Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

 

Watch the trailer of the movie here

 

Remember Harvey Keitel who plays Auggie in the movie "Smoke", who owns a tobacco shop in New York? One evening, as he’s closing up, Paul, a chainsmoking writer, runs up, hoping he’s not too late to still get some cigars.

Auggie lets him into the shop, and as he’s getting the cigars, Paul notices a 35mm camera sitting on the counter. He assumes another customer has left it behind, but Auggie tells him that it's his camera. He spends a little time each day taking photographs. In fact, there’s a little more to it than that; Auggie has a personal project and pursues it obsessively. Every day, at the same time each morning, he stands outside his shop and takes a photograph across the intersection.

Paul expresses interest; Auggie isn’t "just some guy who pushes coins across a counter". Soon the two of them are back at Auggie's place, having a beer, smoking (of course), and flipping through Auggie's fourteen albums. It turns out, he's been doing this for fourteen years straight and has accumulated more than 4,000 images of the same thing. He's never taken a vacation because he needs to get his shot.

Paul is amazed but also dismayed. Here’s the dialogue that follows:

 

 

PAUL "They're all the same." AUGGIE "That's right. Four thousand pictures of the same place. The corner of 3rd Street and 7th Avenue at eight o'clock in the morning. Four thousand straight days in all kind of weather. I can never take a vacation. I got to be in my spot every morning at the same time. Every morning at the same spot, at the same time." PAUL "I've never seen anything like this." AUGGIE "It's my project. What you'd call my life's work." PAUL "Amazing. I'm not sure I get it, though. I mean, what was it that gave you the idea to do this project?" AUGGIE "I don't know. I just came to me. It's my corner, after all. For me, that's just one little part of the world but things take place there too like everywhere else. It's a record of my little spot." PAUL "It’s kind of overwhelming." AUGGIE (Still smiling) "You’ll never get it if you don’t slow down, my friend." PAUL "What do you mean?" AUGGIE "I mean, you’re going too fast. You’re hardly even looking at the pictures." PAUL "But they’re all the same." AUGGIE "They’re all the same, but each one is different from every other one. You’ve got your bright mornings and your dark mornings. You’ve got your summer light and your autumn light. You’ve got your weekdays and your weekends. You’ve got your people in overcoats and galoshes, and you’ve got your people in shorts and T-shirts. Sometimes the same people, sometimes different ones. And sometimes the different ones become the same, and the same ones disappear. The earth revolves around the sun, and every day the light from the sun hits the earth at a different angle." PAUL (Looks up from the album at AUGGIE) "Slow down, huh?" AUGGIE "Yeah, that's what I'd recommend. You know how it is. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, time creeps in its petty pace."

 

The plot of this movie drifts and swirls like smoke. Characters and subplots are deftly woven into a tapestry of stories and pictures which only slowly emerges to our view. This movie tries to convince us that reality doesn’t matter so much as aesthetic satisfaction. Each day passes as Auggie tries to teach us to notice the little details of life.

 

 

I've tried to follow Auggie's routine and take a photo each morning as I sit on the jetty with my first cup of tea of the day, but I might as well have taken just the ONE photo, after all, they are all the same from one day to the next: the same peaceful river, the same blue sky ...

 

 

Ooops, I spoke too soon! Two kayakers just whizzed by, too intend on getting where they're going to take in the tranquillity of the moment. But not so for me: I shall continue to savour this precious moment, today and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow ...

 

 

Come back tomorrow for more of the same. It's my corner, after all!

 

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