It must have been a full-moon night in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean—en route to the unfamiliar home of a maternal aunt in a foreign country—when, according to Alba’s hazy memories, one of the ship’s crew members told her a story. He was a taciturn man of Eastern appearance who had spent his entire life traveling among cargo and containers aboard massive freighters across the globe…
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Christopher Nolan is a film director who deeply interested me in his early days. I felt that, hidden beneath his films, he was covertly asking himself a question that I, too, had been pondering since adolescence…
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Nolan Before He Got Lost in Interstellar Space Read More »
Perhaps because I was very young when I saw it, perhaps due to the beautiful and passionate music of Georges Delerue —although this prolific composer has hundreds of wonderful scores (and I am not exaggerating)— or perhaps because from beginning to end the story drags the viewer into a vortex of raw emotions that offers no respite, “L’important c’est d’aimer” (The Important Thing Is to Love), a film by Polish director Andrzej Żuławski released in 1975, is one of those I always remember with the greatest emotion…
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The Important Thing Is to Love Read More »
An interesting question, in my opinion, always humble and respectful, because I consider it the prelude to the great question: What does it mean to die?…
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To Be or To Have (a Body)? Read More »
I will always remember the first time I saw Humphrey Bogart holding his cigarette between his fingers in Casablanca—how he would gently bring it to his lips and take a long drag, softly inhaling the smoke while raising his glass of whiskey with his other hand to take a sip…
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Some literary characters seem to become a symptomatic expression of a masculine fantasy from one perspective, and a feminine one from another; this could be the case with Lisbeth Salander…
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Hysteria in the Postmodern Era Read More »
While not strictly a “film” in the conventional sense, but rather a documentary, The Disenchantment (El desencanto, 1976) is, in my opinion, along with The Spirit of the Beehive, one of the great cinematic documents for understanding the Spain of the late Franco era. By its very nature, it transcends that scope entirely…
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The Disenchantment Read More »
Many years later, facing his service weapon during the fateful night he took his own life, Sergeant Antonio García of the Civil Guard was to remember that remote afternoon when his father took him to witness the miracle of Macondo del Caudillo—at that time a village of barely a dozen houses scattered among vast wheat fields and lush forests of centuries-old holm oaks…
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After a lifetime of imparting knowledge from the classroom, the master, ever since his retirement, had not been happy. Although he had often entertained himself dreaming of that moment—especially during his final years, when he had noticed an alarming decline in academic standards that filled him with desolation—now that he possessed all the time in the world to read, reflect, and continue learning, he was bored…
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The Strange Tale of the Master and His Foul Family Read More »
We often find her on the screens of the biggest blockbusters, whether in the form of an AI lecturing Einstein on the theory of relativity, an alien with extraordinary powers, an ancient mermaid, or an indigenous warrior lost in the jungle with incomparable combat skills. It is her, the innocent seductress, encased in an adult woman’s body brimming with sensuality, dressed in exotic and suggestive attire…
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Leon and His Friend Read More »
