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I read somewhere: "The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you somebedy else" (E.E.Cummings). This is just such a true statement for me. I tried to fit in, and felt out of place. With the passing years, having experienced lots of unpleasentness I have realized that it is impossible to be happy while trying to satisfy everybody and follow the conventions that don't really agree with me or do not fit in my life. Finding myself still...

Thursday 30 May 2013

El laberinto del Fauno (película 2006)

El laberinto del Fauno, una película inventada, escrita y dirigida por Guillermo del Toro. Cada vez que la veo estoy tan conmovida que tengo que llorar. Es una película muy emocionante y llena de símbolos.
 
Es 1944 en España - los primeros años de la dictadura de Franco. A Ofelia - la protagonista - le gustan los cuentos de hadas. Ofelia es totalmente inocente y en mi opinión simboliza todo lo inocente: los niños, la gente en sociedad española. El capitán Vidal - el antagonista - está obsesionado con el tiempo y siempre lleva consigo el reloj de su padre. Vidal es un facista, una persona muy cruel y brutal, totalmente sin emociones. El definitivamente simboliza la dictadura de Franco y el nuevo orden de España. En la película la realidad (con sus verdaderas escenas de terror) está mezclada con la fantasía (representada por el fauno, hagas, hombre pálido, los cuentos, el libro de las encrucijadas, y el reíno subterráneo y otros elementos más). Todo eso le hace una película inolvidable.
En el mundo mágico Ofelia es una princesa perdida a quien le buscan sus padres verdaderos -  el rey y la reína del reíno subterráneo. Para regresar a su reíno - Ofelia - tiene que pasar por tres pruebas muy difíciles y al final sacrificar su propia vida. Al mismo tiempo, en el mundo real Capitán Vidal - un verdadero monstro - controla la gente de este zona de España, persigue a los guerilleros, tortura y mata personas. La madre de Ofelia muere al dar a luz su hijo - el hermano de Ofelia.
Todo un verdadero horror.

Los simbolos, en la película, son muy fuertes.
El árbol, por ejemplo. La higuera seca con un sapo que la destruye por dentro, parece en su forma a un útero de la mujer. La higuera seca puede significar el útero de la madre de Ofelia que está muriendo por el embarazo - por culpa del niño de Vidal (y ella). O más probablemente la higuera puede significar España que sufre tanto por la dictadura que por dentro arruina todo el país.
 
El hombre pálido, una creatura horrorosa que come a las inocentes que se atreven tocar la comida del banquiete que él guarda, puede significar cualquiera de los dos: el capitán Vidal o Franco mismo. Los verdaderos monstros en el mundo real.

Él cuento de la montaña y la rosa inmortal va así:
"Hace muchos muchos años, en un país muy lejano y triste existió una enorme montaña de piedra negra y áspera. Al caer la tarde en la cima de esa montaña, florecía todas las noches una rosa que otorgaba la inmortalidad, sin embargo nadie se atrevía acercarse a ella, pues sus numerosas espinas estaban envenenadas. Entre los hombres solo se hablaba del miedo a la muerte y al dolor, pero nunca de la promesa de la inmortalidad. Y, todas las tardes la rosa se marchitaba. Sin poder otorgar sus dones a persona alguna, olvidada y perdida en la cima de la montaña de piedra fría, sola hasta el fin de los tiempos."´
La rosa puede significar el pueblo español rodeado por el veneno del facismo, y nadie le puede ayudar. O el país triste puede simplemente significar España, y la rosa puede ser la libertad, y las espinas con veneno - el facismo y dictadura.
 
Quiero reflexionar sobre una afirmación en relación con la película:
"Ejercer el derecho a la desobediencia es una forma de ser libre."
El director Guillermo del Toro durante su entrevista con Jack Rico (¨"Jack Rico entrevista al director Guillermo del Toro sobre Pan´s Labyrinth" - YouTube) dijo que "la desobediencia es la clave de la fé y de la responsibilidad". La niña tiene que hacer lo que ella cree y lo hace por su instinto y está de acuerdo con su corazón. Y lo demuestra en casi todo lo que hace. Por ejemplo al final aunque quiere tanto volver al reíno subterráneo no sique la instrucíondel Fauno y no está dispuesta a sacrificar a su pequeño hermanito. Pero matada por Vidal sin embargo entra al reíno subterráneo como princesa. Resulta que ha elejido bien. Aunque ha desobedecido consigue lo que siempre quería y está libre de remordimientos.
 
La muerte de Dr Ferreiro es una escena que muestra desobedencia como una forma de ser libre. Dr Ferreiro desobedece a Vidal y mata (eutaniza) un pobre rebelde torturado por Vidal, lo mata pare que el no sufra más y porque el se lo pide. Dr Ferreiro lo paga con su propia vida, pero antes de morir dice a Vidal:
"Es que obedecer por obedecer, así sin pensarlo, esto solo lo hacen gentes como usted, Capitán."

Sunday 5 May 2013

'Life After Life'- Kate Atkinson

What a book! What a style!
 
I got encouraged to read this book by recommendations on Amazon. And as it was on my local library's list of most-read books at the moment I added my name to the online queue of people awaiting the copy of it. I think I was 9th on the list, but it did not take long, only a few weeks, and I received an email from the library to pick it up. Well, that was encouraging, it meant people had read it quickly.
 
And yes, it is definitely a page-turner. Big time. I could not put it down, and even though the book is not short (477 pages) it took me about 4 days to read it (during breakfast before going to work, after work and a bit of weekend). It grasped me from the very beginning. The baby dies, the same baby gets born again, the same child dies, and is born again and again. I cannot count the amount of times I cried. Almost every time Ursula dies, every time something wrong happens to her.
 
"What if you had the chance to live your life again and again until you finally got it right?" is written at the back cover of the book. What if? Ursula did, and with a vague memory of consequences of certain decisions in her previous lives, her life took unexpected turns each time. She lost life as a child many a times, she lost life during London blitz a number of times, she was raped, she was murdered by her husband, she was entertained by Hitler before the war, she was childless, she had a child and committed suicide in Berlin at the end of war,  she was single, she had husbands, she killed Hitler, she died of brain cancer (I think), she was bombed, every time 'Darkness fell'- she always died, her life never really fully satisfying. But is it ever? Is it ever satisfying? Every time 'darkness' will fall - we will always die in the end, won't we? 
There is no pay-off in the book. She is just born again on 11 Feb 1910, yet again.
 
It is hardly a new idea. And I am thinking here about the 1998 film 'Sliding doors' (with Gwyneth Partlow) where she lives two parallel lives - in one she catches the train and discovers her boyfriend cheating on her, in the other the door slides before she can jump on board and does not find out about the cheating - her life led completely differently just because of that little detail. Another example, the 1993 'Groundhog day' (with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell) where a main character gets to repeat the same day over and over again until he gets it right - changes completely and gets the girl. Also, this reminds of the famous and popular scientific theory of parallel universes, which Micho Kaku explains so well in his book 'Parallel Universes'. According to one of the theories of the multiple universes, every time one takes a decision another parallel universe is created with the opposite or different decision being taken and therefore different life path and consequences. Mind blowing.
Anyway, going back to Kate Atkinson, the author of 'Life After Life', I am soooo going to read some more of her. I think she is a brilliant novelist with a wonderful capturing style.
 
Some quotes from the book:
 
" 'She doesn't believe in dogs,' Bridget said. ' Dogs are hardly an article of faith,' Sylvie said."
 
"Childbirth was a brutal affair. If she had been in charge of designing the human race she would have gone about things quite differently. (A golden shaft of light through the ear for conception perhaps and a well-fitting hatch somewhere modest for escape nice months later.)"(Sylvie's thoughts, after giving birth to Ursula)
 
"When she was sure Frieda was asleep she took the little glass capsule that the chemist had given her and placed it gently in Frieda's mouth and pressed her delicate jaws together. The capsule broke with a tiny crunching noise. A line from one of Donne's 'Holy Sonnets' came into mind as she bit down on her own little glass vial. 'I run to death, and death meets me as fast, And all my pleasures are like yesterday.' She held tightly on to Frieda and soon they were both wrapped in the velvet wings of the black bat and this life was already unreal and gone. She had never chosen death over life before and as she was leaving she knew something had cracked and broken and the order of things had changed. Then the dark obliterated all thoughts." (suicide in Berlin)
 
"Ursula sighed and stretched. 'You know I really, really have had enough of being bombed. 'The war's not going away any time soon, I'm afraid,' said Millie."
 
"What if we had a chance to do it again, and again,' Teddy said, 'until we finally did get it right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?' ' I think it would be exhausting."