Seconds & pixels

It seems to me that nowadays, pressured by years of structured critique we tend to forget what art is really about, what its purpose is and why we create and observe art. Everything has to fall in a certain category, it has to follow certain rules, it has to score on lists and lists of what are considered to be essential characteristics and the last thing one mentions in the review is the small “like or dislike” factor. But isn’t art just about that? For me a good film is a film that changed my emotions or thoughts after watching it… if it made me feel happy, sad, if it made me wonder about certain things or showed me things I never knew existed, that’s a good film. If those feelings last for a long time, if the next day the feelings or thoughts are still there, then I consider it an exceptional film. And rarely, very rarely, something very weird will happen. Sometimes, a film will change things in me irreversibly. Sometimes, the person walking out of the cinema is not the person that walked in. Very rarely, watching a film will change my life, will change something essential in the way I see the world. That, my friends, is for me an oustanding film, an artistic masterpiece that needs to be shown to the world and made public just like all the other wonders of mankind; and that is precisely what “Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain” is.

“Another complicated French film… is this really a good time for this? I’m pretty tired already…” … these were my first thoughts as I was preparing myself to watch “Amelie”. Little did I know how wrong I was, how pleasantly Amelie would take me through every minute of it’s wonderful portrayal of life. I find it impossible to explain what Amelie really is. It’s a film about a child who got older, but never grew up. It’s a film that doesn’t show you a perfect world, but it shows you how our world COULD be perfect. It’s a film that doesn’t show you the impossible…it just shows you that some things are possible. Magical acting by Audrey Tautou combined with a genius musical score by Yann Tiersen (the theme keeps playing in my head) and amazing cinematography,Amelie makes me wonder if Jean-Pierre Jeunet is really the same guy who directed Alien: Resurrection. I couldn’t guarantee that he really is (although that’s what it would seem), but I know that I am not the same guy that I was before Amelie. I am different, changed in some irremediable way.

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I was never able to steer imagination the way I wanted. Tried words, music, tried everything and never was I able to show exactly what I wanted, to make people see what I wanted them to see. In the end, I realized that I am left with no choice but to show them exactly what I see, to show them the world through my eyes. And then, photography became more than a hobby.

Nevertheless, there are still many things which I can’t capture, which are only there for one second and then they are lost forever. In just that way, I was never able to catch the essence of your perfume. I took a whiff of it and then it was imprinted there, in some dark corner of my mind, forever. It became as essential to me as air and every day in which I would sit right behind you breathing through you was wasted because I never dared move up-front and grab its essence. It’s funny that I never liked your perfume…I hated it from the first day. I though it was a horrible essence for a woman’s skin. Nevertheless, there was something in the mystic olfactory print it had that was more enchanting than anything so simple had ever been before. Those days are gone now and they were all wasted by a pointeless wait. Last time I met you, you were wearing a different perfume, which was the first thing to warn me that things and times have changed - as I was soon going to discover. I find that perfume ocassionaly, on some random girl hurrying through the crowded streets or hallways and it always amazes me what magic reminiscing power it has. But I was never able to capture it and I never will be… It always fades slowly away into utter ignorance until the next time when a random encounter will provide me with a few moments of reunion with those days.

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I sometimes experience a very weird feeling…I miss places I’ve never been to, I miss sensations I’ve never felt, I miss times I’ve never lived in. Nevertheless, this feeling combined with the typical “deja vu” are like salt and pepper to my everyday existence. So I can definitely say that I miss her. I miss her and the simple happiness we had back between the two wars, in that harsh winter in our mountain caban. I miss her.

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