Movie: In a Corner of this World (この世界の片隅に )

"If I can die with the memory of the person I love, I'm satisfied."

好きな人の思い出しと死にしたら、本望じゃ。

I have always loved Japanese drama movies and I always cry every time the last scene fades to black. My senpai and good teacher Ms. Pauline Mangulabnan shared  me this movie "In a Corner of this World" and indeed it was a heartbreaking, heartwarming and inspirational film. I remembered other Japanese movies with the theme of World War II like Studio Ghibli's Grave of the Fireflies and Letters from Iwo Jima and they all made me cry. 

The cinematography of the film is equally sublime and stunningly unique. The first scene that pops out in the movie is a moving cart with a boy and a girl inside. The boy said it was a kidnapper's cage and told the little girl that once it stops they would escape together. Fade to black with the next scene of a woman, whose name was Suzu in bed with his husband Shusaku, the same little boy in the first scene, and they held hands. Then one will realize that both scenes are merely dreams when the third scene showed Suzu in bed, with bandages in her head. As she lifts her right arm, she realizes that her hand is gone from the time bomb that exploded during those times in war. 

Hiroshima. 1930s. Then comes the flashback when Suzu was to meet the man she would marry in a tradition called omiai (arranged marriage). Shusaku, the man she would marry, is part of the military corps. When they finally met, Shusaku said that he already knows Suzu by her mole, with Suzu clueless as to where they could have met. Suzu also met her longtime friend Tetsu and drew him a picture of him as a child and the ocean, the time when Tetsu's brother was killed in the navy war. 

Everything seems normal at first: as a housewife, Suzu worked hard in the house and served her husband well. During these times her husband was working in the military and they both lived in her parents' house, while her elder sister visits them with her daughter occasionally. A significant scene appears when Suzu got lost in the village and met Rin-san, a geisha who was kind and sweet. When she found out that Suzu is good at drawing, she made her draw a picture of a watermelon and caramel. Eventually they bid each other goodbye. 

A conflict arises when Suzu found out that her husband Shusaku seemed to know Rin-san as a customer, and becomes cold to him for a while. Tetsu visited Suzu and gave her an omiyage (present) of a bird's feather and said that it might be the last time they meet each other.

Before the war worsened, spring passed by and Rin and Suzu met again. They shared stories and Rin left Suzu with inspirational messages about the war.

Just because you're lacking a little something, doesn't mean there's no place for you in this world." (だれでもちいとたらもんがあるくらいで、この世界に場所はなくなら。)

The war came like a thunder afterwards and time bombs were scattered everywhere. Shusaku was promoted as a military commander and would be away for three whole months. Suzu endured this while taking care of her niece, Harumi but ended up getting blown by a time bomb hidden in the bushes and a fence, killing Harumi and taking her right hand. 

A part of Suzu was lost during that time because everything she did--cleaning the house, making Harumi a pouch, sketching drawings for her friend Tetsu and Rin and hugging her husband Shusaku became impossible without her right hand. She decided to wander off alone because she still could not accept the fact that her loved ones died and still they lost the war. Shusaku found her and invited her to come home. She said that her home could have been the fence where the time bomb was and then she would be with her loved ones--Harumi, Tetsu and Rin.

"I'll be your home. I hope it would be fine for you," Shusaku said in assurance.

In the end, Suzu returned home and finally accepted the realities of life during the war, and thanked her husband, who would always find her because of her mole, even during that time that she got lost when she was a kid and Shusaku helped her find her way home.

Such Japanese drama movies always make me cry and, and as a Linguistics student who studies Japanese,  appreciate the Japanese culture better. I have noticed that the characters use a Japanese dialect compared to the Japanese used in the cities. The general theme of the movie, I believe is finding one's place in the world even if he is nowhere near perfect, and moving on so that one can face the future with confidence and hope.

#RememberingRobinWilliams: Awakenings

Who are the dead? Who are the living? There are people who live life to be happy and to share happiness. There are people who live to earn a living and feed their families at least three times a day. But there are some people who live in a vacuum--people whose lives are trapped in their own bodies--"living statues".

I was devastated when I couldn't find my CD of my favorite Robin Williams CD "What Dreams May Come", which was shared to me by my mentor Ms. Josephine Bonsol, and decided to borrow it in Video City. Instead I found the movie "Awakenings" (1990, directed by Penny Marshall) and I remember my class in English 11 where we analyzed one of Dr. Sayer's narrative on people with the "Sleeping Sickness". I cried a bucket of tears after watching the movie.

"What is it being like them? What are they thinking?" The epic and most dramatic movie of Robin Williams revolves around a new and socially-awkward doctor Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams) who discovered the long-lost encephalitic patients who have been in a catatonic condition at most 40 years. He was trying to uncover the reasons and possibilities behind the mental illness and found out that even though they always seem to be catatonic and to be "living statues", they have this unique reflexes which can be manifested through the will of another person.

After evaluating patients with histories of Parkinsons' Disease and encephalitic conditions, Dr. Sayer was able to make a circle of group whom he would help to possibly recover from their basic state of mind--that is, he would help them bring back to the world after forty or more years. One of his patients, Leonard Lowe (Robert de Niro) was also catatonic after 30 years and Dr. Sayer began to run tests on the drug combinations for anti-Parkinsons and encephalitic medications to possibly see the light behind the empty eyes of his patients. At first, it worked well with Leonard after a small dosage and was able to communicate with others and write his name. After the successful experiments, he tried it to his other patients and yielded the same positive results. One of his patients, Lucy, was able to communicate again and talk to other people. It was a miracle at the time because the disease had been ignored for almost 50 years.

The conflict began when Leonard started to show signs of aggressiveness and paranoia and Parkinsons' disease--that is, the drug had its own side effects and may only last for a brief period of time. Despite this, the best times of the catatonic patients with the ever-patient Dr. Sayer had been the most memorable for both sides. Based on a true story by Oliver Sacks the story truly touches the heart of the people and reflects a win-win situation--Dr. Sayer was able to temporarily revive the patients and bring them back to the world that they know, while the patients taught him to have fun and interact and communicate with more people.

I will never forget how me and my twin sister and my dad laughed at the scene when Dr. Sayer was examining a woman patient and when he showed her his pen for the evaluation she began to be manically hysterical. I also cried when Leonard finally embraced her mom and called out her name after 30 years. I am deeply moved by the story because I can relate with the related mental illnesses that I am currently fighting as well. 

The theme of the movie is essentially about not giving up, the same theme in Robin Williams' 'What Dreams May Come'. Here are some of the unforgettable lines in the movie:

Memorable lines from Awakenings:

Dr. Sayer: His gaze is from the passing of bars so exhausted, that it doesn't hold a thing anymore. For him, it's as if there were thousands of bars and behind the thousands of bars no world. The sure stride of lithe, powerful steps, that around the smallest of circles turns, is like a dance of pure energy about a center, in which a great will stands numbed. Only occasionally, without a sound, do the covers of the eyes slide open-. An image rushes in, goes through the tensed silence of the frame- only to vanish, forever, in the heart.

Dr. Sayer: What I believe in is that these people are alive inside.

Dr. Sayer: I hope we'll bring him back to wherever he is. To the world.

Leonard Lowe: I'm Leonard Lowe. It has been explained to me that I've been away for quite some time now. I'm back. 

Dr. Sayer: They have to be reminded of the beauty of life, the simple things.

Leonard Lowe: I want to walk alone. I want to do the things that you people are taking for granted.

Dr. Sayer: Love is more powerful that the drug. That needs to be nourished. This is what we've forgotten.

We will always remember you, Robin Williams.

Reflections on 100 Days to Heaven

My dad. Drama mode.

Aside from watching Spongebob Squarepants and Mr. Bean, I've finally got to like a teleserye that truly feeds the minds of kids like me, with ABS-CBN's 100 Days to Heaven (directed by Malu L. Sevilla). It seriously makes me cry, laugh like a mad man, and learn the practical approaches in life like "you should manipulate the world first before it manipulates you and buries you alive."

Sofia's (Jodi Sta. Maria) father Andres (Joel Torre) truly moves me to tears, given his situation as a physically disabled man struggling to do his job as a financially-supportive father. With his son Kevin (Louis Abuel) unfortunate enough of having leukemia, he could not sleep at night just thinking about how he could provide for his son's medical needs.

I remember my father every time Andres stays late up at night and pours out his frustrations, saying he feels like a worthless father because of his physical misfortune. I always cry whenever I see him selling rags out in the streets, with all his efforts to earn money for Kevin's treatment. I see my dad in him thinking how caring and emotionally vulnerable he is as well, with his determination to make us successful citizens of the world by always working overtime.

On the other hand, there are a lot more lessons I learn from Madame Anna Manalastas (Coney Reyes) and Anna (Xyriel Manabat). 100 Days to Heaven not only makes me want to love and understand my dad more, but also helps me understand the "art of being the bad guy". Anna shares a lot of reasonable viewpoints about life and its cruel reality we've all overlooked and we take as unreasonable.

In yesterday's episode, Anna was trying to prove to Sofia that she did a big favor to her employees by scolding them and simply telling the truth that they were a bunch of failures. I remembered how my strict teachers back in high school scolded us and I tried to understand their intentions that after all, they simply cared about us, for if they didn't, they wouldn't even bother wasting their time reprimanding us. Maybe it was just the same way Anna did.

I've always loved villains, because they're not bad guys after all. Like what Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) said, "We've all got light and dark inside of us. What matters is the part we chose to act on." Anna Manalastas may be that annoying, unreasonable toy empress, but she sure teaches me to look into the other side of bad guys--their good side.

Movie review: What Dreams May Come "The tragic myth of heaven"

"It's not about understanding. It's about not giving up."

Just how do you spell "love"? Just how far would you go to prove it? For Chris Nielson (Robin Williams), it means choosing hell over heaven just  to be with his wife Annie (Annabella Sciorra). Literally.

I once thought dreams are simply blurred and distorted images made by our subconscious minds--meaningless, confusing and even nightmarish. I never thought it could be our heaven, because it's all in our minds after all.

What shook me to tears in Vincent Ward's What Dreams May Come (1998) was Chris's undying love for his wife. When he died, he was advised in heaven that his thoughts for her would fade away in time but he refused to let go and even searched for her in hell after she committed suicide, even if it means staying there with her.

The face of hell

Just how big is the commitment in such relationships? My mentor Ms. Josephine Bonsol once said love is not about feeling anymore for it only further breaks the connection with its subjective setbacks. Love does not require a single emotion, and you show your love because you simply want to. She said it's more of a decision while you give all the love even without saying it.

When Chris died, he still longed for his wife. Even if paradise was right in front of him, his paradise was still being with Annie, as he saw his heaven in one of her majestic paintings. He didn't listen to anybody and even risked losing his mind in hell just to bring back his wife. Maybe this is what soul mates--and true love--simply mean.

We would think how heroic it might be when one gives up his own heaven and takes a ship back to the one place we all pray to the holy ghost we would not fall into--hell. Out in the real world we all want to go to heaven because we simply hate suffering. But for Chris, suffering is part of life and he simply hates not being with his wife.

It took me to a lot of tears especially when Chris found his daughter Marie (Jessie Brooks Grant) in heaven disguised as a beautiful Asian woman named Leona (Rosalind Chao, The Joy Luck Club). The movie brought me to more tears when he finally discovered his son Ian (Josh Paddock) as he remembered "he would be with his son even in hell".

Ms. Josephine Bonsol was right: the movie was deeply touching as I cried over Chris's message to his wife, that he couldn't forgive himself because he once said "he couldn't join her" to insanity after their children died, as he tried to push all the pain he even distanced himself to "the woman he loves the most".

Sometimes when you win, you lose.

And sometimes when you lose, you win. What Dreams May Come is a story about not giving up, and a challenge for all of us to face and express what true love really means.