9/24/11: drive and driving

We poked around downtown Whitefish, which is very Cute-with-a-capital-C, for a while, but everything was closing for the day and I didn’t need a $300 purple fringed jacket anyway (do I need a $20 purple fringed jacket? Possibly).

So we went to the movie theater on the Not Cute southern end of town, in a mostly vacant mall that hadn’t seen a facelift since the ‘80s. We saw Drive and it was strange to see L.A. all lit up and infinite on screen as we sat there with one other couple in a tiny town in Montana.

Drive was almost a good movie. I’m usually one to favor mood over plot, but we got the feeling that some scenes explaining huge coincidences in the story may have gotten cut to make room for long close-ups of Ryan Gosling’s slowly clenching fist.

Also, Carey Mulligan’s character—a Denny’s waitress with a young son and a thing for bad boys—didn’t quite make sense. I think Carey Mulligan is hugely talented, and I loved An Education and Never Let Me Go, but she seemed more innocent and regal than the role required. A better casting choice would have been Christina Hendricks, who played a petty criminal and did a lot with the couple of lines she had. But of course it’s not really a movie about the women anyway. Although it does a pretty good job with its who’s a villain?/who’s a hero? theme. And Carey Mulligan has a really cute apartment.

Where were we?

Right, Montana.

This morning we drove back, down the west side of Flathead Lake this time. At the airport AK had to get escorted back through security to put a bottle of lotion and a jar of huckleberry jam in her checked bag. When she returned, she said, “God, everyone’s so nice. Can you imagine how that would have gone in L.A.?”

We decided Montana’s official motto should be: Montana: We’re so nice we make Canadians seem douchey.