WOUNDED SOULS
FIVE RARE FILMS ABOUT THE CONSEQUENCES OF WAR
They saw the world crumbling before their eyes. They passed through the darkness and did not lose heart. But what happened to their souls, poisoned by the poison of war? We present to your attention five rare films about its dire consequences for humans .
HIROSHIMA, MY LOVE / HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR
(ALEN RENE, 1959)
Their love becomes a blinding flash. This flash revives memories of a tragic past. A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) fall in love in post-war Hiroshima (on August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on the city by the US Armed Forces - author's note). Passion for them turns into a revelation that they will not forget.
You only see twenty-four hours in the lives of heroes. There are no actions, few faces, only voices in dialogue are heard. The Frenchwoman tells the Japanese about her dramatic past: she lost her first love in the war, a German officer, in her hometown of Nevers, and everything around her ceased to exist. There she was young and happy and there she left her youth, buried her, it would seem, forever. Now she is an actress and is filming in Hiroshima in a film about peace, but is there peace in her soul? Sorrow, darkness and inordinate longing for the past - that's what gnaws at her all these years. Suddenly, she is imbued with feelings for a stranger (Eiji Okada), associating him with her first and only love. This makes her go deeper into the past, more and more to experience pain. Leaps from life "before" to life "after" begin, a constant analysis of experiences, as if the heroine is afraid to let go of what has already happened, remembering every detail with frozen tears in her eyes.
Her story is juxtaposed with the history of Hiroshima, she constantly talks about it: you see documentary footage of a destroyed city, mutilated people, burned to the ground. Why? Because in her soul she has her own tragedy, her own Hiroshima, in which dreams of happiness, hopes and faith also burned out. Who destroyed them? A war, a war that spares no one.
“- Listen to me, as you, I know what it means to forget. “No, you cannot know what it means to forget. “Just like you, I can remember, so I know what it means to forget. - No, you are not able to remember. “Just like you, I am able to fight oblivion with all my might. Like you, I forgot ... "- say the heroes of the picture.
The dialogues between them are a combination of two tired souls who seek comfort in each other, but do not find it. And the picture is crying without tears and silent grief for unfortunate souls who cannot find their happiness. A journey into a deep ocean of memory that has no shores. And you will never forget this journey.
BATTLE NUMBER FIVE / SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE
(GEORGE ROY HILL, 1972)
How to connect the past, present and future? How to live if the thread of time is irretrievably lost? Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade 1969 by American writer Kurt Vonnegut is trying to answer these and other questions.
The main character, Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sachs), makes constant travels in time and space. Now he seems happy with his wife Valencia, here he is in the future communicating with aliens on the mysterious planet Tralfamador, and here Billy is very young, a volunteer in the ranks of the American army during the Second World War, and is captured by the Germans. He witnesses the almost complete destruction of the German city of Dresden as a result of a series of bombings (carried out on February 13-15, 1945 by the forces of Great Britain and the United States - ed.) And turns his whole life upside down.
“... Dresden turned into a continuous conflagration. The flame devoured all living things and in general everything that could burn ... It was dangerous to leave the shelter until noon the next day. When the Americans and their guards went outside, the sky was completely covered with black smoke. The angry sun looked like a nail head. Dresden was like the moon - only minerals. The stones were hot. There was death all around ... "- the hero describes what he saw in the novel.
It seems that it is then that he dies in soul: an innocent child sees the horrors of war and reality is distorted in his understanding. Since then, he has blurred the boundaries between reality and illusion, madness and sobriety, present and past. Emotions, thoughts are intertwined in a tight ball and it is impossible to untangle it.
The director abruptly throws you from one time to another, as if carving out space, not sparing your perception, because it seems that nothing around has any sense anymore. Everything is absurd and fleeting. No life, no dream, no sun overhead. Only darkness and war that destroy the soul. So Billy, an eternal wanderer without a shelter, wanders the worlds in search of the harmony that he once lost. Maybe his restless spirit is still looking for its peace.
ANGER / LA RABBIA
(PIERRE PAOLO PAZOLINI, Giovanni Guareschi (1963)
Look at the world around you. Reimagine your place in it. This is what the rare documentary La Rabbia calls for. This is a poetical - political and social essay in two parts, in which the newsreel of the 40-60s. XX century (dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, erecting the Berlin Wall, etc.) turns into an emotional discussion about the fate of the world and humanity.
In the first part Pier Paolo Pasolini acts as a researcher and subtle artist of the word. Through metaphors and clashes of cadres, he shows all the pain for people who have forgotten their values, exchanged a peaceful existence for weapons. This sounds like grief about the lost hope for a better person, which borders on hopelessness. Throughout the entire time, the viewer feels its weight on himself. The theme of injustice and cruelty makes him worry. The horrors of a truthful life (wars, racial discrimination, etc.) that a person has made allow him to look at the world with different eyes.
Despite this, the film has a dream of personal freedom, respect and equality for all people, which gives relief for a moment, but cannot be realized. She is a utopia. “If you don’t shout“ Long live freedom! ” with love, then you do not shout "Long live freedom!" - says the film. It contains a call for popular tolerance and understanding.
With the depth of an ancient Greek tragedian director thoughtfully describes the "consumer society" that he hates is a victim of materialism, and of those in power who subjugate people. Therefore, the film carries a daring atmosphere of rebellion. It is associated not only with the desire to go against the established way of life, but is also a reflection of the loss of a person in an indifferent world. “ There is no more lonely person than one who is lost in a crowd,” the film asserts.
The second part of the film (Giovanni Guareschi) is more dynamic and less poetic than the first. In it there is a theme of human life as a rush to nowhere. Fear and discontent are being felt more and more. They sound like angry slogans and hit the soul.
The director brings into the film his sorrow for the lost naturalness and beauty of the world. It is put up for human consumption, it loses its value. The image of the selling beauty in the film is Marilyn Monroe - feigned happiness through tears.
The two parts of Anger complement each other. This is a film - crying and revelation, in which the pain of shattered ideals sounds. It is a message from the XX century. in the XXI century, a warning for future generations. The modern world is felt in "Anger", therefore it will always be relevant, give ground for thought and an incentive to change oneself.
It is a profound picture of the present and future of the world, worthy of close attention.
SOPHIE'S CHOICE
(ALAN PAKULA, 1982)
How to live if the meaning is lost? Where to find a fulcrum so as not to fall into the darkness? Sophie Zawistovski (Meryl Streep), lost her husband and children in a concentration camp. She miraculously manages to survive and she moves to the prosperous United States in search of at least some ray of light. Sophie meets Nathan Landau (Kevin Kline), who gives her faith for the best.
She seems to be finding her happiness. But is it really so? At first glance, a blooming new life hides in itself inexpressible pain from the past: the heroine tells her story about loss, about constant existence on the border with death, and about a painful choice that she cannot forgive herself (Sophie is forced to give her daughter to a crematorium and leave her son who is sent to a children's concentration camp). It is then that she dies in soul, turning into a shadow.
In an endless train of her thoughts, a woman tries to forget herself in her arms. Nathan, a strange and loving madman who turns out to be sick with paranoid schizophrenia, but she cannot leave him. Both heroes seem to be on the sidelines of the world and are needed only by each other. Choosing love, the heroine seems to acquire wings, but they are not able to carry her away from the hell of the past in which she arrives. At the same time, her relationship is a tragic semblance of happiness, which still leads her to death. Perhaps it is in her that she finds the long-awaited peace?
Sophie's story is a story about a complex and contradictory relationship with oneself. That war kills the soul, leaving behind only ashes, and the worst thing is to live with the thought that there is nothing and no one else around, and you are alone with your pain until the end of your days.
The film is an adaptation of the 1979 novel of the same name by William Styron.
MILITARY FIELD NOVEL
(PETER TODOROVSKY, 1983 G.)
Do you think that love fades over the years? No, it becomes stronger. Young soldier Alexander (Nikolai Burlyaev) hopelessly falls in love at the front with the beautiful nurse Lyubov (Natalya Andreichenko), but she loves the battalion commander. They were not destined to be together, but fate unexpectedly unites them in a few years.
Alexander is married, successful, but does not love his wife. Love loses its beloved in the war and brings up a daughter alone. He meets her on the street selling pies, and in her tired image he recognizes the features of her former beauty. Forgotten feelings flare up in him with renewed vigor. It seems that he finally finds the meaning of his life - here it is, his dream, a romantic ideal from his dreams. He selflessly gives himself to Lyuba and brings her back to life. But she is unhappy, because she cannot reciprocate to him, and marries another.
Before us unfolds a story about pure love, which can give wings to one and take them away from another. About the hope that it can lift to heaven and throw it to earth. But it seems that it is for this that it is worth living.
Text: Natalia Pushchinskaya
In the Foto: Valentin Galochkin. "Hiroshima". Bronze. 1957.
Posted by Valentin Galochkin (Uploaded by ISeeALL on request by Lidia Galochkina).