It’s official. The Painted Veil was awesome. Simple, lovely, touching, bla bla bla. Subtle.
Nicely subtle. This article about Edward Norton and this article about the screenwriter, Ron Nyswaner convince me further of the film’s worth.

Some reviewers complained it “kept the natives at arm’s length” (The NY Post) and that some real narrative potential was lost in the expedience of story-delivery, but you know when you see a movie with like two scenes worth paying $11 all over again to watch? That was The Painted Veil.

Funny thing happened at the theater though. It was filled with psychopaths. Let me expand:

For the entire 15 minutes before the film started that we were all subject to wait seated, the man sitting behind me yapped and yapped about how he comes to these screenings all the time, and how he ALWAYS tells the screening-organizers and film production reps EXACTLY what he thought of the movie. And according to him, half the time the producers will take his comments and “reshoot the whole film and make the changes (he) suggested, without crediting (him) later!” This disgruntled screening-goer is “tired of telling Hollywood how to make movies, without getting any recognition.”

Two rows in front of me were a quartet of viewers that looked to have come straight out of a John Waters’ casting of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The particularly ribald man of the group kept “talking back” at the movie and the theater. “Talking back” at a movie is totally protocol for something like Snakes on a Plane or Scream, but not at a W.Somerset Maugham adaptation. It may seem snooty of me, but if nothing else, his comments were unwitty, which alone makes his sass totally criminal.

The best part about this guy was his lady friend. Think Aileen Wuornos (Charlize Theron’s “Monster”) if she were a librarian. After the movie, the fawning monster kept rubbing Mr. Talk Back’s head, who gurgled to the two ladies in their quartet, through drunken tongue, “you two watch each others’ backs. OK? Like me and my brother!”

Wuornos kept apologizing for bringing her friends to the movie. “I’m sorry I made us come to this thing. I thought since it was free and people said it was going to win some award…”

I was flanked to the left by an Abuelita, who kept talking about Mexico in the first country. “In my country, we have wonderful Christmas-time weather…”, “my country is a wonderful place to vacation…”, “I left my country when I was 20 years old…”

My patience with her was growing as thin as the razor I planned to cut her with after about five minutes of first country talk in tandem with Mr. Unacknowledged Screenwriter, when I turned to my right trying to figure out what the fuck smell I was smelling.

Thing was, every other person in the theater had brought dinner with them in their backpack. Imagine the smell of lasagna and peanut butter. MMmmmmm…
…

And despite all this, I really loved the film. Now isn’t that saying a lot?

I’m realizing also, that 2006 was a great year for film in general. Not one of the movies I saw this year (in theaters) was bad. Of course, I watched them at a rate of about one every other month, but they were all good. The Departed, Snakes on a Plane, Science of Sleep, Inland Empire, Linda Linda Linda, even Superman and X3 were ok. Good job movie industry! There’s hope for thee yet.