Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Up All Night - Scent of a Woman

As my throat finally allowed me to make some guttural noises last night my hopes were up. I started planning for another good night's sleep like the day before but this one turned the other way completely. First Anjali decided to hang around and play till 1230 in the morning and then I just could not sleep. The smallest irritation would get me started on a painful cough and that was that. I changed places, tried several different postures including one where I tied a cloth rather tightly around my neck. This actually seemed to work until a point came when I was falling unconscious (just kidding) but even that did not. Finally at around 230 in the morning I emerged, hoping to watch tv until I fall asleep.

And then I noticed that Al Pacino's 'Scent of a woman' was about half an hour done and I just lay there, admiring the way Pacino holds the audience by the throat as he plays Lt. Col. Frank Slade, Retd., blind, mean, suicidal, lonely and a lot of other not very complimentary adjectives. He has with him the schoolboy who has been given the weekend job of taking care of blind old cranky Colonel. And before the kid knows what happens they are in New York - Pacino on a one way ticket and the kid two way. The tango scene, the suicidal scene, the scene at the brother's house, the Ferrari scene and the fabulous speech at the school at the end are so riveting that I completely forgot about sleep. Pacino looks so convincing as Slade, that you stumble with him, feel for him and almost cry for him. Oh man, it was fabulous for the nth time. I wonder how they wrote that screenplay - so simple and so powerful, those powerful dialogues, and how Pacino got under the skin of Slade. Any number of times you watch, you see excellence in motion. Powerhouse stuff.

Who cares a damn about sleep anyway. To me that ranks somewhere at the op of actor performances I have seen. Pacino is right up there in my list of favourite actors! Hey that reminds me - a list coming up.

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