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Scene VII:
Critics Take on the Premier Showing of Tank's Documentary of the Closing Eye

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CRITIC 1: “The entire time! The tension! I was pure poured concrete for four hours and forty-six minutes.”

CRITIC 2: “Right on. It was so right on.”

CRITIC 1: “I didn’t dare blink. My attention didn’t wane even when you touched me.”

CRITIC 2: “That wasn’t me.”

CRITIC 1: “Not even to eat my popcorn. You mean it was the guy on my right? In the raincoat? His hand between my legs?”

CRITIC 2: “What a tribute to that movie. That guy could have climbed all over you and would you have known?”

CRITIC 1: “Kool. Oh way kool. Who was that guy?”

CRITIC 2: “In the raincoat? The director, I think.”

CRITIC 1: “Of Documentary of…?”

CRITIC 2: “Yee-oh! The big chief himself.”

CRITIC 1: “Oh God. Say it again. Tank stroked my thighs? Mr Slow Motion. The king? I swear to you this man has made a film the very equivalent of Proust.”

CRITIC 2: “Ah, Proust! Another masterpiece of the first walk was Proust.”

CRITIC 1: “Eighty-two hours and forty-six minutes of sheer unutterable utterance. Who can ever forget Proust propped up in his cork-lined bed, that semi-dark room, never the smallest noise save that of ink smacking the page, the single sustained camera position through eighty-two hours as the dear asthmatic neurasthenic composes the 16 vols of A la Recherche du temps perdu.”

CRITIC 2: “Time! When has time ever been better comprehended?”

CRITIC 1: “Yes! And the cup of tea, the bit of cake. The crumbs on his chest. Sheer genius. My heart stopped. It just went pitter-patter and stopped.”

CRITIC 2: “Wasn’t Proust a Tank?”

CRITIC 1: “Definitely. When he was married to that little red-headed girl in the green shoes.”

CRITIC 2: “Whose eye is it in Documentary? Do you think it was the Eye of God?”

CRITIC 1: “It was Mel Gibson’s eye, stupid.”

CRITIC 2: “Yeah, but like, whose eye was Mel’s eye playing?”

CRITIC 1: “There you got me.”

CRITIC 2: “Let’s go back tonight. The Documentary of the Closing Eye is utter riveting drama played out on a heretofore unrecognized human scale. When that eye finally clanged shut after four hours and forty-six minutes, it was as though eternity had closed its doors.”

CRITIC 1: “Closing Eye Two comes next year. I hear in that one he’s got something in his eye.”

CRITIC 2: “Mel? God? You mean like…?”

CRITIC 1: “Yeah. Grain of sand. Grit. Maybe a twitch.”

CRITIC 2: “Jesus. That’s so – so…”

CRITIC 1: “Biblical?”

CRITIC 2: “Yeah. Such a daring treatise on – on…”

CRITIC 1: “The failure of philosophy. The phenomenological meltdown. Our moral quagmire.”

CRITIC 2: “God, yes. Oh, the agony. I can’t wait.”

manicule

Read on: Act II, Scene VIII »
Go back: Table of Contents »

The Porcupine's Quill would like to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. The financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) is also gratefully acknowledged.

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