Opisy(1)
This full-length debut by Spanish film rebel Fernando Arrabal was based on his novel titled Baal Babilonia (1958). It is an unusually suggestive and agressive picture where real stories from the author’s childhood during the Spanish civil war are intertwined with surreal images full of cruelty and sadomasochism. Arrabal uses his specific style to recount his memories of life lived under the scrutiny of two sets of eyes – one belonging to his beloved and feared mother and one to the father that he never got the chance to know. (MFFK Febiofest)
(więcej)Recenzje (1)
When the opening credits already resemble a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, one must prepare for both fantasy and brutality, in a single blend. A personal, symbolic, and surreal statement about one's own childhood thus blends with naturalism attacking our most intimate senses (not any ephemeral aesthetic abilities), with realism in the description of fascist atrocities. The story of a boy as the story of Spain torn between admiration for the father and love for the mother, where guilt and desire, life and death constantly fight each other - and again (without one side truly winning) come together in a single blend. Therefore, all of Arrabal's film images are predetermined by both desire and death, and the poignancy and dread of this necessity emerge in the person of the mother, whom our protagonist is forced to love despite her guilt – indeed, Spain faced difficult dilemmas in that terrible civil war.
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