Even after it was finished, I carried Carson’s movie around with me, in my mind, the rest of the day. I didn’t want to form any critical decisions about it. I wasn’t even sure if I “liked” it or was just abiding some snarky annoyance. And annoyance of – what? Its pretentiousness? Its wandering, diverging points of view? First time, freshman glibness? Heroic pointlessness?
By now all the things I’d heard before and after Carson gave me his copy made sense. Before he gave it to me, as I said, I’d heard how frustrated he’d gotten having the size and scope of his movie seem to get away with him, although he obviously didn’t do much trimming. It’s a good two hours and fifteen minutes. When the scope of a project keeps expanding beyond your ever renewing commitment to patience, it’s both exasperating and unnerving.
And after he gave me this copy, after I’d thoughtlessly put it away, I heard of other rounds of frustration. Only one or two festivals picked it up. One in France, another one, I think, in Denmark. Now, I thought in my apartment, I know why. No programmer in America would ever commit themselves to a documentary like this – a history documentary or, worse, a documentary on the history of religion – and push it into a time slot over other films demanding that their issue of the day be heard.
I became sympathetic. If I was ever annoyed or snarkily critical about Carson’s movie, I gave it up. It’s impossible for a movie that faces indifference like this to do anything but sit at the bottom of someone’s closet, or exist in a fugue state of ones and zeros in some corner of the internet. I imagined myself sitting with Carson and telling him what I thought, but even that seemed a little maudlin, too charitable by half. I recalled that he, for his part, hadn’t sought me out either, was equally nonchalant about my opinion.
But like I said, something from his movie was still lingering with me. At one point, the Bangalorean heat in my apartment moved me from the couch to my open doorway. Outside my garden apartment, the green of the shrubs and trees and the shroud of rain pouring down seemed like a separate, uncontrollable reality.
I knew I had some work to do and glanced at my watch. The hour was getting late, but the date, which didn’t matter to me at first, suddenly, grabbed my attention. It was June 23. I’d missed the summer solstice; in fact, I – we, we of the Northern Hemisphere – were already heading down the long long long fragrant path toward Carson’s darkness and delight, a winter future already underway.
I ran my finger along the dripping edge of an ivy leaf and went back inside.