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I recently re-watched Alfred Hitchcock's THE BIRDS the
other night with my friend Jason. I hadn't seen it
since I was quite young, but I remembered it as having
been one of my top-ten favourite movies as a kid.
Watching it again, I was blown away by a few things -
first by how amazing the acting and effects are and
how well they've held up, but secondly by something I
never noticed when I was younger. Hitchcock doesn't
ever, not once, not for a second hold your hand and
tell you line by line what's going on. Ever. He
leaves everything open-ended. In fact, he doesn't tell
you why anything's going on at *all*. And I really
appreciated and admired that, because you know what?
If you'd put on your fur and your green skirt set and
driven to Bodega Bay to flirt with a handsome lawyer
and ended up getting the shit pecked out of you by a
million angry birds, there really wouldn't be any
neat, immediate explanation. You'd probably be pretty
damned confused, and that's totally realistic, not
lazy or poor storytelling.
This is exactly the approach Hopkins takes in his
short comic SOME OTHER DAY. This is a story told in
spaces and silences, in glances and glares. Instead
of telling you every last detail of every last aspect
of every last character, as so many comic storytellers
are wont to do, Hopkins uses the page for what it's
worth, and what it's there for, and *shows* us like a
good writer should.
A series of interconnected vignettes about the effects
that exploded-space-shuttle detritus takes on a small
town, SOME OTHER DAY opens with one of the most
intriguing images I've seen a comic open on. The
first panel shows a young white mother and her black
son watching their SUV burning up on the highway.
Again, Kelly's art pops off the page in a style that's
kind of a mix between Jason Lutes and the guys who
drew Archie in the 80s.
Hopkins uses the story to take a few jabs at American
ignorance and the curious emptiness of aspects of the
culture that are supposed to fill your life with
meaning or purpose and are supposed to reflect an
inner passion and drive, like operating a family
business or dedicating your life to religion.
THE BIRDS ends, but it doesn't wrap anything up;
nothing is resolved (we don't even find out if Melanie
Daniels survives the pecking she gets in the attic or
if the birds ever leave Bodega Bay). I'm not going to
give away the ending of SOME OTHER DAY, but like THE
BIRDS its beauty lies in the stillness and quiet, and
the questions it doesn't answer - and won't even ask.
Roxanne Bielskis
Staff Writer, Divergingcomics.com
rbielskis@yahoo.com
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