After 99 nights of waiting at Elena's window, she came to the Paradiso Screening Room...
Each such encounter made me begin to feel a kind of nameless sadness.
--Kang Baustovsky
I watched three films directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, namely The Beautiful Legend of Sicily, The Pianist at Sea and Cinema Paradiso. According to the order of the film' appearance, it should be: "Cinema Paradiso" in 1988, "The Pianist at sea" in 1998, and "The Beautiful Legend of Sicily" in 2000. These three films are known as the "Search Trilogy", "Time and Space Trilogy", "Return (Home) Trilogy" and so on. The fact that people give them different names shows that the connotations of these three films are rich, and the audience can always accept and like them from a certain angle.
Watching The Beautiful Tale of Sicily, I almost ignored the beauty of women and the trampling of beauty, and I was more attracted to the growth of a teenager. To this end, I talked about my own resonance and understanding in the form of a film script - "My Affection Will Not Fade in the Wind". Human growth, like all things, has its own process. The purest and most moving thing is the growth of childhood and adolescence. The sounds of life in the middle of the night are waiting for a "return" revisited; those warm colors left in the memory of growth are looking forward to a search for a "return". The final "return" of "The Pianist on the Sea" still belongs to the azure sea and belongs to the ship of life that has vanished. I appealed my understanding to a direct conversation with Miss Pantien, to the time-traveling communication between the characters in the film— "I came specifically to tell you that I loved a woman in my life in 1900" ("The Ocean Never Talks to Me"), "I Blew the Evening Wind You Blew, Are We Hugging?" ("Let's Look at Each Other"). And now, I am enjoying and understanding "Cinema Paradiso", and the director has lightly commemorated the golden age of cinema in the film, which makes me feel slightly shy. It was because of the decline of movies that I was able to watch movies on the Internet (paradoxes are really everywhere), and I "evaded tickets" like Toto. It's embarrassing for a guy who didn't buy a movie ticket to talk about the movies he watched here. However, with the form of appreciation and the degree of understanding I feel, I feel that I, as an audience, am buying movie tickets in a different form, and perhaps Tornadore can tolerate and smile. Watching The Return Trilogy, really, "Every encounter like this made me start to feel a kind of nameless sadness." ”
The film opens with curtains swaying in the wind
balcony. Curtains swaying in the wind. A coffee-colored pot on the windowsill and two green buds in the pot. Curtains swayed in the wind. A ship in the distance can only be a black dot. All this, facing the sea.
Mother and sister gathered around a long table in such a balcony facing the sea, searching for Shavato de Vita on the phone. Shavatore Divita (nickname or nicknamed Dodo) has been away from home for thirty years. The mother made a phone call in Sicily all day and she said: "I am his mother".
Rome, Italy. The successful film director Shavato Devita drives a Mercedes-Benz car back to his apartment. Palatial room, a woman lounging in bed. The woman said to Shawato Divita, "Your mother has called, and it turns out that your mother has been calling him for a day to tell him that Affido is dead."
Lightning and thunder outside the window. Shawato Divita is caught up in memories...
In the lightning and thunder, I fell into memory
Wind chimes sound. I've been away from home for thirty years, and I've never made the way home in thirty years. It must have been more than thirty years ago, and it was such a wind chime that accompanied me sleepily, and I accompanied the priest in religious ceremonies while dozing off. Without the bell that I shook so hard, the priest would have forgotten the words. After the ceremony, the priest walked from a door connecting the church to the cinema to the cinema paradiso. I wanted to stay and watch a movie, but the priest resolutely drove me away. I still thought about it, and I saw Eferdo alone, showing it to the priest alone. Whenever there was a picture of a kiss, the priest rang the bell to Giverdo, who made a mark and cut off all the film footage of the kissing shot.
Of course, if you want to enjoy the movie and understand the story of the movie, the best way is to watch the movie, not listen to me here. Because, to tell the feelings, understanding and inspiration of watching the movie, it must be selective to capture the picture, just like the movie screenshot, which one you intercept, there is a reason for which one. The film is said to be autobiographical, so even Giuseppe Tornadore faces the question of choice. He seemed to be undecided, and finally there were two different versions, one long and one short (also known as the award-winning version). I think even if he fused these two different versions together, there was still the problem of selective memory. He, or the director, couldn't bring my story to the screen in every detail.
People have said a lot about my story. Almost all talked about my friendship with Afedor, about my love affair with Elena, the daughter of the bank manager... Here, I would like to highlight the intervention in life. Intervention, even the slightest intervention, can lead to different trajectories of the spirit and life, not to mention brute force interventions. The moment the ping-pong ball attaches to the racket, the slight intervention of the racket on the ball completely changes its trajectory. Therefore, the master of ping-pong is not required to use the force of the big arm, and so on is to use the wrist, the first-class master, more good at using the power of the fingers. In actual combat, Chinese taijiquan uses the intervention to the fullest, it seems that there is no intervention, but at a certain time, the slight intervention changes the direction of the force, the so-called four or two strokes of a thousand pounds. The most brutal intervention I encountered in my childhood and adolescence was the priest's cutting of the film footage, which was spiritual; my youth was equally youthful, and the most painful intervention I encountered was the intervention of my first love, Elena's father, in my love affair with Elena.
My girlfriend was already snoring slightly next to me (oh, I can't remember exactly how many of my first girlfriends she was, because I don't record every woman, every sexual intercourse, like Alyssa in Love in The Time of Cholera). At this time, in this dark night of lightning and thunder, I looked at the ceiling with more and more wide eyes, looking back at my childhood and youth.
My childhood and adolescence were very ordinary and ordinary, and I grew up with war, poverty, and the innocent joy of my childhood. I want to thank Giuseppe Tornadore, who, like the great fairy tale writer Green, "always stood on the waste and garbage of the low house and saw the view of the clouds", but he was able to see the disappearance of the clouds and the obscuration of the soul by the clouds! I'll never forget that I hid in the corner of Cinema Paradiso, watching the priest sitting precariously review every kissing scene in the film. I also remember in the cramped and irritable screening room, my old friend and old friend Eferdo separated the film between the kissing shots with a note and cut it off with a click. Why are only cut films allowed to be screened in public? At that time I didn't understand, and later, I understood, it was a crude intervention of religion on the human spirit! Putting the church and the cinema together, and there is a door connected, this idea is really the screenwriter's magic stroke.
I remember once running to the screening room, facing the beautiful films that had been cut, Efeldo lied to me and said, "If you can't find a place, you will leave it here", which is clearly a rough obliteration of their position in front, which leads to the result of putting it here if you can't find a place. I made a request to Effedo, and I wanted these cut film films. Affedo promised me. However, the film must be kept by him first. I did not expect, I really did not expect, that Effedo had promised a thousand dollars, and that more than thirty years later, Effedo's widow would pass on this valuable gift to me.
It is not so much that the priest intervened in the film film editing of the Paradiso Cinema as it is a crude trampling on the spirit by dogma. What people can see and what they can't see, why not let people decide for themselves? Commenting on Prussia's censorship of books and newspapers, Marx pointed out: "You praise the ever-changing and endless rich treasures of nature, and you do not ask for roses and violets to emit the same fragrance, but why do you demand the richest thing in the world, that the spirit can only have one form of existence?"
The same is true of my love affair with Elena. I love Elena, and Elena loves me just as much. My love affair with Elena was the biggest life intervention I had ever encountered. This intervention came mainly from her father (in the long version of the film, Effedo intervened in my love out of kindness). In the process of my growth and achievement, I also encountered "intervention", which is the care and advice from Eferdo, both positive and negative. The deep friendship between Effedo and me made me not doubt his kindness to me at all. However, when I have achieved fame, why am I still so nostalgic and so sad? There is no shortage of women around me, but where is the woman I love? I lost love. It's funny that in the long version of the movie, I actually reunited with my first love more than thirty years later and had sex. This may be the way to fulfill one's wishes in life, but not to art. Therefore, this plot was deleted in the award-winning version, but after this plot was deleted, the connection of the story was not smooth enough, and some details were not convincing, such as I did not return to my hometown for thirty years, after all, my mother was still in my hometown. Speaking of my mother, she was widowed at a very young age. I hadn't come home to visit her in more than thirty years. Because Affedo was dead, my mother knew my thoughts, and she insisted on calling for a day to tell me about it. The relationship between me and my mother is a relationship between nursing and being fed, even if the congenital umbilical cord is cut, but the mother's hand is threaded, and it has been involved there until the mother and son embrace each other happily in their own small courtyard. That thin, long, woolly thread, I still see as the spiritual umbilical cord that my mother gave me. My mother cleaned up the little room where I lived, and the utensils of my childhood, adolescence, and youth were left untouched. I even found short films of Elena made when I was younger, and I showed Elena from my youth in my own little room. Thirty years later, I met my dear Elena again. The mother was very aware, and she told me that the women who answered the phone, in their voices, she could not hear their love for their sons. My mother didn't want my first love to be a hindrance to my life either, and she wanted me to settle down. This is the result of the intervention of the first love, the unforgettable sweetness and pain that has accompanied me for decades. I know that it will continue to stay with me until the end of my life.
The ambiguity of the film made me have to relate to other plots and details to understand why the director handled my love so much (award-winning version). The Paradiso Cinema was on fire, and Efedo was blind in both eyes. People's spiritual world seems to have collapsed at once. After a period of rediscovering, the New Paradise Cinema was in a state of depression, and finally the parking lot had to be demolished (the cruise ship of 1900 was also blasted). I understand that this is a triumph of the material over the spirit. Viewed from the point of view of historical principles, this is the progress of society, understood from the moral principles, the spiritual life of a generation represented by the Cinema Paradiso is drowned out by the law of the jungle of the survival of the fittest. The nostalgia complex in the film and my personal life after I became famous all prove the director's hope for a spiritual homeland. Therefore, I should not have reunited with my first love and had sex after more than thirty years. Because love is purely spiritual, and sex, by any means, is material, even though it also has a spiritual component. Therefore, I prefer the award-winning version, which is more responsible and carries more of the weight of life. Hugo also said that loving or ever loving, that's enough. There is no need to ask for anything in the future. In the dark folds of life, there is no other pearl to be found...
I remember Elena and I kissing in the cinema screening room of the Paradiso Cinema; I remember the film footage that Effedo cut; I remember the mother's hand was threaded, the wanderer was clothed; I remember the people in the cinema who waited, waited for the "running film" to run from one village to another; I remembered the madman who took the square for himself; I remembered the love story that Effedo told me; I remember that I watched in front of Elena's window for 99 nights... Now for me, everything is a thing of the past. There are only geese in the sky, and there is no trace of flying, and everything is without a trace...
I attended Affedo's funeral. At that funeral, I thought of Sholokhov. He said: Grass floods the grave,—— time to eliminate the pain. The breeze blew the footprints of the expedition clean,—— time licked the pain of blood and the memories of those who did not look forward to their loved ones, and could no longer look forward to them, because human life is very short, and there is not much grass destined to be trampled by all of us.
With tears in my eyes, I traveled through the flickering opening credits to the end of the black and white world
I finally sat in the most modern cinema and enjoyed the masterpieces of human cinema alone. This version, which Eferdo cut off, was the film he promised to keep for me, and he connected copies of them to become a unique version of the film. In the most modern cinema, I worship masterpieces in the history of human cinema. I wander through the vast spiritual world of mankind, contemplating and understanding every wonderful kiss. With tears in my eyes, I traveled through the flickering opening credits to the end of the black and white world. There were no clouds, no colors, only the earth and the ocean, the waves of the ocean roaring, the wheat waves of the earth tumbling, Elena running toward me, behind her was a paradise on fire, and the flames rushed into the sky. I ran to her, at this time, the fire of heaven was more intense, and I kissed my Elena in the fire of heaven...