Mu ... n ... ich

The movie Munich is a great movie ... so far. It is suspenseful, gripping, well acted, and long. To be precise, it is 164 minutes long. For those of you who think in hours, as I do, that is sixteen minutes shy of three hours. Three hours!

Two years ago we'd have very purposefully started a movie of that length earlier than was our norm. We do the same thing now, but we move it up days rather than hours. If the movie is under an hour, and there are a few of those out there, we watch it in a single sitting. If the movie is between an hour and an hour and a half long, it may be seen in one night but there is no guarantee. A movie in the area of two hours, which is where most of them seem to fall, is a two night affair. Movies in the three hour neighborhood, which will almost be movies we didn't realize were that long when we ordered them off of Netflix, are almost inevitable three day affairs.

Watching a movie over three days is a different sort of experience. The flow of a movie is broken. Often it seems as if we are watching completely different movies. Sometimes a movie makes for two good movies. Sometimes not. At the halfway point many movies still seem promising, and sometimes downright good. More than once my wife and I have called it a night and reluctantly stopped a movie short of it's end, only to be disappointed with the ending when we watch it the next day. Some movies never seem good. These pose a dilemma. I don't like to watch half of any movie, no matter how bad. I want to be able to check that movie off of my list without having to add an asterisk. My wife doesn't like to watch bad movies, no matter how short or how much I want to watch them. This difference of opinion means that when we order a bad movie, we end up keeping it forever. Before we rented Munich, we had Myra Breckenridge for at least a month.

Munich will go back tomorrow, as long as Dipity goes to bed on schedule tonight. It is a good movie, and well worth whatever effort it takes to watch it.