La terra trema: Episodio del mare

La terra trema: Episodio del mare directed by Luchino Visconti is one of the movies that have managed to make me feel depressed for days.


The first interesting thing about this movie is its cast. Right on the beginning, the actors are listed as Sicilian Fishermen. And indeed, the entire cast was composed of non-professional actors - real people that are portraying their lives. The story is settled in the village Trezza and those people truly are genuine fishermen and inhabitants of Trezza. Now, this really gives authentic feeling and you are going to care (more than usual) about those people and happenings that will take place in their lives.




Visconti was forced to sell some of his mother's jewelry and one of the family's apartments in Rome to finish this film. He got only one award - Golden Lion, which is absolutely amazing for me, simply because I think this movie, made almost as a documentary, deserves much, much more!



La terra trema: Episodio del mare is a heart breaking study of the Sicilian fishermen family Valastro. They struggle to survive, while being heavily exploited by fish wholesalers. But wholesalers are not their only enemy. There is also an unpredictable and dangerous sea.



The family Valastro tries to overcome their poverty by buying their own boat and becoming their own boss. They are forced to take mortgage on the only possession they have – their family house.


Valastro’s decision is welcomed and supported by the other inhabitants of Trezza, the same inhabitants that won’t have any mercy and compassion later on, when faith turned down its favors to the Valastro family. Was it faith or greed that made them sink so deep? I think they simply didn’t have luck nor enough money to recover after the tragic lose of their boat and with the mortgage on their back.




At one point, Visconti clearly identifies the corrupt, exploitive wholesalers with the Mussolini’s regime. He also emphasis that we all must work together for the common good and only then everyone has a chance to succeed.



Yes, Visconti was Marxist, but I think he didn’t make this movie in order to judge or to make a political speech. Even if he did, you can dislike his political attitude and ideas but you simply can’t disregard the fact that this movie has a universal message and is telling the story that can take place anywhere and at any time in history, and that’s all that matters. And what a story!

Einstein’s Dreams

Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.

Has anyone read Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman? It is one of my favorite books.

Lightman is known as the man that made fundamental contributions to the theory of astrophysical processes under extreme temperatures and densities. His research has focused on the relativistic gravitation theory, the structure and behavior of accretion disks, stellar dynamics and relativistic plasmas. In a way, his book Einstein’s Dreams brought science and literature together. The book contains 30 little fables about places where time behaves quite differently, but these are also the fables about the way we live. I liked Lightman’s style very much. I found this book to be very original and interesting. Once I started, I couldn’t stop reading it. I totally recommend it.



Excerpt

Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.

For the most part, people do not know they will live their lives over. Traders do not know that they will make the same bargain again and again. Politicians do not know that they will shout from the same lectern an infinite number of times in the cycles of time. Parents treasure the first laugh from their child as if they will not hear it again. Lovers making love the first time undress shyly, show surprise at the supple thigh, the fragile nipple. How would they know that each secret glimpse, each touch, will be repeated again and again and again, exactly as before?

On Marktgasse, it is the same. How could the shopkeepers know that each handmade sweater, each embroidered handkerchief, each chocolate candy, each intricate compass and watch will return to their stalls? At dusk, the shopkeepers go home to their families or drink beer in the taverns, calling happily to friends down the vaulted alleys, caressing each moment as an emerald on temporary consignment. How could they know that nothing is temporary, that all will happen again? No more than an ant crawling round the rim of a crystal chandelier knows that it will return to where it began.

In the hospital on Gerberngasse, a woman says goodbye to her husband. He lies in bed and stares at her emptily. In the last two months, his cancer has spread from his throat to his liver, his pancreas, his brain. His two young children sit on one chair in the corner of the room, frightened to look at their father, his sunken cheeks, the withered skin of an old man. The wife comes to the bed and kisses her husband softly on the forehead, whispers goodbye, and quickly leaves with the children. She is certain that this was the last kiss. How could she know that time will begin again, that she will be born again, will study at the gymnasium again, will show her paintings at the gallery in Zürich, will again meet her husband in the small library in Fribourg, will again go sailing with him in Thun Lake on a warm day in July, will give birth again, that her husband will again work for eight years at the pharmaceutical and come home one evening with a lump in his throat, will again throw up and get weak and end up in this hospital, this room, this bed, this moment. How could she know?

In the world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely. So too every moment that two friends stop becoming friends, every time that a family is broken because of money, every vicious remark in an argument between spouses, every opportunity denied because of a superior's jealousy, every promise not kept.

And just as all things will be repeated in the future, all things now happening happened a million times before. Some few people in every town, in their dreams, are vaguely aware that all has occurred in the past. These are the people with unhappy lives, and they sense that their misjudgments and wrong deeds and bad luck have all taken place in the previous loop of time. In the dead of night these cursed citizens wrestle with their bedsheets, unable to rest, stricken with the knowledge that they cannot change a single action, a single gesture. Their mistakes will be repeated precisely in this life as in the life before. And it is these double unfortunates who give the only sign that time is a circle. For in each town, late at night, the vacant streets and balconies fill up with their moans.