I rarely watch movies, but this week’s pick is Dirty Pretty Things. I checked it out from the library because I’m a fan of Audrey Tautou’s (Am?©lie!), but so far I’m impressed with the entire cast. They play various members of the (illegal) immigrant underbelly of London–they come from Nigeria, Turkey, Somalia, Eastern Europe, China, South Asia, etc. So far the movie captures the humanity and desperation of these often invisible workers. I’m reminded of my vacation in Paris last summer, in which I mostly experienced a city of white tourists, students, and Parisians until I left the popular spots and stumbled into a crowded city park (looking for the Canal Saint-Martin captured so beautifully in Am?©lie) that was crowded with Africans and Arabs and reggae and soccer/foot-balls.

I’m about half-way through and am calling it a night. I stopped at this one scene in a hospital morgue in which a Chinese hospital employee sews shut, with some red thread, the suitcoat pockets of a dead man. As he rhythmically dips the needle in and out, up and down, he speaks in his thoughtful, Chinese-British accent:

Unusual…a Chinese guy with no family.
Maybe he’s from the back of a truck.

I cut off his buttons so his spirit can escape.
I’m sewing up his pockets
so he can’t take his bad luck with him to the spirit world.
If he’s an atheist,
I’m ruining a suit no one will ever see.
If he’s a Buddhist,
I’m giving him eternal happiness for the price of a piece of thread.

I’m not sure why, but this scene fascinates me. I am intrigued by funerary rites (so much so that they may be the subject of my PhD dissertation someday). Also, in a movie which depicts bodies, both living and dead, being treated with so little respect, this scene presents a poignant contrast.