Nostalghia, bad movies, and wandering through an Ottawa night

I am in Ottawa with Caitlin to do a little work and visit the place we lived from three years back in the early 1990s when we graduated and started our life together. This morning I find myself in a cafe on the edge of the Byward market, deeper into the historic French and Catholic neighbourhood boards the north end of Dalhousie Street. For all of it’s growth, Ottawa remains remarkably unchanged over the past 30+ years, especially in the downtown core which is partially protected by the work of the National Capital Commission and full of important and historical buildings. As a result even the neighbourhoods we lived in remain familiar and intact – the Golden Triangle and Sandy Hill. The apartment and duplex we lived in are still there, and in fact last night, out on a late walk home from a movie, we stopped in front of our old place on Frank Street and one of the residents asked what we were looking at. When we told him, he gave us a tour inside the building. Nothing had changed. Memories came flooding back.

I love that about visiting physical places in which I have lived. The same happened when I took my son to England in April and showed him the place where I lived as a pre-teen in the three years our family spent there. Things change, but also they don’t, and walking through places of forgotten memory wakes up deep FEELINGS, not just stories. I can tell you about the time we were introduced to chèvre at the Ritz on Elgin, or the nights we spent at the Bytown theatre, or the potato skins we ate at the Royal Oak, but visiting these places (or the locations of these places) evokes a feeling that is indescribable. It put me in mind of Tarkovsky’s film Nostalghia, which, I discovered this morning, had its seminal scene filmed in the Bagno Vignoni, which I visited in May without making the connection. Funny what we miss.

It’s a thin time, All Souls Day. I can feel them here in the cold wind coming down the valley, the fall colours on the Gatineau Hills and the smell of leaf mold on the breeze. I love it.

Speaking of films, last night we ventured to Landsdowne Park, a place which HAS changed a lot since we lived here. It is the hoe of the TD Place stadium which hosts both of Ottawa’s professional soccer teams and its Canadian football team as well as the arena where the OHL Ottawa 67s play. A whole entertainment district has spring up around the stadia, and we headed there to watch Aziz Ansari’s new movie, Good Fortune, and then catch the end of game 6 of the World Series, which the Blue Jays lost 3-1 after a bizarre ninth inning in which Barger’s ground rule double due to a ball lodged perfectly in the left centre field wall prevented the Blue Jays from tying the game.

About that movie though. It’s not very good. Ansari plays a guy who supposedly makes documentaries, but who is working gig jobs in LA and living in his car. It’s a comedy, which is such a weird take for the struggle that lies just out of view of the film. Due to the errant actions of a guardian angel acting above his pay grade (Keanu Reeves), he ends up switching places with a tech bro (Seth Rogan). Ansari’s character gets comfortable and tries too steal that life. The angel says he can only switch back if he can find meaning and worth in his life as a poor homeless person. Ansari fakes memory loss after an accident and won’t give the tech bro his life back. Why would he?

Except, inexplicably, he does. I’m going to spoil it here, although you can see the ending coming a mile away, but Ansari eventually relents, the tech bro minimally atones for his experience by paying his gig drivers more, but the union drive at the hardware store fails again and everyone resolves to keep working to change the conditions over which they have no control. It’s actually pretty horrifying. The privileged white guy gets his fortune back, the brown guy ends up poor again but with a renewed sense of purpose and with his true love, a struggling colleague who tries unsuccessfully to organize her workplace, and the angel gets his wings back. A bunch of gig workers quite their jobs, but it’s not clear to me how they then make ends meet after walking out.

Tellingly at the end of the movie, Ansari’s character puts an ad on Craigslist asking for folks to take part in a documentary about the LA underclass and gig working. I walked out of the theatre wondering why Ansari chose to write a lighthearted comedy about these people rather than ACTUALLY MAKE THAT DOCUMENTARY. It smacked of a film made by people who heard about how bad stuff was from their delivery drivers and baristas, but no one involved has lived experience of this life and it shows.

Miss this one and go re-watch Tangerine instead.