You know the feeling...

[PeteMork]

Just dredging up some old discussions from back in the day. There certainly were some thought provoking ones that's for sure....I wonder whatever happened to Lacenaire? Used to have some great arguments with him.

Ah yes. The enigmatic Lacenaire. https://bonjourparis.com/history/pierre ... ery-paris/

I miss him too.

[sauvin]

Ah, Lacenaire. I never really knew how to take him, but I do remember he made my blood boil a few times.

In the movie, we never really knew why the other kids pick on Oskar or Owen. We can theorise, hypothesise and spin some yarns out of errant bits and pieces of nothing at all, but we never really know. We just know the other kids perceive some difference in him that brands him as a target, and we're given hints that the kids doing the picking are just trying to displace some oppression.

The differences don't have to be what adults would always describe as "disadvantageous".

Maybe Oskar is just unusually intelligent, for example. Maybe he sees patterns and can draw conclusions that other people can't follow (and, as a parenthetical thought, did the morbid curiosity evidenced in the classroom scene where the cop mocked him cause the branding, or was it caused by it?). It's a fact of human nature that nobody loves a retard, but people - especially kids - also tend not to like unusually intelligent people who have trouble masking it.

Lacenaire is an algebraic topologist, or something of such nature, presumably involved on a daily basis with the kinds of mathematics I can never hope to understand. He's also apparently rather well-versed in various forms of art and literature and seems to have an abiding knowledge of history. It wouldn't surprise me at all if somebody were to make a supportable claim that Lacenaire is a polymath.

Does that necessarily mean that everything he said has solid foundation? Maybe yes, maybe no. Different people vary in their ability to perceive and process what most of us understand as "the real world", and probably vary much more greatly in how "appropriately" they interact with it. Some of us suffer various conditions, such as various forms of dementia or cognitive "deficiencies", that make interacting with the "real world" more onerous. Worse, it's certainly possible for a raving lunatic to have startlingly relevant insight, and it's perfectly possible for a perfectly sane genius to go sprinting off into random intellectual cowpaths. This is worse because it can be very, very hard for dullards like myself to tell the difference.

Whatever else anybody might say of him, he certainly did bring some life (and some heat) into the board.

[BadWolf]

Ah, Lacenaire. I never really knew how to take him, but I do remember he made my blood boil a few times.


Whatever else anybody might say of him, he certainly did bring some life (and some heat) into the board.

You've jogged my memory now about Lacenaire being a mathematician of some sort....I'd forgotten that. I remember him having great trouble coming to terms with the fact that ELi solved the Rubik's cube so quickly. It really bugged him for some reason. I guess like many people on the board Lacenaire was constantly looking
for reasons why the movie had affected him so much, and when he couldn't work it out he started to pick holes in the narrative. And being the smart guy that he was that led to some awesome (albeit annoying) discussions. Good times

[a_contemplative_life]

Just dredging up some old discussions from back in the day. There certainly were some thought provoking ones that's for sure....I wonder whatever happened to Lacenaire? Used to have some great arguments with him.

He's probably in a jet over the Pacific, headed for Japan

[Wolfchild]

Just dredging up some old discussions from back in the day. There certainly were some thought provoking ones that's for sure....I wonder whatever happened to Lacenaire? Used to have some great arguments with him.

Perhaps you should invite him to return. If you go to Lacenaire's profile you will see a link to send him a forum PM. The default setting for the forum is that if someone sends you a PM, an notification email will be sent to the email address that you used when you registered for the forum. If Lacenaire has not changed this setting, he will get an email about your the PM.

I too have some esteem for some of the things he posted here, as you can see from my current sig. I could send him an email myself directly, but I feel like that would be abusing my position as a moderator to invade his privacy.

[NigelNinja]

... when the "new Håkan" theory comes up in a review, and than the critic starts to see the film only from this point of view, calling it (exact quote) "one of the most cruel stories of the decade: a tough drama about the will to control, bad choices and being used". And then you want to tell them, that it's the brilliant ambiguity of the film, but it actually is a love story, and if you've read the book... - and at that point, you know that you can't convince them, and starting to preach about what JAL said in interviews and the whole thing about real love is well, it's not worthy, there's no way they will take you seriously.

But still, the feeling is there, that it's not right when they write this about the film. Anyone felt the same?

I get pissed when someone throws thiz out there! Eli genuinely LOVES Oskar!