21st. July 2021
A massive event in my life. My husband has a heart attack and a couple of strokes/ 2 weeks in hospital and self discharge with a couple of replacement body bits…. Luckily younger daughter had arrived just as I called the ambulance and took over.
Since my diagnosis years ago it was assumed that my husband would be my carer and he was a very good one. The roles were suddenly reversed. Arrangements were made for our needs and we managed a quiet and boring life in isolation from family and friends. I gave up any personal activity and I wondered if I should join the dementia sites.
I decided that my experience of being ignored by my friends was worth writing about and read by the people who read my film blog rather than the special readers interested in dementia.
The diagnosis of my dementia had the effect of me disappearing from the people I knew. Apart from a couple of very good friends and a cousin who corresponds with me, the rest of people I shared an interest with for years in meetings and discussions, holidays, just erased me from their consciousness.
Never a direct mail to me. Never an enquiry to my husband about me or a mail asking me how I was coping. Of course I felt guilty of my own behaviour when I found the difficulty of corresponding or visiting a friend I worked with on old age and films…..
Now that the situation is more settled I tried to go back to my blog. Last week we viewed “It must be heaven”. I just could not follow the meanings of the film at all and went to sleep. A film that should have been of interest to me , directed by a well known Palestinian director: Elia Suleiman. I decided to view it again in the morning when I am more alert. I took notes of the different scenes.
Amazingly I did read their meanings and deep references and the film made sense.
Will I be able to follow this technique with other films?
But first of all I must try the transcription of my notes and see if they make sense .
Had a look at my notes and wondered how to deal with such complex scenes and subjects. After a try to reach the issues that I found most important to me, I decided to restrict my analysis to those that I found personally interesting.
It was possible do divide the film in 4 parts.
1- Palestine
2- Paris
3- New York.
4- Conclusion
Personally I felt that the Palestine section was the most important to understand and decided to restrict myself to analysing this first section….
I had a look at the notes that I took while watching the film.
The most difficult to interpret but the most meaningful were the first scenes. For me they were the most emotional and meaningful since I lived my youth in Beirut.
1- Palestine: the first scene is of a very well attended Christian ceremony. A huge crowd led by a priest is trying to enter a locked church. The lead priest (I am not versed in Palestinian Christian sects) comes to the rescue. He takes his head cover off, goes to the back of the church and with a noise of forced bangs opens the door. For me there was no doubt that these scenes expressed the presence of a resistant Christian population in Palestine .
I will not describe the events in any order but will extract the story and how I interpret the scenes.
2- The balcony. As in many Middle Eastern buildings the balcony is a very important space where social life and events take place. It is from this vantage point that our main character observes the street and the garden. A man politely excuses himself for cutting some branches and explains that the lemon trees need pruning…
3- In the interior of the house, he is seen watering his little tree, checking the clock, examining photos in the bedside drawer. We realise that the flat showing disabled people’s implements belonged to the recently deceased parents. The bedside table showed a Virgin Mary. Later the chairs and packing boxes are put in the back of a van that hurries away.
4- As he walks in the street a group of menacing young men holding threatening sticks rush ahead. They pass by without touching him. Again our fear is dismissed.
5- Outside the house the man visits the cemetery. Another hint to take us to the past.
6 – The interior of a cafe and morose two men and one woman around a table : the owner is called and accused of serving a sour meal to the woman. The calm and pleasant owner explains that the taste is due to wine. Accused then to serve alcohol he calmly explains that it is not people who imbibed the alcohol but the chicken that was cooked with the food. The altercation finishes with a drink for all. Is it alcohol that they drink?
7- The street and neighbours: An old man with a hunting rifle accosts our character and tells him the story of an encounter he had with a menacing huge bird and a snake. He saves the snake by shooting the bird and later he sees the snake greeting him and blowing up the deflated wheel of his car.
8- The town square: a group of women look at the back of a woman spread in a cross shape against a ruined wall.
There is a quiet feeling in the square. A couple of relaxed policemen next to their motor bike. A man loaded with cameras and other modern equipment is accosted by two policemen. Once again we fear for the man we follow. They only would like to borrow his binoculars. The only character that intrigued me and that I do not understand is a young man with a damaged eye (seen before in the street) who finishes his drink, pees and throws the bottle against the water fountain….
9. It is raining heavily. A very old man is peeing against the wall and distressed seems to think that the rain water is produced by himself and says that he cannot stop the flow and that this has never happened to him before. He is approached by our main character who gently explains the situation to him and invites hime to walk with him under the umbrella.
The end of the first sequences sees the departure of the man to France and the USA in order to sell a film script. His drive is very familiar to me. Long stretches of dry land interrupt olive trees groves and Cactus plants *
A woman in traditional clothes carries on her head a classical shaped container that she puts on the ground in exchange for another. At the end of the film this ritual is changed. I did not grasp the deep meaning of this sequences. Help me if you can.
2- Paris
3- New York.
I have not done justice to the first sequences of the film but I wanted to express my reactions to scenes after scenes where fear is expressed but not justified.
The next parts of the film, Paris and NewYork are easier to interpret. My impressions are that Paris themes are beautiful women, selfishness, and powerful weapons of war.
As for New York after the abundance of people with armaments there is an atmosphere of fantasy. Big supermarkets full of goods and chases in a beautiful park.
Both these episodes are easy to interpret and analyse.
In both countries his attempts at presenting his script are rejected. The rejections are very different. in style. In France the rejection is explained in long sentences that signified that the story is not Palestinian enough. In the USA his presence is just ignored by an attractive woman, in favour of his friend who did introduce him.
The last episode is the consultation with a
fortune teller who predicts: Yes there will be a Palestine but…… not in your Lifetime .
*I am told that in Israel young men are called Sabra the Hebrew word for the plant because they are prickly on the outside and tender and sweet on the inside…..
STILL WALKING (2008)
Still Walking (2008)
As with some family reunions, my second viewing of Still Walking was quite painful. I saw it at home with a cousin with whom I had shared family reunions in my youth. Her general comment was: there is a certain coldness between parents and children and between the old couple themselves, but maybe that’s what it is like in Japanese families.
When I saw Still Walking at the NFT I was overwhelmed by the familiarity of the atmosphere of a family gathering. I loved the mother and daughter talking cooking together and gossiping, with the mother’s familiar repeated recollections, the father’s grumpiness and detachment, the children running all over the place. I appreciated the efforts of the daughter to avoid conflicts and her interest in moving in with her parents ‘to look after them’ and of the son-in-law trying to ingratiate himself but forgetting to do what he promised. I recognised the new daughter-in-law and her child trying hard but failing to fit in. I somehow did not completely appreciate the unresolved grief of the loss of the elder son that the reunion was commemorating.
The story of the death of the elder child while saving a friend, the bitterness of the father, the revenge of the mother against the rescued man was a surprise. At the Q and A session with Kore Eda this subject was not raised but he mentioned the fact that for the dialogue he only used actual sentences that were used by the cast.
On second viewing I found the portrayal of the grieving old couple quite unacceptable, and dare I say, ageist. I found their resentful attitude and even nastiness towards the rescued man, depicted as an inadequate figure of fun, exaggerated. They both express openly and viciously their hatred. In fact the old couple appear in the whole film as selfish and unpleasant…
The couple express openly throughout the film prejudices on marriage, work ethic and careers.
What may have escaped me is the class and generational elements of the families interactions. The parents are well off and the father is very proud of his status as a doctor. He is treated with respect by his neighbours. The mother sticks with her traditional ideas about families, choice of a partner and when to have children. There is a certain distance between the couple. (The grandmother does not hesitate to recall her husband’s affair in front of everybody.)
The daughter and her family appear as secondary in the story. She tries to smooth out the conflicts in conversation. Her keenness to move in with her parents reveals a financial need. This is reinforced by the characterisation of the son-in-law as ineffectual. He is asked to do the menial job of mending some tiles in the bathroom but forgets to do so.
It is when the sister and family leave that the father and mother open up and reveal the cruelty of their yearly invitation. The mother even expresses the wish to carry on punishing the rescued unfortunate man. Having shown no interest in his grandchildren, the father shows some hope in the adopted son when the child shows curiosity in the array of medicines lining the office of the retired doctor.
The surviving son, Ryota, his wife and adopted child represent the new generation. Ryota a jobless art restorer feels strongly the disapproval of his father, in particular because he is unemployed at the moment. But he has the decency of criticising his father for the language he uses to describe the low class survivor.
The gift of a Kimono by the mother to her daughter-in-law seems to soften her character but her immediate advice that it would be better if she did not have another child…. somehow does not.
Although the goodbyes feel warm enough, the young couple decide not to spend the night again in the family home.
The last shots show Ryota, wife, young boy and younger daughter tending the family grave.
I find it strange that no commentaries are made in the reviews on the representation of the grieving old couple in this film. The Q and A session with Kore Eda did not mention the traditional relationships and ways of behaving between parents and children in Japanese customs. Neither does the film offer any way to sympathise with the grieving grandparents.
Share this:
Like this: