“The second half of the movie didn’t happen. It was Schofield’s hallucination in the moments before his death, lying there at the bottom of the stairs after being shot.”

But his friend wasn’t listening, not that it would prevent him from laying down his critique.

“There was a shift in style in the second half. The movie went from real to surreal, right from the opening pan after Schofield came to at the bottom of the stairs. If you remember, the camera panned up the stairs, then pushed into that back wall – where the German soldier, who had exchanged fire with Schofield, lay dead – broke that back wall, and continued into the fiery night. In no prior scenes did the camera do that. It was faithfully following the protagonists wherever they went. It was almost as if Schofield himself flew through that back wall.

“After that, the rest was just classic dreamscape stuff: Schofield being chased down by silhouetted figures, shot at, but somehow ducking flying bullets; him having a moment of respite, attending to a mysterious lady and her baby, both of whom somehow had hidden away from the Germans despite the baby crying, no doubt; then more hot pursuits by Germans in the fiery night, ending with him taking that plunge into a fast-moving river below, presumably swept away much further down-river before breaking the surface for air, where one would suppose it was at most a few minutes later – for as long as he could hold his breath – so it’s supposed to still be dark, but it was well past dawn when he broke for air!”

His friend was a million miles away. So he stopped. He studied her nose, how it gently rose like a crescent into its tip. He loved her nose. He considered its structure super feminine. On a man, and you’d be staring at it for all the wrong reasons, he thought.

Je t’aime. Je t’aime beaucoup de tout mon coeur. But saying this would have been silly for she was Latvian and spoke no French.

What was it about her?

She was born beautiful, then blossomed into her beauty. Gentle, yet a tinder-box when she felt most vulnerable. This was what he was most afraid about her. Although he was never at the receiving end, he wondered more frequently if it were just a matter of time. Her honesty would set him on edge sometimes because at those times, he wouldn’t be able to tell if she were sardonic or just comfortable, as on occasions, she had told him, “You make me feel safe and comfortable.”

Sometimes, when it was a little much for him, he wanted to say to her, “Listen, my feelings, please.”

He never did. Instead, his mind would go into a swirl, just as it was going into one right then as all this flashed through his head, and he heard his mind professing loudly, “I want to make a baby with you!”

From a million miles away, as if she had also heard this declaration in his soul, she looked up at him for a hard two-count.

“It’s cold tonight in Hokkaido,” she said softly.

They were in a cafe in Ho Chi Minh City. The monsoon outside hadn’t stop.