all Latin's fault.

In other news I haven't posted much lately because I was busy having what might be considered a nervous breakdown. Basically, I holed myself up for a while and didn't do anything (socially at least)...trying to simplify life a bit. It was sorta like Walden, but instead of going out into nature I troglodyted it up.

In other news, I'm pretty excited for the fall (my favorite season). Fall is beautiful in Provo. The trees are all yellows, oranges, and reds. and the weather is crisp. Also, hot chocolate tastes better, I I can find more flavors of eggnog at the store, and the holidays are on the horizon.

It's the perfect season.

On a side note....it bothers me that we don't capitalize seasons. We capitalize the days of the week for heaven's sake...why not the seasons?

Speaking of season names. What's everyone's opinion on "fall" and "autumn.' I think autumn is a more beautiful sounding word, but fall is more descriptive sounding word (leaves falling and all). Most other English speaking countries call the season "autumn." I guess we silly Americans wanna be special.

Oh, and I really missed the time change this year. Yesterday I woke up to my (uncorrected) alarm at 7 o'clock (really 6 o'clock) and rushed and got ready to make it to church by 8 (really 7) for a meeting.

I thought I was 4 minutes late so I just went right into the door and I walked right into the bishopric meeting that happens right before the meeting I'm supposed to go to.

So, I walked right in on the bishop having a meeting and I started my introduction by apologizing for being late. The bishop looked at the clock and said "do you know what time it is?" I said "Well, by the looks on all your faces, and by the fact that no one else is here, and since you thought to ask me that question...probably not."

He then explained that I lost an hour of sleep for no reason. It was a hard piece of information to take. My frustration at my lost sleep overpowered my embarrassment and I left the room to take a nap for an hour.

To make things worse, when the meeting finally did start up, another person walked in (this was a day for interrupted meetings). This guy was from the stake and he needed pictures of everyone with leadership callings so they could be put on the stake president's wall. The problem was that I hadn't shaved (I thought I was late after all).

When the guy came into the room the bishop looked at me and laughed and said "Well, this isn't a good day for you!"

I posed for the picture and then asked the guy if he wanted to photoshop me clean shaven. He laughed (guess he assumed I was joking). Oh well, I guess I'll just be the one scruffy face on the president's wall.

Well, I better get going. I gotta get a lot of stuff done today. Thank you for making it to the end of this disjointed and rambling post.

I hope you all enjoy Fall/Autumn (I'm capitalizing them in rebellion (and screwing up capitalization throughout the rest of this post for Consistency).

Have a wonderful day.