A Matter of Context
You don’t see the seasons here so much as sense them in a thousand little details. I believe that if someone had shown me an unlabeled color photograph of Market Street as I left the library yesterday at six, I would be able to identify it on sight as a shot from early spring. It’s something about the shadows of buildings falling against buildings, the top stories still in sunlight, and above them the sky the color soft gray silk with a touch of pink. ..

Live somewhere for a couple of decades and every stroll is fraught with context. South of Market used to be my neighborhood, and the landmarks I pass are always silently, half-consciously ticked off as I go by. I marvel at the longevity of Zain’s Liquor on one side of Third (never been in it, just seen it since 1988) salute Dave’s on the other (Brown little dive. Tim Maroney sitting on a barstool one night telling me about the eternal expansion of the universe…) note Rochester Big and Tall, (Driving Charlie Brown there shortly after moving to the Bay Area and going to work for Locus. The feel of the steering wheel beneath my hands as I waited for him in the car, parked illegally) and then I feel that slight lift of spirits I always get when I see the row of frothy fountains that border the park.

The best thing about going to the Metreon is walking through the park. I like the fountains. I like that big glassy half-hull of a boat sticking out of the ground, which I guess is meant to represent all those buried ships holding up the Embarcadero. I like the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and the expanse of grass across from it. At sunset only a few people are left. Last night I saw a guy through the curtains of water of the MLK fountain, reading King’s words on the wall in various languages. A young couple was kissing on the patio that fronts the Metreon.

As for the Metreon itself -- too brightly lit, too shiny, too many electronic toys. There may be a bookstore somewhere in there, but it’s apparently camouflaged to blend in with all the high end gaming, jelly-bean, and tsostchke shops. I kept my eyes front and hurried to the escalators up to the theater, where I was waved into the screening by a very cheerful hipster with a soul-patch and a clipboard. In the theater I saw M high up, far back and center in the stadium seating, a small figure in a sparse crowd. He was watching me, his face grave, one arm extended over his head and waving stiffly, with great dignity, from side to side like a metronome as he talked on his cell phone.

“So are you going to get someone to help with your bags when you down the stairs to the taxi?” I heard as I edged into the seat next to him. “Okay, be a shtarker…” He was talking to his mother. After carefully going over with her the logistics of getting downstairs with luggage and assuring her that I’d arrived at last, safe and sound, he signed off and we put our heads together and quietly went over how our respective days went.

A friend on deadline with technical issues came by to use our email. M’s class went well. He showed a film I’d said I wanted to see, the one about those photographers in Chile, remember? How many reservations for tomorrow? Hardly any. Maybe too many people have already seen the movie. Oh well… Our words trailed off as the lights went down. This wasn’t one of those screenings where DJs show up to whip the crowd into a frenzy, which was a good sign. They just lowered the lights, no trailers, no ads, no fuss, and began.

The film was MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY, a romantic comedy starring Frances McDormand as a dowdy Englishwoman adrift in London in 1939. The writing is crisp and witty, the cinematography and acting quite good. On our way home after the film, we talked about why it worked. There are two things that lift this film above the common run of romantic comedies. One is the fact that the real love story, the ADULT love story as opposed to the two pretty young things who inevitably get together at the end, is told in a way that makes you understand why these two people fall in love. You know enough about Miss Pettigrew and the man played by Ciaran Hinds to see what these two wise, slightly battered middle-aged people find appealing about each other.

At the risk of giving entirely the wrong impression about a lively, funny movie that has more than a touch of PG Wodehouse running through it, (Guenivere Pettigrew is plainly a blood relative of Reginald Jeeves) I’ll describe the second thing that truly makes MISS PETTIGREW worthwhile. History.

There’s a moment when, at a party, the sound of fighter planes passing overhead signals the beginning of war. Almost everyone runs out to the balcony to sip drinks and watch and cheer. Miss Pettigrew and one other person stay inside. “They don’t remember the last time, do they?” she observes sadly. The backdrop of this comedy is a world on the brink of changing forever, and the filmmaker understood that conveying this effectively requires a great deal of attention to detail. The soundtrack perfectly reflects the era and what’s unfolding before you, beginning with “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” as Miss Pettigrew walks, bereft and jobless, through depression era London, and “Anything Goes” as she navigates with surprising assurance the world of fashion and show business. Every face in a crowd, every extra is interesting, whether it’s a dark-skinned woman among wealthy bohemian party-goers, or a grim-faced, bespectacled jazz musician stubbing out a cigarette before beginning another set. Every individual prompts speculation about where that person will be a few years from now. Or if they will be.

It’s not something that the filmmaker insisted upon. There are no moments in which what lies ahead for every one of these people is clubbed over the audience’s head. You can, if you’re in the mood, just watch this movie and enjoy the jokes and root for Miss Pettigrew. But there is something else hidden among all that art deco for anyone who cares to notice it. That’s the best kind of story-telling.