An auspicious start

Raccoon and I began our weekly film series today with Rushmore, a kind of oddball fairy tale of affection and affectation in which Joschka Fischer–er, rather Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) and Herman Blume (Bill Murray) compete–er, rather comprise two versions of tired (Blume) and inspired (Fischer) resignation before Rosemary Cross’ (Olivia Williams) limpid eyes.

The movie takes performance seriously, while deploying enough weird to keep from slipping into somnolent cliches about life being a stage. Throughout the viewer feels as though the timely delivery of a line limns the sodden materiality of class and age. Bill Murray’s pocked-moon face covers the rest.

Is noir played prosaic a kind of pedestrian balance? It’s not so much “life is like that,” as “life is life” plus dynamite.