Sigh, feeling all dreamy and peaceful and quietly inspired, watched one of my favourite movies again the other day, AMARGOSA. Came out in 2000, about the then 76 year old, painter, dancer, actor, musician and theatre restorer Marta Becket (1925- ). At the age of 42, in 1967 she left the bright lights of dancing in a chorus line on Broadway in New York behind and moved to the desert in Death Vally Junction, California. Where she restored and painted murals on the walls and ceilings of an old run down theatre for six years, which became the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel. The murals of people's who had previously lived in Amargosa, provided her with an audience while she composed her, often humorous, dance, ballet and theatre performances, working much of the time alone. The walls, and Marta couldn't be more alive!
She seems so true to herself and her artistic vision, has such a clear way of both understanding and describing these. Singular in her dedication, disciplined, quirky flamboyant, and funny. Marta tells a story of seeing a play set in a senior citizens home, which had a special chair and when when each person sat in the chair they would tell their dreams, and the others would listen intently. She says 'Somehow people laugh at old persons dreams, they even laugh at dreams, until they come true, then they don’t laugh anymore.'
Amargosa is beautifully shot and musically scored, it opens with the spine tingling scene of the sun slowly rising over the mountains in the desert,the wild horses who live there, Marta walking, and these words:
'It begins with a distant notion, a plaintive whisper of the heart, it comes in the flash of an epiphany, or through a deeper unexplainable longing. It is the recognition of conception, the understanding that a new idea has been formed. It is embracing the dreamscape which is imagination, and having the courage to go there. For those who accept a life of self exploration through willfull acts of creation, the journey offers the ecstasy of all that is possible along with the agony of unattainable perfection. It is a solitary road in to the unknown self, and offers no destination but the journey. But for those who follow it does lead somewhere, and such a life will never be uninteresting. One such road led a woman from the urban confusion of a broken childhood, across the flatirons of midlife, to a deserted crossroads in the badlands of an uncertain future. But it is here, amongst the rubble of another time, in a place abandoned by hard men and harder gods. She makes the path by walking, in a state of mind, called Amargosa'.
Sigh.......
She seems so true to herself and her artistic vision, has such a clear way of both understanding and describing these. Singular in her dedication, disciplined, quirky flamboyant, and funny. Marta tells a story of seeing a play set in a senior citizens home, which had a special chair and when when each person sat in the chair they would tell their dreams, and the others would listen intently. She says 'Somehow people laugh at old persons dreams, they even laugh at dreams, until they come true, then they don’t laugh anymore.'
Amargosa is beautifully shot and musically scored, it opens with the spine tingling scene of the sun slowly rising over the mountains in the desert,the wild horses who live there, Marta walking, and these words:
'It begins with a distant notion, a plaintive whisper of the heart, it comes in the flash of an epiphany, or through a deeper unexplainable longing. It is the recognition of conception, the understanding that a new idea has been formed. It is embracing the dreamscape which is imagination, and having the courage to go there. For those who accept a life of self exploration through willfull acts of creation, the journey offers the ecstasy of all that is possible along with the agony of unattainable perfection. It is a solitary road in to the unknown self, and offers no destination but the journey. But for those who follow it does lead somewhere, and such a life will never be uninteresting. One such road led a woman from the urban confusion of a broken childhood, across the flatirons of midlife, to a deserted crossroads in the badlands of an uncertain future. But it is here, amongst the rubble of another time, in a place abandoned by hard men and harder gods. She makes the path by walking, in a state of mind, called Amargosa'.
Sigh.......
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