Was watching "Ballerina" the other day just for some

whatever slop "content" (didn't finish it). I have watched

some of the John Wick movies but the brutality of the "action"

never did anything for me, even as a huge fan of 80s and 90s

action blockbusters, and this was just more of the same

except with an even more physically frail protagonist? Yeah,

whatever.

Somehow, I still got something really valuable out of the

experience. In one scene they show the outside of an old

movie theatre with the title "Andrei Rublev dir. Tarkovsky" on

the marquee. I was vaguely aware of both Tarkovsky and

Rublev, so I was like, fuck it, I'll watch that instead, and it was

an amazing decision.

Art cannot exist solely to generate profit. And that's not to

promote authoritarian soviet-style socialism either; they

banned and then heavily censored the film. Without the

immediately necessary impetus of protesting the repressive

state apparatus, art (and religion for that matter) cannot truly

exist, and without them generating that spiritual drive, people

lose faith in institutions writ large.

Have a lot more to say on this and related matters but this is

already a rant in a void that could go in a million different

directions, and my ADHD can't be bothered