Another go at taking an antihistamine, one with a different active ingredient, and same result: intermittent sleep. Yay. My options are either getting through allergy season in a hazy fog (Benedryl) or acting like someone on the most boring, shaky high ever.

Neither appeal, oddly enough.

It’s supposed to rain all day, so I’m going in early so that I don’t (hopefully) get too soaked. I also have a minor (hopefully) crisis to deal with on a day when my boss won’t be in (hopefully?) and it would be best to deal with it ASAP. It was awfully nice to get an email saying that two movies we were expecting today wouldn’t be arriving…via an email sent at 5:28pm on Wednesday night.

In better news, seeing this on the big screen was amazing. I’d never seen it before and it was literally one of the most interesting films I have ever seen. I don’t break down films critique-style (I don’t have it in my to pontificate in that way), but I am in awe of the social commentary, the filming style (mostly silent, out of budget constraints too, which is pretty fascinating, and the adept jump cuts and montage sequences), and how, for lack of a better phrase, non-black and white the actions and attitudes of the characters were.

It was made as the Nazis were rising to power as well. Rumour has it that Goebbels, who said this was one his favourite films, was the one who told Peter Lorre (who was of Hungarian Jewish descent) to get the hell out of Germany for his own safety. Fritz Lang fled a couple of years later (as he was half-Jewish). The Nazis later banned the film and used Lorre’s trial scene as an example of ‘fallibility’ and ‘evil’ of Jews in their most successful propaganda film, The Eternal Jew. What a difference nine years can make.

I love when films have a part in history (even when it’s horrible). I guess it’s part of my trivia craving, but also born of a determination to make  people believe that movies are ‘important’ beyond just entertainment. It’s not just their content, or their box office numbers, but their part in the collective consciousness, and occasionally in shifting political and social opinions, that truly fascinates me.

Unfortunately, my lack of ambition these days has not pushed me back into the academic world to pursue it further. Yet. But I think I’m going to reread some literature from my graduate school days (no, actually) and see if a spark develops again.