Cake

    I love movies.  I usually go to the movies twice a weekend with Tom, and before I started writing this blog I used to get in a couple of Netflixes or library DVD's a week besides. 
    I miss all that movie-watching. 
    Too bad there's not  an extra 2 hours in the day, then I could do it all.  Or else just have another 2 hours to fritter away.
    Which is what some people consider movie-watching to be.  Not me.  I don't consider watching a movie a fritteration of time any more than reading a book is.  To me the only difference between a movie and a book is that with a movie you cover more ground in less time.
    Not that some books aren't a whole lot better than some movies and vice-versa.   And I'll even concede that there are probably more great books out there than great movies.
    But there are some great movies out there.
    This past weekend I saw one.
    I saw two movies, actually.  One of them was great.
   So, on Friday night Tom and I drove across town to the Lennox AMC, which usually offers  an arty/indy selection or two among the mainstream movie choices.    We  saw "Foxcatcher",  a movie based on the true story of John Dupont, the creepy sheep of the mind-bogglingly wealthy DuPont family, and his weird involvement with a couple of Olympic wrestlers.
    All the movie critics loved this film. 
    I thought it was like an excruciatingly long, slow, run-on sentence that you're thinking will never end then all of a sudden it does.
    It'll probably win an academy award.
    On Saturday night we returned  to the Lennox to see "Cake".
    The New York Times hated "Cake."  So did Rotten Tomatoes, Variety, Roger Ebert, and most of the   other film critics.
    However the critic for the Associated Press loved it, and so did Tom and I. 
    "Cake"  stars Jennifer Aniston looking bloated, scarred, and miserable as Claire, a woman who went from having it all to having nothing except what money can buy.  An accident has left her with a disfigured face and in constant pain.  Because she's pushed away with both hands any one who cares about her she has no one in her life except for her long-suffering maid.  Claire is  the one patient that no doctor, psychologist or physical therapist can tolerate:  the patient who doesn't respond to treatment, whose condition doesn't improve, who doesn't heal. 
   In the opening scene of the movie Claire is kicked out of her pain support group for a purposely insensitive comment she makes regarding Nina, a member of the group who recently committed suicide.  But Claire becomes obsessed with Nina, and in her percoset-popping, insomniac existence imagines Nina visiting her from the other side from time to time, always looking fresh, lovely and pain-free.  Claire develops an approach-avoidance fascination for suicide and for Nina's widower husband who understands that Claire is suffering intensely on a deeper level than what she feels physically.
     All the characters in "Cake" tugged at my heart: suffering Claire, her kind-hearted maid, the broken-hearted widower,  the people who seek to help Claire, the people she pushes away, the ones she finally reaches out to.  I loved every character.  Every character resonated with me.  I sniffled my way through the movie and sobbed at the end.
    I don't think "Cake"  will win any academy awards.  But it really moved me.