I agree, Matt.

Alma lost ALL of my sympathy in the kitchen scene. When they were married, that's one thing -- not only was he cheating on her, but she had to live with the fact that he'd probably never loved her at all. But bringing it up again once enough time had passed for her to be pregnant by her new husband was purely petty and mean-spirited. I felt great pity for her, but no sympathy.

Matt, the scene in question was filmed, but IMO it had enough buildup to give you a deeply uncomfortable sympathy for both of them. He was tormented, lonely without the daily presence of his daughters (though still unable to respond to their please for affection and attention), and no more free than he'd been when he was married. She had cobbled together a new life, but it wasn't the one she had expected, and it was made clear in a couple of brief but vivid scenes that the marriage had been extremely miserable for her, and that the divorce had happened without any real talk between them. The reason why the marriage died was never named until that moment at the kitchen sink, and the screenwriters, Lee, and Michelle Williams all made you feel how suffocating those years of silence had been. She attacked with cruelty and venom, but there was truth behind it -- it'd just been festering and turning poisonous in all that unspoken time. The scene showed her ugliness and cruelty, but it was damn effective at making you understand where it came from.

Or, er, in light of Jessica's post, clearly YMuddledUnwillingSympathyMV.

Have I mentioned that this film totally wrecked me in every good way?

Maybe an inappropriate time to inject some levity, but the Chronic of Narnia rap (from SNL of all places) is amusing me. [link]

They had me at "You can call us Aaron Burr from the way we're dropping Hamiltons."

They had me at the Magnolia Bakery verse.

Thanks for transcribing that, Raq. I'm amused by the video but I can't crank it at work so I'm missing most of the lyrics.

Here's a whole transcription: [link]

I'm feeling the Jesse-love.

Somehow being the only person in the theater appalled or saddened by the violence or tragedy onscreen is worse than being the only person in the theater who is laughing at the joke.

This. Individual humans = mostly loveable. Crowd behavior = frequently unnerving.

This was completely my experience of Crash in the theatre. So much so, that I left halfway through and havn't yet rented the dvd.

Sometimes people laugh because they can't bring themselves to acknowledge how tragic a situation it really is -- it's distancing, especially in a group. (I'm happy to say that the friends I was with were gasping with horror and dismay at the same scene, because at the same time that it's all Grand!Passion, the betrayal that it is also gets shown.)

And it seemed to me like such a fantastic, brutal, heart-wrenching moment -- and then practically the entire theater burst into cheerful, boisterous laughter. Not embarrassed, shocked, uncomfortable laughter, but the art-house movie equivalent of Fuck yeah! It was an utter Bizarro World moment.

This happened both in my theater and in the theater my friend saw it in. And I was laughing myself initially until I realized I wasn't supposed to be finding it funny. Something about the way the scene was played, the fact that it was an "Oops!" moment just struck that comic nerve. I think we were primed for that reaction since we also found the immediate rush to make out surprisingly funny. Everything seemed to be moving so much faster than we anticipated. It's possible it was just one of those releases of tension that you need in a movie like that, and it just happened to occur at an inappropriate time. Because the scene's clearly not meant to be funny at all.