I’ve already written things about Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thomson and their duo in the film “Last Chance Harvey” on this blog.  This is one of the advantages of a blog, considered as I do as little more than a “dear diary.”  Nothing more, but nothing less.  Being able to watch “Last Chance Harvey” on TV was exceptional for me, as it was for Helen, who was bone tired, and tense with the effort of imposing on the household programs devoted to home decoration and refurbishement that frankly drive me up a wall.  I far prefer seeing automobiles crash into each other, or the communciations network of the USA fall into the hands of domestic terrorists, rather than watching people improve their living conditions on the basis of huge estates or monthly salaries.  Once again, the existence of multiple choices saved our couple: last night we could watch “Last Chance Harvey.”

It’s awful isn’t it to grow old!  It’s one of the best parts of the film, seeing how truly awful it is to grow old.  How lonely it can be, especially in contexts where the majority are young and in the prime of life: this is one of the rare situations when I feel the impulse to become a terrorist.  In order to eliminate all the dynamic and self-centered young people (all those between 18 and 48).  This is well-done in the movie. 

Dustin Hoffman is Harvey Shine.  Before he meets up with Emma Thomson, he’s as good as dead.  People smell despair at a hundred feet away.  The film documents the horredous possibility of children being permanently estranged from their parents — sons and daughters will nothing much left to say to their fathers.  Harrowing.  Chastening.  The stuff of which nightmares are made. 

Here’s the equivalent in “On Beauty” by Zadie Smith.  As harrowing and horrifying as anything in any film.  Something that, if possible, I would fain avoid.  The scene is an encounter, a homecoming of sorts, between Jerome and Levi: brothers who haven’t seen each other for quite some time.

THEY WERE BOTH NODDING A LOT.  SADNESS SWEPT OVER JEROME.  THEY HAD NOTHING TO SAY TO EACH OTHER.  A FIVE YEAR OLD GAP BETWEEN SIBLINGS IS LIKE A GARDEN THAT NEEDS CONSTANT ATTENTION.  EVEN THREE MONTHS APART ALLOWS THE WEEDS T GROW UP BETWEEN YOU.

The film equivalent is awesome: an image of hell on earth.  Both with the daughter and with the ex-wife.  Being an ex-husband and a father is no guarantee that you can be taken out of the voyage to the end of the night.  Nobody owes you anything.  Shit happens, and things die, even the most precious things. 

One of the finest things in the movie is how this outcome is avoided.  How people manage to remain forever young.  The most moving aspect of this salvage operation is to see the two protagonists simply walking through the streets of London, along a path that my Helen knows by heart (she has always been with big major stollers, men who have sublimated the joys and pleasures of being in a stroller with their mothers), and talking, grooving in talk, like you do when you play catch with someone you know.  The sheer weight of the odds against a couple of getting beyond all of the obstacles that life places in the path of a new couple is crushing, and, thanks to the movie, funny and moving.  Heart attacks can put an end to just about anything, and by the way an end to life is often less horrible than an end put to a possibility of a new connection.   The telephone and the streets of London can lead astray, and can offer an issue to the worst of possible scenarios.

Harvey knows all about the books his new girlfriend has read.  She says “Middlemarch” and he says, like an automatic answering machine, “George Eliot.”  Have you read it, Harvey, and he says, of course, NO.  I don’t understand this twist in the characterization, but it’s cool.  As if the search for a proper partner, played out to the hilt in “Middlemarch” was something Harvey knew about, but couldn’t care less about until it was brought home.  The fact that he knows the author without knowing the story makes Emma Thomson laugh, and let me tell you, when these two people laugh, the impact is on a par with the strongest emotions you have lived through.  The whole world loves to laugh.