The Last Movie

Saturday, April 5. Welles’s Othello: black and white grid of rage, steam of sheer fury spewing from the vent of violence that followed where they went. Wind howled on the battlements, but sun gilded glum canals. The lovers floated beneath black bridges, coupled in stone rooms. The unrepentant villain (at the start so all the rest was flashback) dangled from a cage squinting inscrutably at the funeral procession winding through the town below. The air was full of wailing. Knives of sunlight glittered on the sea. We lurched out onto Fifty-Seventh Street. You said “I think I’m dying.” Next week your eyes went out. Shining under the lamp, your blue gaze, now opaque, your face drawn sharper but still beautiful: from this extremity you can attempt to rise to rage and grief. Or you can yield to the cozy quicksand of the bed. You wave your hand at walls of books: “What do I do? Do I throw all these away?” Their anecdotes, their comforts—now black glass.