Hell On Wheels

OK, I'm not a big fan of sinking to hyperbole, but here goes: I just saw the best movie I've seen in at least a year.

And it's a documentary.

I'm still processing how I feel about this film, but you? Yes, you? Over there? You must immediately go and rent or buy a copy of "Murderball." This is, in simple terms, and with no exaggeration, a great film. Deeply moving. Truly inspiring. Resounding depths of greatness. Relentlessly exciting. Consistently thought provoking. Often hysterically funny, and yet sad without being self-righteous.

But above all, it is effortlessly entertaining.

A great film, no hair on it. A great film about men, and how they tick (yet not clinical). About true sportsmen, and why they organize their lives around "games." And so many other things. I'll be processing this movie for days before I really know how to absorb it. But this much is easily stated: I just watched a movie about a bunch of quadriplegics, and Every. Single. One of them made me wish I could be as alive as them. Or that I even knew a single person who was as fiercely, completely, absolutely devouring the life and time they have been given, with enormous, gluttonous bites.

Perhaps it's the intimate encounter with immortality, the butterfly kiss from Death that spared their lives but took away their able-bodiedness (that certainly seems to be the theme of the Canadian coach's story arc). But whatever it is, I finished watching this film and immediately thought "why the hell don't I feel half as alive as those guys? And how can I wake up that part of myself that they've clearly roused from slumber?"

See this movie. It's the definition of great.

Mood: Elated
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