Skip to main content

The Painted Veil

      Hey, everyone. Tonight I watched a good movie on television entitled The Painted Veil. Edward Norton stars as a Doctor named Walter Fane who goes to China for an outbreak of cholera. Dr. Fane is a bacteriologist. The story takes place around 1920. Walter, a proper English bloke,marries a girl named Kitty (Played by Naomi Watts.) before leaving for the Orient. Kitty agrees to marry Walter for that age-old reason, to escape her mother. She is justttttt a wee bit selfish and immature. When she arrives in China she straightaway begins an affair with a colleague of her husband.
    When Walter catches the lovers in the act, he volunteers for service in a village swept by cholera, although he is more of a lab guy than an M.D. He forces his wife along for the ride. I really am not sure if his intent is a double suicide via infectious disease or not.
      Regardless of intent, they arrive in a grim and tragic mess. There is widespread hatred of Europeans,complete with attendant violence, soul-shaking death and suffering due to disease and soul searching on the part of the young couple.
    Will the marriage survive? Will both of them die of cholera? Will Kitty use the lemons of her life to make lemonade for the orphans in a house operated by Catholic Nuns? The answers to these questions are yours if you watch this movie. I would call this a four star out of five. No, that's not fair. It is a bit better than that. Normally I deplore sad movies, but this one is terrific.
   In a side note, I received a trade magazine in the mail today. As you know, I have a license in water treatment. (One of many former jobs.) Well, I sat on my porch, leafing through the periodical, reading an article about some water treatment folks who went to a remote area in Central America and did a nice thing. The villagers had no sanitary drinking water and only a limited supply of water, of any sort. They installed a well pump, piping and attendant equipment that will make everyone healthier and happier. The story touched me. Back in the day, it was the sort of thing I would have loved to do. Now, certain things preclude such an adventure. Age, physical things etc.
     Then tonight, I watched this show about thousands dying due to unclean drinking water. It was an odd coincidence and doubtless made the show more riveting. Also, the human drama about youthful mistakes which continue to yield a bitter harvest, year after year, of unforeseen misery... was compelling.
      At times, I wonder if this life is a mere shadow of what could have been if I had stepped out in a different direction. I bid you good day.
    From the front porch of life, I'm CE Wills.
P.S. Liev Schreiber stars as the scoundrel, Charlie Townsend.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Movie Review: Limitless

    Hey, everyone. I ventured off the mountain today, down into the haunts of men. I'll tell you about a movie I saw, then later I'll tell you about some other stuff. The movie is Unlimited . This is a story that you would have to call science fiction, but in the not so distant future you may call it reality.      Bradley Cooper plays Edward Morra. If you looked up loser in the dictionary you would see this guy's picture. He has freeloaded off his girlfriend for years. He claims to be a writer but can't seem to put words on paper. His woman leaves him; he is a scroungy, dirty dude with no future, no drive and no money. He is about to be evicted from his scummy apartment.     Then he bumps into an old friend. The friend wants him to try a new drug which comes in the form of a small, clear pill. What Edward doesn't know is that the pill is pretty awesome. The drug is designed to unlock the true potential of the human brain. We only use a...
4 comments
Read more

It's So Easy

     Hey, everyone, out there in etherland. I've been playing some new songs this morning on my keyboard. You may remember a Buddy Holly tune called It's So Easy . I hadn't matched the title to the song before today so I was delighted when I saw that it was the one that goes like this: "It's so easy to fall in love, it's so easy to fall in love." It rocks pretty good. A later version of it, after amps and guitars had improved, really rocked. It seems like Joan Jett may have done a version. Anyway, I was playing this song and I thought about a fun thing I like to do. Sometimes I'll start to play a song and tell Carley, or the grandkids, whoever may be there, a silly story about it.      For instance, I would say that once upon a time Buddy Holly came to me and said, "CE, I need a hit, my man. The kids need shoes. I want to go on American bandstand, you know what I'm saying?"     "Yeah, Buddy, I hear you. But the thing is, I think ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Biscuit

    Hey, everyone. What a relief that Christmas is over, huh? I don't think it was meant to be the way it is.     I started thinking about the so-called good 'ole days today. My wife says that at her house, they would take a left-over biscuit and shine their shoes before church. I one-upped her by saying, "Oh, yeah? I ate the biscuit when everyone got finished with it. And I was grateful for it." Truly, though, you can and people did, shine their shoes with a biscuit. Hey, they were greasy little buggers.     Speaking of greasy little buggers, I remember when everyone had wells and were very conservative about water, particularly those of us who had to crank a handle up and down to get a bucket of water. There was no daily bath. (No showers in those days, mate.) About twice a week we took a bath and here's the recipe: The oldest kid took a bath first, then the next oldest etc. You can see why younger siblings hated the older. Bathing in the...
Post a Comment
Read more