digging through your wallet

I have long had a theory that, given five minutes with anyone's wallet, I will know as much about that person as if I had known them for years.

The same applies to personal libraries. What we put on our bookshelves and in our billfolds is far more accurate about who we are than any Rorschach test.

My most recent DVD acquisition is the Criterion Collection's release of the gargantuan Russian War and Peace filmed in the 1960s. It is actually four separate films in one package.

I was in college when they were shown at the Music Box theater in Portland, attending each of the four installments with acquaintances from the university's film studies section.

After each movie, we would retreat to one of our local hangouts and discuss what we had just watched. Because they aspired to be film-makers, my colleagues were fixated on the technical aspects of the films -- most of which they found hopelessly out-dated.

The only film student who defended the techniques was Mark, who loved anything Soviet. We re-christened him "Marx" because of his political obsession. (He now works for the libertarian Cato Institute.)

Despite his ideological blinders, he had a far better argument than his "modernist" colleagues. He was correct that the film faithfully incorporated a lot of Sergei Eisenstein's technique. And, in the context of Tolstoy's novel, the choice was effective.
I was not so much interested in the filming technique as I was in the script. After all, mine was a writer's heart. And there are few writers better than Tolstoy to describe the human condition -- even when he describes it in the context of a social order that is completely foreign to American psyches.

This version, like the one I saw in the late 1960s, retains the original languages -- French during aristocratic salons, Russian for the remainder. The Russian is translated into English subtitles. The French is not -- I suppose on the assumption that a person educated enough to appreciate Tolstoy will also speak French.

The effect of that choice retains the sound of Russian society in the early 1800s. Reading subtitles helps to capture what otherwise might be missed in a dubbed version.

I spent just over eight hours watching what I had seen over fifty years ago. Not surprisingly, even though I know the novel and have seen Woody Allen's spoof Love and Death many times, I had forgotten most of the film.

But, not all. There are several scenes that are seared in my memory. Our introduction to Natasha running around the room at a family gathering. Prince Andrei and Count Pierre walking down a wooded lane (a scene that, for me, encompasses true friendship) discussing the meaning of life. Alexander I's entrance at Natasha's first ball. A mounted Napoleon staring down at the corpse of Prince Andre at Austerlitz.

It occurred to me that if wallets and libraries are windows into people's souls, certainly their movie collections must tell us something about who they are.

You know nothing of my wallet and only a bit about the books I own. But, you are about to get a sampling of my film library. You may do with it as you will.

Listing all 300 (plus change) of my films would be tedious. At least, for me. Instead, I will randomly pick a number (say, every 20th entry), and that will do as my time on the couch. And I promise, no matter how embarrassing the title may be, you are going to see it.

So, here goes. As Auntie Mame would say, let's open a new window:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Back to the Future
• Braveheart
• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
• Fiddler on the Roof
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
• Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark
• A Little Night Music
• Memento
• Nixon
• Quantum of Solace
• The Simpsons (seasons 1-17, 20)
• Star Trek VIII: First Contact
• The Taming of the Shrew
• The Usual Suspects
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• Young Frankenstein

There it is. Like all surveys, especially, of the political variety (just ask Joe Biden how mercurial that process is), this one has its faults. The most obvious being the lack of any of the scores of Woody Allen titles that populate my shelf.

But, I picked a number and I stuck with it. The result is rather representative of the films in my library, and they do reflect a bit of my personality. After all, I liked the titles enough to buy them -- and keep them. (I have given away almost the same number of DVDs as I now currently own. Tastes, including my own, change.)

And the point of this whole exercise? It is for those of you who thumb through personal libraries and then surreptitiously check out what is in the medicine cabinet while using the host's bathroom. (Don't worry. Your secret is safe with me.) Feel free to let your personal voyeur roam.

What does all of this have to do with Mexico? A bit. To assist with my ongoing goal of improving my Spanish, I will often listen to the movies dubbed in Spanish. DVDs offer some great features.

 The hardest part of any language is learning to listen in that tongue. Listening to familiar movies with a new language overlay has helped me pick up sentence structures, grammar, and, of course, a lot of new words.

The real reason I keep them, though, is that like those scenes in War and Peace that are etched in my mind, each of the movies holds some special connection with my life (say, Sandahl Bergman's star turn in All That Jazz). And, like those post-movie discussions at The Cheerful Tortoise fifty-odd years ago, they raise questions about the lives we live -- and how we should live those lives.

Where else, but in War and Peace, could you encounter this Tolstoy nugget. “If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.”

You talk amongst yourself. I have to put another DVD into the machine.