Movie: For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

Hemingway was an “active intellectual”; he noticed whenever something was happening anywhere on earth, was instinctively attracted to that place, and actually went there. He was sent to France as a correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance. For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Hemingway published in 1940 that depicts the Spanish Civil War (the battle between the fascist army led by Franco’s military authorities and the guerrilla army that opposed them) that was happening in the 1930s; it is told through a fictional American character who assisted the anti-fascists. This movie is the 1943 film adaptation of this novel. Gary Cooper, a close friend of Hemingway’s, was entrusted to the role after starring in A Farewell to Arms (1932), and Ingrid Bergman performed María, the protagonist’s lover.

The monarchy was overturned in Spain in 1931, and a Republic based on a constitution was established; however, the government was unstable, and soon after the military coup d’état attempt in 1932, Spain fell into a state of chaos. The official Spanish Civil War was from 1936 to 1939; this movie depicts 1937. This was not a simple civil war; volunteer armies from the Soviet Union, Mexico, and other nations supported the Republicans, while the fascists led by military leaders such as General Franco got support from Japan, Germany, Italy, and Portugal. The powers were quite evenly matched, and it is said that at least 500,000 people died in battle. The movie depicts the interaction between the partisans/guerillas of the Republican faction, who are holed up in the mountains in the Segovia province near Madrid, and the protagonist—an American professor of Spanish and explosives specialist—who assists the guerrillas under the instructions of a Soviet Union commander. The bombers of the Italian army (an army Hemingway once supported) attacking the mountain in which the American protagonist is hiding demonstrates the change in Italy over the last 20 years.

Returning to discussing the movie, when this movie was being made, many top actresses in those days expressed interest in the role of María, but in the end, a ballerina who did not have much acting experience was chosen. When filming began, the director was unsatisfied with her acting ability. It is said that before being fired from the role as María, she quit and gave up the role; Ingrid Bergman, who Hemingway was hoping for, was hurriedly chosen from the auditions, and the scenes with María were reshot. Ingrid Bergman said something like the following on this situation:

“The reason the ballerina gave up the role of María voluntarily is that the role of María is demanding; she has to go up and down cliffs where the caves are, and the ballerina was afraid she would injure her legs during filming. After all, the legs are most important for a ballerina, much like how the face is most important for an actress, I think.”

With her casual comment, she aptly says how “looks” were the most important thing in Hollywood in those days. It’s no wonder that Hollywood movies in the 1950s or earlier were little more than elementary school plays performed by handsome men and beautiful women.

Today, of course, there are some actors such as Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, or Tom Hanks who are primarily chosen for their popularity and, if they accept the role, will receive a performance fee of multi-million (!) dollars unconditionally. But nowadays, the criteria for selecting an actor often seem to be, “How well can they perform the role realistically?” In this sense, what are most important are the background of the actor and their acting ability to realistically express the character’s historical context, age, personality, and ethnicity. Also, since filmmaking is a team project, they must be a team player who gets along with everyone, healthy, punctual, and professional so as to not waste other people’s time. Since “time is money,” you can’t waste time.

Actresses of the same generation as Ingrid Bergman include Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, Joan Fontaine, Jennifer Jones, and Loretta Young, and these women came before Hollywood’s flowers, such as Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, and Elizabeth Taylor. These actresses of Ingrid’s generation died young and had short-lived activity as actresses, but Ingrid Bergman continued working as an actress up until she died in the 1980s, and kept her reputation as a great actress until she died. Therefore, she was an actress with more than just a beautiful face.

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Person: Generalísmo Franco (1892-1975)

Around World War II, (in)famous dictators appeared one after another. To list a few, there was Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), and Francisco Franco (1892-1975). You could say they were all the same generation. Did the uneasiness of the people produce a dictator, or did dictators take power and cause war and uneasiness? It is the chicken and the egg, and both may be right. Another thing characteristic of this time was that these dictators took over after the collapse of an absolute monarchy. A revolution broke out in Russia in 1917, and, with the abdication of Nicholas II, the Romanov dynasty collapsed. In Austria, Charles I, the last emperor of the House of Habsburg, took refuge in 1918, and the Habsburg Empire that had ruled over Central Europe for 650 years collapsed. In Spain, as a result of a general election held in 1931, the left-wing Republicans gained power, and Alfonso XIII abdicated; the Second Spanish Republic was established, and the House of Bourbon fled to Italy. Italian history is complicated, but to say it briefly, the House of Savoy continued to rule until the end of World War II, but the House of Savoy, which supported the dictatorship of Mussolini, lost the trust of the nation; in a national referendum carried out in 1946 that questioned the continuation of the monarchy, it was decided by the narrow margin of 54% to abolish the monarchy. Umberto II was dethroned, and Italy adopted a republic, becoming the Italian Republic. Also, a long time ago, the rise of Napoleon was welcomed by the people of France—who abolished the Bourbon dynasty. All of these are very different from Great Britain, which built a democracy while using the royal families (with the idea of “reigning, but not ruling”) as a moral support for the people.

Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco tend to be discussed in the same category of being fascists, but Franco walked on a different path than the other two. In March 1939, just before the end of the Spanish Civil War, Franco joined the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan, Germany, and Italy; but when World War II broke out in September of that year, Franco decided that the nation was not strong enough to participate in the war due to the devastation in the nation from the civil war, and thus declared neutrality. However, at that time, he maintained friendly relations with Japan, Germany, and Italy. Later, when the Allies gained the upper hand around 1943, Franco firmly maintained a neutral stance, and he broke off relations with Japan, citing a conflict of interests regarding the Philippines. The United States—which had become a world leader after the war—could not entirely eliminate their suspicion of Franco. After all, Franco ruled as a dictator over Spain, which was close friends with Germany and Italy. However, it was undeniable that Spain was militarily and politically important for the U.S. With the historic meeting of President Eisenhower and Franco in 1959, the two people unexpectedly succeeded in building a deep mutual understanding, and from this, the relationship between America and Spain rapidly improved.

Looking at the surface, Franco seems to just be an opportunist, whose actions were very strange. However, I think Franco was a consistent person in his essence. Throughout his whole life, Franco was afraid of two things that he couldn’t understand. The first was communism, which succeeded in Russia; to Franco, Germany and Italy were a breakwater to keep communism from penetrating Spain. The other was a fear of activity by any ethnicity other than Caucasians. These cannot be criticized unconditionally. Everyone is afraid of things they don’t understand and that are new. Franco was an officer who had risen through the ranks, and he may have felt that he could trust President Eisenhower and President Peron, who proudly carried out their professional duties and supported their administration, even though their countries and environments were different.

Franco seems to have thought seriously about what kind of government Spain should have after his death. Since he watched the repeated failure of a parliamentary democracy in Spain, he did not seem to think that Spain could transition smoothly to a democracy when he died. He thought that switching over to a monarchy after the dictatorship he established would be the best for Spain’s future. In 1947, Franco instated a “law of succession,” which changed Spain into a “monarchy,” declared Franco the head of state as the “Regent to the King of Spain” for life, and gave Franco the power to decide the next king. This “law of succession” was established with a national referendum in July, and Franco was given the position of head of state for life.

When his health began to deteriorate in his 70s, Franco named Juan Carlos—the grandson of the former King Alfonso XIII of the House of Bourbon—as his heir in 1969; Franco died in 1975 at the age of 83. He is a man considered across the world to be a fascist and terrifying like Hitler, and was criticized by opposing factions in Spain, but he died in peace a natural death in his own bed.

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Movie: Butterfly’s Tongue — La lengua de las mariposas (1999)

When you watch this movie along with Belle Époque (1992) and The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), you can understand the painful and silent times after the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936 and the fascist administration superseded the Second Spanish Republic that was established in 1931. Belle Époque depicts the establishment of the republic, while The Spirit of the Beehive depicts the silent times of the 1940s. Butterfly’s Tongue depicts the arrival of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Because this movie was made in 1999, the Franco administration had collapsed and democracy was restored, so Spanish artists could break the silence, cast away the symbolism used to protect themselves, and express their message frankly.

The movie is set in a remote town in Galicia, Spain in 1936. Moncho is a young boy with asthma entering elementary school one year late. The teacher Gregorio is kind to Moncho, who is shy and has a hard time fitting in. Gregorio teaches the children about various things beyond the curriculum, including life, literature, and love. The teacher takes the children on a fieldtrip in order to study living things. Gregorio promises Moncho, who is interested in the story of the butterfly’s tongue, that he will show him with a microscope. Moncho’s older brother Andrés joins a town band and expands his experience by travelling around for concerts. Moncho’s father supports the Republican Party, while Moncho’s mother does not believe in the Republicans, but it does not hinder their married relationship. There is friendship and respect between the father and the teacher Gregorio.

However, the day that the town is seized by fascism at last arrives. In order to protect his family, the father, who had until then made it clear he was a supporter of Republicans, goes to the town square with other townspeople in order to participate in humiliating the arrested Republicans. In order to protect the family, the mother boos and jeers the people arrested, while the brothers watch silently; Andrés is surprised to see his bandleader who had been kind to him among the arrested, while Moncho is surprised to see his close friend’s father. At the end of the line of people who were arrested is the teacher Gregorio. The father, with pain, also starts to insult. At the urging of his mother, Moncho insults the teacher that he loves with, “Communist!” and “Atheist!” while throwing rocks.

What is most frightening in this movie is that the people who had peacefully lived together in this town completely divide into friends and enemies because of the Civil War. Before the Civil War started, there were small problems or disputes between married couples, within families, at school, or in church. However, the town was able to overcome these small differences by working together as a community. As the struggle for central power gradually becomes more extreme, however, the faces of the townspeople change, and in the end, the community is destroyed by hatred, fear, fighting, and stone throwing. The fight between Fascists and Republicans is not an abstract battle performed by the distant central government. Here, it is the terrifying reality that your neighbor yesterday becomes your persecutor today.

Another scary thing is that children sensitively notice their parents’ fear for their family’s safety, and the children’s actions become more radical than their parents. In this movie, the parents do not wish for war and don’t want to hurt others, but they know that if they support the arrested Republicans, tomorrow it could be them, so they insult the Republicans to protect themselves. However, the children sensitively perceive the fear, and go beyond their parents’ actions. It is scary that the children cannot control their actions because they don’t understand the consequences.

However, this movie doesn’t blame Moncho for throwing stones at the teacher Gregorio who cared for Moncho dearly. The times that forced the child to act in such a way are to be blamed; the child doesn’t understand what is happening, but senses that something is happening. As in China’s Cultural Revolution and with Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, children were the ones who cruelly persecuted adults, but someone else was in the background to make the children act this way.

Franco died in 1975, and Spain established a truly stable democracy in 1981, but those who opposed Franco had to wait until 2008 for their honor to be restored. There must be many people in Spain like the teacher Gregorio who had their honor snatched away and died.

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Movie: The Sun Also Rises (1957)

The Japanese title—“the sun rises again”—could be taken as a Japanese translation that signifies the renewed hope of, “Even though life is painful, tomorrow could be a wonderful day”; but actually, after World War I, there was a period of time when people had an emptiness that was hard to express, and the title captures the hopeless regard for daily life of, “Oh, today I also drank, ate, loved, and then it was over. Nothing new ever happens. The earth turns regardless of what I do, and tomorrow the sun will also again uneventfully rise…”

Hemingway, who lived out in the country in America, was not well understood by others regarding his wounded body and mind from World War I, so he planned to move to Italy, which had become his second home; but a friend advised him, “If you are going to Europe anyway, go to Paris, the center of culture,” so he found work as a correspondent and lived in Paris. There were many youths like him whose lives were changed by some sort of injury during the Great War. The Sun Also Rises is the story of the protagonist, who is a projection of Hemingway, sightseeing the bullfighting and festival in Pamplona, Spain with friends, and him being charmed by the beauty of the sport of bullfighting.

To be honest, this movie—other than the bullfighting scenes and the scene when the bulls are released into the streets—lacks charm entirely; I think the biggest problem, though, is that the lost youths in their 20s are performed by actors in their 40s. In the original, the protagonists are young, disappointed for some reason, don’t know what they should do, and live a life where their love affairs have become their “full-time jobs” (the only thing they have). In contrast, the actors performing them are successful in Hollywood, their pockets are packed with money, their faces clearly show an attitude of, “let’s enjoy dinner with family and friends after filming,” and they don’t look like they have any anxiety for their lives or futures. When well-aged actors play immature youth who are impulsively moved by their hormones and can’t stop themselves from falling in love, it is a disappointing movie that makes me want to say, “You should be old enough to know better than to do these stupid things.”

There is no author that represents the merits of America as much as Hemingway. He was born in Illinois, which symbolizes the heart of America as well as honesty, faithfulness, and diligence. If I list politicians from Illinois—Abraham Lincoln, Hillary Clinton, and President Obama—you will understand the values held by Illinoisans. Hemingway was a handsome man and had a strong sense of justice, and he established a literary style that expressed his feelings in simple English that anyone could understand. He had a healthy body, and liked sports, particularly hunting, fishing, and boxing. He was an athletic man, but also had a mind capable of understanding anything from a delicate heart to a decadent lifestyle.

His experience in World War I determined his view on life. Like how the Vietnam War impacted a generation in America, his most influential experiences started and ended with World War I. The later World War II did not have as much of an impact on him as World War I did. This is because World War I occurred during his late teens, when he could best understand war and was impressionable. To America, Hemingway was an author that symbolized the “good ol’ America” from before the 1950s.

While watching American movies, I noticed movies from before the 1950s and after the 1970s are totally different. Movies before the 1950s seem to be tall tales performed by elementary school children, and there is nothing relatable in them today. In contrast, with movies made after the 1970s –if you look at movies such as The Godfather or The Deer Hunter today—there is something relevant in them today, and the themes surprisingly don’t become old. During the 1960s that bridged the 1950s and 1970, events such as the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., the intensification of the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal occurred. After this, America was no longer the same. Hemingway committed suicide in 1961, which seems to symbolize the end of “good ol’ America.” Even if he had lived on, I don’t think Hemingway, having experienced World War I, would have been deeply impacted by the Vietnam War.

Bullfighting, which Hemingway loved above all else, was once the national sport of Spain, but due to animal rights arguments against killing bulls, the popularity of bullfighting has begun to decline. The first law banning bullfighting came into existence in the Canary Islands in 1991; in July 2010, Catalonia—which had a strong anti-Madrid feeling—established its first ban against bullfighting, and Catalonia had its final bullfighting show in 2011. Seventy-five percent of citizens in Spain say they are not interested in bullfighting, and now Spaniards are crazy about soccer. Once, a circus went around the countryside with a lion and an elephant, delighting people who had never seen these animals in real life, but due to opposition from the animal protection movement, this began to decline; in 2011, the last circus elephant in Great Britain was retired and transferred to an African safari park as its new home, making the news headlines. In 2012, it was widely reported that Juan Carlos I, the King of Spain, unofficially went to Botswana and hunted lions, despite the fact the King himself worked as the honorary president of the World Wide Fund for Nature; he received international criticism for hunting animals and was dismissed from his position as honorary president of the Fund. Currently, the most popular sports in the world are soccer, basketball, tennis, and track-and-field events, while the interest in boxing and hunting seem to be decreasing. The sun always rises the same way every day, but the times change.

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Movie: The Spirit of the Beehive — El espíritu de la colmena (1973)

After the violent Spanish Civil War, Generalísimo Franco overthrew the left-wing Popular Front administration that was selected by a general election; this movie is set just after Franco seized power in 1939. Following this, a reign of terror continued in Spain until Franco died in 1975, and people remained silent during these times out of fear of retribution. In 1973 when this movie was made, the dictatorship was not as severe as it was initially, but movies were still strictly censored by authorities. The reason why even recent Spanish movies have many metaphors and abstractions may be that this way of expression became a part of the engrained culture of the intelligentsia, who faced 40 years of cultural oppression. In fact, there is not a single dramatic event in this movie. This is the kind of movie that makes me wonder after finishing the movie what it wanted to say.

There is only one scene in the movie that implies that a Republican soldier who escapes is shot dead, and the censors also made note of this scene; however, they figured, “Nobody will watch such a boring movie,” and the whole movie made it through the screening process uncut. During this time, moviemakers made their political agenda increasingly abstract, while authorities tried harder and harder to find the hidden political agenda, like a monkey chasing a weasel. However, when this work was finally screened, it touched people, and it established a reputation as a masterpiece. Was it because people were touched by the beautiful images in this movie, or because the Spanish audience learned the art of discovering something in the metaphors?

Since this movie is so abstract, viewers are allowed to interpret it in many possible ways. To give an example of an extreme interpretation as a political metaphor, the father who spends all his time on a trivial beehive study symbolizes the intelligentsia, who gave up their true interests in order to survive. The beehive society that he hates is a metaphor for the society under the control of Franco, which is orderly, but devoid of creativity. The mother spends her days writing letters to a former lover (I assume, based on how the movie depicts it) who is a Republican fugitive; this symbolizes the longing for freedom and the nostalgia for the past. The two daughters are in the same generation, but the older sister Isabel—who seems quite mature for her age—represents the young generation who adapted to Franco’s administration without criticism, while the younger sister Ana—who looks at the world with frightened eyes—symbolizes the idealistic youth in Spain in the 1940s. The emotionally discordant situation of the protagonist Ana’s family symbolizes the division in Spain due to the Spanish Civil War, while the ruins and the surrounding desolate scenery represent the sense of isolation felt when the Franco administration was first established. Near the end, the mother—who ignored her children and stayed in her own world—softens emotionally, and the bonds between the family members becomes stronger; this can be interpreted as hope for Spain’s future.

Another extreme interpretation is that this story has nothing to do with politics, and that it is just about the little girl Ana growing out of her child mentality that merges the real and imaginary worlds.

Therefore, everybody can appreciate the beauty of the images, but the opinions on how to interpret the movie seems to be divided. Since everyone in Spain in those days had to live life as if they were being watched by someone behind them, it is unlikely that this director had no political stance at all. This is because everybody had to internally deal with the reign of terror. However, I don’t think that the whole movie symbolizes an anti-government protest. I don’t believe this movie was so calculated in its construction.

This movie depicts the sense of fear any young child feels in an unknown world. Frankenstein’s monster, the dark, nighttime, ruins, poisonous mushrooms, ghosts, deep wells, the forest, reflections in a pond, and railways are all fears of children. However, while it is natural for a child like Ana to have these fears, she strangely lacks the parents who should hold her and say, “Don’t be afraid, it’s okay.” The reason is that the parents also have a fear—the government. During Ana’s search for Frankenstein’s monster, she meets a soldier who escaped. Since the escaped soldier is shot to death, Ana realizes—although just vaguely—that there is something in the real world that is even scarier than any fear that she came up with in her mind. Perhaps this is the criticism of the government that is hidden in this movie.

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Movie: Belle Époque – The Age of Beauty (1992)

In Spain in 1931, there was a clash between the Republican Party that aimed to abolish the monarchy and establish a Spanish Republic, and the royalist Traditionalists that opposed them; this story is about Fernando, who volunteered for the Republican army but ends up deserting, and an artist who protects Fernando and lives in a village with his four lovely daughters.

Fernando is a handsome young man, kind to women, pure-hearted, and excellent at cooking. The four daughters live in Madrid and only return to the village in the summer, but with Madrid in political turmoil, they suddenly return to the village, “tired of demonstrations.” Using beautiful images and music, wonderful humor, and smiles and family love, this movie depicts every day being a picturesque happy day—including the eldest, second, and third daughter each seducing Fernando in their own way; the third daughter being wooed by a young Traditionalist who serenades her under her balcony; having a lunch full of love with the Catholic priest who is a family friend; a carnival; an enjoyable picnic; and the mother who is an internationally successful opera singer suddenly returning home. The story ends with the victory of the Republican Party, the mother once more setting off on a world tour, the three elder sisters saying they will be back again next summer as they return to Madrid, and the youngest daughter marrying Fernando and the two leaving for America, “the land of opportunity,” to live happily ever after.

Such is the beautiful outer layer, but there is another layer hidden under the happy, humorous story.

This movie begins with a scene where Fernando, who deserted, is arrested by the Traditionalist military police. The military officers are a father and his son-in-law; the father says, “We should be kind to a Republican soldier since the Republicans may win,” and tries to let Fernando go. The angered son-in-law accidentally shoots and kills his father-in-law; the son-in-law, shaken by the sin of killing his beloved father-in-law, commits suicide in front of Fernando.

All four of the daughters are beautiful and charming. However, the eldest daughter’s husband drowned in a lake during a picnic last summer. The second daughter is a lesbian. The third daughter is confused about how to best handle her suitor, who is a Catholic from an affluent family and supports the royalists. The youngest daughter has strong feelings for Fernando, but everyone treats her like a child, so she is frustrated. When the mother thinks about the futures of her four daughters, she becomes worried. Regarding the eldest daughter, she is still as beautiful as ever, but every year she grows older, and it is hard to live as a widow. In terms of the second daughter, she has a professional job and economic stability, but will she be able to find a companion (either a man or a woman) who really loves her? The third daughter lives a transitory lifestyle, not having a job and not treating her suitor seriously. However, the mother doesn’t know if marrying that man will make the third daughter truly happy. The mother hopes the youngest daughter, who everyone treats like a child, will find a more stable life by learning from her older sisters. Even the mother has issues; although she believes she is an international opera singer, her performances are actually continuously in deficit, and the only reason she has barely kept her star status is because her lover/manager covers the financial burden from his own pocket.

Since the Republicans are winning, the third daughter’s suitor and her mother, who were stubborn royalists, quickly switch over to the Republican side. However, on the youngest daughter and Fernando’s wedding day, the Catholic priest who was a family friend hangs himself and dies. Even if Spain becomes a Republic, Fernando’s past of deserting the Republican army won’t disappear. So Fernando’s only option is to immigrate to America.

The family says, “I look forward to next summer!” and leaves, but will there really be a happy next year for them with Spain in political turmoil? Fernando and the youngest daughter who go to America together won’t be able to return to Spain for a while. Even though the mother is an opera singer, there is the possibility that she might end up dead by the roadside somewhere in South America if her manager abandons her. Anything could happen to the three daughters living in Madrid during this chaotic time, and there is the possibility that the elderly father, who is left all alone in the village, may get some illness and die tomorrow. However, the movie ends with hope that after a few years, this family may fondly look back on the short time that the deserter Fernando spent with this family, and say, “Those were beautiful times.”

The reality is that the Republic soon collapsed and Spain entered a civil war. After the Civil War, Franco’s dictatorship continued for a long time, and then after Franco’s death, the government suffered from instability. It was 1981 when Spain became truly stable as a democratic nation, while those who opposed Franco had to wait until 2008 for their honor to be restored. This movie was made in 1992, and it would have been difficult to make such a beautiful move without a stable political situation. However, even in 1992, direct criticism of fascism was probably not easy. This challenge resulted in this beautiful movie.

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Movie: The Women on the 6th Floor — Les Femmes du 6ème étage (2011)

This movie that I casually chose without knowing anything about was such an enjoyable one!! The story, images, actors, and the conversations within this movie were delicious, and I got hungry watching it.

It is Paris in the 1960s. Poor Spanish women under Franco’s oppression in Spain moved to Paris to live as maids for wealthy French people. These women earn what money they can in a foreign country to support their poor family back home, and return to their home country if they are able to save up enough money. They nostalgically think about their family they left back home, the relationships with other villagers, the warmth spreading through the air, and foods that they often ate; fellow Spanish maids in Paris help each other, go to church every Sunday, and look forward to the day they can finally return home. However, even if they miss their hometown, a few made up their mind to not return unless the reign of terror of Franco ended.

Maria is a young, beautiful, intelligent, pious, and capable Spanish maid. She is the favorite of her affluent landlord employer and his wife, but as the story develops, it becomes clear there is something hidden within Maria. Because the landlord’s wife rose to the upper class from being a poor country girl through marriage, she doesn’t have self-confidence and she tries very hard to assimilate into the superficial high society of Paris. Her husband had everything he could want—wealth, job, family—and thought he was satisfied with life, until he met Maria.

I don’t write here what happens to the two people because it is a spoiler. The landlord married his current wife without having given it much thought because, even though he is the son of a rich family, he had a feeling of being cramped in the upper class and felt more comfortable with a woman from the countryside. Maria was born with elegance and a strong mind, and is a woman who truly has the self-confidence to not feel inferior to others, even with a difference in social class. Maria is the kind of person who can make herself and the person she loves happy, while the landlord is actually quite gracious if need be when it comes to letting go of extra things, and as a viewer, I find myself wishing that the landlord and Maria somehow find happiness.

Natalia Verbeke who played Maria has a small face and good posture, somehow like a ballerina. This actress met the director’s strict standards of, “Maria must be beautiful, but not too beautiful.” Verbeke was born in Argentina in 1975, but because of the oppressive politics during the “Dirty War” when she was a child, she and her family fled Argentina and moved to Spain.

This is a digression, but Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris was another movie set in Paris released around the same time. In Allen’s movie, every scene seems to be a typical picture postcard, and by pasting all of these picture postcard scenes together, he is trying to paint Paris with brute force; but the movie shows his same New Yorker mentality and it lacks the true smells and essence of life in Paris. In contrast, The Women on the 6th Floor is set in Paris, but does not show any typical Paris scenery. For the migrant Spanish worker, most of what is seen is her working place, the market, the church, and her own loft. Living in Paris doesn’t mean visiting all the places for tourists. The lives of Maria and her friends are made up by their surroundings, and I think they really live in Paris, even though they are there just for a short time.

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

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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Movie: The Last Circus (2010)

This movie mostly depicts the life-or-death struggle between a cruel clown and a tormented, sad pantomime; the story is grotesque and absurd and upon finishing the movie I angrily thought, “I could not recommend this movie to anyone.” However, when thinking of this movie after one night of sleep, the cruel and grotesque scenes entirely disappeared and I saw more clearly the things that were hidden by the absurdity. This movie was an allegory about Spain’s recent history and thus naturally contained—like every allegory—cruelty, sorrow, and a lesson.

It is 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. The people in circus troupes who peacefully traveled around to rural areas to entertain people are threatened by the communist general Enrique Líster, who is supposed to be anti-fascist and fight for the people; the circus people are drafted by force and fight in the front line. In the end, the Spanish Republican Army suffers a crushing defeat; the fascists execute most of the circus troupe members and only the clown is sent to a slave labor camp. The clown’s son goes to the slave labor camp to help his father, but sees the fascist general kill his father before his own eyes; the boy crushes the general’s eye and barely escapes from the camp alive.

The story suddenly shifts to the present time in the 1970s, a time of peace under the Franco Administration. The son of the clown who died is now a crybaby pantomime full of sadness and goes to an interview to get a job at a circus. The most popular clown at the circus who conducts the interview says, “If I weren’t a clown, I would become a murderer”; to the audience’s surprise, the cowardly pantomime responds, “Me too.” For some reason the clown likes this cowardly pantomime and hires the pantomime in order to torment him. The clown is arrogant, cruel, and malicious to all the other circus people, who are afraid of him; but he is popular with children and, since spectators come to watch him, nobody including the troupe manager can complain about him and they laugh at his lame jokes, pretending the jokes are funny. The pantomime is the only one who stares blankly and frankly says he doesn’t understand the joke, offending the clown. The clown’s beautiful acrobat lover admires the attitude of the pantomime who isn’t afraid of the clown and she seduces the pantomime. The pantomime falls in love with the acrobat who, even though she is abused by the clown, cannot leave him; when the pantomime tries to rescue her from the clown, the clown explodes with anger and beats the pantomime, nearly killing him. While watching over the pantomime in his hospital room, the acrobat says she chooses the clown over the pantomime and leaves, but the pantomime gets angry and attacks the clown and ruins the clown’s face. The pantomime runs away from the police and coincidentally finds himself under the protection of the general whom he had taken the eye of. The one-eyed general treats the pantomime like a dog. The one-eyed general lives in a luxurious mansion; he invites his boss Generalísimo Franco to his home for hunting and has the pantomime offer the game in his mouth to Franco. Generalísimo Franco is depicted as a gentle and kind person within this movie, admonishing the one-eyed general with, “You mustn’t treat a human with such cruelty,” but in the next moment, the pantomime bites Franco’s hand. The pantomime destroys his own face and transforms it into a terrifying face, kills the one-eyed general, and runs away.

The clown who was once popular is now ugly, hated and feared by children. However, when the pantomime appears in front of the acrobat with unchanged love, she says to him, “You are more terrifying than the clown now.” Franco’s right-hand man Prime Minister Blanco is suddenly assassinated. In the chaos that immediately follows, the pantomime and the clown chase after the acrobat like mad men; she escapes by climbing up a ridiculously tall, skyscraper-like cross and thus the desperate struggles of these three people begin. Seeing this, a young man who was a fellow member in the circus makes up his mind to go rescue these three people. This young troupe member was shot from a cannon to a wall every day and, though people were interested and laughed for a moment, he was immediately forgotten every day. He is shot from the cannon toward the cross, but he hits the cross and really dies this time. Acrobat tells the pantomime, “I love you now,” before falling from the cross and dying.

The clown and pantomime are arrested and face each other in a paddy wagon, both of their faces now terrifying without any makeup. In the repeated life-or-death struggle, the acrobat and young troupe member died while the two men live on heartily and the movie ends with the two staring at each other and smiling as if to say, “So what happens next?”

The beautiful acrobat courted by the pantomime and the clown represents “power.” She symbolizes the target that kings, dictators, nationally elected presidents, or any person with political power desire to reach. I think the clown symbolizes fascism. He has charm to attract the hearts of the people, but is also dangerous at the same time and nobody has the power to suppress him. However, the people begin to hate the clown when he becomes ugly. The pantomime symbolizes communism or populism that becomes radicalism. Originally possessing a noble heart, existing to speak for the sorrow of other people, the pantomime gradually becomes brutal and at certain occasions is more frightening than the clown; even though the clown doesn’t get arrested for anything he does, the authorities continue to chase down the pantomime for his atrocities. The nameless circus troupe member who doesn’t attract attention from anyone and dies trying to rescue the three people may symbolize anonymous citizens. I wonder if the young troupe member represents the Spanish citizens that do their own jobs silently without drawing attention and do not know an effective method to solve the chaotic system.

In this movie, the generals of both political parties are depicted cruelly, but, curiously, Franco is depicted as a gentle and fair person. Certainly it couldn’t be that criticism of Franco is still taboo nowadays in 2010. I believe that Franco was severe with the opposing party, but as a person, was honest and seriously thought about the future of the people of Spain; the people of Spain, even those with different political standpoints, appear to appreciate and recognize him for these values. That was the impression I got from this movie.

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Movie: Biutiful (2010)

Uxbal lives a very poor life in a poor region of Barcelona, Spain that has many immigrants, and he makes money by procuring work for illegal immigrants. Also, he is able to talk to the souls of the deceased so relatives of the deceased sometimes ask him to converse with the dead at funerals as a medium. Uxbal lives with his two young children separate from his wife who is unable to raise children due to her bipolar disorder. Meanwhile, he is diagnosed with terminal cancer with only a short time left for him to live. When the husband of a family of illegal immigrants from Senegal is deported, Uxbal unexpectedly starts living with the wife of the family Ige and her baby. Watching Ige gently care and nurse her own child, Uxbal gives everything he owns to Ige and asks that she take care of his children after he dies. The movie ends on the day Ige secretly leaves the apartment with the money to return to Senegal and Uxbal dies.

The movie’s ending is extremely ambiguous. Whether or not Ige returns at the end, her voice that answers, “I’m back” may have been imagined by Uxbal, or perhaps the daughter answered in place of Ige. Another possible interpretation is that Ige was killed by a robber when carrying a large amount of money and only her dead spirit returned. I have seen the following conversation on a discussion site for this movie: “Did Ige come back in the end?” “I’m sad she stole the money since she’s a good person.” “Ige’s voice is just Uxbal’s imagination.” “No, in an interview with the director, he said that she came back.” “Oh, then I’m very glad.” “Yeah, there is no hope if she just stole everything.”

What a nice conversation. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu would surely be asked the same thing time and time again by fans with wet eyes. It must be an utmost reward for a director to make a movie that is able to capture the hearts of the audience. I also think that Ige returned to Uxbal’s home in the end.

It is said that Barcelona now ranks next to London as the second most fashionable city in the world (passing up Paris and New York!). Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona depicts the beautiful side of the city for tourists to see, but this movie depicts the other side. Since ancient times, there has been conflict between the Catalonians living in Barcelona and the Spaniards in Madrid. In order to destroy Catalonian culture, Generalísimo Franco endorsed the immigration of Spaniards into the Catalonia district and prohibited Catalan from being spoken. Among Catalonians, the lower class was pushed into the slums of Barcelona and these people began to be called “xarnego.” Uxbal is a “xarnego”; Uxbal’s father opposed Franco’s policies and, his life in danger, he fled overseas and died young in Mexico.

This movie depicts the dark themes of cancer and the livelihood of the most extreme lower class; despite the darkness, the movie evokes a lot of sympathy and somehow provides us with a ray of hope after the movie is over. This is because Uxbal is depicted with an extremely beautiful heart and as a deeply caring person. However, he is not a perfect person. The reason the title is “Biutiful” instead of “Beautiful” is that there is something missing in him that keeps him from being a perfectly beautiful person. What he is missing is wisdom. He sympathizes with the Chinese immigrants living in the worst conditions so he buys them a heater, but the heater is poor quality and generates toxic gas so eventually all the Chinese immigrants living together in the large room die. Since he earns his money from the underworld, he can’t deposit his money in the bank, he has no health insurance to treat his cancer, he can’t decide what to do with his poor children after he dies, and can’t die in peace. The only person he can rely on is a stranger Ige so he leaves her everything he has at the end. However, this wisdom and these secrets to success are learned from parents and society. It can be said that it is the result of Franco’s suppression that there weren’t parents to grant such wisdom to Uxbal and also that the discrimination toward “xarnego” limited education and prevented them from getting proper jobs. It’s a vicious cycle in a bad system. This movie seems to criticize the societal system indirectly by depicting Uxbal with an unwise, but beautiful heart. Uxbal’s ability to communicate with the dead may be the extreme result of the combination of his pure heart and lack of education.

When I watched director Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding, I got the impression that the director used cancer as a convenient tool to move the story along, and I wasn’t able to like that movie. In contrast, I found how cancer was handled in Biutiful to be convincing. I think director Alejandro González Iñárritu understands death intellectually and emotionally. The scene where a fellow medium talks to Uxbal and she calmly tells him, “You are going to die soon. Put your affairs in order before your death,” is very impressive. Most people don’t think about their own death and most of the time death comes suddenly. However, in the case of cancer, death comes calmly and slowly. One is given time to prepare for death and reflect over their own life. Nowadays, cancer isn’t the “fatal disease” anymore. It’s possible to come back from cancer. I live in America, but have met many people who came back from cancer and many of them say that experiencing cancer was the most fortunate thing in their lives. I can understand this mindset 100%.

I’ve watched all of director Iñárritu’s movies; there is an underlying sentiment in his heart about “every encounter is unique and should be cherished” or “the cycle of death and rebirth” that a Japanese person can connect with. His thought would be that people in this world are connected endlessly in unexpected ways, and life develops from these encounters. Therefore, the human connection spreads across national borders. Director Iñárritu does not talk about what happens to a spirit after death. However, he may believe in something like a spirit that is inherited by our children and the people of the next generation after our death. Therefore, living to give to the next generation is living for oneself.

Director Iñárritu is from Mexico, but now lives together with his family in Los Angeles. This is not a betrayal of his native country Mexico at all, but rather may be for the sake of a job, due to concerns over raising children in Mexico which is becoming particularly dangerous these days, or for the benefit of gaining multiple perspectives by living in two countries. The reason I believe Ige actually came back is because Ige is in a similar situation. When her husband was deported and forced back to Senegal, he told Ige to never come back to Senegal and try hard to stay in Spain with the children. Children born in Spain are Spanish citizens, so as the child’s mother, she can stay in Spain. Compared to the poor life waiting if she returns to Senegal, life in the lowest class of Barcelona is easier and there are hopes for the future of her children. This is the determination of a parent.

This movie competed and lost against director Susanne Bier’s In a Better World in the 2010 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. Susanne Bier said, “Humans tend to desire revenge over small things. I thought this was interesting and made this movie.” Even though In a Better World got the Academy Award, it doesn’t mean Biutiful is inferior. At least director Iñárritu won’t say, “Sure, that’s kind of interesting, so I made a movie out of it.”

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