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the gleaners and i (2000)

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James Dean in the 21st Century

I find every time when I watch a film starring James Dean, it’s always a haunting experience. I feel as if I am Cassandra, issuing prophecies that neither Nicholas Ray, Elia Kazan, or George Stevens believe my warnings. You feel obligated to warn Dean of his premature death, but as a viewer you’re absolutely helpless. 

Dean is an eternal legend. His spirit will continue to influence the everlasting angst teenagers are bound to encounter for generations to come. Besides his sex appeal, fashion, and overall moodiness that Dean enhances on every teenager in their formative years. How does Jimmy continue to influence the youth in our modernized world?

I argue that it’s the preeminent event that happens to every human as we approach the resolutions of our lives, death. Within American culture, death seems like fiction rather than fact. Dean is the ultimate paradox of this philosophy that death doesn’t happen in America, because that would pose a threat to the American Dream. Dean embodies the American Dream, a hardworking midwestern from nowhere that was able to become an actor in Hollywood. One of the ultimate pinnacles of American society.  

For America’s younger generations today that have grown up during a post-9/11 America, and the overall disquiet of America’s position in a rapidly modernizing 21st century. A generation that didn’t see the eminence of America like our parents and grandparents did. Dean still provides a sense of comfort to our disoriented generation and the despair that COVID-19 has brought onto the most important years of our lives.

Dean was killed instantly driving his Porsche 550 Spyder at only 24 years of age. Death at such a young age seems almost surreal as well as immensely real to the teenager or 20 something year old of today. Dean’s death is the perfect allegory of the distress, that the youth of America feels towards the absurdism of the 21st century.

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Gertrude 1964

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s final film could be an embodiment of my philosophy on love. Gertrude, our main character believes that love is the essential motive of life and nothing else matters. Personally, I believe this to be true.

Gertrude has three lovers throughout the film her husband, ex lover, and a younger lover. There is a common theme throughout all three of these relationships in that all three of these men have put their careers in front of their relationship with Gertrude. This reoccurring action is the reason why Gertrude can’t live towards her ethos on love.

This film was made towards the end of Dreyer’s life, he was married to his wife for 66 years until his death, just four years after the release of Gertrude. A film, like a novel is the manifestation of our author/director’s thoughts. With this logic I can argue that Dreyer was a hopeless romantic and Gertrude is one of the grand pieces on the philosophy of love, that only the cinema can depict.

Then what is the overarching message of Gertrude on love, the ultimate aspiration that we are all searching for. In the final scene, thirty years later, our main character is approaching her demise and did not find her true love. However, Gertrude is fulfilled as she reminisces over her life because she still had the opportunity to experience love, the only emotion that matters.

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Beauty of the “Proustian Moment”

I stumbled upon Proust when I was senior in high school. I was reading Boys Don’t Cry the visual magazine and accompaniment piece of Frank Ocean’s Blonde. There was a page that struck my attention with a quote by Marcel Proust. I did a quick google search and discovered his gigantic novel In Search of Lost Time. The title alone was enough to grab my attention. However, I was a 17 year old at the time and I thought to myself, I am way too young to appreciate this.

I finally began my attempt to tackle Proust during my senior year in college. Exactly four years after I first discovered Proust. I’d like to think of my life in periods of four years. Comedically, due to my love of sport and how the World Cup occurs every four years is the reason behind this. 

I read Swann’s Way the first volume of his masterpiece during the autumn of 2020. Within any medium of art, I find my favorite pieces contain big themes on memories and their impressionistic ability on our psyche. Nostalgia in my opinion and the feeling that stems from it is one of the most beauteous experiences. The most important and famous scene from Swann’s Way is when our narrator dips his madeleine cake into his tea. This incident allows for the influx of memories from his youth as a result of the action, visuals, and aroma of dipping his cake into the tea.

This occurrence is called a “Proustian Moment” or an involuntary memory. Where any stimulus within our daily life can give rise to a past memory in an almost mechanical manner. I’d like to believe this is a universal experience that every human experiences as we grow older. 

This “Proustian Moment” is one of the most humbling and moving experiences that we can experience. The process of reflecting and examining the past is one of the most powerful activities that we can do. What’s beautiful to me is that a sound, aroma, or image is connected with a single memory that is deemed so important that it’s stuck permanently in our consciousness within our chaotic lives. 

I find music is the best amplifier of this sensation, and how a song can allow for the instant nostalgia of different periods in our lives. No matter how old we get, a single harmony in a song will always bring us back to that moment we can never forget. The time travel machine may never be invented within our lifetimes, but the “Proustian Moment” will always bring us back to that single vignette in our memories. For me, that is enough to say that memories are the essence of the human experience. 

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L’Avventura 1960

I do have a familiarity with the films of Michelangelo Antonioni. Without a doubt, Antonioni is a master of the cinema. A recurring theme that I see within his films, which happens to be my favorite subject is love particularly the study of romantic relationships. I believe there can be an argument that the message of every single piece of art can be traced back to some form of love. Antonioni has such a deep understanding of the human soul and connection with the environment that encapsulates his stories. Otherworldly beings could grab the essence of human nature from only a minute of an Antonioni film. 

There’s a reason why his films have been considered poetic like many other great auteurs that contain this poetic analysis of the human condition such as  Tarkovsky, Kiarostami, and Ozu. L’Avventura questions the morality of the romantic relationship in a postmodernist world. This film reminded me of a Buñuel film with the examination of the bourgeoisie and the soullessness of the main characters. 

Ana, the lover of the main character Sandro goes missing. A search is conducted, but she seems practically forgotten about as we progress along the film. Further highlighting the shallow and indifferent feelings of the bourgeoisie within their respective relationships. Antonioni brilliantly juxtaposes this with the main characters disregard of the lower and middle classes of southern Italians and how they are treated as objects and nonexistent to the wealthy main characters of the film. 

Antonioni is one of the few artists of his generation that was able to use his  poetic and humanistic intelligence with the cinema, and us viewers are blessed because of it.

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Oaxaca 19

Is a period I think about often in my life. That summer had proven to be the biggest influence during my four years in undergrad. The time I spent in Oaxaca and the memories associated with it, I will always be thankful for.

The colors of orange, pink, and the various golden hues are the biggest visual elements that I can remember from that ethereal summer. The state of Oaxaca carries a unique atmosphere that can only be found in that part of the world. There’s a reason why magical realism is associated with Latin America because it can only be found in Latin America. No other region in the world has this magical romanticized aura that is constantly following you. 

The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz is an essay I discovered and read after my experience in Oaxaca and summarizes the feelings I felt and was looking for during that summer. Paz argues that Mexican Americans are “spiritual orphans” because of the alienation between the United States and Mexico, and to add to our Mestizo makeup which is a result of colonialism. We are constantly at battle with the mutually exclusive cultures of our European and Indigenous roots. This constant identity crisis leads to solitude of the Mexican and the existential state that plagues Mexicans until our deaths. 

That summer was a bildungsroman for me in a sense, in that I grew spiritually and discovered my Identity as a Mexican American. My grandfather’s side of my family that lives in Oaxaca city was with whom I was able to stay with. They may not realize it, but their feeling of familial love and warmth was extremely touching to me. 

Both my grandparents were immigrants from Mexico, my grandfather from the state of Chiapas and my grandmother from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. I grew up and lived with them for 14 years until both of them passed away. I was at their house everyday after school and throughout my summers due to my parents both working. When they both passed away I didn’t realize it at that time, but that was the day I loss my culture and identity as a Mexican that I wouldn’t experience again until that summer in Oaxaca. 

The most beautiful memory during that trip, and where I regained my sense of belonging was when I went out to visit my grandfather’s brother in a small village called Suchilquitongo. It’s about an hour north of Oaxaca city. It was my first time meeting him, but it was surreal in that he was an identical image of my grandfather. We compared our own physical features and we had the same eyebrows, bone structure, and hands that I inherited from my grandfather. We then talked about life and family with the beautiful Oaxacan mountains and greenery surrounding our conversation. I unfortunately had to return back to Oaxaca city, but while I was riding back in the taxi with the orange sunsets that accompanied the driver and I as we sped through the countryside. I was able to feel that familial warmth that I was searching for so long. This unconditional love of family and belonging could potentially be a remedy for the eternal solitude that accompanies the mestizo from the erasure of our Indigenous past.