Quotes from ‘The International’
This has nothing to do with Lowell other than that we are consumers of the pop culture like everyone else. One of my favorite films of recent years is “The International” (2009), starring Clive Owen as Interpol investigator Louis Salinger and Naomi Watts as New York City Assistant District Attorney Eleanor Whitman. It was the Saturday night movie-of-choice in our house last weekend. The film has a fabulous look and mood, along with snappy and loaded writing and a complex storyline. The settings are Berlin, New York, Turkey, and other places. I found these nuggets of dialogue from the screenplay online. If you haven’t seen the film, I suggest you give it a try.—PM
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Wilhelm Wexler: Sometimes a man can meet his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.
André Clement: I am more comfortable tense.
Wilhelm Wexler: We cannot control the things life does to us. They are done before you know it, and once they are done, they make you do other things. Until at last everything comes between you and the man you wanted to be.
Umberto Calvini: [In explaining the “true” nature of banking in the world] The IBBC is a bank. Their objective isn’t to control the conflict, it’s to control the debt that the conflict produces. You see, the real value of a conflict, the true value, is in the debt that it creates. You control the debt, you control everything. You find this upsetting, yes? But this is the very essence of the banking industry, to make us all, whether we be nations or individuals, slaves to debt.
Cassian Skarssen: When there’s no way out, you find a deeper way in.
Paul, “…to know which bridge to cross…” triggered an old poem:
The Merrimack
Plunge deeply in the cold, cascading whirl.
Bleed slate-grey wounds (slash-marks the whipperin.
Burn the bridges, swim the river’s swirl.
Plunge deeply in.
Feel the clutching current’s striped white skin.
Claw-hammer the rapids rocks–crack, then hurl.
Dark and light are two poles within.
The river runs down to the salty, coiled curls
where the roaring waves rumble and unpin.
The ocean’s foamed fold releases, unfurls.
Plunge deeply in.
–Daniel Patrick Murphy
As my friend Tony Sampas (Nicky’s brother) said: “Hey Danny, it sounds like a cold bath without the soap.”