PACIFIC VIEWS

REEL THOUGHTS

SARAH'S KEY

     Sarah's Key is one of those films that hits you hard.  

       The story line is tense and intricate. The acting, especially by Kristin Scott Thomas is superb. It is directed masterfully as the story moves between past events and a current unfolding of a mystery.  But it is the historical reality that plays as background and setting for the plot weave that is most moving.  

        The French, under Petain cooperating with the Nazis, rounded up and shipped thousands of their fellow countrymen, French Jews, to death camps.  Based on a novel by Tatiana de Rosnay, a French journalist, the story begins as thousands were rounded up in the Vel d'Hive incarceration in 1942 when a family is separated.

         In a way the story is framed by a sentence spoken during the film  

                                                   "The Truth has a price." 

     The truth of the context that gave birth to this fiction is painful and costly as is the fictional story played across 6 decades. The French can not escape what some of them did, nor can the world forget the Holocaust.  

      This is one story set against millions of real tragedies, but it is a story that packs an emotional wallop while once again reminding us of what should never be forgotten. Less important, but still significant, the story also demonstrates what value exhaustive journalistic reporting provides.  

THE SUMMER SHORE

       We are coming into what could be the best time of year

along the California Central Coast.  

       The sun warmed Pacific is reaching more mild temperatures.  Surfers always wear wet suits, but on the hotter days you see a few people wading or splashing in the surf.  The pier seen above is at San Simeon, near the original Hearst pier.  It is also near where the "Friday Lunch Flash Mob" is known to assemble.

        As late summer deepens into early autumn, temperatures warm, winds subside and there is less of the marine bank fog  that you see lurking off the point in the frame below.

       Though fall maybe the best, every season is magnificent

here in the unspoiled California.

        See you down the trail.