Malena

sad but utterly beautiful.

This is one unique film, that handles a topic that is sometimes overlooked in life. How beauty can be destructive.

Monica Belluci, who was a beautiful woman in an Italian town, gets gossiped at by jealous women and lustreous offers from hungry men. It is a depction of what a society is capable of and how it could turn a beautiful, faithful woman to a prostitute, how humans beings tend to destruct everything pristine, about the filthy human nature that surrounds us. The italian culture at the war, reminded me of egyptian culture. Where a word spreads out in seconds and the way, every person snoops in everyone's business.

Malena, throughout this whole film endures the pain alone, silently. The only person, who truly understood her in the film is the young boy on the bicycle, who always watched her from afar. The only person, who knew her real story. His love for her was different from all the others. He wasn't just a lustful creature, he was a young boy mesmerized by Malena's beauty, who held an unconditional love for her not expecting a return.

Monica Bellucia did a great job, everything she felt was there in her face, in her eyes. Not for once did she talk about how she feels, yet it was so well said through her expression.

This one got to me.

Very deeply.

It penetrated my chore.

The passion of Martin

Are humans animals? Or are they some form of a higher being?
It's something that I pondered on after watching the film.
Martin, throughout the whole film was looking for purity, eternity, but all he did was turn love into an obsessive, unhealthy thing.
Even at the beginning all his pictures were shooting the ugly side of life. It's very contradictory, but that's how human beings are, filled with contradictions.
It was a very interesting film, but I'm not sure I like the twist at the end. On one side, it captures the psyche of an obsessed stalker but on the other, the feeling it gave out at the beginning was so different from the feeling at the end. Maybe because at the beginning I related a lot to Martin, but at the end I couldn't relate.
There's a lot of washing throughut the film. Martin, in many scenes sits in the bathtub, and there's also the scene when he washes his laundry, with the closeup on the washing mashine. It gave a feeling of cleansing, which is somethng Martin wanted to do from the beginning of the short film, looking for the pristine. His mind always compares, the beautiful with the ugly, the angel with the devil.
He's very afraid of death and decay, that's why he keeps on looking for something to hold on to, something that would last forever. The film captures the lonliness of people, the yearning for someone who understands, "someone who understands my core" as Rebecca put it.
I liked the part when he analyzes everY sentence in the note that she left. The obsessive behaviour, of turning every word, every action into a long list of questions.
What I didn't undertsand is the fact that he was always looking for someone to talk to, someone he could understand, so how did he at the end enjoy her as she was a lying vegetable? That's something I didn't truly grasp.
But the qustion still lingers.....
where's the distinction between love and sex?
Are humas uncontrollable beings?