The Soul of the City

So, we saw the Binghamton movie! An actual movie, sitting in our own living room, eating peppers from our own garden stuffed with chorizo and cheese and egg. Should have taken a picture. I think it must be that we don't watch movies because we are always shoved out by the children, who get, on Friday evenings, to be on every conceivable electronic device as long as they don't speak to us for two hours. How we separated them from the TV, I am not exactly sure. Maybe God quietly interfered.

And, I will say, it was a decently good movie. It didn't rise to the level of other Hugh Grant movies, but I think he played himself very well, and he certainly entered truly into the soul of Binghamton. And that's why we were watching the movie, essentially. Not for the plot. Not for the writing. Not for the acting. Really just to see how well Hollywood could carry off Binghamton.

Because, as I was saying to someone this weekend, waving my hands and frothing ever so slightly about the lips, Binghamton is its own thing. It has its own character that cannot be mixed up with any other fading northeastern town. Sure, there are all kinds of commonalities, one recognizes a certain and sure similarity, one might experience a touching warm feeling of home, but, and I do feel that it is a fairly substantial one, Binghamton is its own Depression. It is not Detroit's Depression, nor Baffalo's nor any of the others. No, when you get off the plane, as Hugh Grant so charmingly did, and walk past the little squat model airplane, and are hit with the cold and gray, and drive through to that high point where you look down into the valley and see the school, you have, how shall I say it, in a very basic way, you have come to the End. It is the point where you look down and you see your own mortality, you see the futility of your own existence, you see the judgment of God. Most of the time, of course, the people of Binghamton must shove this sensation down and carry on with the business of keeping body and soul together. The people of this place can amply distance themselves from sorrow by well appointed trips to Wegmans, and the gorgeous shiny new wine store next to it. They can console themselves at Thai Time and l'Aveggio. In the summer they can sit outside and gaze happily up at the hills and the sky. It is not that we who live here walk around in an angst ridden morass of joyless sorrow. But one look into the hangdog, shocked, appalled face of a stranger who has, for the first time, seen his own end, that is the moment of truth and recognition.

And Hugh Grant carried that look off beautifully for the whole one hour and forty something minutes. He has, as I whispered to Matt, a face for Binghamton. He produces, almost flawlessly, the stooped shuffle of defeat. His face and eyes reflect the gray of the sky and the broken woe of the heart.

And then comes in Marissa Tomei. And really, for a long moment, I was troubled by the incongruity of her beauty and energy. Her character is supposedly from here. She is supposed to be the usual single mother, trying to break out of the regular hole, trying to get somewhere and be someone. She works in the bookstore and waitresses at Number 5 (which is not actually Number 5) and believes in herself. She is positive, and scrappy, and a good mother, and optimistic. She doesn't go with Hugh Grant when he finally succumbs to a Spiedi at the Spiedi and Rib Pit. In almost every way that I can see, she is Not Binghamton. She is the person who leaves Binghamton and remembers it fondly forever. That, in the end, she and Hugh Grant walk out into the sun, the light glinting and illuminating the hopeful arrangement of so many young and promising students, all of whom will leave, taking hope and optimism, leaving behind nostalgia and smiles, is not believable. She has urged him to stay, and he does, but you know in the end she will leave him here. That will have to be Part Two, the sequel, if you will, that is so predictable you kick yourself for even watching the trailer.

When, toward the end, Hugh Grant, driving in his gray car with his gray face in the gray rain, passes the Binghamton City Limits sign, I wept. Like an absolutely baby. I just started bawling. Which is always what Matt wants out of an evening together, for me to sob all the sobbing of the world. But, well, what else can a person do? It's Binghamton. It's who I am.