the path of least resistance
I'm watching a fairly obscure little movie in the theater today-- The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet and there two moments stick out as things I want to get into here. (First of all, the movie's directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet--if you know who that is and are interested, you should know that it's an English language film (though filmed in Canada). It's about a 10-year-old-boy who heads out on the road (almost Into the Wild -style) to get from Montana to D.C. to accept an award for inventing a perpetual motion machine. There's a whole thing about guilt over the accidental death of his twin brother and an almost painfully obvious metaphor--perpetual motion for the way the family has settled into its post-tragedy life, and everything resolves itself a little too neatly. But, the visuals, including overlayed maps and diagrams (apparently the book on which the film is based includes a lot of these things) are great, a lot of train rides and countrysides (Canada posin...