It's still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die...
Herman Hupfield (as sung by Dooley Wilson)
...there’s this guy...crusty, bitter, cynical...concerned with nobody but himself...corrupt...mercenary...but, underneath all that, though he himself refuses to admit it...might not even know it...he's still an idealist, a romantic...caring...full of love and compassion...when the chips are down, downright heroic....Clive Owen played him a few years ago in Children of Men...Harrison Ford in Star Wars...Paul Newman and Jack Nicholson a couple times each...though nobody as often...or nearly as well...as Bogart...
...watching Casablanca on a tired, rainy evening...can relate to Bogart’s Rick...the ugly attitude and bottomless bottle of booze...not about to stick his neck out for anybody...turning away from the young woman desperate for his help with a terse nobody ever loved me that much...certainly far easier to see oneself in than Paul Henreid’s Laszlo with his apparently bottomless sense of purpose, courage, virtue, and understanding...
...but, of course, Rick’s better self emerges...he helps the girl and, in the end, sacrifices his own happiness for a higher purpose, leaving corrupt Casablanca behind to rejoin the cause, somewhere out in the desert...even inspiring Claude Rains’ gleefully corrupt and amoral Captain Renault to join him...
...I think maybe the yoga thing is kinda like a Bogart movie...about working through the hard, crusty exterior shell...the outer Bogart...freeing the better Bogart within...
...but, y’know...without the cigarettes...and, preferably, without shooting anybody...and, no, I can’t really imagine Bogart doing downward facing dog...so, maybe it’s not a perfect metaphor...ah well....guess we’ll always have Paris...
