H. Bosch, painter and cop! Michael Connelly’s idea of naming his fiction detective Hieronymous Bosch, Harry for short, after the great XV-XVI century painter seemed to me a good twist. Indeed, sometimes, Harry Bosch comes out across the pages has having inners pains and tumultuous thoughts as one could only just guess that Bosch had in the XVI century when he managed to paint those outstanding paintings. Something I got used to, whenever I am in Madrid, is to pop up in the Prado Museum, just walk through to the first floor into the Bosch room and stand in front of Bosch’s Garden of Delights. What was going on his mind when coming up with those scenes? More astonishing even are both the Temptation of St. Anthony in Lisbon’s Ancient Art Museum and the Last Judgement in the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. The somewhat nightmarish like figures and characters depicted particularly in those last two triptychs are remarkable and no doubt quite outside the usual ethics and values for the time. One could even say that Bosch was a XVI century Surrealist. When Michael Connelly pushes Harry Bosch, who in turn drags partner Kiz Rider, and surrounding cops, along tortuous investigations, was he thinking any of those things?

Bill Murray and Sam Shepard, or should I say Jim Jarmusch and Wim Wenders? Anyway, the first two were looking for their sons in the films of the other two, in that order. Looking in a sort of backward looking way since first they did not seem to be aware they had fathered the kids and second the search was probably already a bit late in time, with kids being no longer kinds but rather young adults. I saw these two movies when they came out in 2005, first Jim’s Broken Flowers and afterwards Wim’s Don’t Come Knocking. Apart from somewhat parallel topics, there is some good acting and directing in there, and I would say that probably the costs of making such pleasant movies were not that high by the current international patterns. My point is that good stories and human skills do seem to be able to create terrific films. In both cases there is this feeling of something lost in the past by the main character, in other words, the son that by the turns of life he did not see and accompany in his growing up odyssey. They pity this to some extent, maybe a lot, particularly given the rather emptiness nature of their current lives.

Wim Wenders already had done an extraordinary film in the eighties were similar feelings seemed to have been in place, and were Harry Dean Stanton could not seem to forget Nastassja Kinski but could nevertheless stay with her anymore… yes, it was Paris Texas, in 1984! Interestingly, I think that the first film I saw by Jim Jarmusch was also the 1984, and it was Stranger than Paradise where John Lurie and company go on a road trip that reaches Florida. That was also a great little movie, and I particularly recall that poster where the two guys stand by the car, and the girl is inside looking at the window, all wearing dark shades!