If you love dogs…

This remarkable documentary was on IndiePlex–that’s, I think, Channel 76 on Charter Spectrum. It’ll repeat on Friday, but early in the a.m., so set that recording thingy.

I am so technologically adept.

It’s about the love between old, old men–my age–and their dogs, truffle-hunters (I have never had a truffle in my life!)

Big business has intruded into truffle hunting, and these old men, who’ve been doing this all their lives, as have their ancestors, as have the ancestors of their dogs, are facing competitors not above setting out bait laced with strychnine to kill the old-timers’ dogs.

But the love between these men and their dogs–not to mention the delight that spreads across the faces of those who taste the truffles, with beautiful fried eggs–is such a joy to watch.

I realized that the trailer is scored by Offenbach’s Beautiful Night, Oh Night of Love,” from an 1881 opera, his last. I had to look that up; I know nothing about Boccherini, except that I used to show my AP Euro students the 1997 film Life is Beautiful, the Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Picture. The film is devoted to the Holocaust, but even that is transcended, once again, by love. Here’s the trailer.

And here’s the film’s ending which, in a different way, is about love, too. In this case, it’s my love for my country, now in such great danger.

What had kept the little boy alive in the concentration camp was his father’s promise that the two of them were involved in a secret contest. If they won, the little boy would get his very own tank.