Nighthawks

Edward Hopper's Nighthawks is one of my favourite paintings. Certainly it has influenced my photography. It has all my favourite photographic ingredients: cinematic mood and viewpoint, construction of shapes and diagonals, lonesome figures, light/dark contrast... Apparently the restaurant depicted was inspired by one in Greenwich Village - one of my favourite part of town in NYC.

Looking at this painting now reminds me of a beautiful French film I saw recently: 35 Shots of Rum. It's a film about a functional family, instead of a dysfunctional one. The film doesn't have much of a storyline and has very little dialogue. It has however, an excellent cast, a beautiful score and cinematography. The film captures the love between a father and daughter in some very ordinary but beautiful moments, such as riding together on a motorbike, having dinner together, the daughter smiling on hearing her father entering the apartment... The film is tender, warm, and as a reviewer noted, 'smooth like rum'. The film contains several shots of the Paris train tracks, from the viewpoint of the father, a train driver. There is also a scene of the family at a small Parisian bar/restaurant on a rainy night. These lonesome moments (of unknown/complex emotions) echo the mood created in Hooper's painting.