Friday, August 27, 2010

Rain and romance



It feels like the beginning of fall. August in Holland is supposed to be a summer month, but it has rained for so many days now. I do love the fall. I love so many things about it. After a period of sunshine, being outdoors, eating light foods, swirling around in summer clothing with the lightness of the air, the fall is like a slow retreat back into your home. Daylight lessens, heaters are turned on, you make a nice nook for yourself in the couch in your dimly lit living room and read a book while listening to rain and wind against the windows. It's a mystical transformation, it's returning to yourself, to your home, to each other. You watch the world turn red and yellow and brown from your window, last harvests are being brought in, the food you eat starts to taste more saturated, heavy and filled with dark flavours.

The fall is also a season of romance. Romantic movies make more sense when you watch them during fall (and I believe I mean here the romantic movies that take place in a far away time or land, not so much the modern romantic comedies). Yesterday I watched Becoming Jane again, about our little brave and heroic Jane Austen. So today I am in a romantic mood and I would like to share with you my favourite scene from the movie.

Jane arrives at this ball (I've read that Jane Austen lived a quiet life, reading and writing a lot, but she nevertheless loved balls and dancing and she was good at it too). She knows Tom Lefroy, a man she has met a few times and is falling in love with, is at the ball as well. As she enters the room, she looks out for him. She greets some people, but all this time her mind and attention are focused on seeing his face in the crowd. Mr. Wisley, the man who proposed to her and with whom, if she were sensible, she is supposed to marry, comes up to her and asks her to dance. She accepts, giving up her search and they start to dance.

Then this is what happens. (please click to see for yourself)

'Poof' suddenly out of nowhere he appears, joining the dance. Everything about this scene is so well performed, the camera swirling through the crowd and slowly closing in on Jane, so that your mind is close to hers and you do not see the surprise coming at all. The music...ah...the music is just gorgeous. It's a remake of a piece by Henry Purcell, a famous musician from the Barok period. The actors, the way she flutters and tries to compose herself, the way her posture changes from boredom to passion from the moment he is there. The way he smiles all smug exploring the reaction caused by his surprise and suddenly changes the intensity of his gaze, realizing the effect of his act goes deeper than he could have imagined, the confusion of mr. Wisley, the hand on her back, it's just...overwhelming. Not a word is being said and yet so many things are happening in this scene. I love that. Can you imagine a time when this was a part of life, these manners, the dancing, the clothing, the music? It seems so strange to me. Dance, etiquette, social rules, they are all a collective creation of mankind. Just dancing, not speaking, moving your body to a certain rhythm and expressing a certain emotion by that. Isn't it strange that we do this? We are still the same mankind, but the manners are so different now. I do miss that in modern day courting. There is almost no room for tension to build up. When you dance with someone like in this scene, just looking each other in the eyes, touching hands carefully, moving slowly to the same rhythm without saying a word, the tension must be so real and tangible. There is more room for your inner feelings to be felt, to be explored. Silence and movement is something we do not use anymore in courting. Speaking has become the main element of winning someone over. But speaking and feeling at the same time is difficult (at least for me it is). I wish more people would try to get to know each other in silence.

There's another thing this scene evokes in me, caused by the music. When I was a little girl, I used to play the violin. My father gave me this CD filled with classical music, I think it was to inspire me. I used to listen to the CD, but for some reason, I only listened to it on Sundays. Sunday is somehow the most quiet day of the week. It's a day that you tend to feel closed off from the world, secluded in your own space and your own mind. Sunday is the day melancholy seems to manifest itself very strongly and classical music goes perfect with that. So when I see this scene and hear the music I think back of those Sundays. I would be in my room, watching the clouds drift by from my roof window, surrounded by books and homework, writing or reading. This world in my room filled with classical music would be so enormously vast and wide. Everything fitted in there, all the feelings and hopes and dreams and desires and funny things, everything from inside of me was in that room. And it was huge, it covered meadows and lakes and forests and people I had never met and worlds I had never visited.