Charlie’s Country with David Gulpilil

http://www.theguardian.com/film/australia-culture-blog/2015/feb/06/david-gulpilil-interview-charlies-country

Written by: Alexandra Spring, a Sydney-based journalist who writes about the arts, culture and lifestyle
Friday 6 February 2015

Charlie’s Country has an important message for all young people about the destruction that drugs and alcohol can cause, according to its leading man David Gulpilil. “It’s no good for our body or our universe,” said the award-winning actor, who is the subject of the opening evening of Blak Night Screen, a free two-day festival in Melbourne celebrating Indigenous film-making.

Speaking on the Aactas red carpet in Sydney, Gulpilil credited his career longevity and success with having quit all stimulants. He even skipped the whirlwind of parties at the 2014 Cannes film festival, despite picking up best actor in the Un Certain Regard section for his role in Charlie’s Country. “I said: I’ve done that – biscuits, caviar and champagne. I [even] quit the cigarettes.”

Gulpilil, who was also named best actor at the Aactas, came to prominence in the 1971 movie Walkabout, shot when he was just 15. The breakout film was screened at Buckingham Palace and Gulpilil still remembers walking the red carpet with the Queen. He went on to star in Australian classics including Storm Boy, Mad Dog Morgan, Rabbit Proof Fence and Crocodile Dundee.

His collaboration with the film-maker Rolf de Heer was seen as a career rejuvenation after Gulpilil’s own battles with addiction. He starred in De Heer’s The Tracker and Ten Canoes before Charlie’s Country and the actor confirmed the pair intend to work together again soon.

He says he is “very proud” of his latest film, particularly the recognition it has received in Australia. The film tells of one man’s struggle to reconcile the traditional Indigenous way of life with contemporary Australian society, specifically the restrictions imposed by the Northern Territory’s Intervention.

Gulpilil also sees the film as a reminder of the importance of a close relationship with nature, adding: “I get a message from there.”

“I’m a ballerina, a dancer, I’m an artist, I’m a writer and I studied the earth, same as David Attenborough.” he said. “I’ve done so many things, of course, but now I’m performing and acting so throughout the world they can see how many things I make … what I’m doing is introducing the country of Australia [to the world].”

There will be a free screening of Charlie’s Country as part of Blak Nite on Friday . The event includes a discussion between the broadcaster Aaron Pedersen and the Indigenous filmmaker Darlene Johnson, who directed Gulpilil in One Red Blood.

The festival will also feature a screening of The Turning, and episodes of Gods of Wheat Street and Redfern Now in celebration of Blak Wave cinema.

• Blak Nite Screen is at the Treasury gardens, Melbourne on 6 and 7 of February

Uta’s October Diary continued

Over the weekend Peter and I talked and talked about two different movies that we saw a few days ago. The first movie was DAS WEISSE BAND (The White Ribbon). This one we watched online. The other movie was BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP. Both movies were very thought provoking. After we saw BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP on Saturday morning at the GALA Cinema in Warrawong we had lunch – (not just desert!) – in this Cafe which used to be a book shop previously.

DAS WEISSE BAND is set in a village in northern Germany before World War One. To me the way religion was regarded in this village looked very much like fundamentalism. Normal village life suffered because of this. Built up frustrations among adults as well as children resulted in evil deeds. Significantly nobody wanted the culprits to be found. Really strange behaviour! The Authority of the baron, the doctor, the pastor was accepted as a God given by the farmers and village workers. Nobody ever questioned the authority of these people.

The village teacher and the 17 year old nanny of the baron’s children were from the city, meaning they were outsiders and being treated as such. The midwife, who acted as housekeeper to the widowed doctor, suffered terrible abuse from him. The baroness was an altogether different person. She spent most of her time living in great style in Italy with her two children and a lot of servants, having a great time there. Once she returned to the baron’s manor with all her servants. This is when she employed the 17 year old nanny. However the baroness did not stay for very long. She asked the baron for a divorce for she had met someone in Italy and wanted to go back to Italy.

The pastor made his two eldest pubescent children wear a white band to remind them that they had to stay pure. The boy’s hands were tied to the bed at night so he would not be able to touch himself! All the poor families in the village (including the pastor) had too many children and were constantly in fear they would not be able to feed that many children.

Then World War One started.

See more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Ribbon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_I_Go_to_Sleep_(film)

Before I go to sleep: “This psychological thriller is based on the worldwide best-selling novel about a woman who wakes up every day remembering nothing – the result of a traumatic accident in her past – until one day, new terrifying truths emerge that force her to question everyone around her…”

As I said we watched this movie in the GALA Cinema. So many things in the plot we did not quite understand at first. I read up a bit now about it, also about the plot in the novel. In the movie the woman, Christine, speaks every day onto a camera as opposed to keeping a journal as in the novel. Christine is played by Nicole Kidman . Mark Strong plays Dr. Nash. Colin Firth plays Ben Lucas, the husband of Christine. Anne-Marie Duff plays Claire, a good friend of Christine’s. Can Christine trust her? She admits to having had a brief affair with Ben and that she then stayed away from Ben and his son for she did not want to upset her friend Christine.

Christine decides to trust Claire. She also wants to trust, Ben, her husband. Then it becomes doubtful that she can trust him. There were some scenes when Christine had reason not to completely trust Dr Nash. In the end she is very confused and does not know whom to trust.

Presumably, Christine was for a number of years in hospital after her traumatic accident. When the movie starts, she was at home with her husband Ben, but maybe only for about the last four months or so. Living with Christine becomes quite frustrating for Ben for every morning Christine has forgotten everything that went on the day before. After sleeping she does not know that Ben is her husband.

Dr. Nash gets in touch with her. He rings her every morning telling her where she has hidden her camera. Christine meets Dr. Nash but is not allowed to tell her husband about it. It is a suspense drama all right.

And how the story ends is really mind boggling. There are a lot of contradictory things that Ben tells Christine. What sort of accident has she actually been in and what or who caused it? I ask the question, why has this horrific “accident” not been conclusively investigated? Who is telling the truth? If Christine’s son is alive (according to Claire), why is she being told by her husband that he is dead?

Both movies had to do with human relationships and they raise for me the question why act people in a certain way? I tend to contemplate about what influences play a part in their lives? The photography, directing and acting in both movies was outstanding.

Childhood Memories

I publish here a copy of something I had published already in May 2013. I did get some very interesting comments to this post at the time. So I copied all the comments and my replies as well. Some of my new blogger friends might want to have a look at it and maybe some of my older blogger friends also would like to have another look. 🙂

This now is what I published in May 2013:

‘I have now two pages about my childhood. One is just “Uta’s Early Childhood”, the other one is “Uta’s Early Childhood, Part II”. In the Part II I inserted today some pictures about my sixth birthday in 1940 plus one picture from summer of 1942. All these pictures were taken during the war, World War II that is, when we lived in Berlin, Germany.

Did we suffer during the first years of war? I don’t think so. Except that my father had moved away from Berlin. He became the manager in grandfather’s furniture factory in Lodz, Poland, which since the German occupation in 1939 was called Litzmannstadt. My father had grown up in Lodz. His family had lived in Lodz since the early 1800s, when this part of Poland belonged to Russia.

My father had studied in Leipzig, Germany. In 1930 he had married my mother in Leipzig. During the early years of their marriage they had for the most part lived in Berlin. Sometime during the early war years my father had some disagreements with some Nazi people he worked with in Berlin. I think he didn’t voice his disagreements publicly. Had he done so, he may have ended up in a concentration camp!

In the end he was allowed to remove himself from Berlin. As I said he became then the manager in grandfather’s factory. My mother typically chose to stay with us children in Berlin. We only went for some visits to “Litzmannstadt”.’

Submitted on 2014/10/15 at 9:49 am | In reply to auntyuta.
Just now I did re-read this whole post and all the comments. As Peter says, between “Will” and “Reason”, “Will” will always win. I think this is because most people will their emotions let their thinking rule. Well, this is the way it is, this is what humans are like.

To come back to how children experienced the Nazi area in Germany, one book, that deals with this, comes to mind. I read it only recently. It is set in a small place near Munich in southern Germany. I lived near Berlin and in Leipzig during the last years of the war. So I have no experience what life was like for children in Bavaria during these war years in Nazi time. However what Markus Zusak tells us in his historical novel THE BOOK THIEF sounds absolutely believable to me.

In the next comment section I post some details about the book from Wikipedia.

auntyuta
auntyuta.wordpress.com
utahannemann@hotmail.com
14.200.207.145
Submitted on 2014/10/15 at 9:30 am
THE BOOK THIEF

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the novel. For the film adaptation, see The Book Thief (film).
The Book Thief
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak book cover.jpg
1st Edition front cover
Illustrator Trudy White
Cover artist Colin Anderson/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images
Country Germany
Language English, German
Genre Novel-Historical Fiction
Publisher Picador, Australia; Knopf, US
Publication date
2005(Australia); 14 March 2006 (worldwide)
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 550

The Book Thief is a novel by Australian author Markus Zusak.[1] Narrated by Death, the book is set in Nazi Germany, a place and time when the narrator notes he was extremely busy. It describes a young girl’s relationship with her foster parents, the other residents of their neighborhood, and a young Jewish man who hides in her home during the escalation of World War II. First published in 2005, the book has won numerous awards and was listed on The New York Times Best Seller list for over 230 weeks.[2]

berlioz1935
berlioz1935.wordpress.com
berlioz1935@gmail.com
14.200.207.145
Submitted on 2013/05/21 at 11:05 am | In reply to Robert M. Weiss.
Robert, you are spot on with your overall view of history. I always say, that the 2. WW was a continuation of WW I as it was finished in an unsatisfactory way. Meaning, nobody was thinking about the future. Versailles was a disaster. A much better solution was found at the end of WW II. The Germans, at the end of WW I, were hoping that Wilson’s 14 Points would be adhered to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Points

As a result “The humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles”, as you say, let to the rise of Hitler.

You say further “By borrowing heavily from German mythology, Wagner, the concept of the ubermensch, Hitler instilled in the young a burning pride in Germany’s future. Hitler was also influenced by Schopenhauer’s “Will to Power”. This idea is the subject of a book. “The Jew of Linz” by Australian writer Kimberly Cornish

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jew_of_Linz.

Cornish has been criticised too, but I found it an interesting read on a certain view point of history. Schopenhauer stipulates, that in a contest between “Will” and “Reason”, “Will” will always win.

berlioz1935
berlioz1935.wordpress.com
berlioz1935@gmail.com
14.200.207.145
Submitted on 2013/05/21 at 10:27 am | In reply to The Emu.
The disagreement with the Nazis was on two levels: personal and about the conduct of war.

Personal: When Hitler came to power he joined the party as a “good” public servant would. Later the life style of his wife could have headed for divorce. This was intolerable for the Nazis and they asked him to discipline his wife or he could not remain a member of the party.

Contact of War: After the Sportpalast Speech

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportpalast_speech

in which Goebels called for “Total War” to be waged. Uta’s father was of the opinion that it was pure propaganda. As an economist he could see that many mistakes were made and the German industry and population were not put on a war footing. He criticised the use of forced labour and called for the utilisation of German women in industry. Only 33% of women were working. Working women was an anathema for Hitler.

He wrote a Memorandum to Hitler and for his effort was hauled in front of Martin Bormann, secretary of Hitler, who advised him not to insist on sending the Memorandum to Hitler. Instead they sent him to the “Ostfront” because he was a Russian speaker.

This is the stuff novels are written about. A lot of what we know is only bits and pieces. Adults did not talk to children about it. Later, yes, but not all came to light.

auntyuta
auntyuta.wordpress.com
utahannemann@hotmail.com
14.200.207.145
Submitted on 2013/05/21 at 7:59 am
Thanks for this very insightful reply, Robert.

” . . . . nationalism has been responsible for many wars.” This is a known fact. Still, leaders don’t want to learn from this and continue to promote it.
Will there ever be a time when mankind can live in peace without any wars?
Maybe if there’s an outside threat we’ll then be acknowledging our common humanity.

So he marched to the death camp with his children . . . . . I wonder how many children were with him.

Is it that the Nazis rigorously went to eliminate everything that seemed foreign to them?Do a lot of people to this day have an innate fear about this what doesn’t fit into their view of the world?

I think not many people are interested in understanding the historical process. They are just interested in how they see their own little world, which is an island surrounded by things that frighten them. Does this lead to fundamentalism? Can fundamentalists live peacefully together with non-fundamentalists or other fundamentalists? If they don’t want peace, what do you do? Eliminate them? Every religion teaches you not to kill unless you are attacked. So for instance Talibans want to kill us. So we are allowed to kill them. Aren’t we? No objections to killing Talibans. Too bad if a few other people get killed along the way. And so it goes. No wonder I need prayers to stay sane. Because the historical process goes on whether I like it or not.

Robert M. Weiss
river4827.wordpress.com
forestbreeze40@earthlink.net
70.197.68.149
Submitted on 2013/05/21 at 3:00 am
Janusz Korczak was offered an opportunity to escape from Poland, but he did not take it. Instead, in 1942, he marched with his orphan children to the death camp of Treblinka…. No doubt people in great psychological need follow cults, and often utilize unhealthy coping mechanisms. What happens with countries brings matters to a larger scale, and nationalism has been responsible for many wars. The humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles, the rampant unemployment, and other factors went into the cauldron of Nazi Germany. Hitler’s genius was to work with the young people, and gain their support in actively supporting the Third Reich and its goals. By borrowing heavily from German mythology, Wagner, the concept of the ubermensch, Hitler instilled in the young a burning pride in Germany’s future. Hitler was also influenced by Schopenhauer’s “Will to Power”, the incendiary speeches of Bismarck, and the methods of American advertising… History is composed of a series of reactions and counter reactions. Perhaps one day we will succeed in isolating the variables responsible for the vagaries of history, and gain a more precise understanding of the historical process.

catterel
catterel.wordpress.com
catherine.sommer@bluewin.ch
86.168.203.38
Submitted on 2013/05/20 at 9:02 pm | In reply to auntyuta.
HiI Uta – yes, no, yes. I’m writing a memoir that gets added to sporadically, but haven’t published many old photos from that time. Maybe I should!

auntyuta
auntyuta.wordpress.com
utahannemann@hotmail.com
14.200.207.145
Submitted on 2013/05/20 at 3:10 pm | In reply to The Emu.
“The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was the American program to aid Europe, in which the United States gave economic support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II in order to prevent the spread of Soviet Communism. . . .”
Ian, this recovery program helped Germany enormously after WW II. Whereas what happened after WW I was a terrible disaster for Germany. The result was that the Nazis came to power!
The disagreements my father had with the Nazis had to do with the war. But sorry, I cannot recall properly what my father said about it. Anyhow the way I remember it, my father was objecting to the way the war was conducted. I think he moved to “Litzmannstadt” towards the end of 1940. This for instance would have been long before Pearl Harbour!
For a great part of 1941 we stayed with the grandparents in Poland.
By August 1941 we were back in our apartment in Berlin (without my father of course). In September 1941 I started school. I was then aged seven already! My second brother was born in October 1941.
My first school reports say my father’s occupation was “Betriebsführer” (Manager).
He was born in 1904. During the first war years he was regarded as being too old to be conscripted. But by 1943 his year, that is men having been born in 1904, were being called up for military duties. After some training my father was made straight away to be an officer. He was sent to the Eastern front.
He came back from the war with his health ruined. For many years after the war he suffered from these health problems without getting any support from my mother I might say. But his sisters and the sisters families as well as his mother who were all refugees from Poland, well everyone in his extended family supported him to the best of their ability. Eventually he did recover and was able to get full employment. At about 1949 my mother got a divorce from him. In the 1950s when he was gainfully employed again and his health had improved a lot, he asked my mother to marry him again. She refused.
He married his secretary in 1959. In 1966 he died of prostate cancer.

The Emu
aussieemu.wordpress.com
ian.anafelton@gmail.com
121.219.179.19
Submitted on 2013/05/20 at 11:37 am
Very interesting Auntyuta, to read of your background in those years, virtually a first hand account and must be recorded and handed down into your family and put into book form.
It intrigues me as to the disagreement your father had with the Nazi;s, maybe you could elaborate on this Auntyuta.
A great historical reading.
Emu aka Ian

auntyuta
auntyuta.wordpress.com
utahannemann@hotmail.com
14.200.207.145
Submitted on 2013/05/20 at 7:58 am | In reply to catterel.
Hi Cat, do you write a lot about your early childhood and do you have pictures of that time published? Do you find you cannot disclose too much about people who are still alive? It’s great for your kids to be told by you what life was like in the 1940’s and 50’s.

auntyuta
auntyuta.wordpress.com
utahannemann@hotmail.com
14.200.207.145
Submitted on 2013/05/20 at 7:46 am | In reply to Robert M. Weiss.
Hi, Robert, I have the feeling what you say about Hitler may be absolutely right. My generation (after all I was only a child during the Hitler years) on the whole has learned not to trust people like this.
Aren’t there certain people around in certain countries who somehow are able to get followers when clearly if they only started thinking a bit for themselves maybe they couldn’t be followers? Sadly people in general go more by their feelings and what’s in it for them rather than thinking about the consequences of their support. Aren’t most people selfish? If something is promised that advances them they go for it, don’t they?
I guess Janusz Korczak was a remarkable educator, right? I think you mentioned him in one of your blogs. But I can’t recall any details. Did he for instance survive the war years? Did he have family? It is of course admirable if people stand up for what they believe in.
The best example where protests by a lot of people resulted in an immense change happened in the Eastern part of Germany. The fall of the Iron Curtain, which for years and years looked rather impossible, all of a sudden was possible in a rather peaceful way. That it went ahead peacefully was thanks to some noble people who restrained themselves from interfering.
War and Peace, War and Peace, maybe this is the fate of mankind for ever and ever. Didn’t Orwell say, some people when they say peace mean war? Our previous Primeminister Keating here in Australia used to fight a lot in parliament. His attitude was it was better to fight in parliament rather than attack each other in the street.

Robert M. Weiss
river4827.wordpress.com
forestbreeze40@earthlink.net
70.197.70.2
Submitted on 2013/05/20 at 2:24 am
Many people at that time didn’t voice their opinions openly. Janusz Korczak, the Polish educator, did. He walked through the streets of Warsaw wearing his Polish army uniform, and was put in jail for his efforts… I continue to be amazed how the Germans could have supported such a madman as Adolf Hitler, which he clearly was. He misused Darwinism, Nietzsche, and never followed his main tenet: to produce children for the Fatherland. Perhaps he knew that that he was the most misbegotten cross and handicapped person of them all.

catterel
catterel.wordpress.com
catherine.sommer@bluewin.ch
86.166.198.202
Submitted on 2013/05/20 at 12:10 am
Yes, do please write about your childhood. It was so different then, and personal memories make it come alive for our children and grandchildren. My early life in England (1940’s and 50’s) seems like tales from a distant planet when I reminisce to the kids!

auntyuta
auntyuta.wordpress.com
utahannemann@hotmail.com
14.200.207.145
Submitted on 2013/05/19 at 4:36 pm
Hi Diana, thanks for the comment and welcome to my blogging. I read your about page and am interested in what happened to you when you turned forty. I remember, a long time ago when I turned forty my life seems to have undergone some kind of a change.
A lot of the subjects you write about look very interesting to me. I want to do some reading of your blogs pretty soon.
Cheerio, Aunty Uta.

Holistic Wayfarer
aholisticjourney.wordpress.com
dipumpkin@gmail.com
76.232.196.192
Submitted on 2013/05/19 at 1:51 pm
Keep writing. That was a fascinating era — and we are just so comfortable these days. We don’t appreciate what our parents and grandparents endured to sustain the basic things we take for granted.

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

I still did not finish reading the whole novel on ‘kindle’. Today I thought about it that we once watched a film version of the book. I wanted to see, whether wikipedia said something about the movie. I did find quite a bit about different movie versions. I also found the following entry about the book in wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nations_of_Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Airstrip_One

Here is a bit of what it says on the above page of wikipedia:

“Ambiguity
Almost all of the information about the world beyond London is given to the reader through government or Party sources, which by the very premise of the novel are unreliable. Specifically, in one episode Julia brings up the idea that the war is fictional and that the rocket bombs falling from time to time on London are fired by the government of Oceania itself, in order to maintain the war atmosphere among the population (better known as a false flag operation). The protagonists have no means of proving or disproving this theory. However, during preparations for Hate Week, rocket bombs fell at an increasing rate, hitting places such as playgrounds and crowded theatres, causing mass casualties and increased hysteria and hatred for the party’s enemies. War is also a convenient pretext for maintaining a huge military–industrial complex in which the state is committed to developing and acquiring large and expensive weapons systems which almost immediately become obsolete and require replacement.
Because of this ambiguity, it is entirely possible that the geopolitical situation described in Goldstein’s book is entirely fictitious; perhaps The Party controls the whole world, or perhaps its power is limited to just Great Britain as a lone and desperate rogue nation using fanaticism and hatred of the outside world to compensate for political impotence. It’s also possible that a genuine resistance movement exists, or that Oceania is indeed under attack by outside forces.”

I say all this sounds pretty ambiguous. But what I remember about the novel and the film and what I’ve re-read this far this is the sort of picture I do get from this novel. All in all some pretty scary ideas about an imagined world. Sometimes these things do sound a little bit too true for comfort!!

My Thoughts on Divorce

Helen Mirren played Elizabeth II in the movie THE QUEEN. We watched this movie last night on TV. This movie made me think about the issue of divorce in our society. I contemplated what leads to divorce, and how it effects our lives, for example in my own family but also in families like the British Royal family. Often one can see the signs that lead to divorce, but sometimes a divorce can come more or less totally unexpected.

First I want to say how well I think Helen Mirren portrayed the queen. We already saw several movies with Helen Mirren as British queens.

Wikipedia says apart from Elizabeth II Helen Mirren portrayed these queens:
“The first was a queen consort, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in The Madness of King George (1994), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress; the second was a queen regnant, Elizabeth I, in the 2005 miniseries Elizabeth I. She also played a policewoman, under cover as the Queen, in The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu.”

THE QUEEN is a 2006 British drama film that depicts the aftermath of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, who died on 31 August 1997. I remember, how shocked we all were about her death. After her divorce from Prince Charles the media had kept haunting her unceasingly. I ask myself, did the public expect her to live like a nun after her divorce? Probably not. However the interest in Diana’s private life was kept alive by a very intrusive media. She was an extremely good looking, very kind woman. The public just loved her. The excessive media attention led to disaster. In the end not only Britain but the whole world was grieving her death.

I recall an interview with Diana as she opened up about her marriage. She said it was like there were three people in the marriage. She came across as being very honest and heartbroken about it. I think she felt as though she did not have a husband any more. She had fulfilled her duty to give the throne two heirs. Now Prince Charles felt free to follow his muse. Diana was too young and fun loving for him. She played no big part in his life. He probably had married her more or less only because she was young and good looking and likely to give him some children. But it turned out he had no real connection to her. She wanted some affection in her marriage. She did not get it the way she felt she needed it. How very tragic! Divorce followed after a long struggle. The rest is history, as the saying goes.

There were quite a few divorces in my immediate family:
First my favourite aunt was divorced, then my parents were divorced, my husband’s parents were also divorced, my favourite cousin was divorced, also one of my daughters did get a divorce (in her twenties!), one of my brothers got a divorce. And so it goes. It seems there were plenty of divorces within my immediate family. Have divorces increased during the past fifty or a hundred years? Probably. Is divorce always a disaster? And who benefits from a divorce?

These are very general questions. I would say more often than not one partner wants a divorce to be able to marry someone else. The partner who is left behind may initially feel quite deserted but in time adjust to the new conditions and possibly be able to find solace in being free again. Sometimes divorce may be due to difficult economic circumstances . . . .

Does a deteriorating love life necessarily lead to divorce? Yes and no. After a man has been married for a number of years, he may wonder what it might be like with somebody else. He may feel that some new exciting love affair would be quite a challenge. What man can resist if an attractive woman indicates to him that she could be willing? The man tumbles into a new relationship. The new woman is hopeful the man is going to leave his wife and marry her. So he needs to get a divorce. Then he can marry the new woman. As simple as this.

In the ‘old’ days some women would refuse to grant the husband a divorce. Then maybe the husband would just live apart from his wife with the other woman. Sooner or later the other woman might find another man who could marry her. Then perhaps the first wife would end up with her husband living at home again. Or not, if she found it impossible to forgive him. Or found someone else herself in the meantime!

If a woman falls in love with a man who is married already, is it morally right if this woman accepts the advances of a married man. They both might feel they are made for each other. It may turn out then that the first woman is left behind. The new woman might be married herself and end up asking for a divorce if she wants to stay with the new man.

So far I have never mentioned children of divorced marriages. If there are any young children involved this can complicate matters quite a lot. I’ll write about my thoughts on this some other time.

From Wikipedia a Review: Once You Are Born, You Can No Longer Hide

Review: Once You Are Born, You Can No Longer Hide

The world saved by children

by Camillo De Marco

24/11/2005 – “‘Once you are born you can no longer hide’ really is an African surname… And it is the real name of an illegal immigrant…”

Review: Once You Are Born, You Can No Longer Hide

“Once you are born you can no longer hide”, as is also said in the film, really is an African surname. There, people often use concepts as surnames. And it is the real name of an illegal immigrant that I met and interviewed.” (Marco Tullio Giordana)
A sailboat rapidly ploughs through the water in the dark of night, a boy on the stern sways and falls overboard. He flounders, resists and is then swallowed up by the depths of the sea. Helped by unknown arms he re-emerges, symbolically reborn from that amniotic fluid.

This is the most beautiful and important scene of Once You Are Born, You Can No Longer Hide [+] (o.t. Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti), the sequence around which the film’s theme revolves: entrusting to a child’s eyes the task of being astonished by the world, just as we are astonished by cinema. In order to recount the moral growth of his young protagonist, Marco Tullio Giordana chooses as a pretext the phenomenon that is marking our era: the migration of thousands of people towards our coasts in search of the promised land. Reception and rejection, solidarity and diffidence, tolerance and racism, hospitality and contempt, consumption and marginalization, rich citizens of the world and new barbarians. Us and them. It is simply the Italian version of a global problem. A problem that is no longer novel, which has already produced a massive amount of news footage and film images that have filled our collective imagination to the brim with rhetoric that we must avoid. This is precisely the reason why, during Cannes – where the film, inspired by the eponymous sociological text by Maria Pace Ottieri, was screened in competition – French and US critics were not very gentle with Giordana. They accused him of opting for a documentary-like rather than cinematic approach, of not being very courageous in his choices, of falling into the trap of pedantry, of not keeping his promises, of stooping to clichés. And if this criticism might even seem appropriate – the film is discontinuous and awkward at times – Giordana’s directing and the screenplay were not aiming to illustrate clichés but to render their predictability evident.

What remains at the heart of the film – splendidly shot by Roberto Forza – is the young Sandro Lombardi, played by Matteo Gadola, an actor gifted with an intense gravity. Sandro could be a descendant of the Carati family from Best of Youth. In him, we discover the ethical traits of the characters of the Giordana’s 2003 film – the same desire to take action, without giving in to prejudices and stereotypes. Sandro is a 13 year-old from the affluent part of the city of Brescia, who falls into the sea during a trip and, as in Kipling’s “Captains Courageous”, is saved by illegal immigrants aboard a battered boat headed towards Italy. Sandro befriends Radu and Alina, two young immigrants his age and, upon returning home, he cannot go back to his previous sweet life.

The boy’s perspective is lost, replaced by the more “conventional” and political point of view of scriptwriters Stefano Rulli and Sandro Petraglia, on the people of northern Italy, the schizophrenia of an unwitting racism, and an energy that is dulled by fear. The Brescia of the film is the most multi-ethnic of Italian cities, and was the first to confront its immigration problem and recognize that foreign labour was an indispensable resource. A Brescia that is simultaneously generous, obtuse, industrious, narrow-minded, sensitive, vulgar, united. However, in Once You Are Born You Can No Longer Hide, there is none of the overwhelming sense of guilt that permeates Michael Haneke’s Hidden [+]. Here, there is only Sandro, who learns an entirely new “language,” different from the one he is familiar with. Who comes to see people in what was previously just a presence. Who understands that friendship is a luxury and that integration and coexistence are only two beautiful sounding words. And who discovers the right not to hide, once we are born.

(Translated from Italian)