Chaplin

1992 biopic

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The life of Charlie Chaplin from his impoverished childhood with his older half-brother and mentally ill mother to his life in exile in Switzerland. It's a life of sex with minors, multiple divorces, obsession, accusations of communism, and struggles to find a cane with just the right flexibility.

I saw this in a movie theater at the very beginning of 1993 and then forgot about it. I didn't know anything about Charlie Chaplin, and I think I had only seen one of his movies. Maybe. One or none. As I left the theater, I put my hands in my pockets and walked as slowly as possible to the car. There was a juggler. He wasn't juggling, but he asked me for a quarter anyway. I told him, "I don't have a quarter," and gave him a nod of the head so he'd believe me. As a fellow juggler, I could identify. It was really cold. My nipples were likely erect. Distracted by the gravity of the situation, I ended up accidentally dropping my hat in a mud puddle and not knowing until the next day. But I think I was in love; that, or I had the kind of rash that you just don't want to go away. There was a cemetery with infants' graves and a lake in the shape of America. Somehow, I ended up in a basement, completely confused about why I was there or what I was supposed to do. A quick flash, sort of a lunge, and the promise that when I returned from military school, I would locate and embrace the statue of Athena in the middle of the golf course, the one with the wind-scrambled fragments of paper scattered around her cracking feet. The one with the albatross perched on the shoulder. Earlier, we'd spent what seemed like minutes but was probably hours or days trying to piece the paper back together again, reassembling so-and-so's love for so-and-so or maybe the news that the other shoe had dropped, proverbially. Pondering an end and a ladder without any rungs, I drove over one hundred miles per hour, maybe even one hundred and fifty, and counted every single snow flake. I may have counted some stars, too. The difference between bright stars and snow flakes drifting in front of your headlights on a winter night is barely discernible. The memory is so vivid that I barely remember it. It's when I reach my hand out in my memory that I find another hand forever there. All of my memories are black and white and silent, and the title cards are illegible and the organist has the flu and refuses to take off his mittens. So that explains all that.