Everything is Illuminated #1
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
The first attempt.
Today I'll give somewhere to start and hope that someone will bite. In the film, Everything is Illuminated, based on the book (which I've not read) the grandfather commits suicide after confronting his past. He is happy to die there in the sunny bathroom, bathed in lukewarm red water. What did his re-encounter with the past make clear to him? Should he have been more true to his roots? Should he have fought in the moment and not abandoned his Judaism? Should he have stayed in Tranchimbrod and lived differently? Why does he kill himself? What mattered to him?
If you have an opinion, or can help me start this journey, please come along. I would love to open this up into a lifelong segment on this blog, something I'll organize and archive and just maybe we can get down to the bottom of it together.
Thank you.
1 comment:
Gaylord said...
the grandfather, traveling with his grandson, discovers the girl, now an old woman, he walked away from during the holocaust, the girl collecting the present in her basket to preserve for the future. He (Alexandre) somehow, some inconceivable how, dodged (literally, a bullet. He stood up as she was collecting the personal effects of the deep-piled dead, takes off his jacket with its gold star, branding him as someone who must die, who is unfit to live, and throws it onto the pile of rubble, bodies. She silently watches.
Now it is many years later. She is crazy but she is sane. They recognize each other and they recognize who they were and who they became. What matters now? The past cannot be squeezed out like we want it to have been. Nothing can change. Nothing will change. So what matters?
Courage matters. learning to be who you are matters. Loving someone matters. Family matters. Memories matter. Creating matters.
The grandfather cannot change what didn't matter to him then. He can only change what matters to him now. He has many choices. He chooses to stop memory. To stop remembering. To stop living. Is he at peace with his decision. His grandson suggests, yes. It matters to him that his grandfather made that choice. New things matter to him now. His judaism matters to him now. His friendship with Jonathon matters to him now. His life with his family matters.
May 15, 2007 2:24:00 AM CEST
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