Mad Monk

Jenny Diski

• The New Biographical Dictionary of Film by David Thomson
  Little, Brown, 963 pp, £25.00, November 2002, ISBN 0 316 85905 2
• Nobody’s Perfect: Writings from the ‘New Yorker’ by Anthony Lane
  Picador, 752 pp, £15.99, November 2002, ISBN 0 330 49182 2
• Paris Hollywood: Writings on Film by Peter Wollen
  Verso, 314 pp, £13.00, December 2002, ISBN 1 85984 391 3

I think it is two years since I’ve been to the cinema. This is something of a mystery to me, like love gone wrong: in fact, it is love gone wrong. Was the love misguided in the first place, have I simply aged out of the way of love, or has the beloved altered beyond all recognition? Naturally, lovers whose love is depleted are inclined to think the last: it makes them feel better, less fickle, less hopeless, that the loss is not their own fault. But it’s always best to doubt such self-serving conclusions. Generally, things are one’s fault, unless it can be positively proved otherwise. Anyway, sit me in front of Bringing Up Baby, The Wild Bunch or The Conversation and I’m ravished. It’s not the films I love that I’ve fallen out of love with.