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Wednesday, 25 March 2015

The Cinemaniac Corner (second season): Discovering the world

When I was a child, and had never travelled to any other foreign country, I loved to imagine exotic places by watching adventure films. You know, those movies in black and white, such as `The Thief of Baghdad´, `The Treasure of the Sierra Madre´, `King Solomon´s Mines´ or `Valley of the Kings´...

When watching those films you could cross different ages and borders. In a way, you could not only enjoy and learn from them, but you could initiate yourself in interesting archaeological or historical interesting facts and issues.

Let us remember actors of the stature of Charlton Heston, playing characters such as `Ben-Hur´, `El Cid´ and `Michelangelo´.

Let us consider charming actresses like Ava Gardner, starring in `The Snows of Kilimanjaro´ or `Mogambo´.

Since then, I have visited some places -although not too many or too exotic- but I still like to learn about different countries and imagine how they were or nowadays are. That´s why I am going to travel through five remarkable, well-known and acclaimed films from five continents, and tell you something about them in connection with the corners of the world they show:

Europe: `How Green was my Valley´ , by John Ford.
Africa: `Out of Africa´, by Sydney Pollack.
Asia: `Slumdog Millionaire´, by Danny Boyle.
America: `Forrest Gump´, by Robert Zemeckis.
Oceania: `Mutiny on the Bounty´, by Lewis Milestone.

How Green was my Valley (1941)
 

This movie offers a personal view of the working-class Europe of earlier times. 
It was an impressive movie for me which taught me a little bit about that industrial Europe far from post cards, far from the world reknowned monuments such as the Eiffel Tower, the Colisseum or Big Ben.

The plot of the film combine both the lives of many miners who had lost their jobs in a Welsh town that used to be prosperous, with the more sentimental unforeseen incidents of the Morgan´s, a hard working family in the late  Nineteenth Century.

It deals with how the area became blackened by the coal mines that fill the south of Wales, how the workers started organizing themselves, how hard working conditions limited and influenced the lives of so many people in the surrounding area.    

Most interesting is the work of Maureen O´Hara and the rest of the film´s cast, and it must be emphasized that the movie won five Academy Awards.


Out of Africa (1985)


This famous movie common remembered mostly because of the fine characterizations by Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, as well as John Barry´s soundtrack, offers many other attractions. Although the story begins in Denmark, taking place during the First World War, it runs over into the heart of Africa.

The main character -the Danish writer Isak Dinesen, the pseudonym of Karen Blixen- goes through a very troubled and disappointing marriage of convenience, not blessed with children, and filled with the infidelities of her womanizing husband. She then devotes herself to founding and running a school for native Massai children, together with managing the family´s coffee plantation. At the time, an attractive free-living big-game hunter appears, a non-conventional man. An affair between them ensues.

Eventually, they find out that their lifestyles are very different and so their love is impossible. Nevertheless, when the plantation and the school suffer an unexpected fire bombing, this man rushes to the property to help them and save it.  

The film offers fabulous photography of African wildlife,  the savannah and big forests, of the mountains and the immense expanses of Kenya. The film won seven Academy Awards.


Slumdog Millionaire (2008)


In this more recent film, you can explore some very unique places of the huge continent of Asia: specifically the slums of Mumbai. It is a story told by plenty of flashbacks, featuring the young contestant of a TV program who is about to win a grand prize. He is then arrested and tortured by the police because he is suspected of cheating. This is how we know about his former life and his brother´s and girlfriend´s harsh background.

Despite the brutality of the many things that he remembers during the contest, far from the hard living conditions he and his family had to go through, we can appreciate in this movie a country full of contrasts, a part of the world where the most impressive wonders, such as the Taj Mahal, exist together with dreadful poverty, pitiless gangsters and bizarre traditions. But most of all, it is an eight-time Academy Award winner  with the values of friendship and the strong human desire for self improvement triumph over all.

The film is well acted, the Bollywood music well represented and the whole product oozes a positive view of life in spite of misfortune.
       

Forrest Gump (1994)


This very well-known movie is popular for the excellent work of Tom Hanks, and remembered because for a sentence fixed to the brain of anyone that has enjoyed it: `Stupid is as stupid does´. Sentence he repeats several times throughout the film, from the very beginning when he is sitting on a bench at a bus stop. This assertion is deeply connected with the fact that the main character, Forrest Gump, is a naive affectionate fellow with a minus-75 IQ who paradoxically leads his life much better than some of the clever people he meets, just because of his good heart and because of some long-lasting values that his poor mother -wonderly interpreted by Sally Field- has taught him, such as that contained in the fore mentioned sentence.

The movie gives you the opportunity to travel not only across the Atlantic, but also all over the history of the country in the second half of the Twentieth century. Several presidents appear: Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon... Various historical milestones are referred to: the Vietnam War, the Sixties´ hippie movement, Watergate Scandal... Some admired celebrities are in them, too: Elvis Presley, John Lennon...

Other endearing characters of the film are Forrest´s war buddy, the shrimp fisherman Benjamin Buford `Bubba´ and his beloved AIDS-infected wife, Jenny.

The film made a lot of money for Paramount and won six Academy Awards. The National Film Registry selected it as an `aesthetically, historically and culturally significant´ creation.  


Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)


I remember this as one of the most exciting nautical films of my teenage years, which impressed me most with its exotic locations: the Tahitian Islands.

The plot is based on the trouble provoked by the cruelty of the captain of a British ship called the `Bounty´, that sails from England to Tahiti, around Cape Horn, in order to transport breadfruit to feed slaves in Jamaica. Soon, the trip becomes strained when a seaman is falsely accused of stealing a cheese on board, and brutally flogged for it. This is witnessed and disapproved of by the ship´s mate who happens to be played by Marlon Brando. But this is only the first step of an increasingly general annoyance that leads to a mutiny.

The stressful atmosphere of the vessel contrasts deeply with the easy-going life they find in the Tahitian Islands, a natural paradise where they are kindly received by the natives.

The beauty of the Polynesian women trap them all, especially Lieutenant Fletcher (Brando) who falls in love with the Tahitian king´s daughter, a gorgeous woman played by Tarita Teriipaia.

The film could be considered an entertaining captivating adventure. It did not win any Academy Awards although it was nominated for quite a number of them.

Of course, I could finish this small personal five-continent film review with the acknowledgement that the last movie to consider under the topic `countries' might be `Finding Neverland´ by Marc Forster (2004).

But that´s another story. And probably, another place, too.


The Thanksgiving Turkey

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