Some musings regarding Atonement (2007)

Atonement reminds me of that masterpiece of a movie called Blow Up, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. As in Blow Up, in Atonement we have this dynamic between reality and fiction, which is the most haunting thing about them. In Blow Up (based on one of the best short stories you would read, Julio Cortazar's "Las babas del Diablo"), a fashion photographer happens to discover a crime while taking pictures in a park --or that's what he thinks up until the amazingly ironic, metafiction-related end.

Fiction exists to complete reality, to make justice and give us --the readers, the viewers-- freedom (and not only for the duration of the movie). Appearances have a reality of their own whenever you think of how different they can get from every different person that approaches the same object/subject. It's like all those female teens who read Twilight, and then, out of the many smart ones who didn't dig the screen adaptation at all, they are still so different from each other because at the end it's not about the outside reality --not even of a novel or a flick--, but about who they are as individuals. And that affects everything we touch with our minds. The subjectivity in regards to fiction and the "real" world is the central theme to Atonement, and it is just fascinating to reckon.

requiem

Is it any worthy approaching women I don’t like just because there are no approachable beautiful women at all in this city (or that’s what it seems to be happening for ages here)? Is it any worthy just to approach for the very sake of approaching, when it actually truthfully feels like an awfully hopeless warm-up to the nothingness of it all? Am I a Buñuel born a whole century before cinema was invented, the double of Casanova that proves Raskolnikov’s theory of two Napoleons: one the superman and the other just his mere useless excuse for a shadow?

Beauty is life, not a lie, and I’m so tired of breathing. I never even did that right.

P.S. Chelsea: you were my only muse, my only wish. Remember me. It was worthy.

P.P.S. I leave all my money to my mother, Rosa, and all my books to my sister Jackeline.

~Christian D.

Editor’s Note: These are the last words still known to have been said by the man who hanged himself at the corner of *** and *** Street, in this city with a very forgettable name. In our newspaper’s case, we endorse the opinion that a soul seemingly as sensitive as his couldn’t survive the dreadful atmosphere created by the competition and their utterly unfair advantage over our much better sense of journalism any longer. We salute this man of our time, this lost samurai, this Quixote who betrayed himself and fell, his own Judas and savior. Rest in peace, at last away from the paranoia of all the security guards and the angry boyfriends of the very few and very gorgeous ladies you were able to know in your wasted existence, away from the so cruelly ugly women you couldn’t touch with a mile-stick and yet did with your idealistic imagination and compassion --a holy fool’s tragic soberness. Kudos, (high-fives), hats off to your doing of the things we guys everywhere usually can only dream of doing when we have the fine taste of even thinking about it --and no, I’m not talking of your approaches done out of existential defiance, let alone the ones that occurred out of your metaphysical, almost divine desperation. It’s game over, but you were a real artist, and your legacy will live on wherever and whenever beauty and women go together. (H.H.)

June 2, 2012