The importance of hope

I still remember Brideshead Revisited and not just because of the script (an adaptation of a novel by Evelyn Waugh). Everything seems magical, unreal. And the places, Brideshead, Venice, Tangier... 
The second generation of the family is divided between rigid religious values and the call of real life, for love, friendship, adventure. The eldest daughter returns to her comfort zone of purity and God's forgiveness. The youngest one can never free herself from this influence. And the son ends up in Tangier drinking and smoking his life away. 
The main character finds hope in the end, after all the experiences that life gave him: love, friendship, pain, hope. He is not a believer and has seen how rules can destroy a person devoid of affection. Only love can save and heal. 
Finally he understands the rejection of his lover and her choice for God and peace of mind.

Another tv series that I won't forget is The jewel in the Crown. Again, it's not just the script. The place is also magical... India in the fourties. So much love and so much pain. So much madness and prejudice. There is hope in the end, even with the scars...
More recently, Parade's End and War and Peace.
All these tv series are adaptations of novels.

And then there are tv series designed directly for television: Law & Order, criminal intent, Menphis Beat, Person of Interest, Borgen, Homeland. 

Homeland is becoming better every season. :)
Carrie defends young students caught up in the fine line between a natural revolt of free speech and the intention of violence, the real threat. The challenge is huge: how can we draw the line?
In Homeland we learn to accept human nature, its strengths and its weaknesses, suffering, dependencies, self-destructive behavior. We won't find prejudice or disgust. Humans are fragile. 
Hope is still alive in all of them, above suffering and lonely days. This is the message. Humans mess things up but have the ability to fix them.

Human

Build your safety net

When we were kids, our safety net were the parents or grandparents or caring adults. As grown ups we find it hard to live with no support. We think we found it in those who care for us, but we only can find it in ourselves. 

We all were loved once, even if we don't remember. We all have a special place, a secret place where we feel safe. That special place is linked to a special time, a connection that nobody can destroy. We know that there we can't be hurt or betrayed. That feeling is our safety net. We may fall... but we know, even then, that we are safe. We can lie down for a moment and decide to try another experience when we're ready.

"Those summers saved my life"

"Those summers saved my life": this line is very important in the film. 
The film is a Ridley Scott, A Good Year.

How many of us don't feel the same, saved by some moments of our distant childhood? A special relationship, a grandmother, a grandfather... for Jack it was uncle Henry.
Long conversations, laughter, empathy among the older and the very young.

The best treasures are hidden in our hearts. So, the choice is clear: "life" over "money". 

Reality is different from fiction

Pleasantville is a film about fiction and reality.. 

In a world in black and white everything happens according to a script, there are no surprises and things never go wrong, there are rules that everybody knows and respect.
Pleasantville is like a perfect world, where people are young and beautiful, streets are clean, everyone is polite, families live in harmony, good always wins in the end.

Reality is about injustice, pain, surprises... and colors. We have no script, rules are not respected, things go wrong. The world is not perfect, bad wins sometimes and villains are powerful.
Neverthless in its imperfection, reality is about life and living things, love and passion, curiosity, adventure, future. 

Europe was presented to european citizens as a Pleasantville with a script and rules, where countries are equal and live in harmony, with respect and fairness... a perfect world.
Reality showed them a very different Europe: there was a different script for the powerful, rules were only applied to the weak, citizens were punished for the financial sins. Villains won, good people lost 

Now Europe is facing a new phase without one of its 28 stars. UK was the first star to flee. Nobody expected such a result, but.now... that it happened... we can understand why. Reality is different from fiction. 

"Irony is not a high priority"

You don't need much to make a party

Billy Wilder knew that. The Apartment is about that.
The juice of a good comedy: it's about real life and real people doing their best to deal with their circumstances. And remember, you don't need much to make a party.

Life as a road movie

David Lynch' The Straight Story: life as a road movie. 
It is also about aging. Aging in a wiser perspective, finding the right rythm of life, a choice of freedom and some dignity, travelling with family and friends in our hearts.

To celebrate friendship

Stand by me shows us how friendship is important to deal with the challenges of growing up. Four boys in their last summer together. Each one will soon become a flashback of sunny days in the others' lives.
This is a lucky movie with no dull scenes. I've chosen 3. Scenes 1 and 2 - to celebrate friendship. Scene 3 - to meditate: adult life seems to narrow the dreams of these young boys, except for one of them, who exceeded his possibilities.

Just some reasons to be here

Let's start again, even if my english writing is not that good. Really, who cares? The important issue is the ideas. And what really matters to me is the ideas and feelings and life and be awake. Ok., sometimes I'm dreaming, but most times I'm awake, I think...

Let's share with you what I found this morning, purely by chance, like many good things we find in life, along this mysterious path we call life...
The author is portuguese, like me, but, unlike me, he writes in perfect american english (Snif). Listen carefully to what he says, almost whispering, the reasons to be here, who am I talking to? Who' s listening?
" (...) I started my own blog in December 2003. Now that’s a long time because, as we all know, blog years are like dog years. This blog has gone through many mutations and I’ve certainly made all sorts of mistakes in the process. But a couple of years ago I was making it big for an architecture-related blog, hitting the thousand daily visitors mark. Yep, those were the days because, for several different reasons, nowadays that average has been cut in half. And that’s okay.Let me be honest about it. I’m not saying I’m happier for that fact. What I mean is that I’ve been trying to find that sense of balance, to find the reasons that drive my need to write a personal blog. And to me it has become a mixture of interrogations: who I’m writing to and who I’m trying to connect with. And the latter part of this equation really is a great measure of what makes a successful blog. Who are you reaching through the web? Who is tracking what you write and what feedback are you getting from it?That has become a far more important measure of success than the single number of visitors one gets on a daily basis. And so I have come to realize that I’m trying to reach people who share similar interrogations, on architecture and life in general, and although I’ve been loosing ground on my home base of readers, the world map has been lighting up on my Analytics account. And it feels great.As I face this new stage of my blogging experience, going through the set of rules outlined by Derek certainly makes a lot of sense to me. At the core of it lies the importance of humanizing the writing process. Simply put: be honest, be different. Share what you know. Share what you don’t know. A personal blog doesn’t have to be about yourself but it should be about your own vision, your doubts and your ideas. That’s what makes it universal, no matter where you are.And if you stick to it, and keep learning and growing, people will come from all parts of the world. And in this nebulous landscape of the digital web, you will matter. "

River of no Return, a perfect life's metaphor

There is a river called the river of no return... Sometimes it's peaceful and sometimes wild and free...

Life, love, dreams, freedom, survival... along the river...

We travel with them, we see how fragile life is and how poetic a family can be. They don't know yet but we do. We see how they survive the rapids, the wild river... we listen to their voices when they stop to rest. They drink hot coffee and eat fish, they talk about their pasts, their dreams, their hopes.

Their dialogues are so philosophical... How she has ended up in a saloon, how she has given up her dreams, how she always gets herself into trouble. She tries to excuse her boyfriend, it was life that made him that way. One night she tells him how she would like to live in a place where people could be treated as human beings. The Man says: That's in Heaven.

Let's begin from the beginning.

The Man arrives in his horse to fetch his son. The Boy is waiting in a gold mine camp. The Woman takes care of the Boy and asks the Man, what kind of father are you to leave your son in a place like this.

They'll meet again, in different circumstances. The Woman's boyfriend, the Gambler, is in a hurry to claim a gold mine he won in a poker game before the owner... well, he has to go to Kansas City. So, they try their luck through the river.

Meanwhile the Man is practicing his new role: being a father. And as a father he teaches the Boy how to use a gun for protection. Here, life is a struggle and danger is real. And don't forget the indians.

When the Gambler, after they were rescued from the rapids, steals the Man's horse, and the indians attack his house, we just know they have no choice. They are in the middle of an adventure: life itself, no guarantees, no certainties, just the struggle to survive.

So, here we have Life (the river), Family (the Man, the Woman and the Boy, before they even dream with it). Soon, we'll have the most magic word in old movies. Just wait a moment. We are getting there.

They manage to survive. They take care of the Boy, they begin to know each other and to trust each other, just like a family. The Boy learns disappointment, one the most difficult lessons of growing up. He discovers his father has shot a man in the back. Soon he'll learn that there are all kinds of men, and sometimes one has no choice.
Arriving Kansas City... Have you noticed how beautiful and poetic this scene is? Everyone may ask for a gift, says the Man. The Woman's will be to give her boyfriend a second chance, to let him explain himself. Marilyn in the Man's coat, so fragile: it must be marvelous to be loved that much...

Here, everything is in its right terms: the Boy will learn how to be a Man and will use the gun to save his father, even if it means to shoot a man in the back. (What difference does it make how you kill a snake, in front or in the back?) Then father and son hug...

Try to watch this scene very carefuly: the Woman picks up her shoes, the only thing that she owns now, and steps in the saloon. Pause... just before entering the saloon she looks back... What a magic moment... Have you noticed that?

Marilyn singing: There is a traveller on the river of no return... he'll never return to me... never...

And there he is. He looks at her and puts her in his back, just like that.

Where are you taking me?

Home.

Life, Family, Home... three magic words in old movies and in hopeless romantic souls.

As mine.

Life and Cinema

It Happens Every Spring is a 1949 film, directed by Lloyd Bacon, with Ray Milland. I've chosen it because of the tittle. It turns out that the tittles I chose initially, River of No Return (Otto Preminger) and Wild River (Elia Kazan), were already taken.
Anyway, It Happens Every Spring impressed me immediately. As a metaphor, it's inspiring. And the movie, the description in the catalog, has to do with baseball, a game I don’t understand but that I find very elegant.

But is this blog about movies?
It's about life, love, friendship, dreams.
It’s about power, war, destruction, survival.
It’s about freedom, hope, a second chance.

It's about thoughts and feelings and what I've learned from all those movies, especially the old movies, my favorites.

I hope you'll find the same magic that I found, the same joy. Cinema is a very special way of telling stories.

And I also hope you won't find many errors here. But if so, would you be kind enough to let me know? Until now, I’ve only written in portuguese and it’s a completely different structure. Sometimes I misplace words and concepts. You see... I must think in english first and then express those ideas in writing. I tried to translate what I had already written in portuguese, and even used some translation tools, but the result was not what I really expected.