Limbo

 

I've been watching a new movie where the main character is a highly tatooed drug addicted policeman investigating a twenty year old unsolved case.

It is in black and white and everything about it would indicate that this will be a film noir piece that would generally not appeal to me. Yet it did. I have watched it and rewatched it quite a few time, always gleaning something new from each viewing.

First of all the people are real people, living lives I can relate to. Emma, with her three kids in the back seat is reminiscent of my childhood. My mother never left us alone. She piled us into the back seat of the car and took us with her as she attempted to do various low paying jobs to make ends meet. Charlie is the typical small town, man, working hard at a dead end job, trying to deal with being a man in the local sense, while finding himself not able to connect with his own kids, being raised by his sister. These are not hollywood people who whip through their lives meeting impossible barricades with gloss and glitter. They are down to earth, day to day people dealing with hard every day situations the best they can. It's feels real.

Travis, the policeman, comes into their lives, unwanted, knowing he probably can't do what he's there to do and yet he makes a difference by simply being a decent human being who is cognizant of their situation. Tattooed with angel wings and various other graffiti all over his body he tells one of the children he is from up there. (He simply points at the sky.) The savvy child knows this isn't true and yet his choices of what he listens to in his car and his demeanor make me wonder.

Even the dogs in this movie cause me to ponder. It is that kind of a film.

I wanted to watch this film because my favorite actor is in it, but I never expected to find myself so entranced by the slow unfolding depth of it.