by any other name.

You know that feeling, the one where even a half hour after the movie has ended and you've found your way out of the darkened theater and out of the taxi or car or bus or what-have-you and into your bed and you STILL can't figure out where your stomach went except that you must have dropped it somewhere along the way because you can feel it tugging at the pit it left behind? The one where your eyes are still clouded on the edges like a black and white photograph because the tears are trying to hide themselves in the shame of cliche and the knowledge that they'd do no justice by falling? And your whole body is sore and there's a dull pain in the back of your head, just above your neck that, if you massage it to lessen the pain flashed images and scenes and snippets of dialogue before your closed eyes?
The movie ended an hour ago and I'm still struggling through it. Granted, Zwartboek or The Black Book or La Lista Negra is a Dutch film and we watched it with Spanish subtitles so that might be partly responsible for my general post-movie exhaustion (which has nothing to do with the current "finals month" exhaustion that I'm experiencing).
But what a movie!
As we walked out, all I could say was "That was such a good movie... except "good" isn't the right word. It wasn't "good," it was amazing? intense? It made an impact...?"
It was probably one of the most amazing war movies I've ever seen, if only because every character spoke their own language. The nazis spoke German, the Dutch spoke Dutch, the Canadians spoke English. There was none of these namby-pamby villains who speak English when no one is looking... Also, the movie was touched up with film noise, specks and distortions so that it looked like they wanted it to look like it was filmed at the time (ish).

But the real point to this story is that I saw a foreign film with Spanish subtitles and understood it. (Never mind that sometimes (read: most times) I can't understand my host sisters when they are talking.) A level of awesome which was only SLIGHTLY mitigated by the fact that Ems and I high-fived each other during the movie every time we remembered that we were watching a foreign film with Spanish subtitles.
Also, it was fun catching Dutch and German words that are similar to English words. Especially the swear words. Subtitles NEVER get that kind of stuff right...