Monthly Archives: March 2014

Movie: Persepolis (2007)

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This movie is about being a “young adult.” This is the period when people start thinking of themselves no longer as children, but aren’t yet recognized as adults by those around them; it is the period of their ego sprouting, selecting their life course, interest in the other gender, and conflict with grownups or the establishment. Similar to puberty, the period of young adulthood often includes behaviors such as becoming uncontrollable after leaving the supervision of their parents or acting without restraint in regards to violence or suicide, by obsessing over the opposite sex or drugs, or running away from home.

Persepolis is the film adaptation of the autobiographical graphic novel that depicts the period of young adulthood of Iranian graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi. Becoming an adult is quite difficult, but because her time of growth coincided completely with the Islamic Revolution of Iran, the Iran-Iraq War, and the subsequent cultural oppression, Persepolis is tinged with a considerable political flavor, though Marjane Satrapi is not a political person. She herself said this interesting comment: “I am not interested in politics. Politics is interested in ME!”

Marjane Satrapi was born in Tehran, Iran in 1969. She is the great grandchild of Ahmad Shah, the last shah of the former Qajar dynasty. Her grandfather and uncle were imprisoned for opposing the policies of Pahlavi Shah who succeeded Ahmad Shah. Her father also possessed progressive thoughts and he spearheaded a resistance movement with the majority of the nation against Pahlavi Shah who suppressed freedom. The joy of Pahlavi Shah fleeing the country in January of 1979 was short-lived; in April, Iran established the Islamic Republic based on a national referendum, Grand Ayatollah Khomeini took power, and oppression in Iran worsened beyond that under Pahlavi Shah’s reign. In addition, their neighbor Iraq, having had disputes at the national border for many years and fearing the influence of the Iranian Revolution, invaded Iran and the Iran-Iraq War began in 1980. Rumors of young soldiers being put in the frontline of the battlefield as a “bullet shield” circulated and many parents who had sons of drafting age fled the country.

In 1983, Marjane Satrapi’s parents arranged for her to move to Austria’s capital Vienna by herself to study abroad. It was not to avoid the war, but rather her parents feared their daughter might become a victim of legal rape; the minimum age for women to get married was reduced to 9 years old in the new Muslim regime and any sexual abuse after a young girl was forced to marry would no longer be considered a crime. However, she was not able to adapt to life in Austria. In those days, the international image of Iranians was a cruel savage, and she wondered if others saw her this way. In addition, she struggled with how her looks and body were different than European girls at an age when she was self-conscious about her appearance; she lived a depraved life without the supervision of her parents, fought with the people providing her housing, and, in the end, slept in the streets without a house to live in and spent her days digging through dumpsters. Suffering from pneumonia and homesick from such a lifestyle, she finally returned to Iran.

After returning home, she became depressed and she almost died from overdosing on drugs. However, with the encouraging words of her family–“Study at a university and become an independent woman”—she entered university. After the failure of a brief marriage with a young Iranian man, the movie ends with her moving to France in 1994 at the suggestion of her parents—“You can’t live your potential in present-day Iran.”

Her uncle was executed under the Islamic Republic alongside other liberals and socialists. A friend that went to war returned without limbs. A friend who lived next door was hit by a missile from Iraq and died. Parties were illegal under the Islamic Republic, but she dared to participate and a friend was chased by the police and died. She was arrested for behavior unsuitable for an Islamic woman and was told, “A fine or a beating?”; she was released after paying a large sum of money. The university she entered with high expectations was governed by Islamic principle, so she had no joy. She had thought Pahlavi Shah was a bad person, but his regime imprisoned her uncle while the regime of the Muslim Khomeini executed her uncle. Nothing in society had improved.

Even though this movie depicts her terrible youth, it does not lose its peculiar cheerfulness. One reason for its cheerfulness is that it is animated and not performed by real actors. Her drawings render a strange, humorous style. However, the brightness flowing through the bottom of this movie will come from the love of family. Marjane Satrapi’s parents were progressive people, but unlike her grandfather and uncle that were executed, they acquired worldly wisdom in order to find a way to survive under political and religious oppression. However, at the same time, they taught their daughter to do the right thing in life, to skillfully find happiness, and to believe in and pursue her own talents. They made up their minds to protect their child from danger by any means and unconditionally forgave and supported her completely if she made a mistake because of immaturity.

With the genuine support from her parents and grandmother, Marjane Satrapi grew up to be a real adult. She was a child who had strong curiosity, was outspoken with her thoughts—which made people around her worry—and became depressed from her difficulties to the point where she may not have been able to recover; but she was also surprisingly acute enough to see opportunities and was able to size up her surroundings with a watchful eye in order to survive. As soon as she was determined to not lose sleep over what was already past, she became a strong person who was amazingly able to live facing forward. Though she was a loser in Austria, she blossomed in a big way in France. Was there a difference in Austria and France? Or is the reason that she became a real adult in France?

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Movie: The Lives of Others — Das Leben der Anderen (2006)

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It is said that Lenin once stated, “If you listen to Beethoven’s sonata, it will be difficult to continue a revolution.” This movie is a story of the men who listened to the sonata.

It is 1984 in East Berlin. Captain Wiesler of the Ministry of State Security (Stasi) is a talented member of this secret service. He is ordered to spy on a playwright, Dreyman, who is suspected of anti-establishment thought, and Dreyman’s lover Christa, a stage actress. Wiesler wiretaps the apartment they live in, but finds out that the real reason the wire was placed was because the Minister of Culture wants Christa for himself. Wiesler is moved by the sonata Dreyman plays. Dreyman had carefully separated himself from anti-establishment groups, but after a close friend who was oppressed as a writer by the government commits suicide and leaves behind a piece of sheet music titled, “Sonata for a Good Man,” Dreyman decides to publish a story in the West to disclose the reality of East Berlin. Meanwhile, Christa loses the favor of the Minister of Culture and is pushed into a difficult situation, so she becomes a spy to inform the authorities of Dreyman’s secrets. Wiesler, developing sympathy for the two through the wiretap, tries to help Dreyman and Christa using the information that he knows, but Christa commits suicide, and Wiesler is suspected and demoted to a dead-end job.

A while after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Dreyman discovers that he had in fact been wiretapped by the authorities, and from these surveillance records, he learns that Christa was a spy. However, the person in charge of gathering this intelligence, whom Dreyman only knows by his codename, did not report any evidence to his authorities that Dreyman was the author of the story published on the West side that revealed the reality of the establishment in East Berlin. For the first time, Dreyman discovers that this anonymous spy had protected him. After many years, Wiesler, now living a quiet life, becomes aware of the recent publishing of Dreyman’s book titled, “Sonata for a Good Man.” The movie ends with Wiesler opening up the book in the bookstore and seeing a note that said the book was dedicated to him with gratitude.

Ulrich Mühe, who splendidly plays Wiesler, at first appears to be a highly skilled and ruthless man dressed in uniform, but as he listens in with the wiretap, he is gradually transformed into an ordinary, middle-aged man with unfashionable pants and a balding head. Wonderful themes, acting ability, images, sounds and voices, and suspense make this the “perfect movie,” but if there is a criticism for this movie, it would be the following.

The historical inaccuracies within this movie may be the target of criticism. The Stasi wouldn’t have the room to produce people of kindness like Captain Wiesler. Observing each other is among the duties of a spy, and it would be impossible for a spy to help someone. Even if there were spies that were kind like Wiesler, I would think that the punishment wouldn’t be something as simple as, “doing a boring job for 20 years.” Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who wrote the script and directed the movie, spoke of this in an interview: “The more I studied the Stasi, the more I found that what they did was too cruel to depict as it was, so I intentionally avoided cruel scenes.” The only cruel scene is the one of Christa’s death, and even in this scene, it is not clear whether it was an accidental death or a suicide. This movie poses a question that cannot be answered: when conveying a theme through art, which method has a more lasting impact on the audience, depicting cruelty as it is or abstractly?

Ulrich Mühe who played Wiesler was highly esteemed as a stage actor in East Germany, but he also participated in anti-government demonstrations and was involved in plays that criticized the system. He had two children while with his first wife, stage director Annegret Hahn, but they divorced, and he married actress Jenny Gröllmann in 1984. However, he later learned that four of his theater colleagues and his wife Jenny Gröllmann were spying on him and reporting information to authorities, and he divorced his wife in 1990. After that, he married again in 1997 to actress Susanne Lothar.

The Lives of Others won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2007, but Mühe had to rush back to Germany immediately after in order to undergo surgery for his stomach cancer. Mühe passed away at the young age of 54, at the height of his fame due to the many prizes The Lives of Others received.

In 2006, in an interview included in his book that was related to The Lives of Others, Mühe confesses that, in the days of East Germany, his former wife Gröllmann spied on him as an “unofficial collaborator”—similar to the story of the movie—and reported to a Stasi officer who had the codename of “HA II/13.” Ex-wife Gröllmann filed a suit to the Berlin district court against what Mühe claimed, and argued that she had become a source of information on Mühe as an unofficial collaborator without her knowledge, and that the publication of the book be prohibited. The court approved this statement and prohibited the publication of the book; Mühe’s appeal was rejected and he was prohibited from denouncing Gröllmann as the source for the Stasi as an unofficial collaborator. Immediately after, Gröllmann died from an illness, and then one year later, Mühe also died. In addition, his third wife Lothar died in 2012 at the age of 51. All three certainly died prematurely.

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Movie: Lincoln (2012)

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Lincoln was born in 1809; in 1861, he was elected as the 16th president of America and was re-elected in 1864. The Civil War started immediately after his inauguration in 1861 and his famous Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves happened in 1862. In 1865, Lincoln led the North to victory. On April 15, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated and left the world at the age of 56.

Director Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln depicts Lincoln’s tumultuous life up until his final moments in April, focusing on the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in the U.S. Constitution that abolished slavery. The movie has few war scenes and focuses on the discussion of the Constitution and the opposition to slavery. Spielberg presents a story that an average American is likely to understand, but a Japanese person may have difficulty in understanding the time period here without the knowledge of American history and the U.S. Constitution. It might be hard to understand the difference between the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It was not the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 but rather the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 that truly liberated a slave. I think this is why Spielberg focuses on the approval of the Thirteenth Amendment in his film Lincoln.

The U.S. Constitution can be modified through only two methods. The first method is shown in the movie where the Senate and House of Representatives of the Congress must both get two-thirds to vote in favor; then within a year, three-quarters of the states must ratify in order for the amendment to be adopted into the Constitution. Once the amendment is adopted, it is binding to all states. The Thirteenth Amendment was already approved by the Senate in April of 1864. The movie depicts the dramatic two-vote margin when the amendment was passed in the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865. After the amendment had finally passed Congress, the ratification was easy. As the Land of Lincoln, Illinois was the first to ratify in support of the amendment the next day; many states followed suit and the Thirteenth Amendment was adopted into the Constitution. The president is not supposed to be involved in this amendment process, but President Lincoln believed in the Thirteenth Amendment from the bottom of his heart and did what he could to make it happen. The biggest obstacle in the process was to get the House of Representatives to approve. Therefore, Spielberg focused on the chronicle of events with the House of Representatives in Lincoln.

So then what is the difference between the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 and passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865?

The United States had gained its independence formally in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris, but by the mid nineteenth century, there was already serious antagonism between the North and South on the direction of the country. Some scholars say that the Civil War originated from an economic conflict between the North and the South; the South was reliant on the large labor force provided by slaves for their plantations, while the North wanted free labor for industrial factories. Others think that the North believed slavery to be inhumane and wished to abolish slavery, as Europe had already. However, I believe the fundamental cause of the conflict was the tension between federal and centralized government. Another conflict was whether or not slavery was a part of the founding principles of America. Lincoln clearly says in the movie that America will never be a modern nation as long as there is slavery in America, and that slavery opposes the fundamental truth set by our Founding Fathers that all men are equal. Lincoln was running as the candidate for the Republican Party, which opposed slavery. When Lincoln was elected as President, the South (South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) withdrew from the U.S. and tensions escalated into the Civil War.

A question brought up by the Civil War was how to handle the slaves that the Union Army captured from the Confederates. Lincoln tried to solve the problem by passing a law to liberate slaves who were owned by the enemy Confederate Army. This was the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862.

A big problem still remained in this Proclamation. If either the Confederate Army won the Civil War or the Union Army did not occupy the state, slavery would continue in the South. Also, the Proclamation did not apply to the states allied to the North such as Maryland, Delaware, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri, even though slavery was legal in these states. Furthermore, the 48 counties that left Virginia to become West Virginia were not targeted. (However, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and later West Virginia abolished slavery on their own volition.) Since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 only regarded wartime handling of enemy property, regardless of the outcome—even if the North won—it was possible slavery could still persist.

The Emancipation Proclamation was a temporary wartime countermeasure to free the slaves in the states of the Confederate Army. In contrast, the change to the U.S. Constitution with the addition of the Thirteenth Amendment made the change permanent across the whole United States. Even Lincoln was not supportive of declaring the full abolition of slavery initially. As mentioned before, there were states that supported the Union Army that still had slaves. These states fought against the Confederate Army not to fight slavery but rather to unite the nation together again as the United States. Therefore, if it was declared that they were fighting for the complete abolition of slavery, some states would’ve rescinded their alliance with the North. If that happened, the South would’ve gained the upper hand over the North in the war. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation allowed former slaves freed from the South to join the Union Army, which provided their army with 200,000 new African-American soldiers.

Some would say that Lincoln actually opposed the abolition of slavery, but I still believe that Lincoln fixed his eyes on the ultimate goal and took steps and the right method most appropriate for the time. His ultimate goal was to get rid of slavery to unify the North and South again in America. Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln was able to capture this very well. By choosing to focus on the story of getting the House of Representatives to approve of the addition of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Spielberg shows Lincoln to be an excellent politician with a clear goal and realistic, steady steps. Simultaneously, Lincoln is talkative and has a gentle humor and we find him very likable and like a trusted friend. Steven Spielberg was able to find just the right actor to capture this character, and his great performance as Lincoln shines.

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Movie: L’Odeur de la papaye verte – The Scent of Green Papaya (1993)

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I have a triangular theory for classifying movie directors. At one point of the triangle, there are directors with breathtaking cinematography like Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Sergei Parajanov; at another are directors who rely on clever storytelling and patiently construct the plot like Asghar Farhadi. At the third point, there are the directors who utilize straightforward methods, and have both interesting stories and well-calculated cinematography, such as Akira Kurosawa or Steven Spielberg. Tran Anh Hung, the director of The Scent of Green Papaya, is the first type—a visual director.

This movie does not have a clear story at all. The stage is set in Vietnam under French control in 1951. In the first two-thirds of the movie, there is some explanation of the characters and setting through the young girl who comes to work as a housemaid asking, “Who is that person? What is happening?” to a middle-aged maid, but most of it is spent depicting the young boys in the family killing insects, playing with reptiles, and urinating everywhere, and on close-ups of objects. The remaining third suddenly leaps to ten years later, and the young girl has grown up and moved to work as a maid in another home; the master of the house falls in love with her, and, like a Cinderella Story, she becomes his wife, but there is hardly any dialogue. The information about the human relations within the family provided through the juvenile methods in the first half is hardly useful for understanding the second half. If I were to explain it, the intention of the first half may be to depict the difficult life of the director’s mother as a woman, depicted by the patient and kind mistress of the house where the young girl worked, while the intention of the second half may be to depict a woman in the younger generation to whom he gave happiness, by means of the young girl who grows up in the movie. The grown-up maid is performed by the director Tran’s wife. Well, since there is no story at all, nor much dialogue, I don’t know if there is anyone had the same interpretation of this movie that I did. This movie may make the audience think, “There are some pretty scenes, but what does it want to say?” or “Taking advantage of the exotic location is cheap.”

Director Tran is Vietnamese, and he escaped from the communist regime with his parents and immigrated to France when Saigon fell. Because he studied film at a prestigious French film university, the theory of La Nouvelle Vague (“the new wave”) and the cinematography methods of Andrei Tarkovsky must have been hammered into him. This movie was his first work after he graduated, and he was about 30 years old when he directed this movie. When this movie became a sensation, he declared this about his literary style in an immature manifesto: “I completely deny traditional storytelling, and want to make a movie with a new language—body language. By making use of body language instead of logical reasoning, I challenge the audience, and I want them to grasp the essence of the movie.” In other words, he is saying that story, language, thought, and information in a movie are unnecessary, and he will convey his message to the audience using only images. I am curious whether director Tran still has the same opinion 20 years later because I believe it is wrong if one thinks that one can be a great director by just supplying beautiful images. A movie is the optimum integration of thoughts, opinions, facts, imagination, feelings, information, story, acting, sounds, cinematography, and countless other components, presented to the audience. Among the various components that make up a movie, the story holds a very important position. He should use a different medium if he wants to use only images. If you are using a movie as your medium of expression, the idea of, “I have pretty pictures so it’s good enough without a story,” seems arrogant and lazy to me. Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan stuns the audience with beautiful images, but his works consistently possess awareness and thoughts on issues, and the beautiful imagery represents his inner landscapes. Director Asghar Farhadi’s images are excellently full of information and reinforce his storyline. Nobody would ever say, “Asghar Farhadi is not talented because his images are not novel.” The point is that the story and cinematography work together, and that the attitude that a movie doesn’t need a story—even if there are pretty images—is wrong. You don’t need to use movies as a medium if you are only using images.

In his early 30’s, director Tran won prestigious awards at the Cannes and Venice international film festivals. Perhaps he was given these awards as a way to identify and encourage an up-and-coming director, and also because the international film world wanted to support Vietnam in their recovery from the Vietnam War. However, it may not necessarily be good fortune for this young man who just graduated from college to acquire fame before making a masterpiece. In one sense, having won awards may be a curse because no one will criticize his works harshly and life becomes too easy. It is interesting that he only directed a few works, including Norwegian Wood, in the 20 year period following this.

It seems like this movie is praised by a male audience and hated by a female audience. What rubs women the wrong way is the mentality displayed by the mistress in the first house and the grown-up maid—being passive, putting the man first, and the only important thing being getting the approval of a man. After the mistress’s husband has an affair and suddenly takes all of the assets in the house, her mother-in-law says to her, “My son did what he did because you don’t have charm as a woman,” and the mistress just agrees and cries. The maid starts working in the house of the older man that she has yearned for since when she was little; she happily works hard, and steals this man from his fiancé. Why this rich man would go from a rich upper class fiancé to a maid—not as a lover, but as a wife—is not explained at all. Although director Tran tries to depict pretty serious events happening to women with just artistic images, the viewers get nothing from these scenes. A woman as depicted in this movie may be attractive to a man, but would irritate a woman. Even though the man broke the engagement off with his fiancé, he has her return the engagement ring to him, which he puts in his pocket with a shameless and unpleasant manner.

Another thing wrong in this movie is the performance given by director Tran’s wife as the grown-up maid. She doesn’t talk at all, and in order to express a subordinate woman, she is always hunched over with her head tilted at a 45 degree angle, always has a downward glance, wiggles slightly, and her lips constantly in a half smile. Regrettably, her performance as the maid in the movie is creepy, unnatural, and unpleasant. If I were to say my opinion, director Tran of course loves his beautiful and intelligent wife, so he wants to use her as the star in his movie. However, perhaps since she fled Vietnam when she was a child, she can understand Vietnamese, but it is not her native language. Also, even director Tran doesn’t seem to have confidence in her ability as an actress. Therefore, I suspect he gave his wife no lines so as not to have any defect seen by a Vietnamese viewer. If he thought it was okay for her to have no lines because just making her hunch over and wiggle her body would be sufficient to express a woman’s attractiveness and obedience, that is a problem. The only time the grown-up maid talks is when the master of the house is teaching her how to read and write, and she reads one short line of poetry. Until that scene, the papayas shown in the movie are green, but when she is wearing a yellow ao dai (a traditional Vietnamese dress) while she is pregnant with a child, it feels as though she has become an ideal woman for her husband—like a mature, yellow papaya. However, when she opens her mouth, her expression reverts back to modern, Westernized, cheerfulness. Although she reads only one line of poetry, I feel as if she is saying, “Yes! I faked it, got this man to marry me, and successfully became a winner. I got my happy ending.”

To say it briefly, a woman might feel the following about the movie: “I went on a date to watch this movie. After the movie, he was deeply moved and kept saying, ‘What beautiful images!’ and ‘This is what art should be—full of emotion!’ and, ‘That actress was very beautiful!’ and, ‘After all, women should be obedient. Obedience brings women happiness,’ and, ‘Sadly, that kind of woman is rare nowadays.’ Even though I thought he was an idiot, I didn’t say anything and laughed at him secretly.”

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Movie: Uzak — Distant (2002), Iklimler – Climates (2006)

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Turkish movie director Nuri Bilge Ceylan produced, wrote the screenplays for, and directed the movies Distant and Climates. Ceylan is very well-regarded internationally. Distant (2002) won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, Climates (2006) won the Movie Critics’ Award at Cannes, Three Monkeys (2008) earned Ceylan the best director award at Cannes as well as made the shortlist for America’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and Once Upon a Time In Anatolia (2011) once again won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. In addition, Small Town won the Caligari Film Award at the Berlin Film Festival and the Silver Award at the Tokyo Film Festival and Climates won best picture at the SKIP City International Cinema Film Festival in Japan. In other words, nearly all of his works have received prestigious international awards. However, it is curious that none of his works have premiered in theatres in Japan.

The distinguishing feature of Ceylan’s movies in a few words is his cinematography that is so beautiful, it’s terrifying. His cinematography is exhaustively calculated such that each frame in his movies could be a painting. Every moment is perfectly timed and positioned—a bird flying, a fly buzzing, a cat jumping out, a person entering. The color of the clouds, the shading on the mountain, the motion of the sea waves, the color balance of the buildings and roads, the effective use of mirrors, the paint peeling on the exterior of the train, the contrast in the colors of the red mast of a scrapped boat and the snow—all truly astonishing. He pays meticulous attention to lighting. He also delicately uses sound, inserting even noise effectively.

We can understand Ceylan’s obsession over images and sounds if we take a look at his resume. He studied electrical engineering in college and also worked part-time as a photographer to support his living. Before his success in cinema, he had a career as a photographer. He produced, wrote the screenplays for, and directed his own movies, but also supervised photography and sounds and did his own film editing. He is certainly a very technical person.

He also obsesses greatly over the acting. He had several actors perform the single scene of a man simply getting out of a car and talking to someone, ten times each. Even if he reshoots it fifty times, if he is not pleased with it in the end, he might mercilessly cut it out when editing. Snow scenes play a big role in both Distant and Climates. Since snow rarely falls in Istanbul, did he happen to just be lucky? Or did he wait patiently for it to snow?

When directing, he is quite micro-managing. For a seven second scene when the actress opens the door and enters her room, he interrupts for the smallest details that happen in one second—the way she tilts her neck or the way she purses her lips. He has his own clear image and he demands that the actors produce an image that is the same as his. Some actors may think it would be a little hard to work with him or that he is quite strict.

The theme of his movies is “inner world.” He is not a political artist at all, at least from his works that I’ve seen. However, having spent his youth in the 70s, a time of turbulence across the whole world, political disturbance was something that he could not avoid. In 1976, he entered Istanbul Technical University, but in those days, Turkey was in a period of political turbulence and the university didn’t function well; in 1977, the Taksim Square massacre occurred. The facts relating to this event aren’t made very public, but that day was the nation’s Labor Day and it is said that a rally gathering socialists and illegal communists was planned. Istanbul Technical University was the center of student movements and not an environment conducive to studying, so after that, Ceylan took an entrance exam and transferred to Boğaziçi University. He finished his military service and traveled around many places; in his mid-thirties, he decided to become a full-fledged person of the cinema.

When I watch his early works Distant and Climates, I am made to think they might be an autobiography of his inner self. Depicted within these movies is a lonely man who is self-centered and unable to make a commitment to a woman or even himself. Both movies have a protagonist who is a good-looking man with a white-collar job. Women are drawn in by and attracted to such a man, but the man can’t commit to a serious relationship. He has a feeling that there are more interesting things in life than just dedicating himself to one woman so he rejects the woman. However, in the end, the man can’t find something that gives him satisfaction. He regrets parting with the woman, but he doesn’t have the passion to work hard enough to get the woman back.

The loneliness of the protagonist also comes from the loneliness of the people living in the city of Istanbul. Many of the residents living in Istanbul are from rural areas and moved there seeking work. The sense of community of people helping each other in rural areas is lost in a big city like Istanbul, but they are not true city dwellers. The protagonist is a rootless person that wanders about the city.

The loneliness of the protagonist also seems to symbolize the loneliness of Turkey as a country.

The Ottomans, after overthrowing the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century, established their great empire that reached from Azerbaijan in the east to Morocco in the west and from Ukraine in the north to Yemen in the south. However, in the 19th century, signs of decline of the empire began to show and many races in various places ruled by the empire became independent one after another. Because of Turkey’s defeat in World War I and the occupation by countries such as Britain, France, Italy, and Greece, Turkey dissolved. Facing this crisis, patriotic Turks appealed for their nation’s independence and started an armed resistance movement. Under the preeminent leadership of Mustafa Kemel (Atatürk), Turkey was successfully reestablished as the Republic of Turkey in 1922 and the Turks were able to overcome the crisis of extinction.

Turkey chose secularism, separating religion and government, and tried to modernize. After World War II, Turkey, touching the south border of the Soviet Union and in conflict with Russia throughout history, was valued by the west as an anticommunist barrier during the Cold War. Turkey was again valued as a buffer zone between Islamic countries and Western countries when the conflict between America and Islamic countries intensified after the Cold War. Perhaps Turkey wants to be included in European countries. However, an anti-Turkey feeling still remains in Europe, viewing Turkey as a friend to Islam with their anti-Islam eye. From the perspective of Islamic countries, though, Turkey is a country that has abandoned Islam.

There is also conflict within Turkey. The majority of people in Turkey support the stance to separate religion and politics, but there are also many who wish to revive Islam. There are socialists as well as a strong influence from military authorities. It is a country of gentlemen carefully trying to not cause any international problems, but the internal balance is quite delicate.

Ceylan married Ebru Ceylan, an actress much younger than him who co-starred with him in Distant and Climates; they have a child together and Ceylan appears to be a settled family man. Climates is a tribute to his own child, but I assume there was a day of loneliness before he reached his peaceful state of mind. When watching these movies, the feeling that remains in me is a deep loneliness.

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Movies: Babettes gæstebud — Babette’s Feast (1987), Ladies in Lavender (2004)

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I watched two very similar movies in succession recently: Babette’s Feast and Ladies in Lavender. Babette’s Feast depicts a 50-year-span around the time of the Paris Commune of 1871, while Ladies in Lavender is set in Great Britain in 1936. I thought Ladies in Lavender was borrowing ideas from the very successful Babette’s Feast because the Ladies in Lavender movie was made about 20 years after the movie Babette’s Feast, and the essence of the times depicted and the overall feeling of these two movies were very similar. The impression I got from these two movies was that they depict the atmosphere of the early 20th century in Northern Europe.

After doing some background research, I found that the author of the original Babette’s Feast, Karen Blixen, was born in 1885 and passed away in 1962, while the author of the original Ladies in Lavender, William John Locke, was born in 1863 and passed away in 1930. While I wouldn’t say they are the same generation, the time that they were alive overlapped. This explains why they share similar perceptions. The original Ladies in Lavender was published in 1916, slightly earlier than when the original Babette’s Feast was published, and the Ladies in Lavender movie actually changes the setting to 20 years later than the original story. Basically, the atmosphere that is expressed by both movies is the mindset of the people in Europe during those good times; imperialism was still going strong in Europe before World War I, people were enjoying economic prosperity, the rural parts of Northern Europe were not engulfed by big political changes, and the sense of community between neighbors was still strong and people helped each other in good faith. I think both Karen Blixen and William John Locke had the feeling that such times would disappear in the near future because both of these movies seem to give an impression of fleeting times. Since I have not read the original pieces, I wish to write about the similarities and differences between the two movies.

The first similarity between these movies is that both are stories of elderly, unmarried sisters living in the same house after their father dies. The two live in a beautiful, tiny village along the North Sea. Babette’s Feast takes place in Jutland, Denmark, while Ladies in Lavender is located in the United Kingdom, but the scenery in both movies look very similar. The maid similarly goes down the hill every day with a shopping basket to buy fish from the fisherman who rides up to the beach in his boat. There is also a similar set-up where life for the sisters is very repetitive—cherishing the memories of their fathers and thankful for their peaceful life—but then a lonesome, artistic foreigner drifts into their lives (in Babette’s Feast, it is Babette, a female chef of a first-class Paris restaurant; in Ladies in Lavender, it is Andrea, a mysterious Polish prodigy violinist) and their lives suddenly become exciting, which causes the sisters to reflect on their nearly forgotten younger days.

A similarity between the authors is that Karen Blixen and William John Locke both lived a long time in Africa. William John Locke is British, but when he was 2 years old, he immigrated to Trinidad and Tobago; in 1881, he returned to his home country of the United Kingdom to attend the University of Cambridge. On the other hand, Karen Blixen is Danish, but in 1913, she married Bror von Blixen, a Swedish aristocrat related to her father’s side of the family, and they immigrated to Kenya the following year. As a married couple, they managed a coffee plantation, but the married life soon failed and ended in a divorce; in 1931, Karen returned to her home country of Denmark. The memoir she wrote of her time living in Africa, Out of Africa, was made into a movie and won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Babette’s Feast won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

So then what are the differences? Since I have not read the originals, I can only compare the movie renditions, and one difference is the way the two sisters reflect on their pasts. In Babette’s Feast, the sisters do not have regret in their hearts about their past at all. There were many men who fell in love with the sisters because they were beautiful, but the sisters are still unmarried because they helped their father who had started up a church in the village, and they and all of the church-goers grew old; the sisters had made up their minds to maintain the church until they died. The sisters have no trace of avarice and don’t seek luxury, and the warm spirits of the men who fell in love with the sisters seem to be protecting them near the end of their lives. Babette, who lost all of her family when they were killed during the Paris Commune, was sent to Denmark from Paris by a man who had loved one of the sisters. Babette is thankful to be able to live with the sisters, and wants to be with the sisters until they die. Babette’s Feast depicts the calm happiness someone with a faithful heart and without greed can achieve.

In contrast, Ladies in Lavender is a story of the younger of the two elderly sisters recognizing her hidden desire for men due to the young, charming man who drifts in. The young man has feelings of gratitude for the elderly ladies who helped him when he was dying on the beach, and loves the old ladies like he loves his mother, but in the end, he carries feelings of romantic love for a woman young like himself and cannot stay in the countryside because of his ambitions for his career. The younger sister laments, “He is unobtainable. Life is unfair!!” Although others may view the feelings of this elderly lady as humorous and off-putting, from her point of view, her feelings are serious and noble.

Of the two movies, Babette’s Feast is much better, and Babette’s Feast will probably remain in movie history. In this movie, these old, but still beautiful actresses are practicing a life philosophy—one that is easier said than done—to gain happiness: not regretting, not envying, accepting, and being grateful.

In Ladies in Lavender, the elderly sisters are performed by Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. These great actresses have won Academy Awards and were granted Dame status by the Queen of the United Kingdom. However, the sisters in the original Ladies in Lavender are much younger, and the theme of the original story is a single woman in her forties—no longer young, but still a woman nonetheless—who has feelings of love triggered by a young man and pines for her lost younger days. Director Charles Dance was concerned about having Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, who are in their 70s, perform the sadness and excitation of these women in their 40s, but said this about casting the two of them: “Well, I think they can do it because these women are great actresses—like goddesses.” I think this approach to acting is sacrilege. Even an actress who is like a goddess cannot play a character in her 40s if the actress herself is in her 70s.

Since it is nearly impossible for women in their 70s to perform as women in their 40s, this movie ends up being a story of elderly women. For someone watching this movie, I think it is impossible to understand that the protagonists are in fact in their 40s. Therefore, in this movie, jealous women in their 70s try to keep a man in his 20s in their house, obstruct his contact with women of his own generation, and scheme (or perhaps I should say weakly hope) to have him stay forever. It is ironic that the director’s respect for Judi Dench and Maggie Smith resulted in the failure of this movie.

I have not read the original, but my impression of the original Ladies in Lavender is that the protagonists have remained unmarried for some reason, and that the story is about the “beauty of a transient emotional conflict” of a woman in her 40s—who is no longer young, but not old—suppressing the longing for a young man—who is not as young as her children would be, but on other hand, too young to be seen as acceptable by society. I feel that these women are single as a result of their society, perhaps because there are few suitable men since many of their generation died in the war, or there may not be many opportunities to meet people. No matter what age, there may be a feeling of yearning for a person, but with an actress in her 70s playing as a woman in her 40s, I think the movie changed the spirit of the original work. In the original stories, the backdrops are very similar, but the mindsets of the sisters are very different; however, because of the great actresses chosen for Ladies in Lavender, the movies end up looking similar.

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Movie: Grbavica – Land of My Dreams (2006)

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While many war movies depict the soldiers who fought, people who died, and hard-fought victories, this movie depicts those who survived the Bosnian War and the children who were born during it.

During the Bosnian War—through events such as the Srebrenica massacre that occurred in 1995—the Serb army carried out a strategic “ethnic cleansing” where Bosnian Muslim men were killed and women were raped and forced to bear children. The original title “Grbavica” refers to the district in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in which the ethnic cleansing occurred.

Esma, a single mother, lives in this district with her only daughter Sara, who is 12 years old. Sara’s grade is going on a field trip, and when the teacher tells the kids that those who lost their fathers in the war get to go free of charge and those whose fathers were injured have their fee reduced, the eyes light up in the kids who have such fathers. Because Sara was told by her mother that her father died honorably in battle, she requests her father’s death certificate in order to go on the trip for free, but Esma makes up a variety of excuses and doesn’t show her the death certificate. Esma barely makes ends meet with compensation money and sewing, but also adds on a night shift as a waitress at a nightclub to earn money for Sara’s trip fees.

A man working as a bouncer and driver at this nightclub remembers Esma from when they had met while he was searching for the corpse of his father at a war morgue. Esma had also been looking for the corpse of her father there in the morgue. The man grows to like Esma. When Esma reluctantly accepts an invitation to go on a date, she finds out that this man is educated, studied economics in college, and still has a desire to study. However, he mutters that he would not be able to handle the rigorous college life anymore because he currently is living without passion and discipline; and besides there aren’t good jobs in the current situation of society, even if one graduates from college. As for Esma, before the war started, she was a medical student and was working hard to become a doctor. If not for the war, these two would’ve met as elite, possibly as a doctor and a government official, and the two of them could have built a happy home.

Sara, at the height of a rebellious age, cruelly fights against her mother who does not talk about the father. She says to her mom, “You’ll leave me,” and also, “Mom, promise me you won’t get married.” After all, though, she is an ordinary girl, delights in playing with friends, and becomes close with and tenderly cares for another boy who has no father and is living more nihilistically than herself. After Esma manages to pay the cost of the school trip with a loan, Sara questions her intensely about where her father’s death certificate is.

One day, the bouncer comes to visit Esma. Since he gained permission, he plans to immigrate to Austria. At that time, Esma’s response was not, “Are you leaving me?” or not, “I wish you happiness,” but rather, “And who will identify your father’s body if you leave?” Sara, frustrated that her mother just sadly lets this man leave, points the handgun she borrowed from her friend and threatens Esma, “Tell me about my father!” Parting with this man, her difficult relationship with Sara, economic struggles, and an unforgettable past all combine at this moment for Esma and explode; Esma then tells Sara that she is a child born from the rape by an enemy soldier.

Innumerable cruel things occurred during the Bosnian War. How does one convey these to the world and to the next generation? If someone just presents cruel events one after another, it would be a documentary. If someone presents who the bad guy is, who the victim is, and what to do to bring them to justice, it would be propaganda. However, in order to make a good movie as a form of art, it must have hope in it. The past is unalterable and the future could take any direction, so what art can do in this situation is present hope.

This movie is sad, but there is hope. This hope could be short-lived and it may vanish at the end of a tiring day, but at least there is hope. When Sara asks her mother what part of her looks like her father, Esma finally answers that Sara’s hair color was the only thing she had in common with the father who had raped Esma. After Sara learns the truth about her father, she sobs profusely and shaves her own head. On the morning of the trip, Sara hesitantly waves to her mother from the bus, while Esma smilingly waves back. Esma at first hated her baby and continued to while it was in her belly, but while breast-feeding after the birth, she accepted the baby and was determined to raise Sara. And the greatest salvation is that this movie doesn’t call the enemy “Serbs.” The movie says that the people who slaughtered and raped the Muslims of Bosnia were Chetniks (the derogatory term for Serbs who believed in the Greater Serbia ideology, fought alongside the Nazis against Tito in the past, and gathered up an anti-Muslim force in Bosnia for the Bosnian War), and never says that all Serbs are the enemy of Bosnians. The past is unalterable. However, the people involved in the making of this movie may have wanted to say that hope doesn’t come from thoughts like, “Serbs did this and that, and so they are evil.”

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Movie: The Way I Spent the End of the World – Cum mi-am petrecut sfârşitul lumii (2006)

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This movie is a sketch of the life of 17-year-old Eva living in Romania’s capital Bucharest in 1989. In 1989, the General Secretary of the Communist Party in Romania, Nicolae Ceauşescu, was executed and this was the year the communist dictatorship fell. In this movie, Eva seems to be rebellious, expressionless, unsociable, irresponsible, and random (however, she looks pretty and shows a little smile when she talks with her boyfriend); even though she is going out with Alexandru, the son of an important man in the socialist administration, she shows interest in Andrei, whose parents are missing on the charge of the assassination attempt of Nicolae Ceauşescu, and the two plan to cross the Danube River to escape to Yugoslavia. But partway through, Eva says “I quit,” stops crossing of the river, and returns to Bucharest alone; her parents are angry and they ask Eva to keep a good relationship with Alexandru for the sake of the safety of their family. Eva is captivated with a cheap condominium (or it may be a high-end condo by Romanian standards) that Alexandru recently bought. In the end, an intimate relationship between the two somehow develops, and Eva returns home and declares triumphantly, “We are engaged!!” but immediately after, a bloody revolution erupts; the adults, who seemed until then to be gloomy and obedient to authority, suddenly and joyfully begin destructive activity. This movie ends after briefly depicting Alexandru’s family slipping from the upper class after the bloody revolution, Andrei safely arriving in Italy via Yugoslavia, and Eva triumphantly pursuing a career as a crew member on an international passenger ship.

Eva is expressionless and arrogant from the start to finish and her inner state isn’t depicted at all. She goes back and forth between Alexandru—who symbolizes in the movie the center of political power—and Andrei—who symbolizes anti-establishment. Despite their political differences, she is attracted to both of them with the fickle feelings of a teenager. Romania, an underdeveloped satellite country of the Soviet Union, is in a desolate state of affairs and even the capital Bucharest is in bad shape; we don’t know what the parents do, but they always look gloomy, tired, and uninterested in their children. I don’t think they are poor, but it seems that the home is also in a dismal state and their meals are just soup and bread. There is no discussion of politics because the adults are afraid to get involved with politics. This depiction of desolate everyday life aptly shows the true nature of the stagnation that resulted from the socialist dictatorship in Romania and no further words of explanation are needed.

The Romanian film world first showed signs of new activity in the late 1980s and it started getting attention from film festivals, primarily the Cannes Film Festival, in the 2000s. These movies focused on the themes of the transition from a socialist country to one with a free economy or criticisms of the Ceauşescu regime, and many seemed to have an unfinished, minimalistic, documentary feel. There is a divide on whether to call this “fresh” or “amateurism,” but after watching movies from Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary that proudly demonstrate sophisticated techniques, I have a feeling that Romanian movies have a long way to go. Perhaps because Western European countries want to support Romania, Romanian movies briefly gained praise at Cannes, and Dorotheea Petre who played Eva in this movie even won the Best Actress Award at Cannes. This movie’s story is unrefined; since winter and summer are repeated many times, it feels like many years pass in the story, but it is only one year. This movie doesn’t seem to care about these inaccuracies. In addition, Dorotheea Petre who played Eva looks like she is in her 30s and doesn’t at all resemble the actress who played her mother, who is dressed to look younger; the two look as if they are sisters or friends. Both actresses certainly are quite beautiful, but that is not enough. There is a feeling somehow that this movie was made without attention to details, in contrast to the many directors in the world that really pay attention to detail. I wonder where Romanian movies will go from here.

1989 was the year that the Tiananmen Square Massacre happened and the grip of communism was strengthened in China, but it was also the year that the communist dictatorship in Eastern Europe was ended relatively peacefully. John Paul II from Poland was inaugurated as Pope in 1978 and, even though nobody thought that this was a step towards ending the Cold War, I think Pope John Paul II greatly contributed to the ending of the Cold War. Poles felt that there was something to believe in, a kind of spiritual hope. This led to the rise of charismatic yet pragmatic, labor-union chairman Lech Wełęsa. While he was trying to change the social and political direction of Poland with the word “Solidarity,” most people in the world watching Eastern Europe thought, “Oh no, something like the Hungarian Revolution or the Prague Spring might be repeated in Poland…” However, Wełęsa’s approach was different. He who would bend but not break to pressure carefully watched Moscow’s reaction in order to advance or retreat appropriately, advocated for nonviolence, and patiently and peacefully pushed for the democratization of Poland.

Hungary was similarly a “mature country.” This is because Hungary prided itself in being an advanced country like Austria. Mikhail Gorbachev’s administration of the Soviet Union began “perestroika” in 1985, which removed what was called the “Brezhnev Doctrine” that regulated the Eastern Bloc of the communist party countries; Hungary, taking advantage of this deregulation, opened the national border between Hungary and Austria in May of 1989. A non-communist regime was elected in Poland in June and a non-communist regime was established in Hungary in October.

Now that citizens from East Germany could cross the Hungary-Austria national border and flee to West Germany by way of Austria, the Berlin Wall had lost its purpose for existing. The Berlin Wall was destroyed on November 10. This encouraged many citizens in Czechoslovakia and Romania to demand democratization. On November 17, a bloodless revolution called the Velvet Revolution began in Czechoslovakia. However, a bloody revolution in Romania resulted in the execution of the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu.

Nicolae Ceauşescu was the dictator of Romania for 22 years, from 1967 to 1989. At the beginning, he opposed the suppression of the Prague Spring by the Soviet Union and refused to send armed forces; declared a pro-Western Bloc attitude along with Yugoslavia; and became a member of IMF and GATT and conformed to Western Bloc economics. Romania was the only satellite country of the Soviet Union that established diplomatic relations with Israel, and it participated in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics when all other Eastern Bloc countries boycotted it. Nicolae Ceauşescu gained a very favorable impression with the Western Bloc countries, and support from citizens was also high. Unfortunately, however, he seemed to have held a position of power for too long. He gradually began to turn Romania’s government structure in a direction that resembled the Workers’ Party of Korea in North Korea or the Chinese Communist Party.

The failure of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s economic policy was what decisively made him unpopular. Because Romania was popular with the Western Bloc countries, it was able to easily obtain funds from the Western Bloc, but this was a double-edged sword. Romania struggled with paying off this large sum of money that was loaned to them, causing the national economy to suffer and most Romanians to live in great poverty. Due to the food rationing system that was established in the country and the unreasonable exports that were given priority, Romanian citizens were without daily food or fuel for winter heating, and power outages became frequent. Such things are depicted in this movie.

In the “Arab Spring” of 2012, Twitter functioned as real-time communication and accelerated a revolution, while television played a big part in the “Revolutions of 1989” in Eastern Europe. Through television, Romanian citizens were able to know what happened in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. We can see this happening in Romania extensively in this movie.

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Movie: La Teta Asustada – The Milk of Sorrow (2009)

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Fausta, living in the poor outskirts of Peru’s capital Lima, was raised hearing her mother sing almost every day about her experience of being raped. Her mother was descended from the Quechua people from the Incan Empire living in the Andes Mountains that experienced a violent civil war in the 80s. She took refuge in Lima after her husband was slaughtered and after her own brutal rape. Fausta seems to be around 20 years old thus her mother is likely in her 40s, but she already looks very old. This song having evoked a fear of being raped, Fausta puts a potato in her body to defend herself from being raped. The potato damages her body, but Fausta stubbornly refuses to take it out.

One day her mother dies. In order to make money to pay to have her mother’s dead body buried in her hometown in the Andes Mountains, Fausta starts working as a maid at a woman’s house in the highest class neighborhood adjacent to the poor region she lives in. The mistress listens to Fausta sing and gives Fausta one pearl for each sad song she improvises. The mistress is a world-renowned pianist and she composes a piano sonata based on the songs Fausta sings. After performing this piece of music and receiving high praise, she fires Fausta. Fausta possesses an abnormal fear of men and rejects the trustworthy gardener who likes her, but finally she undergoes the operation to have the potato removed from her body. This movie ends by depicting Fausta burying her mother’s dead body in the beautiful Andes Mountains and, at the very end, her response (probably) to the gardener’s affections.

This movie has the distant background of the civil conflict in Peru beginning in the 1980s between the Maoist group Sendero Luminoso (“Shining Path”) and the government troops trying to suppress them. The Sendero Luminoso had their power centered around the Andes Mountains area. During the conflict between the Sendero Luminoso and government troops, many villagers were murdered and raped. However, this movie is not a political drama to depict these terrible scenes. No violence appears in this movie. The audience may think that the mother was retaliated against by government troops for the crime of sheltering a guerilla of the Sendero Luminoso, but also the Sendero Luminoso is called the “South American Pol Pot” in contemporary history for exerting utmost cruelty; the movie does not speak at all of which side raped the mother.

The movie’s cinematography is extremely beautiful, but for some reason it leaves a lasting pain in your heart. Since real terror is symbolized by the potato in her body instead of visible violence, this sadness is not visible but is felt. Also, it could be said that the growing process of this young maiden is an allegory. Her mother’s lullaby about rape strongly influenced Fausta—she couldn’t laugh, and she hid behind walls when she walked the streets—until she became an adult. She bled from her nose when she was afraid, and could not love someone out of fear. However, she finally makes up her mind to live by overcoming her mother’s curse.

When this movie was one of five finalists to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the Peru government was ecstatic; Peru expected an increase in tourism revenues after people all around the world watched this movie. The governments of each country select one movie to be considered for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. This movie depicts dark times in Peru, but I think the government approved this movie because these times were already in the past for Peru’s government, the government succeeded in achieving peace, and this movie shows that the people of Peru are happy today.

It was President Alberto Fujimori, a Japanese Peruvian, who finally ended the civil conflict that exhausted the Peru nation. At that time, the Sendero Luminoso occupied most of Peru, seized the Pan-American Highway and major roads, and surrounded Lima; there was a feeling that a revolution by the Sendero Luminoso was approaching soon. The citizens disappointed by left-wing President Alan Garcia Pérez were pressed to make a serious decision for Peru’s future in the presidential election in 1990. Mario Vargas Llosa who served as chairman of PEN International and won numerous international literary prizes was thought to be the favorite for president, but when the voting was over, dark horse Fujimori was elected. He won the election for various reasons; Japanese Peruvian Fujimori was racially neutral in the antagonism between the Spanish ruling class and the poor indigenous Peruvians, and he also received support from the rich Spanish Peruvians. Although Mario Vargas Llosa was left-wing, he was of Spanish descent so he did not receive full support from the indigenous Peruvians; also contributing to his defeat, his socialist economic policy was not considered realistic.

Mario Vargas Llosa later won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The director of this movie, Claudia Llosa, is the niece of Mario Vargas Llosa.

This movie was a big hit in the country of Peru and received international praise after winning the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival and being nominated for an Academy Award. However, there is criticism for this movie domestically. Fausta and her uncle’s family live in a slum, the slums in the outskirts of Lima called pueblo jóven (“young town”). Adjacent to this is the highest class housing district, where the affluent Spanish pianist lives. With an upcoming concert, the musician who had fallen into a slump performs Fausta’s songs that she heard in exchange for pearls as her own musical pieces, and then fires Fausta. This episode is reminiscent of the former ruler/ruled social structure. Director Claudia Llosa is Spanish and she did her higher education in Spain and America. That is to say, she is the status of the pianist in the movie, but she attempted to make the movie from the viewpoint of an indigenous Peruvian. However, no matter how good-intentioned and artistic the movie was, there is something in the movie that is not completely accepted by Peruvian hearts that consider themselves indigenous. This criticism may stem from the hatred remaining in indigenous advocates toward the elite Caucasian Peruvians supposedly in support of fraternity for all, like her uncle Mario Vargas Lllosa. This criticism reminds us that the nationalism of the Quechua people—which can be understood only by Quecha people who once built the Incan Empire—is still alive.

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Movie: Blame it on Fidel — La Faute à Fidel (2006)

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BlameitonFidelThe period of the 1960s through the 1970s was a time of great social upheaval around the whole world. Castro declared socialism In Cuba in 1961, Indochina was bogged down with the Vietnam War, and the Cultural Revolution continued in China. A socialist administration was established in Chile by means of a democratic general election. Even in the Western Bloc, there were the May 1968 events in Paris and demonstrations against a military regime in Greece. In addition, an anti-war movement was surging in America and acts of terrorism by the Red Army and extreme leftists occurred one after another in Japan. In Spain, Franco’s dictatorship still continued since the Spanish Civil War. In short, it was a period where problems that weren’t able to be settled after World War II surfaced.

1970. Nine-year old Anna lives in Paris with her Spanish father Fernando, a lawyer, and her mother Marie, the editor of the woman magazine Marie Claire, in a magnificent mansion with a garden, and she commutes to a prestigious Catholic mission school. Anna spends her vacations in Bordeaux and is looked after every day by their maid, who fled from Cuba where Fidel Castro had established a socialist system. One day, her uncle in Spain is executed for opposing Franco’s dictatorship and the aunt who escaped Spain starts living together in Anna’s house, which triggers a change in the father’s behavior. Fernando, feeling in debt for having not done anything so far for his native country of Spain, feels his social conscience awaken and suddenly takes a trip to Chile with Marie. The two then return completely baptized with communism and start to look like hippies, and Anna is not pleased at all with the changes in her surroundings. The Cuban maid says to Anna, “Everything, blame it on Fidel.” The maid is later fired. Fernando resigns as a lawyer and works to establish Allende and a socialist administration in Chile, while the mother decides to start a movement supporting abortion to expand women’s rights. Because of the change in her parents, Anna’s life also takes a 180 degree turn. She no longer takes the classes on religion that she loved, her family moves from their big house to a small apartment, and she has a Vietnamese babysitter that comes to the apartment. Although President Allende is elected as the leader of the socialist administration, it is short-lived and President Allende is assassinated. Watching her deeply grieving father, Anna decides to visit her family’s roots; she finds that her family was high-ranking nobility in Spain, cruelly oppressed anti-royalists, and belonged to a pro-Franco faction under the Franco administration. The movie ends with the scene of Anna commuting to her first day of school after dropping out of Catholic school and deciding to attend public school.

In a word, the impression I got from this movie is “headstrong.” Headstrong might mean overly rationalistic, or stubborn, or an empty talker; this is the attitude of someone judging others using the lens of their own ideology, rather than absorbing and accepting their surroundings with an open mind and without preconceptions. Although the events of just one year are in this two hour movie, it is a very busy movie as it tries to pack in all of the problems of the world.

In the beginning, the death of Fernando’s brother-in-law happens at the same time as the younger sister’s wedding. I would think a political death is more shocking than one of natural causes, but since the wedding ceremony is carried out happily, if you are not careful, you may not notice that the uncle has been executed. The maid changes one after another from a Cuban, a Greek who fled her country, and then a Vietnamese woman. Shocked from the uncle’s death, it is fine that a political conscience that until now has been ignored is awakened, but why does the father join the reform in far-away Chile and not Spain of his own roots? Costa-Gavras, the father of this movie’s director Julie Gavras, possesed left-wing ideology and gained global fame with his Missing, which depicts the conspiracy of the American government in Chile; I can’t help but think that his daughter is exploiting this. It seems that Fernando and Marie stay in Chile for about two weeks, but after that, the two return as die-hard communists. If communist brainwashing is as simple as this, Lenin and Stalin wouldn’t have had so much difficulty. Fernando’s younger sister who married two or three months ago and should be very happy suddenly wants an abortion and Marie begins to play a big role as a feminist. What, she is already pregnant? And is she already unhappy with the married life just after getting married? This makes me want to recheck the numbers since two or three months doesn’t seem like enough time for this to happen. As an additional bonus, Marie grumbles about there being no true liberation for women even in a socialist household when Fernando angrily tells her, “You should be a good mother and give more of your attention to your family rather than having the maid look after our child,” because he is jealous of her being more famous than him with the publicity she gained from her article about the “Manifesto of the 343” demanding the lifting of the ban on abortion.

It is as if director Julie Gavras wanted to say:

“’Sorry, mommy and daddy have their hands full with their own problems, and you may suffer for it. But mommy and daddy are doing their best to pursue what they think is right. Perhaps you will understand the feeling of daddy and mommy when you are an adult,’ the mother says to her daughter.

To which the daughter responds, ‘No, daddy and mommy, you don’t have to shout about solidarity or unity to achieve it. If you lend a hand–even if you don’t say anything—you are connected to those around you. I get it.’”

This is my guess, but this movie still leaves me questioning whether making a movie that is crowded with all of the world’s problems is the best method to convey this message.

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