This is a post of many layers.

Recently, we re-watched Cinema Paradiso, written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, and released in 1988. (The long version, complete with English subtitles, can be viewed courtesy of Internet Archive. There's also a script available, albeit in slightly odd English.)

Why this second bite? Well, the informal film club that exists here in Kuching was having a little brunch, and part of the rationale for the meeting was to discuss Cinema Paradiso.

The story in brief:

Salvatore Di Vita, aka Toto -- whose father died in World War II, and whose mother has little money to spare -- grows up in a Sicilian village called Giancaldo, and develops a great love of cinema. He's alternately encouraged and restrained in this passion by local projectionist Alfredo. Encouraged, because he's obviously keen, and not untalented. Restrained, though, because he's a brazen little chap, and his mum is determined to bring him to heel, and because Alfredo is very clear-eyed about the pluses and minuses of his job: "I took up this profession when I was ten years old... The films were silent. The projectors were run by hand, like this, with a crank. And you wound the crank all day long. It was really rough going!! If you got tired and slowed down, boom! Everything would go up in flames!... This is not a job for you. It's like being a slave. You're always alone. You see the same film over and over again, because you have nothing else to do... Cooped up in here you die of heat in the summer and cold in the winter. You breathe in smoke, gas fumes, and earn practically nothing." There are advantages, though, he admits: "With time, you get used to it. Besides, when you hear from up here that there's a full house and that people are laughing, having fun... Then you're happy too..."

The years go by. Alfredo, blinded in a cinema fire (a very common occurrence, it seems), is succeeded in his role of entertainer-in-chief by Toto. But after the young man's first love meets with a disappointing outcome (Elena's father does not approve), he goes off to do his military service.

When he returns, Alfredo urges him, in no uncertain terms, to leave Sicily: "This land is cursed... When you're here every day you feel like you're at the centre of the universe, it seems like nothing ever changes... You've got to go away a long time, for many, many years, before coming back and finding your people again, the land where you were born..."


It wasn't just the south that people left... Trieste also experienced a wave of emigration in the 1940s and 1950s

Alfredo is known for dispensing life wisdom via quotes from films. But these are not movie words. They're Alfredo's words. "Go back to Rome," he reiterates. "You're young, the world is yours!... I don't want to hear YOU talk any more, I want to hear talk ABOUT you." When Toto leaves, Alfredo says: "Don't come back any more, don't think about us, don't turn round, don't write, don't give in to nostalgia. Forget us all."

So he does. He becomes famous as a film-maker. But his life is empty, devoid of meaningful relationships.

Hearing of Alfredo's death, Salvatore decides to return to Sicily for the funeral. For the first time in 30 years... He hangs around long enough to see the demolition of the village cinema (now no longer used). Then he goes back to Rome, and resumes his accolade-studded but lonely life.

***

It is, without doubt, a brilliant movie. There are many striking scenes, but at this moment I'm thinking of the one where Alfredo projects the movie onto the building across the square, and everyone is SO happy and excited. Then comes disaster. Which is exactly how life is, of course...

The longer version adds a lot more detail about Elena. Salvatore meets her again on this return visit to Sicily, and learns how their planned final meeting was thwarted by Alfredo. "It's better for both of you if you don't see each other," Alfredo told her, adding: "Do it for him!" Salvatore tries to rekindle the romance, but after one passionate encounter, she regretfully closes the door on this idea. In the desolation of the deserted cinema, he finds the note she left him, unbeknownst to blind Alfredo.

For me, the shorter version, without all this infill, works much better. A stronger, punchier, sadder message. And a more realistic one. We hardly ever get to know the details of these things. It didn't work out. Basta...

(Incidentally, film-maker Edmund Yeo agrees with me...)

***

We last watched this movie in December 1996...

Diary entry: "After supper we watched Cinema Paradiso, a beautifully done Italian film (though sadly in a TV-abridged version). It is very sad, rather haunting, leaves lots of questions. Alfredo urges the young lad to leave the God-forsaken southern town he's grown up in. He does, and becomes very successful, but at the price of abandoning his family and the girl he loves. So, was it the right decision?"

The following year, we left Britain. Questions about decisions to leave were very present in my mind.


Us in 1996. I know...

***

Rewatching, almost 28 years later, was an interesting experience, and the main thing I take away is a realization of how much more I appreciate it now, with all those decades of context behind me... I hate growing older, really hate it, but this was a reminder that an advantage of growing older (possibly the only one) is that you just KNOW so much more...

Watching now, the enthusiastic Sicilian audiences remind me of audiences in India (or Indian audiences in Malaysia). The priest's censorship (one "ding" of the bell, and the kissing is cut) reminds me of censorship experiences in KL.

And when you know the work of Elena Ferrante, you have a context for all the dust, all the routine violence, and all the other indications that these weren't really the "good old days".

You're reminded that what makes people laugh or cry is constantly subject to change. The people in the movie during Toto's childhood liked what my Dad liked. But we've gone through many shifts in our lifetime. Think of 1970s TV... Even 1990s comedy seems a bit dated now...

And you're reminded that the friendship between Alfredo and Toto would probably be suspect these days, which seems terribly sad...


Cinema in Jaipur

Cinema Paradiso treats you to layer upon layer of film history. The more you know your old films (and I don't particularly), the better you'll appreciate it. But even I can see the style of movies changing, becoming more gritty, less escapist.

We've now been through enough cycles to put the feared "death of the cinema" in context. Yes, many movie theatres closed. But they never entirely succumbed to the home entertainment phenomenon. I'm reminded of little cinemas I loved so much -- Cinema Gold in Palmerston North, Cinema Nova in Melbourne... -- and of inspiring film festivals in Melbourne and KL and (even more appreciated because rarer) Kuching.

And film has remained part of our lives, even when it's reduced to the small screen. Since leaving Britain we have moved from videos to DVDs to various streaming opportunities. These last, plus the covid-related immobility that was thrust upon us, ensured several film-heavy years. (Hence all the "Pictures from everywhere" posts, which start here.)



And that question. Always that question. Did Alfredo do the right thing? Did Salvatore do the right thing? So much success, yet so much heartache, so much emptiness...

Film club brunchers seemed to agree that, yes, leaving was definitely the right thing to do. But then they're mostly migrants. They left somewhere to come here. On the other hand, Salvatore's mother also seems very accepting, very forgiving, when he talks to her at the end. I guess Italian mothers were used to departures...

I'm still divided. I don't regret any of my decisions to leave. But I'm also very aware of their cost.

***

Sicily, we hope, is going to figure in our next backpacking expedition. Bagheria, Tornatore's hometown, was the inspiration for Giancaldo. That looks pretty accessible from Palermo. It's the piazza of Palazzo Adriano that figures in the movie, though. Not sure we'll find transport to get there, or to Cefalu, further along the coast...

***

As a coda, I offer this. The two places we lived in Melbourne were both very close to the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, aka ACCA.


ACCA houses Vault, a controversial yellow sculpture that started out as an object of derision, and is now "on its way to being honoured with inclusion on the Victorian Heritage Register"

I loved ACCA. Whenever my PhD brain was overloaded and confused, I would go and look at the exhibitions over there. I never really understood them, but they made me see things differently. A kind of homeopathic cure for brain scramble.

Anyway, in November 2007, I went to see an exhibition entitled Cinema Paradiso.

Diary again: "This seemed designed to illustrate that cinema is very far from paradise, and some of it was predictably weird. But these expos ALWAYS leave you with something to think about. The beautiful black-and-white photos of ornate cinemas, for example, or the studies of petrol stations, a la road movie. Or the triptych of a real road movie -- the middle panel giving you the view forward out of the rainy windscreen, the other two focusing on the universes of the driver and passenger. Or the shorts, quite creepy -- the constant re-runs of a guy who is trying, but never quite managing, to haul himself over a wall, a study in futility and frustration (or of never giving up); the guy in the bath, the water glinting above his wide open eyes, totally corpse-like until he sits up. Or the split-screen viewing of 'Destroy She Said', portraying 'fractured femmes fatales' (the blurb) -- women in fear, women outside, pictures of dislocation. Or, possibly most effectively, the miniature cinema. Standing at the back you see the audience space and the movie playing on the screen. Through the headphones you hear the film dialogue, but also the conversations of the audience members. ('Do you have any more popcorn?'; 'This isn't the film I thought it was going to be.') Then the film breaks down, and the action is taking place in the audience, with shots ringing out, and panic all around. A more complex form of the alienation effect -- distancing you, and then blurring the boundaries between portrayal and reality. That's why I go. These things stay with you."

Art, ultimately, is a laboratory, where we conduct experiments on what might have been.