I got rid of friends, clothes, habits, photos.
It was a cleanse. A purifying rage attack.
Everyone knows that if there is going to be some kind of radical change, it is better to get rid of all the past as soon as possible. This is good advice.
For example, if there is another country on the horizon. Another religion, another optics – it is worth immediately digging a very deep hole to lay a completely new foundation on it.
Different lives will never be friends with each other.
That’s what Italian Valeria Collina did. He had three lives – before his death came and his life after death began.
How do the mothers of murderers live? How they feel, how they feel: Such a beast was given to the world in this bosom, these hands caressed it, you smiled with these lips in exchange for the smile of the future beast … At least cut your whole body into pieces.
An elderly woman in a headscarf, in almost complete darkness, looks directly into the frame and starts a conversation. Confession of a man whose confessions the cinema does not usually accept, so it starts out awkwardly. disdain. Fears.
An unusual disaster happens, it is impossible to live on it, all the rails and traverses on which the engine goes, are dismantled, the engine runs out …
And yet such disasters happen at every turn. Art does not like to analyze such cases. You will not receive artistic, social, monetary benefits.
The title of this movie is “After the Bridge” – a title that refers to “The world after Auschwitz”, a term that appears in literature and tries to understand how the Holocaust was possible in the civilized world.
The film “After the Bridge” was screened yesterday at the “Docker” festival in Moscow, the festival shows relevant documentary films from year to year.
But there is a movie – and there is a movie.
It has to be shown and seen.
There are lots of movies about war, about disasters, about people who don’t want to profit from the mountain. That’s why the movie is always made from the victim’s point of view. Shooting this way is easy and enjoyable. The audience is crying. Box office, awards, this and this.
And here is another scheme that will bring you fame and money: the two victims of the two warring parties are locked in a situation, a temporary void where there is no way out – and there is love and understanding between them – the audience leaves the film, aware and content with itself.
There is a public consensus about the victim. As for the killer, no.
How is it possible, blah blah, – the audience timidly, – there are cows and pedophiles in the middle of the day – why have you ever thought about it – crazy, they are not the norm, they are born abnormal families. What if not? But what if they are the norm, but what if they were born into normal loving families? Hannah Arend and Sigmund Bauman who wrote about the normality of evil are infuriated, few write about abuse against them.
Even about major disasters, something very cute for the laity is created. Victims are good and unfortunate – murderers are pathological personalities. And now the industry of tragedies is getting fatter and feasting. Without touching the core of the disaster.
But the film industry has real priests and warriors. They make movies like this, like “After the Bridge.”
In 2017… we still remember right?.. or has everyone forgotten?.. There was a terrorist attack on London Bridge.
A van hit the pavement and began to run over pedestrians. Then three people with long knives got out of the “Islam” van and started cutting people. Eight people were killed and dozens were injured. A few minutes later, all three attackers were shot dead by the police.
The name of one of them was not made public for a long time. This was the vote. Son. Joseph.
Signora Valeria acts with incredible dignity. The writers of the film protect themselves with incredible dignity. No one will flirt with the audience here.
At first it was surpassed by journalists.
– Signora Valeria, how do you feel now? What would you say to the families of the victims? (great journalism question)
– It is impossible to say anything intelligible. All I can say is that I totally understand what that’s like. I know how mothers feel.
The attack was on Saturday. On Sunday, Valeria’s ex-husband called from Morocco and said he could not contact Yusuf. Only two terrorists have been identified so far. On Monday my daughter called and said she was going with two cops. Police came. He said he was ready to give his phone if it would help them, but they said no. “You don’t understand, ma’am, that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to tell you that your son is dead.”
He was third. However, his face has not yet been shown.
His son was the last to be identified. His hand was shattered, he could no longer hit anyone with it.
From that moment began the most painful phase of his life. Already fourth?
She had three lives (first an Italian, a Catholic and an actress, then a Muslim, a Moroccan and a mother, then divorced and an Italian). She was a good mother. What was his fault?
His corpse is unnamed, his grave is unnamed. Her biological mother refused to come to her funeral and pray at her grave because she couldn’t accept what she had done, which was her way of saying “I disagree with you”.
continues to be her mother.
Valeria, an ex-Catholic, communicates with a Catholic priest. This is how people of faith should be. It is a mistake to think that belief is human, that belief is anything but human. Humanism is a child of the Enlightenment and the antonym of religion.
(Of course there are even more traumatic movie experiences for the viewer, such as the movie “The Act of Murder,” another masterpiece in which the viewer is forced to sympathize with a real-life serial killer.)
Here they wander together: a priest and a Muslim woman, like in heaven, like animals coming to the watering place, like people before autumn. When Dostoevsky wrote a sentence about how a murderer and a prostitute got together in the same room to read the Bible – Nabokov laughed at this sentence, mocked, threw up, so he did not go into it. There were those who argued that the publisher entered this distasteful sentence into Dostoevsky’s text as if with his own hand.
Nabokov froze in his hatred for Dostoevsky and crushed everyone with him.
What’s so bad about this sentence? Big Bible picture. No rudeness. The cigarette butt barely illuminated that “in the beggar’s room, the murderer and the prostitute strangely come together while reading the eternal book,” is an important thought in any case.
That’s what comes to mind when you see these two, they walk in peace and talk about the terrible.
– I was looking for a wife for my son, I found a good girl, and my son suddenly said: Mom, wouldn’t you want me to marry the houris of paradise?
“He finally said something terrible, which he did. He thought the logic of death was a god and killed people in the process. Don’t ask him now.
I know a person from Israel, a healthy man who had gone through the military, who accidentally witnessed a terrorist attack. It was very difficult to listen to him. But it is necessary.
When the police saw what had happened to people, they had their hair cut off and yet they were taught how to act in such a situation. But there are situations where you cannot teach.
He knows all this. Italian, ex-Catholic, ex-artist Signora Valeria, who fled to Morocco, uprooted her European life to become a Muslim and gave birth to a son who uprooted her life.
This movie, of course, is reminiscent of Dante, and Valeria goes through the hell her own little son is taking. It is no coincidence that he so often walks through the gloomy forest. I found myself in a gloomy forest that lost the right path …
The movie is extremely important. I hope the jury will not hesitate to award unusual films.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.