NERUDA: A FILM IN THE MOST NERUDAIC SENSE “Love is so short, forgetting is so long” – Pablo Neruda Who am I? Am I just a character in a fiction, forever trapped in the mind of the author? These were the questions that flooded my mind after watching the 2016 Chilean film directed by Pablo Larrain entitled, Neruda, in honor of the late poet and diplomat, Pablo Neruda. Originally, I intend to write this essay for explicating the ideas of communism especially in our “Americanized” consciousness but the issues of identity and existence surpassed the first reason. Historical point: Pablo Neruda is a poet, a diplomat and an ex-senator of Chile. At the age of 12, he began to be known because of his poetry. By his 20’s, he already published his much-acclaimed, Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desasperada (Twenty Poems and a Song of Despair). He serves in numerous diplomatic capacities in his early years. In the midst of the Spanish Civil War, he is the Chilean consul to Madrid. This experience opened his eyes to the longing of the people trampled by the bourgeois. Since then he adopted communism as his political identity. Upon return to Chile in the 1940’s he was elected Senator of the Republic. President Gonzalez Videla of the Radical Party asked him to be his campaign manager which Neruda gladly did. However, upon being elected, Videla betrayed the left (which is actually the base of his electoral triumph) by illegalizing the Communist Party. Everything took its peak when Videla ordered the arrest of picketing miners supported by the communists. Augusto Pinochet, commander of the armed forces and later dictator of Chile during the ‘70s until early 90’s (sounds familiar eh?), led the arrests and putting the communists and those who sympathize with them in concentration camps. Eventually, Videla ordered the arrest of Neruda in an attempt to counter his popularity among the citizenry. Neruda was then sacked from the senate and was gone hiding from the government forces for almost thirteen months. Eventually he escaped Chile through passing the mountains to Argentina by horseback. He then settled in Paris with his friend Pablo Picasso, leading the resistance against Videla. The film revolves around this point of Neruda’s life. It involves a healthy mixture of fiction and history, very Nerudaic if you ask me. A keen young policeman named Óscar Peluchonneau was tasked to pursue Neruda. Then a cat and mouse chase ensue with Peluchonneau always arriving at the place where Neruda was a minute ago only to find detective pulp fiction with a dedication to him by Neruda. Ultimately, the Communist Party decided to smuggle Neruda out of the country through the mountains but his wife has to be left behind. Peluchonneau then questions her about her husband. Instead of telling him about Neruda, she began telling him about him. She tells him that in every story there is a primary and a secondary character, in this story the secondary character is the policeman. This unsettles him. She further says that while Neruda and her are historical figures, that is they exist in the physical world, Peluchonneau, on the other hand, is just a figment of Neruda’s imagination. An imagined character made by a prisoner’s bored mind. This destroys his confidence. And so, to prove his reality, he follows Neruda until the mountains. At the end, unable to reach Neruda, he kills himself. Neruda then finds his corpse. His companions asked him if he knows Peluchonneau and said “No… Yes…” At the end the viewer will ask himself: “Is the policeman the creation of the poet? Or is the poet the creation of the policeman?” In this imagined world where history and fiction mixes gracefully, who indeed is real? Peluchonneau, nearing the end of his life, tells the audience through the narration, “Here I am the pawn of the traitor Videla… or am I not? Am I Neruda himself?” After watching the film, I have to pause for almost an hour wondering the same question: “Here am I a pawn in this universe… or am I not? Am I the universe itself? Who really am I?” Who am I? This is the question humankind has tried over and over again not to face. We invented distractions just to escape this question. But who really is this I? What is he? Why is I? Why I? What if I am just a pigment of your imagination? Worse, what if we are just character in a fiction? I guess I should have just stayed with discussing communist thought. Over all, Neruda is great film and I will recommend it to anyone who can understand Spanish (since there is still no English dub or good English sub available). For the meantime, here is a sample of Pablo Neruda's poem in English and the original Spanish:
I was in a wake. The funeral parlor does not look like one upon ascending the steps rather it looks like a hotel for the middle class. No signs of death can be seen except when you see the pictures of the dead hanging outside their room as if claiming territory. Yes, I am in the territory of the dead. And yet, this is still the territory of the living too. We entered the spacious hall that could fill 20-40 people (I think it can support 60 when jampacked) yet only hosts 3 at the time we arrived (not counting the dead). I was culture-shocked for not seeing the traditional Apostolados ng Panalangin, the manangs talking and whispering, the tong-itans, mahjongs, and saklas that so characterized and gave color to Philippine wake culture. Instead, I stand in front of a casket adorned side-by-side by flowers and a TV monitor playing an AVP of the pictures of the deceased. The deceased is the grandmother of my friend. I have never met her before and yet her death speaks to me like the death of my own grandmother years before: ringing in my ears, “Why only now? Why haven’t you seen me when I can still smile to you and give you my blessing?” Yes, I don’t know her if not for her apo but still death has this faint voice that accuses us of running from our responsibilities, one can hear it if one can and will only listen. Without the usual distractions, I heard it more clearly than ever.
“You cannot really be happy in this life… Augustine says we are always in the now, in the present, but I think there is no now, the reality of time is that everything becomes a past and everything is still a future, it’s all mixed up.” That is what my friend said that struck me that night. Well, that or another thing for I cannot remember the exact words he uttered. I munched on it until the day after. The problem of time filled my hours even until the next day. I was writing the Mass Parts of September’s First Friday issue of Sambuhay then when I found that the Gospel and reflection still contained the issue of time. Time has been following me like a hound for its prey. Maybe, that is what wakes are for: to remind us of time. We commonly think of wakes as an honor for the dead but in fact it is not for the dead but for the living. As we sat there we remember not just her memory, the then, but also our future. And if my friend’s argument be taken, then that wake made us conscious of the very mixed-ness of the past and the future of the now of our discussion. The photos in the AVP that tells of a happy past is also a warning for the living of the imminent future: that, in the end, death is inevitable. “You cannot really be happy in this life…” said my friend who styles himself as a Lord of Oblivion. Maybe that’s why we believe in eternal life. I myself believe in it. Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas believe that all our actions are geared towards the good, towards happiness. If we cannot be truly happy in this earthly existence then what if in the next if there is a next one. Maybe that’s why the Salve Regina calls this world the valley of tears and it is rightly so. But whether there’s life thereafter or none is none of our business. The deceased in front of us asks us not to look beyond her death but on her death itself. Whether she lives again or not will be the problem of whoever is in charge, whether it be God, nature, Intelligence or the mad scientist experimenting a brain-in-a-vat. What this wake asks of us is to live in this mixed-ness of the past and the present, to mingle with it savoring every tears and laughter as we journey our way. After all, we could all be Schrödinger’s cats so better have dived deeply into life. We talked more about ourselves than the dead and rightly so. In wakes, one should talk about life. Yes, it is befitting to remember the memories of the dead but death itself invites us to reconsider this mixed-ness of future and past we call the unfathomable present. In front of the dead Other, the I is confronted with the question: “Have I lived a life as fruitful as hers? Have I indulged in the woes and sufferings of this valley of tears? Have I lived thoroughly each laughter I elicited in my existence? Have I been humane enough to be called human?” What is time? What is happiness? How can I be happy? Can I really be happy? When? Now? Never? Thereafter? These are eternal questions poised to us by the death of the Other.
-Lennon caranzo, sspJust a travelling someone in this reality we fell in live with. |
anonymous lenzJust a traveling someone in this reality we have fallen in love with... this we call our world... "What is essential is invisible to the eyes..." Tags
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September 2018
"There is only one corner in the universe that you can be certain of improving and that's your own Self" |