ONE BOOK, ONE MOVIE
Aug. 24th, 2011 02:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jenni_blogThe Book: The Foreigners by Maxine Swann
Reviews and description in amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Foreigners-Maxine-Swann/dp/1594488304
The Movie: Nowhere In Africa, directed by Caroline Link
Link to IMDb page on the movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0161860/
Both deal with ex-patriots. I've always been interested in people who can move from one country to another. Such drastic relocations always struck me as being heroic steps to take. The idea of unknown experiences lying ahead of you always gave me some sense of exhilaration, though.
As a child, I used to dream of going off by myself to a new place and not necessarily with enough money to do so easily. I always thought it should be hard. And I preferred to think of myself as living on the edge, having to find a job, any job. And renting a room or small apartment, but always paying in advance. I liked the idea of paying a year's rent in advance from savings I had accumulated while still living at home, and then trying to set myself up during that year without having to worry about where the rent was going to come from, just so I could concentrate on working and using some of my salary to pay for language courses, or anything else I needed to improve myself.
But my dreams never turned into reality because I met a man I fell in love with, I married him, and my life changed in the sense that I no longer had any freedom to travel. For better or worse, I don't know, but my life changed abruptly. Then I dreamed of my husband and I jumping into the car and going on a random road trip to anywhere - just stopping whenever we needed to rest. We did actually realize that dream a couple of times - first to Florida, then a massive road trip to San Francisco. Once the children came along it put the kibosh on doing anything like that again for awhile.
Now that I am older and have a bit more freedom, I have traveled a bit to Europe in the past few years and hope to keep doing so for as long as I can. I have always been a free spirit on the inside, no matter what I've had to be like on the outside. So books and movies that deal with free spirits are totally fascinating to me.
These two are great ones - the book and the movie.
First, the book "The Foreigners"
This is a story of three women from different countries who come together in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Daisy is an American divorcee, Isolde is from Austria, and Leonarda is an Argentine radical and free spirit. The story takes place during the tumultuous times of 2002, when there was political unrest and frequent rioting in Buenos Aires.
I have not yet finished the novel, but it's already given me some wonderfully provocative ideas. Here are some quotes:
"Who's Sarmiento?"
"Just, like, the father of the nation. He has a beautiful image, that the whole nation is a sickly anatomy."
To paraphrase what Leonarda says later, the country was too big in Sarmiento's view, and inert. What he wanted was to create a circulatory system for the nation, putting it in motion by populating the country with immigrants but only the 'right kind'. He talked about the greatness of Argentina's systems of navigable rivers whose 'aorta' was El Plata. Fascinating stuff if you are a foreigner wanting to get a handle on the country!
Daisy meets Gabriel upon renting her house (she paid rent in advance for six months, just as I had always wanted to do). Gabriel is a young man with a mournful face when he is serious, but it turns demonic when he smiles. He used to study medicine, but hard times forced him to become a bicycle courier, as well as a gigolo. A male/male gigolo who dates men for money and to be taken out to nice places.
Another awesome line:
"The question is what do you do when you're living in an age of stupidity and in possession of a truth that no one wants to hear?"
Fantastic! I've always thought this exact thing!
Daisy has joined a group of people who are trying to create an alternate society. Leonarda introduces her to this group, called Mercury.
I am hoping that the rest of the book continues to be as interesting and provocative as the first 50 pages. It does seem to be full of interesting characters (I haven't met Isolde yet) and I am hoping it will also have some good insight into the character of the country.
The movie "Nowhere in Africa".
This film involves a family from Germany, forced to flee the Nazi regime in 1938, relocating in Africa and working on a farm in a remote area of Kenya. The husband/father was a lawyer back home, but in Africa he must try to manage a small farm for its owner, without knowing anything about farming. At first he seems to fail in everything...in his job, in his relationship with his wife (she hates it there and doesn't cooperate), but the daughter loves Africa. She runs wild, makes friends with native children and adopts some strange pets. She has an absolutely fabulous life there as an adolescent, soon to be a woman, while her parents' relationship begins to fall apart.
I've never heard of any of this film's actors before, but they were all terrific, especially the young girl and the elderly African gentleman who works as the family's servant, but who teaches them everything they need to know about Africa with quiet, graceful dignity. He loves them and they cannot do without him, coming to love him in return.
This is one brilliant film, one that is easy to love, in the same sense that "Old Yeller" was. I am very enthusiastic in my praise of this movie. I'd recommend both it and the above book for anyone who thinks they might be interested in the subject of moving away from home.
Reviews and description in amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Foreigners-Maxine-Swann/dp/1594488304
The Movie: Nowhere In Africa, directed by Caroline Link
Link to IMDb page on the movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0161860/
Both deal with ex-patriots. I've always been interested in people who can move from one country to another. Such drastic relocations always struck me as being heroic steps to take. The idea of unknown experiences lying ahead of you always gave me some sense of exhilaration, though.
As a child, I used to dream of going off by myself to a new place and not necessarily with enough money to do so easily. I always thought it should be hard. And I preferred to think of myself as living on the edge, having to find a job, any job. And renting a room or small apartment, but always paying in advance. I liked the idea of paying a year's rent in advance from savings I had accumulated while still living at home, and then trying to set myself up during that year without having to worry about where the rent was going to come from, just so I could concentrate on working and using some of my salary to pay for language courses, or anything else I needed to improve myself.
But my dreams never turned into reality because I met a man I fell in love with, I married him, and my life changed in the sense that I no longer had any freedom to travel. For better or worse, I don't know, but my life changed abruptly. Then I dreamed of my husband and I jumping into the car and going on a random road trip to anywhere - just stopping whenever we needed to rest. We did actually realize that dream a couple of times - first to Florida, then a massive road trip to San Francisco. Once the children came along it put the kibosh on doing anything like that again for awhile.
Now that I am older and have a bit more freedom, I have traveled a bit to Europe in the past few years and hope to keep doing so for as long as I can. I have always been a free spirit on the inside, no matter what I've had to be like on the outside. So books and movies that deal with free spirits are totally fascinating to me.
These two are great ones - the book and the movie.
First, the book "The Foreigners"
This is a story of three women from different countries who come together in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Daisy is an American divorcee, Isolde is from Austria, and Leonarda is an Argentine radical and free spirit. The story takes place during the tumultuous times of 2002, when there was political unrest and frequent rioting in Buenos Aires.
I have not yet finished the novel, but it's already given me some wonderfully provocative ideas. Here are some quotes:
"Who's Sarmiento?"
"Just, like, the father of the nation. He has a beautiful image, that the whole nation is a sickly anatomy."
To paraphrase what Leonarda says later, the country was too big in Sarmiento's view, and inert. What he wanted was to create a circulatory system for the nation, putting it in motion by populating the country with immigrants but only the 'right kind'. He talked about the greatness of Argentina's systems of navigable rivers whose 'aorta' was El Plata. Fascinating stuff if you are a foreigner wanting to get a handle on the country!
Daisy meets Gabriel upon renting her house (she paid rent in advance for six months, just as I had always wanted to do). Gabriel is a young man with a mournful face when he is serious, but it turns demonic when he smiles. He used to study medicine, but hard times forced him to become a bicycle courier, as well as a gigolo. A male/male gigolo who dates men for money and to be taken out to nice places.
Another awesome line:
"The question is what do you do when you're living in an age of stupidity and in possession of a truth that no one wants to hear?"
Fantastic! I've always thought this exact thing!
Daisy has joined a group of people who are trying to create an alternate society. Leonarda introduces her to this group, called Mercury.
I am hoping that the rest of the book continues to be as interesting and provocative as the first 50 pages. It does seem to be full of interesting characters (I haven't met Isolde yet) and I am hoping it will also have some good insight into the character of the country.
The movie "Nowhere in Africa".
This film involves a family from Germany, forced to flee the Nazi regime in 1938, relocating in Africa and working on a farm in a remote area of Kenya. The husband/father was a lawyer back home, but in Africa he must try to manage a small farm for its owner, without knowing anything about farming. At first he seems to fail in everything...in his job, in his relationship with his wife (she hates it there and doesn't cooperate), but the daughter loves Africa. She runs wild, makes friends with native children and adopts some strange pets. She has an absolutely fabulous life there as an adolescent, soon to be a woman, while her parents' relationship begins to fall apart.
I've never heard of any of this film's actors before, but they were all terrific, especially the young girl and the elderly African gentleman who works as the family's servant, but who teaches them everything they need to know about Africa with quiet, graceful dignity. He loves them and they cannot do without him, coming to love him in return.
This is one brilliant film, one that is easy to love, in the same sense that "Old Yeller" was. I am very enthusiastic in my praise of this movie. I'd recommend both it and the above book for anyone who thinks they might be interested in the subject of moving away from home.
