Sicko

It's not a coincidence that I'm thinking of this film today because I'm home from work sick. This is the first time in years that I am getting paid to be home sick because in February I acceped a job that provides health insurance coverage for me and my family. It had been more than ten years since I've been in that position (having health care through my work), although I worked nearly all of that time.

I saw Sicko, Michael Moore's scathing documentary about the U.S. health care system, a few weeks back, and like most viewers, my initial reactions were of outrage and frustration. I've seen all of Michael Moore's films, and in my opinion this is his best. For one thing, he doesn't insert his usual gadfly self into the story as much as he has in past films, and this allows his story to unfold. Yes, his presentations of the English, French, and Cuban health care systems are one-sided, but so what? This is what makes a compelling documentary. I was particularly piqued to learn that in France new mothers are treated to a government-sponsored (free) nanny who comes to your house and helps with cooking, laundry, and looking after the new baby. That is in stark contrast to what new mothers in this country go through, often overwhelmed, in isolation and with only six weeks maternity leave. When the new moms in France are ready to return to work, they can rely upon high-quality child care that costs roughly the equivalent of about a dollar an hour. All French workers receive unlimited sick days.

It has only been in the last six months that my family has had employer-provided health coverage. For the previous several years we paid for a very basic plan that fell short of what we needed when our second daughter was born with health problems. The out-of-pocket cost of even minimal coverage for a family of four is prohibitive. Like many Americans we have been forced to reevaluate job and career options through this lens.

This is one of the most entrenched problems facing this country, one that none of the presidential candidates have addressed in a satsifying way. However, if only because the costs to corporations for providing their employees with health coverage are so exorbitant that it makes them less competitive in the global marketplace, I remain hopeful that in the not-too-distant future we will begin to see at least some reform on this issue.

Michelangelo Antonioni Dead at 94

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/movies/31cnd-antonio.html?hp

So strange how I had just been thinking of his films this morning (see two posts below). And a coincidence that Antonioni passed away on the same day as Ingmar Bergman. Two of the most extraordinary film artists of all time.

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Over the weekend I had the chance to see this amazing Peter Weir film from 1975 once again. It had been about 10 years since the last time I saw it. It is always so interesting for me to go back and see films or read books after a long period of time, and see different things in it than I had when I was younger. Picnic at Hanging Rock is a masterpiece of psychological tension, so evocative of another place and time. The story involves the disappearance of three boarding school students and one of their teachers while picnicing at the mythic site on Valentine's Day, 1900. Their disappearance is never explained or resolved, and the behavior of the young girls, which appears to be so in keeping with rural Australia in 1900, seems so innocent and yet so odd to us today. Check out this image and this one to get a sense of the atmosphere Weir creates. The unresolved mystery at the heart of this film is what I find appealing, along with the striking cinematography. Dialogue is minimal. We often hear characters' thoughts without them ever being spoken aloud. And the music, especially the pan pipes that fade in and out, is particularly haunting. While it seems very rooted in its time and place, it is also very evocative of some other films of the same era, especially two by Michelangelo Antonioni: The Passenger (1975) and Zabriskie Point (1970). All are highly recommended.

It was also poignant to have seen this film the same weekend we went hiking in Calaveras Big Trees State Park. The colossal trees and massive granite outcroppings, strikingly similar to the ones in the film, have been around for centuries, some for literally thousands of years, and it is easy to imagine all they have borne witness to.