come and see mr c (in Rebatos)

A teenager becomes an old man in the space of two hours.

Why are some films famous and other films are not?
Cultural imperialism and marketing budgets. (Which go hand in hand)
Treptower Park makes more sense after watching this film - the last flowering of Soviet cinema.

A fierce-eyed girl dances on the tree stump in black boots; the loopy-faced boy laughs. We are invited to share the things they will see. Two hours later all of us are haggard.

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In Rebatos, the conversation flickers from one thing to another. Totalitarianism; Uruguayan social democracy; Foucault; the hydra of capitalism; the impoverished dreaming of capitalism; the calumunies of communism. The miners strike and the gulags; the Eastern front and the broken mills of Bengal. Nietzsche, of course.

There is only one who can improvise so fitfully yet passionately across the great divides. Who'd argue in favour of that thing called capitalism one minute and denounce it with venom the next. Only one who'd insist we watch Klimov's masterpiece of a Saturday night, fireworks in the background.

Nowhere better to riff than Rebatos, where the waiters shake your hand and the tapas will be hard to beat in Madrid. We sat at the bar. As I left I saw a crowd colonising the corner seats, branching out onto neighbouring tables. Smoking cigarettes and drinking wine and talking nine to the dozen. Every one of them a ghost.

Long may Rebatos play the familiar tunes, serve the same specials, top up wine glasses before they are finished. Let us hope Mr C and I shall come and see one another there again, sooner or later.