Saturday Night at the Movies

Saturday night is "date night" at our house. DH and I try to spend Saturday night together doing something fun. This time of year with the cold and all, we usually just stay in and watch movies- something we don't have time for the rest of the week.

The last two Saturday nights have been spent with movies that came highly recommended. Last week was "Atonement" and tonight was "The English Patient". Both feature largely British casts, flashbacks as a way to tell the story, and are set in two time periods, the mid-to-late 30s and the war years. Both are visually gorgeous, dramatically intense and classic material for film classes.

Everything that should guarantee that DH and I loved them.

Well, maybe we are both getting old and crotchety, but we didn't much like either one. Both movies are graphically violent, both tell tragic love stories, and both left us with the same reaction- "Well, that was depressing!"

Not that I mind having watched them. They were both masterfully made and exquisite to look at. Both featured good casts and interesting stories. But both reveal at the end that the central character was not, perhaps, worthy of our care, and a sad movie that ends with redemption at least makes one feel like the emotional investment was justified.

If you loved either of these movies, I'd like to hear why.