Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Children's Story

Here is a little children’s story I whipped up when I couldn’t be bothered doing homework:

Matthew appeared to be an average boy. He was an average height, an average size, had average brown hair, lived in an average house with an average family, had an average pet dog, got average marks in all his average VCE subjects, brushed his teeth in the morning and afternoons (which is a fairly average thing to do) and he even ate his meals at the average time of day. But Matthew was anything but average.
At the beginning of high school the other boys were kind to him and welcomed him warmly into their lunch time conversations, but Matthew didn’t like wasting time talking about the latest computer games or how complicated maths class was getting, and so he turned down their offers of friendship and went on a mission to find someone more fun. He missed primary school profusely, he longed for a game of chasey, hide and seek, four square or British Bulldog, but mostly Matthew just wanted to play adventure games. At his old school the boys tended not to play imagination games and were more into running around or playing sport, so Matthew almost always played with the girls. There were no girls at his new school, but his older sister had wisely told him a few days before he finished primary school “when kids go to high school they stop playing games, Matt. No one runs around and no one plays adventure games. Everyone sits and talks” Matthew couldn’t believe what he was hearing
“What do they talk about?” he asked his all-knowing sister
“Boys” she sighed gloomily as if she was rather sick of talking about boys all the time. On his first day of high school Matthew soon realised that his sister had been right, everyone did sit and talk at play time. So he sat down with a friendly looking bunch of boys and said
“There’s a boy who works at the bakery near my house. His name’s George and he’s worked there for fifty years” the other boys stared at Matthew for a second or two and then burst into a flood of laughter. Matthew couldn’t understand what he’d done wrong, George was one of the most interesting boys he knew and if his sister had been right (and his sister was always right) then striking up a conversation about boys should have been a great way to start.
One afternoon Matthew’s sister had a friend over, her name was Clarissa and she was very pretty. Matthew told Clarissa all about his first day of high school and she laughed when he said “I don’t know why they didn’t want to talk about George, Phoebe told me that high school kids just talk about boys”
“Don’t be silly” she had said “boys don’t talk about boys.” This had made Matthew very confused, and it took him a whole two years of solitude to understand it. At the start of year 9 Matthew fell in love with Clarissa, he had never seen his sister’s best friend the way he did at the Christmas party that year. After a fairly awkward conversation with his mother, Matthew realised that he wasn’t ‘in love’ with Clarissa but was simply experiencing his ‘first crush.’ Apparently his mother had been waiting several years for this moment, Matthew blushed and promised himself he would never like another girl again. He had decided that girls were far too complicated (it had, after all, taken him two years to understand that girls talk about boys and boys talk about completely different things entirely.) He was still disappointed that girls, as well as boys, didn’t play adventure games anymore.
Another couple of years passed until Matthew entered his final year of school. He still hadn’t managed to make any friends, the other boys still just talked all the time and no one had signed Matthew’s “Adventure Game Players Club” poster, which he had pinned up on the notice board. He knew that he had been by himself for too long now to make any friends anyway, he had lasted five years alone, surely he could last just one more? But no, Matthew was tired of being called a ‘loner’ and wanted to fit in, so he went to his sister for help.
“I’ve decided that I want some friends”
“Is that right?” his sister replied, not looking up from her college report which was due in two weeks
“Yeah. I’m sick of spending lunch time and play time by myself”
“When will you stop calling recess ‘play time’ what are you, 5?”
“I wish” he mumbled under his breath
“Look” she said, putting her pen down and facing him “you can either be normal and get yourself some friends, or stay the way you are and..... pretend to have friends... whatever.” What Matthew’s sister hadn’t expected was that he would take ‘pretend to have friends’ incredibly seriously.
Matthew had a very productive holiday. On his first day of year 12 he walked to school with his new best friend: Archibald. Archie was a dashing young man and was in the same year as Matthew, luckily he was enrolled to start at the same school as Matthew, this made the two of them very happy indeed. Archie’s family was still living in the Himalayas and so Matthew let him stay at his place over the summer “we should find you a place to stay once school starts” Matthew had told his friend, but he knew that Archie would have no were to go and so added “you’re welcome to stay at my place until everything’s certain, of course.”
Archie was a lot of fun. He enthusiastically played adventure games with Matthew all through play time and lunch. They took all the same subjects, Archie was very smart and Matthew encouraged him to contribute to class discussions but Archie was simply too shy. One day Archie banged his leg rather hard on the teacher’s desk, but the nurse refused to treat him. Matthew was furious and stood up for his quite friend “this is because he’s from the Himalayas isn’t it!? You’re just a prejudiced old cow!” this bought Matthew a trip to the principal’s office.
“Archibald doesn’t fit in, just like me. He’s too different to play-I mean, talk- with the other boys. It’s bad enough that no one but me pays him any attention, and then the school nurse goes and refuses to fix his leg!”
“Matthew” began the principle, a concerned look had spread across his face “you’re far too old for imaginary friends. I’m going to recommend you see a good friend of mine, his name is Dr Carter, I think he might be able to help you” Matthew’s eyes widened, was the principle accusing him of being mad? “You’re a bright student, Matthew” he went on, flicking through what appeared to be Matthew’s files “but not very social, I see”
“I don’t want to be friends with any of the other boys!” Matthew sobbed “all I want to do is play the adventure games I used to play at primary school with the girls, but there are no girls here, and even if there were they would just sit and talk about boys” the principle looked overwhelmed with confusion “but Archie’s different” Matthew continued “he doesn’t tease me for calling recess ‘play time’, he doesn’t laugh when I play in the playground on the way to school, he doesn’t judge me for wanting to escape this world and create my own, he’s always there for me and he always supports me” Matthew whipped back the tears which had uncontrollably streamed down his face “but most importantly” he paused to swallow down some tears “Archie misses playing games as well.” There was an intense silence as the principle absorbed all that had been said, Matthew concluded by saying “don’t call me mad. Don’t call Archie imaginary. Because, if you do, then I’ll go back to having no one.”

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“I have to do this!” Draco whimpers as he holds his wand at the ready towards a defenceless Dumbledore. “I have to do this!” I say to myself when I foolishly realise what a good idea it would be to write a Half-Blood Prince review, almost a week after actually seeing the film.
If you’re reading this then you’re either one of my many(~) blog readers or you typed ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince film review’ into Google and read so many reviews that you’ve now reached page 14 where this little blog post was waiting for you. This means you would have read a lot of other opinions and are looking for something new, if you’ve stumbled across my blog in a desperate attempt to find more things Harry Potter then you’ve also probably seen the film. So, I won’t try and hide important climax’ or sensor anything. I actually already wrote a page long review for a friend and that was only describing the first half hour, so it will be tricky to narrow this review down to an internet browser friendly length. I shall try my best:

1. If you haven’t seen the film, watch out for the Hogwarts Express. Everyone I know who has seen it didn’t notice, but the train seems to have lost its magic. In the other films the Hogwarts Express is a shiny, bright crimson, in this film it’s a faded red. It’s almost as if the film makers misplaced the old train (as trains are very easy things to lose~) and had to make do with spray painting an average train from the undergrounds of London... although the trains in London are double deckers. It was like they were amateurs trying to mimic the Hogwarts Express of the first films. Why on earth would we care about your dislike towards the new Hogwarts Express? You may ask. I might ask myself the same question.

2. Lupin and Tonks. Being the Lupin fan that I am, I was glad to find that my favourite sub plot of the book was one of the main focuses of the film ~. Throughout the book we are given clues as to why Tonks has undergone a personality change (from her optimistic, fun self to something quite the opposite.)Tonks features heavily in the novel and even shows up at Hogwarts a few times. In the end we find out that Tonks loves Lupin and has been upset because he claims he’s ‘too old, too poor and too dangerous’ for her. In the film Tonks and Lupin appear for about five minutes, within those five minutes Tonks calls him ‘sweetheart’ and we are to assume they’re together. Never mind, I’m sure we’ll see plenty of the couple in The Deathly Hallows, just as we saw plenty of Bill and Fleur in this one ~.

3. Draco Malfoy. I must say that I thought Tom Felton was the standout actor of this film, having said that I should mention that I’ve never been a fan of his (just in case you thought I was being biased), he’s always been one of my least favourite characters and I never really thought a great deal for or against Tom Felton’s acting. I wasn’t expecting a lot from him and was surprised by how much I liked Malfoy in this film. I think I’ll go as far as to say that he was better in the film than in the book. Maybe not ‘better’ but I certainly felt sorrier for him in the film. For example: in the book when Harry uses Sectumsempra against Malfoy, I was more concerned that Sectumsempra was an unexpectedly dark spell for the Half-Blood Prince, in the film I was more concerned for the welfare of Malfoy and was actually kind of glad that Sectumsempra wasn’t as extreme as it is in the book. Of all the humorous lines and magical moments, my favourite part of the film was the look on Malfoy’s face when Bellatrix all but obliterated the Great Hall.

4. Several people in this world will roll their eyes when they read the next few sentences. Why was Neville’s role so incredibly small? He was little more than an extra.
“Good luck at the game, Ron!”
“Drink, Harry?.... I didn’t get into the Slug Club, but it’s alright.”
And that was it for the wonderful Matthew Lewis and his great acting (note that there is no ~ at the end of that sentence.) They gave Luna a lot of bonus camera time though, which was nice even though sometimes she appeared only to fill in for the disregarded Tonks.

5. I fully accept the change of script in regards to the cabinet. I think that telling the audience that it was a cabinet from the beginning and exposing its purpose gradually, served as a good way to adapt this part of the story into film. By doing this we didn’t have to watch Harry trying to get into the room of requirements again and again and we had some visual stimulus to keep us guessing and thinking about what Malfoy was up to.

6. Harry and Ginny. “You’re shoelace” she says and then bends down to tie it up for him “Merry Christmas” she adds “thankyou Ginny, I’ve always wanted someone to do up my shoelace for Christmas, you must have found that Christmas list of mine I left lying around.” The pause between Ginny’s ‘Merry Christmas’ and when she leans in to kiss him was a little long and made several people in the cinema laugh.

7. And then there’s Dumbledore’s death. I can imagine Alan Rickman (Snape) spending hours in front of his bathroom mirror practising the Avada Kedavra that sends Dumbledore to his end. Holding his toothbrush at the ready and shouting the killing curse at his reflection. Unfortunately, I actually did imagine this at the moment of Dumbledore’s death, as he fell from the tower I wasn’t thinking ‘this is sad’ or ‘Michael Gambon seems to be pulling this off alright’ I was thinking ‘Alan Rickman must have tried a million different ways of saying that.’ Anyway, you’ve probably had enough of my odd little so called ‘reviews,’ but I do need to mention how nonsensical I thought it was that Harry wasn’t under his invisibility cloak and/or paralysed when Dumbledore died. The words of Dumbledore (“It is imperative that you stay hidden, Harry. Trust me”) was the only thing stopping Harry from saving his headmaster and good friends’ life. Knowing Harry (which of course I do, as I’ve met him numerous times ~) he would have tried with all his might to save Dumbledore’s life, regardless of a few words of caution and Snape saying “shh.” I think it was a fair enough decision to dispose of Dumbledore immobilising Harry, but when Snape came across Harry in hiding, it would have been a perfect moment for Snape to simply say Pertificus Totalus so that there would be no one standing in his way as he finished of what Malfoy couldn’t.

8. The credits. Who cares about the credits? I do. I was just wondering how they decide who gets to go before who in the credits at the end of the film. One at a time the names of the actors appear on the screen: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Helena Bonham Carter, some other adult actors who are barely in it including David Thewlis and then Tom Felton’s name pops up onto the screen accompanied by some other, virtually unknown, actor. Why does David Thewlis’ name get to be shown before Tom Felton’s? I’m a bit of a David Thewlis fan, so this isn’t a biased comment. Malfoy features way more than Lupin, and Tom Felton’s name wasn’t even by itself. I considered that they may show the names alphabetically after the main three, but then Thewlis wouldn’t have come before Felton. I think they show the more famous actors first. You don’t care? I didn’t expect you would.

Friday, July 17, 2009

~

I’ve often wondered what the function of the squiggly key is. I mean, every day I see a little ~ staring up at me longingly from my keyboard, and I’ve never even bothered to ask someone what it does. Maybe you know. Maybe you think I’m an ignorant fool for not knowing. Maybe this is much like me not knowing who Cameron Diaz is, the name is awfully familiar but I can’t put a face to it. I’m thinking there must be some people out there, however, who have no idea what the ~ does, so here is some reliable Wikipedia knowledge on the ~’s function:

- Is called a ‘tilde’ and not a ‘squiggly key.’
- Can be used to mark the omission of a word or the abbreviation of a word.
- “Has acquired a number of other uses as a diacritic mark or a character in its own right” (Wikipedia) which I presume means squiggly admirers stood out on the street holding signs and chanting ‘equal rights for squiggly keys.’ Which must have lead to some kind of compromise involving squiggly’s becoming their own little characters.
- Also used in maths to symbolise ‘to,’ ‘and greater’ and ‘equivalence.’
- It also has some other functions like in economics and for computer stuff.
Examples: 12~15 (12 to 15), 100~ (100 and great), x~y (x is equivalent to y.)

So, possibly that bored you a bit, but I thought you should know its actual function before I introduce the squiggly key’s new and improved role. I think we should use this neglected button as a symbol of sarcasm. For example: what are you talking about Luna!? I always comment your blog ~.

This will allow internet users to more openly use sarcasm while talking on MSN or even just sending an email, because they won’t have to worry about the recipient not picking up their sarcasm. For example: yeah, I thought Bruno was great ~. If there was no squiggly symbol then the person may reply: you liked it too! We should go see it again together! This will just be awkward when the Bruno hater has to explain that they were actually being sarcastic. Of course, in the first place they could have said: I didn’t like Bruno much at all. But that covers their actual personality because in reality they would have used a sarcastic tone to express their dislike.

I know it will be a near impossible task to get the whole world in on the new squiggly function, but if we start with the 3 (if I’m lucky) people who read this post then that’s one step closer to ~ = sarcasm, success!

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde#Tilde_with_keyboards

Monday, July 13, 2009

The White Room

Nobody understood. Nobody knew why. But they went along with it all the same.

Mr Bones poked his head out of the classroom door, and watched Lucy run away until she turned a corner and was gone. It wasn’t until she was completely out of sight that Mr Bones noticed Matthew was glaring at him suspiciously, he gave the untrusting student a polite grin before closing the door and heading back to the classroom desk. A sudden realisation of exhaustion hit Mr Bones and he sank into his chair, took a deep breath and was once again lost in daydreams. He pictured Lucy’s blood loss causing her to pass out on the way to her next lesson, Mrs Proshore distressed that one of her students had been rushed to hospital while under her head supervision and then, most uncontrollably, rows of teachers and students sittings in their black suits and dresses bidding Lucy farewell at her funeral.
Rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger (as if this might just eliminate the distressing image from his mind) Mr Bones remembered that there was still a splash of blood near his classroom door, grabbed several tissues from the box on the corner of his desk, and went to wipe up the shining red liquid he could now see in the distance. He bent down by the door and started mopping up the small pool of blood, to his annoyance the tissues couldn’t withstand the thick consistency and blood oozed beyond the disintegrating tissues onto Mr Bones’ fingers.
At this moment the blinds on the opposite side of the classroom slapped shut of their own accord, and the lights flickered drowsily until the room was completely black. Mr Bones felt a gush of wind swoop by his face, and attempted to stand up but was overcome by his own sudden, unexplainable weakness. A flash of what appeared to be a streamer of blue light whizzed by, followed by the quickly building sound of two knifes being scrapped together. Panicking, Mr Bones lifted his arm and felt around for the light switch which he knew too well was on the wall behind him. The weight of a hundred pounds seemed to be pressing on his arm, and he couldn’t continue his hunt for the light switch. A ladies’ scream filled the pitch black room, almost ghostly and other worldly as if it was coming from a radio. There was a spark of electric green, which illuminated the entire room for a millisecond, but it was over too quickly and Mr Bones caught no sight of another person. The scraping knife sound was now dominating the room, the air was boiling hot and humid, Mr Bones barely noticed that his shirt was drenched in sweat.
For as long as the last flash of light had lasted, Mr Bones could see Lucy standing metres away from him, he didn’t even wonder how he could see her in the dense blackness, he was too distracted by her mutated face which was covered in deep, unhealed scratches. A flap of skin dangled oddly from her cheek, revealing a pair of blood covered molars. The sound of scraping knifes reached an ear piercing volume and Mr Bones lost control of his body, he collapsed to the floor and a beam of yellow sparkles sent him off into a dreamless sleep.

***
Before he fathomed the aches in his muscles and his new location, Mr Bones lay on his back building up some energy to open his eyes. The light touch of something wet and cool on his forehead, alerted him enough to flicker his eyes open. At first his vision was far too foggy for anything he could see to be properly processed, he blinked continuously trying to focus on what he figured was a face in front of him.
“Lucy?” he mumbled, his throat far drier and croakier than he had anticipated. He managed to steady his sight enough to make out the blonde wavy hair and delicately pale face of Lucy.
“Shh” she whispered, dabbing a wet cloth on his head “you have to rest.” Her face was perfectly normal, there was no trace of the deep gashes. Mr Bones was far too uncertain of the current situation to obey his pupil’s considerate orders, and heaved himself into a sitting position. They were in a white room just big enough to fit the small bed he was now sitting in, there were no windows and the roof was so low Mr Bones knew he wouldn’t be able to stand up. There was a clinical feel to the room, and a smell which ignited memories of injections.
“Where am I?” he asked, aware of how cliché the question sounded
“Don’t worry about that” Lucy insisted before quickly changing the subject “you really need to rest.” The blood marks on her neck also appeared to have vanished completely, Mr Bones tilted his head to try and find at least a scar. Lucy coughed slightly and Mr Bones apologised.
“I have to get back to the school” he told her “I have a class to teach in period 4”
“It’s well past midnight, Mr Bones” Lucy notified him with concern. He swung his legs out of the bed and pushed passed Lucy, who was kneeling on the floor beside him. He bumped his head trying to stand up, confirming his original judgement of the height of the ceiling. For a moment Mr Bones was greatly disturbed by the fact that there was no door, he began to feel incredibly claustrophobic and found himself sitting back down on the bed.
“How do I get out of here” he demanded, looking Lucy square in the eyes. She directed her gaze to the ceiling and Mr Bones followed her line of vision, there was a trap door on the roof. “Do you want to tell me where we are before I leave” he suggested angrily while trying to pull down the hatch.
“I have to talk to you” Lucy whispered, her bright blue eyes full of worry. Something in her aggrieved tone made Mr Bones stop trying to escape and sit back down.
“I think you have a fair bit of explaining to do” he said with a grin, trying to make light of the situation.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Onegin

I just finished watching a film, it was called ‘Onegin’ which I personally think was a bad decision for the title, Onegin is the protagonists last name which is rarely ever said and has little relevance to anything except, obviously, his identity. The cover of the DVD claims this film to be “a timeless masterpiece of love and obsession.” By ‘timeless’ I can only assume they mean ‘drags-on-for-102 minutes-when-the-same-story-could-be-told-in-5’ and by ‘masterpiece’ they must be referring solely to Liv Tyler’s acting, which was undeniably the best thing about Onegin.

The plot is: a man moves to the country and meets a pretty girl. The girl loves the man but he doesn’t love her back. The man travels the world for six years and then comes back. The man loves the girl but the girl is married. The end.

You may be thinking by my summary that the majority of the film focuses on the man’s six year voyage, this is not the case, his trip lasts literally no time at all and is only known because of a rather blunt comment by one of the characters: “Evgeny went on a six year trip, he’s back now. Isn’t that right mother?” and so that still leaves one hundred and two minutes and fifty nine seconds (note that the time is written in words so that it feels longer) devoted to drawn out shots of the girl walking around her house gloomily. The objective of the film is to make the audience wish for the two characters to end up together, because we sit there for 1 hour and 42 minutes watching two depressed people moping around in full knowledge that the sulkiness would stop if only they loved each other... at the same time.

The film begins in the perspective of Evengy Onegin, a nineteenth century man from the city who goes to visit his sick uncle. Upon arriving at the country Evengy finds his uncle is actually already dead, but skips the grieving phase (as that would add too much drain to the film) and skips straight to celebrating the fact that his uncle’s rather big house, is now his.
As Evengy is working out some important inheritance matters, he notices a girl with long dark brown hair talking to someone outside in the distance. At the moment of seeing the girl, he makes the hasty decision to stay in the country as opposed to returning back to his home in the city. Evengy then goes exploring his new home village, finds a man singing in the woods and shoots him.... oh, sorry.... that’s threatens to shoot him. Naturally, the two become great friends. This friend (whose name I don’t remember, mainly because I don’t care) just so happens to be engaged to the girls older sister, excellent coincidence for Evengy, it’s at this point we thank god he didn’t shoot the friend earlier. Maybe I’ll just run you through the scene were Evengy first meets this man:

Friend (has back to Evengy and is singing in the forest): la la la

Evengy (aims his rifle just above the man’s head and shoots): BANG! (which is a noise made by the gun, not by Evengy himself.)

Friend: are you trying to shoot me?Evengy: you’re poaching! Get off my land!

Friend: I always hunt here..... oh..... you must be the new owner of the land. I always go hunting in this forest. Are you going to shoot me?

Evengy: yes.

Friend: .....

Evengy: do you want to go get some lunch?

Friend: then are you going to shoot me?

Evengy: only if you are dull.

And thus begins a wonderful friendship, based on fear and threats. Anyway, Evengy ends up going back to the friend’s house. He is asked to wait in a room, we watch him fiddle with a piece of silver for about three minutes so we can feel the same drawn out boredom he feels while he waits. Once the three minutes of intense, edge of your seat action is over.... we meet Tatyana for the first time. She slides open a door, stares at Evengy for a good two minutes, Evengy says “how do you do” and then she runs away.
Conversation is thick that night at dinner, opinions are shared and all get to know Evengy. Tatyana remains a voiceless beauty until the end of dinner when she makes a single comment, which is followed by her mother saying “Tatyana! You have the oddest ideas!” which does a good job of shutting her up again.

We then begin to view the film from Tatyana’s point of view. She has a fever and cannot sleep because her grandma predicted her an undesired future “you will marry a soldier.” We watch Tatyana walk around the house all night, it was obvious the film makers wanted us to watch her entire sleepless night in real time but had to cut it down a little to fit into the acceptable length of a feature film. We discover the source of her insomnia is love sickness, as she writes Evengy a wordy page long letter which says ‘I love you.’ We see the whole thing being written, but are kept in high suspense for five minutes as they won’t show us what she’s writing (although they could have made it more interesting by not showing us the words “I love you” and “dear Evengy” at the beginning of this five minute suspense filled scene.)
Evengy receives the letter and immediately throws it in the fire. He then takes the letter out of the fire and puts it on his desk instead.
At a party Tatyana and Evengy discuss the letter:

Evengy: thank you for the letter. I admired it.
He hands her back the letter.

Tatyana: keep it. It is yours.
He begrudgingly puts the letter back into his pocket.

Tatyana: you admired it?

Evengy: yes. I thought you wrote very intelligently and the use of punctuation was to be commended.

Tatyana: but do you return my feelings?

Evengy: what?

Tatyana: do you love me?

Evengy: Oh...actually, I am not capable of love. You’re senses are strong but your perception is nonexistent.

That same night, back at the party, Evengy innocently asks his friend’s fiancé to dance with him. The friend starts to emit smoke from his ears, and cuts in on the dance “oh, please can we keep dancing!” demands the fiancé and so, to the friends annoyance, Evengy and the fiancé finish the dance.

Friend: why did you do that!?Evengy: what?

Friend: WHY DID YOU SEDUCE MY FIANCE!?

Evengy: I didn’t mean to. She is young, foolish and ...... easy.

Naturally, the friend wanted to battle Evengy to the death for ‘dishonouring the women I love.’ And so, now for the best part of the film (no sarcasm): the gun shooting on the peer beside the windmill. Evengy ends up winning this duel and shoots his friend in the head, a rather MA moment for an M film, I must say. Unfortunately this scene went for a very short time compared to the next scene: a very lengthy shot of Tatyana’s face.

We blink and then Evengy has gone on a six year journey around the world and is back again. When he sees Tatyana again he falls in love, so he writes her a letter telling her this. Luckily, after six years, she remembers him.... but none the less, throws his letter in the fire.
Tatyana stands gently stroking her pet monkey, which is dressed in a regal red outfit. Her husband (yes, she married someone else in that six year blink) touches her arm:

Husband: you are cold

Tatyana: yes, I am

Husband: ...... goodnight then.
And he walks away leaving her shivering on the cold stone floor. Evengy comes along:

Evengy: did you get my letter?

Tatyana: why have you come? I wish you to leave.

Evengy: I cannot. I love you.

He then gets on his knees and holds her hands, she cries.

Evengy: do you love me?Tatyana: I did once... a long time ago. You broke my heart.

Evengy: is it still broken!?
He asks hopefully, a wicked Voldemort like tinge in his eye, as she pours out floods of tears.

Evengy: it is isn’t it!? You’re heart is still hurting!?.... tell me you love me. Even if it’s a lie.

Tatyana: I love you.

Evengy: great. Awesome. OK.

As an audience we can never be 100% certain whether she lied or not. She then tells him he’s too late because she doesn’t want to be unfaithful to her husband.
Later, Evengy is sitting outside by himself at a table, his servant comes out and says “may I suggest you come inside, sir? It’s very cold out” and Evengy says “I like the cold” and the end credits role. An ending rich of meaning indeed.