A French Lesson

The last year and a half of my life I've suffered from boredom. I work my full-time job, go to church, hang out occasionally with friends grab a brew; the usual. But then I come home and have hours to spare. I occasionally write something but more often than not, I just find some way to pass the time. T.V. becomes the easiest time filler and then movies can fill in the rest. I've even come to the point of playing Solitaire on my computer. Nothing says boredom like the most basic card game designed for one.

I'’ve almost become bored with life. Sometimes I wish that some black hole would come along and swallow up where I live and take me to some other dimension. In this dimension, blending a freakin' Pomegranate Frappaccino would be exhilarating and laying out an appointment reminder card for a children'’s hospital would leave me speechless. And interrupting this would be some ace FBI agent who would need my help to solve some twisted homicide in Chicago. And only a veteran of the now defunct City News Service who toured the city and can hear the streets tell him what happened could help solve this case. I would be back in Chicago talking to neighbors and shaking down beat cops when Bryan Singer would drive up in a limo and ask me to screenplay his next movie.

But alas, I live in the everyday world where boredom can strike down the entire human population, where men like Milan and Manesquier, the two main characters of Man On the Train, can forge a friendship and each provide the other with an escape from the boredom that is their lives. If I sound a little like some faux French philosopher, it's probably from watching this 2003 French movie, directed by Patrice Leconte. There's not much action to the movie. Milan, played by French rock star Johnny Hallyday, arrives in a quiet French town to prepare for a bank robbery. He's old and has a headache, which leads him to a pharmacy where Manesquier is waiting for a prescription. Being a retired poetry teacher and having a faulty heart, Manesquier needs medicine for his ailing heart as well as some adventure from retirement. He invites Milan, clad in a black leather jacket, over for a glass of water, hoping for something out of the ordinary.

The movie continues to follow their friendship as Milan tries to teach the old professor how to shoot a gun. Manesquier teaches the bankrobber some French poetry and both bond through their consideration of what their life could have been. However, both are old, tired and resigned to whatever their fates will be when the end of the week rolls around. On this day, Milan reluctantly robs a bank and Manesquier has triple bypass surgery on his heart. The outcome for both men on that Saturday is somehow softened by the time they spend with each other. Their small friendship and sparse conversation throughout this subtle film provide each with the other's perspective of their own lives.

The only downsides to this movie are its subtitles and subtleness. While being a fine film, this is not the movie to watch if undercaffienated.

And while watching this movie cured my boredom for 90 minutes, it also spurred my mind on to consider my boredom itself. Why do I get bored? Should I even be bored? Do I really need T.V. or movies to cure my boredom? And then I realize how philosophically French I sound by asking all these questions and how boring it is to sit around and ask questions for too long.
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