Joe Black dropped by to say hello, today.

Rating: 10/10 (1 February 2020)

As usually happens with cardiac moments I have learned it was just after I got up, as it had been for my first real heart attack 3 years ago.
(When that happened, I went and lay down on my back in bed and then - on the spur of the moment - on the brink of the abyss - reasoned that raising and laying my left arm up above me on the bed might straighten out the heart artery and let the blood flow again, which it apparently did, with the help of an aspirin. A half hour later a second attack came, I did the same thing, it subsided, and I fell asleep - happily to awaken.
I almost forgot to tell me doctor about these, and when I did he became alarmed, tests verified the attacks, and - at no expense in Norway's wonderful national health care - I had an angiogram: a little pipe inserted in the artery.
I had stopped my heart medicine for about a month, ergo this recent little episode this morning, apparently. And I have now just gotten back from one of my long but careful heart walks.)
In any case, my first thought this morning - again confronted with the possibility of dying and deserting my children - was this movie, which I had seen some years ago, long before the attacks.
It is very gradual - slow - and gentle and gentlemanly, as Hopkins&Pitt movies are, and its subject is one of the most basic to living creatures.
And it has an appropriately beautiful ending. HIGHLY recommended.
(And yes, I have seen Andre Rieux's excellent performance of Sir Anthony's similarly beautiful composition, And the Waltz Goes On.)