Numbers to Wrap the Mind Around

The other day we saw a 1997 movie, The Fifth Element, a vast brash sci-fi extravaganza. Later, looking up some names, I realized that the movie had cost $90 million to make, about $714,00 for each of its 126 minutes. Numbers like that fly through our consciousness like particles of paper debris in a storm barely noticed—barely noticed because we are so habituated, beaten into such flat pancakes, by the endless repetition. And that’s just movies. Today I discovered that Fifth Element doesn’t even rank as a particularly expensive movie. The most expensive are reported here, and the winner is the 2007 Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. It cost $300 million or $1.77 million per minute, 169 minutes all told. Ah! Just wave the hand, shake the head. Driving to an appointment together, Brigitte invented a neat product on the fly. She suggested a hard plastic bubble sort of thing bicyclers might wear in icy, windy weather. We got to talking what price it ought to fetch, and we fell into disagreement. I thought I could tolerate a price of $29.99. She insisted that it would still sell at $39.99. That’s down here where the ants live. But up there in the sky are movies that cost nearly a million a minute to make. And, to repeat, That’s. Just. Movies. Is it any wonder that the real grown-ups can casually spend billions a day on reality shows like—Afghanistan?

A Worthwhile Movie

We saw a very fine French movie the other day—impressive enough to recommend. Its English title is The Secret of the Grain, the French is La Graine et le Mulet. It was made in 2007. It is set in a southern French port city. Its subject, outwardly, anyway, is couscous. The best couscous I ever ate I ate at a French officers club in Baumholder, Germany, my hosts the commanders of a French unit made up almost exclusively of Arabic soldiers drawn from North Africa. That’s an aside but meaningful: the family and society featured in this film are of mixed French-Arabic extraction. Brigitte and I were floored. The theme of the movie—its discovery I leave to you—catches up with you some time after seeing it. And then it carries a strange impact difficult to put into words.