"Dance instead."

I really like watching scenes that take place at balls in period dramas.

Well, really, I just like to watch the dances. The clothes are nice. The goings-on are interesting. But the dancing--that's what really gets me.

It's so different now from what it was then. Now, going out "dancing" is basically an excuse to move suggestively and rub up against strangers. It's so sexual--so intimate--in a public sphere. I understand that there's a certain appeal to just letting yourself go, especially when it's dark--it's easy to feel like there's no one else around. In Funny Face, Audrey Hepburn is in a dark sort of beatnik cafe in Paris, dressed moodily in all black with a little flip of a pony tail, and she tells Fred Astaire, "I rather feel like expressing myself now, and I could certainly use the release!" She then proceeds to dance solo in a wild expression of pent-up emotion for about five minutes straight. It's beautiful.

When it's done tastefully, dancing is such a gorgeous form of expression. Passion and grace and taste, especially when set to song, make for something sublimely beautiful. It can be so otherworldy, so ethereal. That's one of the main reasons I enjoy musicals, both on stage and in film--that combination of mediums make for something so powerful. Though, even when dancing's not tasteful, there's something to be said for the raw, primal emotion being expressed. But I think it's even lovelier when that emotion is expressed through restraint. And period dramas that have dancing scenes that totally do that. Haha.

James McAvoy and Anne Hathaway in Becoming Jane are my favorite. They fairly exude sexual tension through sideways glances and light touches through gloved fingers. Keira Knightley and Matthew McFayden are full of resentment and intrigue in Pride and Prejudice. And Jeremy Northam and Gwyneth Paltrow show this unrealized desire for each other in Emma--he knows he wants her and thinks she doesn't want him, and she doesn't know what she wants.

It's pretty masterfully done in all three films--the music helps, and the context, but a lot of it comes purely from the way the actors gracefully and dramatically move toward and away from each other, the way they steal glimpses at each other as they turn, the way they gently clasp each other's fingers. It's subtle, but so effective.

I'm with Philip Seymour Hoffman. I like subtlety.

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Now playing: The Decemberists - The Rake's Song