the-feelms

[the-feelms]

Still Walking (2008), dir. Hirokazu Koreeda

As long as we keep living, we keep trying. We try to live up to our personal heroes-- even when it’s far from our own ideals-- and disappoint ourselves in the long run when we fail to meet their expectations. We try to fit in and please people, and realize that doing so will only drive us to exhaustion. We try to keep the pride that comes with profession by passing it on like some sort of a crown, ignoring the fact that every reason behind every person’s dream is never exactly like somebody else’s. 

We try to reconnect. We try to fill the empty spaces left behind by a lost loved one. We try to overcome grief, and knowing that we almost never do, we try to just live with it instead.

We strive as we keep on living. As we do, we are hopeful, even when it’s always never without a mixture of lonely.

[the-feelms]

All About Lily Chou-chou (2001), dir. Shunji Iwai

The first scene drew me to what Yuichi feels at that moment, as if I am Yuichi-- immersed into the ethereal music, at the same time withdrawn from the vastness and the greenness of the field, and from the rest of the world. 

This film struck me with the semi-dream and semi-reality of it all. The characters represent the youth who were gradually being robbed off their innocence in the vilest of ways. The youth that we are or we once were. Some, in a heartbeat, succumbed to the dark. Believing they have seen enough cruelty that it will be futile to hope there will still be any light to leak through, they became the darkness itself. Some are lost enough that as they grope for a crack to where light can possibly get through, they found themselves just being led on by darkness itself. Some got used to it, as if they accepted it as a part of who they are. Sometimes though, they would wonder what if feels like to be light again, and the longing engulfs them so that they would willingly and decidedly become it. And some are resilient enough to overcome anything that tries to rob them off their light. They are the light in the dark.

The way this was filmed, it made me feel as if I am part of the story. But then, aren’t we? For the tragedy is we live in this world where we are all governed by the same emotions in the same world, but the more we become aware of the world and the people within it, the more disconnected we become. The world isn’t cruel; people aren’t cruel, at least not at first. It is a matter of action and reaction that determines what direction we will be going. People aren’t inherently bad, but we meet some of them in that phase where they have already chosen their fate. Hence, it gets passed on to us with little or complete influence. It’s the inevitability of becoming what we fear and inviting countless victims to fall along with it that continues this endless, depressing paradox of life.