On Body and Soul

As I've ranted before and could scream into the void forever more, I don't take much stock in awards that are doled out by various organisations. Once you realise that the film industry is operated as a business which is funded by public interest, it's hard not to see the cogs turning. Awards aren't given due to merit or talent alone. There is a whole system of campaigning containing various hidden rules and obstacles which are embedded within. So much glad-handing, so much exposure, so much momentum. Lest we forget that the credits at the end of any given film usually will list hundreds of collaborators and people involved in creating these pieces of art and only a handful are awarded for their individual efforts.

Oscar Nominations 2018
Best Foreign Language Film:
“A Fantastic Woman” (Chile)
“The Insult” (Lebanon)
“Loveless” (Russia)
“On Body and Soul” (Hungary)
“The Square” (Sweden)

Believe it or not, in my infinite wisdom and unending efforts to seem avant-garde, I usually take most interest in the foreign film category for the Oscars. I wouldn't say I put much stock in the film which inevitably wins as that typically isn't the one I like the most. The fact that the Academy feels the need to have such a category but doesn't award such films for their technical aspects and acting (only on the rarest of occasions) saddens me.

The more I watch world cinema the more in love I become with it. I prefer watching films with subtitles as I can absorb what's happening much easier. Reading and viewing at the same time has never been a complication for me. Plus there seems to be something much more difficult and unfathomable about the emotions and lack of easy answers presented in such films. Anything which compels me into deep thought captures my affection even if I don't understand it or don't love it in the traditional sense. I've always be drawn toward an element of unknowing as it fuels my imagination.

At the end of the day I always make an effort to watch films nominated for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award just because... Well I really like seeing the world through a different perspective. There's something just very self-conscious about how Hollywood projects it's views to the world. I might be naive but there is something liberating about seeing the rest of the world create indelible art without being trapped in the system.

This brings me to On Body and Soul. In the briefest of descriptions it's about two people who work in an abattoir drawn together by their dreams. It's a tentative love story and it's mixed with brutal images of cows being slaughtered and a fairy-tale landscape in the snow with two deer wandering around together. It's such a whimsical and gentle film in how it manages its central relationship.

To say anymore would be to ruin it though so I'm just going to go on and completely change the subject. At work sometimes my colleagues will sometimes go off into discussions about the reality of ghosts and death and such. I'm not sure how these things happen but they have on more than one occasion. I just sit slack jawed and bleary eyed and make the occasional wry non-committal comment.

It feels a bit awkward of me to espouse my views on such things as I worry other people might think less of me. I am aware I shouldn't let what other people think of me define my interactions but in cases like this it most certainly does. My main concern about my views and feelings are that I can't trust them. They change like the tide, coming and going, shifting back and forth gradually eroding or reforming.

If someone discusses ghosts or religion or the propensity for humans to have a soul. I suppose the magic has dissipated due to my thoughts denying the possibility of anything beyond what I can rationalise. I can believe in life beyond the stars because that makes sense in a way. Space and the deepest oceans can still be the biggest mysteries to me and therefore the most terrifying things. Death and beyond seem mundane to me. But then again some days this could become fuzzier and less definitive. The 'what ifs?' creep in...

When it comes to religion. I read a lot of books from historical investigations of the Bible and religion to angry polemics by atheists and then some cogent counter arguments and the like. I came to the conclusion that death is the end. Life can come from death on a molecular level but beyond that my spirituality is non-existent. The soul is a trick of the brain. Something we have as a species convinced ourselves exists as we are conscious of being alive and do not live solely by instinct like most every other living thing. When you die you cease to exist on this planet. If every other living dies and does not go to heaven then I think it's only fair the same rules apply to everything.

This was developed mostly as a teenager trying to cope with the grief of losing my grandmother. I worried that she was sad and lonely and disconnected from feeling love and I didn't love her enough and that was the issue. I worried endlessly that she died feeling alone although I know my parents and granddad were constantly at her bedside. From all the reading and hoping I realised I had lost my grandmother and that religion and anything beyond that was a tapestry of hopes and dreams manifested by other people over centuries trying to make sense of the world.

That loneliness I could sense within my grandma was something I grew to feel in myself and something I deal with on a daily basis. Some days are harder than others. It's within everyone somewhere I suppose. I would hope from my understanding and caring that I could help people with this sliver of knowledge. I don't necessarily have to love them enough so they aren't depressed like I thought I could with my grandma. I hope that in my day to day life I do enough to stem the flow of loneliness within the people around me and the people I care about. That's all I can do.

Ha, that got weird! I'm not sure I've expressed myself very well at all.