David and I went to see Michael Clayton on Friday. We left the children at home with the babysitter in a house that reeked of floor stain, for the obvious reason that the floor had just been stained. We are so close to the kitchen being done, if you accept, as I have accepted, that being done means not being done. Being done means being three weeks from being done. And not liking the color you stained the floors but moving in anyway and planning on having them redone at some future point. And promising your husband you won’t say anything about not liking the floor stain color but then blurting it out to everyone you meet by way of greeting. I hate the color we stained our floors! How are you?

Shit, this was supposed to be about the movie. Once in a while you go to a movie that is a movie, by which I mean it was made by people who understand what movies can do and are interested in doing those things. Can movies manipulate time for the purposes of creating character depth? Could you, for example, watch someone prepare for something and watch them do it almost at the same time? Oh, and can movies present the things you see everyday—say a closet, overstuffed with clothes—so that you see them, and know them, for the first time? And in a movie, can you get really close to the actor’s face, as if you’re right there with him, and can you see into his eyes as you see into your husband's when he’s lying in bed looking at you at night? Well, then maybe we should do some of that.

Also all the actors gave a shit about their work. Tom Wilkinson is a fucking genius, ditto Tilda Swinton, ditto, at least here, George Clooney. I used to think that George Clooney was Cary Grant manqué but I’m trying to remember when Grant created a character you knew as well as you knew Clooney’s Clayton in the final scene. Maybe in the His Girl Friday. Yar, yar.

I really liked the movie. The people behind us were old and loud and, I’m sorry to say, dumb. Dumb. I know, I'll be there myself one day but.... There’s a murder in the movie and the woman didn’t understand what was going on and kept asking what was going on and her husband kept saying out loud what was going on but she still didn't understand. At the end she said to her friend, I liked it, but I missed some of the details.

Then we went out to dinner and everything, including the things we said, seemed very vivid, and when the waiter came to take our order I wanted to write what he said down, so I would have it forever. I want, sometimes, to make a movie myself.