A Temerarious Existence

Allergies, asthma and anemia, the Three “A”s that rule and confound my life. Two of the three are biting me in the ass right now, and the third will become an issue if I don’t get well enough to cook soon.

Does sickness count as holiday? In theory, I suppose it does. I have been out of work for two days, in bed for most of the last four, finally felled by the sinus infection that has been dogging me since mid-February. The combination of rain, 80-degree days, and then more rain kicked up my allergies enough to inflame the sinus infection, and as usual, sinusitis attacks my poor asthma damaged lungs and turns to bronchitis. Anemia will soon follow as I am too sick to shop or cook the food I need to keep my blood healthy. Ah, the Three “A”s work in tandem once again.

Does sickness count as holiday? I haven’t been to work, have been too sick to work from home, too sick to take care of my home, sick enough that my couch is now bed, dining room table, and place to watch TV and DVDs when I am conscious. Unlike a holiday, there has been no catching up on reading, no exploration, little learning. I have no idea what is going on with the Iran nuke crisis, the upcoming Peruvian runoff elections, the upcoming Mexican elections, Aamir Khan’s entry into the Narmada Dams situation, Donald Rumsfield, Sonia Ghandi, or Nepal – all stories that I would be following closely if I weren’t asleep most of the time. This doesn’t sound like a holiday to me.

I should be writing about my trips, that was the whole point of this blog. In the last two months I have been to two countries on two continents. But this is my blog and today I figure I should write about my mini-vacation at home this week, which includes watching two great movies, Men with Guns by John Sayles and Kilometer 0 from Spain.

It is hard to believe that Men with Guns is an American film made by an American filmmaker. I rented this movie because it is one of the few John Sayles films that I haven’t seen and I should never be surprised by the beauty he can create while delivering subtle political messages that are never overt or preachy. What he delivers in this film is something that I have never seen by an American moviemaker, and something that even South American filmmakers have difficulty delivering, the ability to translate magical realism to film. This magic was what made this movie great and both took my breath away and made me weep with surprise toward the end of the film.

The translation is subtle, and you don’t realize it is happening until the end of the movie. The film itself is a story of a politically naïve doctor in a nameless South or Central American country who decides to track down the seven Indian students he trained as medics years earlier to provide services in the rural, war torn parts of his country. What he discovers on his road trip is not surprising to anyone who is familiar with the guerilla movements and political dictatorships that plagued Central and South America in the last part of the 20th century, what is surprising is that the film manages to tell the story of the villagers, guerillas, and army without taking sides or preaching or becoming dogmatic. The doctor is the most human protagonist I have seen on film in quite some time. He is not changed by his experience, nor is he looking for change, what he is looking for is a chance to view his legacy, and the story of his search to see the fruits of his life’s work and his naiveté regarding violence and poverty that effect his efforts drives this film, keeping it from being the usual journey of self-discovery and awakening.

Besides telling amazing stories, John Sayles has the ability to use scenery to advance a scene, to tell a story, to explain in pictures what doesn’t need to be explained in words. Where other filmmakers use scenery as symbolism, twice in this movie I was awestruck by long shots of mountains that told a story without using words, the mountains emoting feelings and speaking as well as any great actor. The scenery is the uncredited actor in this film. As in Matewan, the quiet scenes of people going about their daily lives do not serve to further the plot or enhance the story, they are the story – and the film’s characters do no exist without the landscape, the farms, and the villages that form their ideas and lives.

What does any of this have to do with magical realism? The story is a straightforward road story, but the secondary story used to narrate the road trip could only have come from the hands of a gifted American novelist – one from Mexico, Central, or South America. Movies and adaptations based on the writings of any of the novelists (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabelle Allende, etc.) who write in this genre are always lacking, as if the mystery and magic of the world needs to be explained away or enhanced with CGI, deflating the beauty and wonder of the genre. I am surprised that the first time that I have seen magical realism translated well on the screen it is by an American writer and filmmaker creating his first movie in a language other than his own. 

Kilometer 0 has nothing in common with magical realism, but it does have an element of fantasy that transforms this ordinary story of missed connections and people looking for love, sex and success into an entertaining and interesting film. The lives of fourteen people intersect ant Kilometer 0, a plaza in central Madrid, and even though all fourteen people miss their correct connections, they meet with the people they need to know at that moment in their lives. What could have been trite farce is instead interesting, driven by stories that don’t move in the direction that you think that they are moving and by great acting by the entire cast, with a surprise twist at the end that made me laugh out loud in joy. This movie will never make anyone’s best of lists, but it is an entertaining way to pass two hours and is emblematic of the wonderful but little-known movies being made in Spain today.

So there it is, amateur movie reviews from my sickbed. More Lima stories and pictures to come next time….