May Culture Diary

Dispatch From MacGuffins #12 - Missions: Impossible

once again humbled by the seats at Metrograph

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May was good until it wasn’t. By May 1, the Botanic Gardens were blooming in outrageous fuchsia and chartreuse. It was warm enough to eat a slice of pizza on my front stoop while chit chatting with the neighbors. I got goosebumps watching The Wild Goose Lake at BAM because it was so balmy outside that I forgot to bring a sweater to the theater, which felt fun and novel. I read poetry in the park. Summer was coming.

May in a nut eggshell

Then things suddenly got cold and gloomy, and I immediately caught a head cold which laid me out for the better part of a week. I approach getting a cold the same way I deal with a long haul flight: I hydrate and sleep as much as possible, eat weird snacks and call it a meal, and if I’m forced to be awake at any point, I watch action movies until my eyes hurt.

Mission: Impossible I - V, Final Reckoning (1996 - 2025)

To prepare for last week’s Prix Fixe, I spent my convalescence rewatching Mission(s): Impossible I - V over the course of 3 days. Tom Cruise became my whole world. Time lost all meaning. I threw Tenet in there at some point, which obviously made everything worse. I also watched a bunch of Le Bureau, probably the best French TV series of all time and a perfect espionage-heavy complement to my Mission: Impossible binge. Rogue Nation remains my favorite in the M:I franchise, but Mission: Impossible 2 rises up the ranks every time I watch it. It’s the only time Tom Cruise has ever been convincingly hot on camera to me, shaggy-haired and hanging off the side of a cliff face.

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There’s something very relatable in how Ethan Hunt’s idea of a vacation is doing what he does for work (free climb large edifices & wear sunglasses) just in a different setting… like how my ideal vacation involves writing in coffee shops, just not my coffee shops. I found revisiting Ethan Hunt/Tom Cruise’s opus very emotional — seeing him desperately throw himself into increasingly perilous situations as he ages, flirting with different cinematic tones and plastic surgery procedures as he grapples with his own mortality.