Hard Candy: "la niña de los cojones".

“Hard Candy: An underage girl -often aged 12 to 16- who is particularly attractive and/or gullible. In other words, a pedophile's dream.”

And that’s what Hayley is. A hard candy. Jeff’s dream. But, this hard candy seems to be harder than others. You know, just like the ones that break your teeth when you bite them. 

Hayley was not what Jeff wanted her to be. Just as life. Sometimes life doesn’t drive you where you expected to go, and then you regret your previous decisions and acts... or you like the new way you’ve came across. Life is like this: unexpected.

Hard Candy is also unexpected. I mean, I don’t want to tell you what happens on the film, but if you have seen it (I hope so), you will know immediately what I’m talking about. Hayley is not the naïve girl she shows off at the beginning. She wants us to think like this. Good job, Hayley (or should I say Ellen Page?), you’ve done it! I know I am talking about fiction, but there is always some reality in it. This film happens to be a story that can occur perfectly in real life. A little bit hardcore, though. Do you think that Jeff, one of the main characters, was thinking about that painful, tragic end when he chatted with Hayley for the first time? No. And when he has met her? No. Not at all. We have to recognize that Hayley has “a pair of eggs” for acting like she does and take revenge on Jeff in the name of all his victims. He deserved a harsh punishment.

Going back to what I am focusing on: roads of life. The roads of life are impressive. We can’t know what is waiting for us right there, in the future. So, why we keep on trying to plan everything in our life? Because it feels good when you have everything under control. But sometimes it gets boring too. This may be a bohemian way of thinking, and it’s normally not my style, but... I like it. I am not saying that we should forget about all our responsibilities and run away, but breaking with the routine once in a while is not only revitalizing, but also necessary.

As Regina Spektor -marvelous voice, marvelous woman- says in “On the radio”:

“This is how it works: You're young until you're not, you love until you don't, you try until you can't, you laugh until you cry, you cry until you laugh... And everyone must breathe
until their dying breath”.

It is a life philosophy. Just as Carpe Diem. Time passes by, we can’t stop it. Instead of it, we can enjoy it. We are filling our life with experiences and memories. We have the good ones and the not-that-good ones, but all of them have been helping us becoming the person we are in the present. And the very important ones will walk with us during the rest of our life. There is still time to make it spectacular.  

One day life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it is worth watching.

Say something, say something.

Billy Elliot: I don't want a childhood. I want to be a ballet dancer.

Surprisingly, I have never seen Billy Elliot until a few days ago. And I’ve loved it. It is compelling, it is saucy... it is MAGIC. 

It makes me think about how life can be conditioned depending on the place you are born, the class you belong to and the time you are meant to live. Why can’t we just do what the heart is telling us to do? Billy is a really good example of willpower and spirit of self-improvement. Although he is just a kid, he fights for what he wants, no matter what people may think or say: he does it just because it makes him feel happy and fulfilled. 

–“Billy: Just because I like ballet doesn't mean I'm a poof, you know.”

It was quite common in the 80’s, usually in working classes, to avoid people’s deepest feelings and passions. Why? Just because they were afraid of what people may say, they thought that what they were doing was stupid and will play against them in the all time low. Nothing further from the truth, but hopefully things has changed (and also people’s mind).  

Another aspect of the film that has shocked me (in a good way) is the power of love. While watching the film we can appreciate an interesting evolution on Billy’s father behavior. When Billy’s father hears that his son is doing ballet he gets angry and bans Billy from taking ballet lessons. He refused to give in until the moment he saw his son dancing. Then he realized nothing is more important that his own son’s happiness. While dancing, Billy feels that problems just vanish, nothing else matters. He forgets everything; he feels like flying as a bird, as electricity. Would a father ban his son from feeling this way? No, never. It happens in real life: parents always want the best for their children. Even though it is not what they expected or what they wanted them to do, if they can see how good they feel when they are doing what they truly love, make sure that a parent will always give children full support. No matter what it costs, no matter how much time it takes, there is nothing more important for a father or mother than helping their children achieving their goals. As Nietzsche used to say: “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” If we fight for something, it is because we are deeply concerned on what we are fighting for.

As a conclusion, I would like you to get my message: Feel free to do what your heart is telling you and always be true to your own spirit. 

Say something, say something.

Pulp Fiction

"Mia: Don't you hate that?
Vincent: What?
Mia: Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?
Vincent: I don't know. That's a good question.
Mia: That's when you know you've found somebody special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence."

        Quentin Tarantino’s films are known virtually worldwide. His unusual way of writing screenplays and directing had made him become a cult director, adored by many movie buffs. Pulp Fiction, the film that preceded his first feature film as a director is therefore a masterpiece. The film, starring John Travolta and Uma Thurman, has received many awards such as the Palme d'Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival or the Best Original Screenplay at the 1994 Academy Awards. This film, characterized by mixing murders with impossible romances and big amounts of violence and drugs, is also full of eclectic dialogues, a great amount of film references and a soundtrack that plays a very important role. 

But it is not only this mixture what makes the film special. It is also because of little details. It is on what we are going to focus. We can see, for example, how it reflects slight differences between American and European cultures. At the beginning of the film there are Vincent and Jules talking about Vincent’s trip to Amsterdam, and how they name McDonalds’ burgers in Europe. There is also the cab scene with Butch and the taxi driver, named Esmarelda Villalobos –I think there is a mistake on the name, it should be Esmeralda-. They both talk about each others’ names, and they realize that English names don’t mean anything and Spanish names have a meaning most of the times.  These two little points make me think about how different we are depending on the culture we have been brought up, but how similar we can be at the same time. Nowadays world globalization is more of a reality than a dream. We can find pizza or kebab all around the world, communication travels incredibly fast and also do people. Long distances seem to be shorter nowadays. But, even though there are plenty of reasons to consider total globalization as a fact, we must take into account a very important factor. The roots of different world cultures are there and had been forged over centuries, so it is impossible to make big changes from one day to the next.

Coming back to the film, we can appreciate that every character let us know its personality by means of the dialogues and behavior. A clear example of this is Jules Winfield and his religion. He is strictly religious, but, ironically, he recites Ezekiel 25:17, the bible passage, every time he is about to kill someone (and everybody knows it is a sin to kill people). We might think it is just Tarantino playing with the character, but we can also think that religion is not interpreted the same way in America than in Europe, which drives us straight to what we were saying before. We have the same impression at the end of the film, in the restaurant, where Jules says that the ‘bullet thing’ was a miracle, like a God intervention, but Vincent thinks it was just coincidence.   

       To sum up, I hope this reflection make you see that not only spectacular plots, scenery, dialogues and actors, but also little and special details are needed to turn a film into a masterpiece.

Say something, say something.