A prologue

So here I sit, with all the vitality of a whale on anti-depressants and furthermore dead on a coast of God knows where, having eaten nothing but cake all day and subsequently spent the evening on a sugar-high playing Guitar Hero like there was no tomorrow before flopping on my chair, feeling as drained as if I had been through two consecutives threesomes except with none of the satisfaction and probably some of the same diseases (by the way is it true that you can get gonorrhoea off someone by playing on his same joystick? Pun not intended, no seriously I swear to God that was not intended).

Now, my blog-posts normally tend to fall under one of the following three categories:

#1. Something you couldn’t possibly care about.
#2. Something you couldn’t possibly care about, but told in a serious tone (this is when I get confessional, which is probably when I get the most readings, a fact as encouraging as the sight of a jogging track built on a trail for rhinoceros).
#3. The artsy posts.

Number three is probably the only kind which never gets any reading whatsoever, and that’s exactly what you’re going to get now, as soon as I can stop my brain from wandering like a broken kite and actually get it on track to where it’s supposed to go. I’m almost tempted to just say ‘nah’ and let this turn into a post of the category #1, because I don’t know if I really can be bothered. But the thing is, you see, that the events for #1 merge with those for #3, so speaking about one builds me a bridge onto the other.

Allow me to explain. What time I haven’t spent working on my dissertation these days I’ve dedicated instead to sitting outside a university block with this Indian housemate of mine, getting stoned like there was no heaven and yacking about what it would be like to have been born a blade of grass or a bird. Well yesterday we had the bright idea of watching Schindler’s List after smoking what was basically half of a Norwegian forest plus occasional pit-stops for recharging.

Oh. God. I’m never. Doing. That. Again. It made me more morose and depressed than a Corsican funeral and seemed to go on for even longer.

But – and this is where the artsy bit supposedly comes in – Schindler’s List was released in 1993, which is an interesting year for Spielberg because it witnessed the simultaneous release of what are probably his two most overrated and underrated films. His most overrated one is, de facto, Schindler’s List. It’s not his worst film by any shot, but it is the one which received the most undeserved laurels in relation to its substance, after all I haven’t seen anyone getting up and slapping the label ‘masterpiece’ on The Lost World or Indiana Jones and the CGI Monkeys or whatever that was.

His most underrated film, instead, is the one I wanted to write about, and it is Jurassic Park. Yup. You got it. Mind you it’s received its fair share of praise, but mostly as an ‘action-packed thriller’ ‘rollercoaster ride’ etc. etc. blockbuster kind of thing. I on the other hand believe it’s one of his most original, profound, memorable and – dare I say it – moving films he’s ever done. Yeah. You’re reading this right. I think that JP is an incredible piece of art, in the most ‘highbrow’ sense of the word. No, I’m not just pulling your leg. No, I’m not still high either, for the sake of – aw, look, I’m almost 600 words in and I still haven’t said anything of artsy, and since I believe in short posts, I’m going to have to defer the explanation of this to the next one. Which makes this post completely pointless. Category #1 achieved with success!!!!!!

But I promise. In a few days, those of you who give a damn or whom I managed to make at least mildly curious will get the explanation on why Jurassic Park is actually an incredibly deep, incredibly moving film about the relationship between art and life.

I promise I’m not pulling your leg. Stay tuned, and you’ll get it all in a couple of days.