I figured since each post is required to be placed in a Post Topic that I would combine my hello world post with a review on a film I watched last night.

My fiancee and I are on a quest to own and watch every Johnny Depp film.  He may be a isolationist, Frenchy-loving, malcontent but what can I say, he's a great actor and, at least from my better-half's point of view, easy on the eyes. 

You may have never heard of the film, The Libertine and no one would blame you.  This remake of the 1969 film went from theatre to DvD in no time flat due to it's explicit content.

The story of the film is loosely based on the life of John Wilmot the Second Earl of Rochester (Depp), brother to King Charles II (Malkovich).   The film takes the viewer through a murky, muddy 1600's Reformation England wracked by political upheaval and debauchery.  This is the world in which Wilmot revels to the fullest extent, yet finds no satisfaction.  Urged by the King to use his gifts of writing to commemorate and honor the glory of England, he instead scribbles poems and plays pointing out her true depravity of drunkeness and sexuality with harsh cynicism. Wilmot seems both liberated and hateful of the life he is free to live.  Totally nihilistic, singular escape is the theatre which he sees as the last realm of life in which there are consequences to ones actions.  He eventually reaps the harvest of his deeds, but that, at least to me, was not the interesting part of the film.

I found the parallel between then and now to be almost startling.  One needn't take a long look around them to see a culture where every form of self-satisfaction can be justified because nothing truly matters.  Everything's a throwaway, yours to do with as you please, including your life.  And the life of a talent so great as Wilmot's, destroyed by his own doing.

This film was a chance for me to consider a certain emptiness that causes a man to embrace the darkest of side of human nature.  Something to think about anyways.