I wonder: what could be the reasons why I sometimes have to struggle through works of art? Is it because they are boring? Or difficult to understand? Or because I am sitting down to engage with it when I am very tired or sleepy?
I have started watching a Tamil film called "Thunivu" because I enjoy the "mystery thriller" genre. But I am finding myself struggling to finish this movie because every time I sit down to watch it, I start feeling drowsy and have to postpone watching it for another time.
I started watching it because the blurb about it was interesting. But now even after watching 45 minutes, the suspenseful story is not engaging my interest.
The reasons why I am forcing myself to finish watching it is because it might get interesting towards the end, and because I may form a bad habit of not finishing through cultural productions such as books, movies, music, etc.
Some of the books I struggled through were Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations" and Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice". The sentences were so long as if they were paragraphs and by the time I approached the last part of a sentence I would have forgotten what the first half of the sentence was about!
So it was a pleasant surprise to discover that 19th century writers could still write in modern prose: for example, I am currently reading a historical novel written by Russian writer Leo Tolstoy who was born in 1828. It's called "War and Peace" and although it's long (1,200 pages!) it's written in simple language and his philosophical ponderings are very eye-opening.
There was only one instance I could not finish a book in my whole lifetime - the award-winning book "Dune" by Frank Herbert. So I watched the 1984 movie version directed by David Lynch and found out that the story is not personally appealing to me and so I gave up reading the book after reading 200 pages.
Perhaps, as I said before, due to my short life, I should dedicate my time to enjoying things I love and not wasting my time on things that I have to struggle through.
Sunday, February 19, 2023
Stuck again
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Perhaps you're trying to watch this Tamil film on bad hair days.
ReplyDeleteBut you're right. There's no point in forcing yourself to get through something that's not engaging. I've give up some books upon reading like 5% or less and quit TV shows after one episode or two. There's so much good works of art to appreciate to be stuck in a struggle.
Against my own good judgment, I forced myself to struggle through and have today afternoon completed watching "Thunivu". They were stretching the suspense too much, and explanations started trickling in only in the last half of the movie. In the end, I have to conclude that there was nothing of particular interest in the revenge storyline and I found it not worth my time.
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