Little Ashes (2008)

Little Ashes (2008)

Director: Paul Morrison
Scenario: Philippa Goslett
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: UK
Year: 2008
Duration: 112 min
Rating: 7.0/10

Actors: Javier Beltrán, Robert Pattinson, Matthew McNulty, Marina Gatell, Adria Allue, Simón Andreu, Rubén Arroyo, Ferran Audí, Adrian Devant, Ramón Enrich Borrellas, Sue Flack, Diana Gómez, Arly Jover, Ferran Lahoz, Esther Nubiola, Bruno Oro, Vicky Peńa, Joan Pico, Marc Pujol, Christian Rodrigo, Pep Sais, Xavi Siles

Drama o snovima, ljubavi i životu Salvador Dalija, Federika Garsije Lorke i Luisa Bunjelija.

Vjerujem da su svi čuli za ova tri genijalca 20 - tih godina prošlog vijeka! Ako kojim slučajem niste odmah da ste pošli na wikipediju i pročitali sve što nađete o njima. Nejmote samo da se obrukate pa kada vas neko pita da li vam se dopada Salvador Dali odgovorite:

" super je parfem!"

Istini za volju ne bi me iznenadilo da tako nešto čujem! Ova današnja omladina je zapuštena totalno!
Film je pokušaj da se na jedan specifičan način opišu sanjarenja tri momka čija će imena biti upisana u knjige Španskih velikana.
Ako ništa drugo ono bar za Salvadora Dalija i Federika G. Lorke.
Međutim iako je film prijatan za oko , prepun simbolizma ugrađenog u predivne pokretne fotografije i ima lijpeu priču, nekako mi je ostao nedorečen. Definitivno , iako je Lorka bio omađijani homić, pisac stihova koji se ponavljaju kao neizostavni dio ljubavnih pisama, avangarda i svog i današnjeg vremena, u ovom filmu to nije dovoljno jako dočarano. Očito da je režiser nedovoljno upoznat sa univerzalnom prirodom gay paćenja i Lorkinom upornom borbom za oslobođenjem sopstvene ličnosti, pravednost i tolerantnost. Sve to ga je odvelo pod nož Frankovog krvavog režima.

Dalijevo eksperimentisanje sa svime što upadne u njegovo genijalno oko je dovelo do fantazija pretočenih na platno. Očito je da je Dali eksperimentisao i sa svojim i sa tuđim emocijama, tražeći u njima odgovore na svoje često zbrkane rebuse, za koje nisam siguran da je iko uspio razumjeti.
Fascinantna je njegova emotivna vezanost za Lorku koju nije mogao upotpuniti i fizičkom, ma kako se trudio i željeli i jedan i drugi!
Na kraju ostane rečenica: "Znam da sam ti povrijedio ponos, iskupiću ti se, a ti ćeš me naučiti kako!"

Artistički postavljen film, nam ipak kontinuirano priča svoju priču koja bi se do beskraja mogla pričati. Pogledajte pa će te znati o čemu pričam.

Vidim da sam zalutao u misli i slike koje su mi se pod uticajem filma naređale, pa bi bilo dobro da napravim otklon od filma i ispričam vam ponešto o mojim mladačkim sanjarenjima.

U to neko vrijeme sam imao druga ( nikada ga nisam nazvao dečkom ili momkom jer mi je to nekeko pederski) kojeg sam nekako smatrao prirodnim dijelom sebe. Naprosto nastavak mene u smjeru u kojem se nisam znao iskazati. Sve što nisam znao kako, on je znao! I obrnuto!
Jednom me je pitao da li me je ikada strah od budućnosti? Rekao sam mu da nije, nego svaki novi dan očekujem kao neki nepročitani roman! ( ili ti neodgledani film) On mi rećče da je njega jedino strah da me ne izgubi!
Nasmijao sam se i odgovorio mu: Nikada me nećeš izgubiti, ovo šti mi sada imamo je priča koju ćeš uvijek imati sa sobom! I čitav život če mo imati ponešto da dopišemo u nju!
I tako je zaista! Evo i nakon 20 godina često se sjetim neke nenapisane misli iz tog vremena!

Souce: www.channel4.com

By Ali Catterall

Drama about the lives and loves of the young Salvador Dalí, Luis Bun~uel and Federico García Lorca in 1920s Madrid
According to Salvador Dalí, Federico García Lorca, the gay poet and dramatist, had been "madly in love" with him. "He tried to screw me," said Dali. "Twice." But the affair was never consummated because, said the painter, "it hurts".

Whatever the truth of the matter (Dalí would say just about anything to get a reaction - or for money), Little Ashes screenwriter Philippa Goslett has taken this, and the pair's supposed innuendo-laced correspondence, as the starting block for a torrid melodrama about forbidden love and artistic integrity, sketching in the details until the facts become as pliant as one of Dalí's timepieces.

The year is 1922, the city is Madrid, and three creative geniuses just happen to be lodging together in student digs while unleashing a firestorm of modernity upon the world. The first act of the film has fun presenting a portrait of the artists as young dogs. Or in Federico's case, an Andalusian one; he later claimed surrealist wind-up Un Chien Andalou was a personal attack on him by his former chums.

Here's bolshie Bun~uel (Matthew McNulty), upbraiding Lorca (Javier Beltrán) for not being more of a modernist. And here's a "strategically placed copy of Freud" on somebody's desk. So which one's Dalí? Oh, there he is, a pale, effete lad, more stick insect than Catalan, pulling up to the doors of the Residencia in lace sleeves, knee-high boots and a poncy page-boy haircut. You can always spot those first-year art students a mile off, can't you?

If Lorca's the wound, Bun~uel's the scab. And Dalí (Robert Pattinson) is trying so hard to be edgy and out there ("how do you feel about communal defecation?" he drunkenly demands of a society hostess), he loses sight of the fact he naturally is. The three consolidate their friendships, and as is often the way with trios, Bun~uel pinballs between Lorca and Dalí, who have initially become far closer. How close? Well, let's just hope the queer-bashing Bun~uel doesn't find out about it. Caramba! Too late.

Although Little Ashes concerns artists and the artistic impulse, it's not what you'd call an 'art movie', sharing more DNA with, say, Lust For Life than 1991's Van Gogh. At its best, it does a good job of showing how it feels to navigate that tricky passage between late adolescence and early-twenties.

But as a would-be penetrating expose, it's too polite, too compromised and stagey. Perhaps owing to its modest ?1.4m budget, it looks - and sounds (everyone ees speekeeng like thees) like a teleplay, featuring stilted dialogue and heavy-handed symbolism, such as a scene of a heartbroken Lorca transposed with that of a slain bull in the ring.

In the reductive way of biopics, Lorca's a sap, Dalí's a brat, and Bun~uel's a yob. Beltrán elegantly conveys the poet's raw sensitivity ("like an animal that's been skinned" as Dalí puts it), though can't quite pull off his celebrated magnetism; the film would rather he fulfill his role as passive victim. Love interest Robert Pattinson is perhaps not yet old enough to play the bug-eyed dandy with the upside-down moustache, an exemplar of John Updike's aphorism that "Fame is a mask that eats into the face". Yet his grasp of Dalí-esque tics and gestures suggest natural comic ability. He's wasted on those fantasy movies; he should play Buster Keaton.

For his part, Matthew McNulty is saddled with the sketchiest, and for dramatic reasons, least sympathetic role as the bullish homophobe. Anyone wishing to get a fuller picture of his Residencia days should be directed to his autobiography 'My Last Breath', in which he says of Lorca, "Of all the human beings I've ever known, Federico was the finest."

For the sake of argument, let us suppose an affair did occur, outside of Dalí's febrile imagination. However, by getting bogged down in a tease of a romance (this is a gay film for straights; nothing to scare the donkeys here), the drama sidesteps the prevailing politics - vital to a real appreciation of the artists' anti-establishment stance, and all but cruises past the Spanish Civil War. Lorca's arrest and murder by fascist firing squad is predictably soft-pedalled, with the camera discretely pulling away from the forensics of his notorious dispatch; finished off with a pistol in his anus ("two shots up the bum, because he was a poof" an assassin later confessed).

Ultimately, Little Ashes, a piece of commercial entertainment made on the other side of the twentieth century, lacks the courage of its case studies' convictions. This is most clearly illustrated by how far it's prepared to go in one direction, but not the other. In the movie's most hysterical scene, a self-loathing Lorca beds his unhappy fag-hag Margarita (Marina Gatell) as a substitute Dalí, while the distraught painter voyeuristically watches. Whether the incident has any basis in reality or not, it's integral to the dramatic arc, and extremely graphic - nudging hardcore. Yet to portray this, in such prurient detail, but not its homosexual flipside - the poet attempting and failing to penetrate the painter (whether it happened or not), seems cowardly, and indicative of that bourgeois morality the film's subjects were doing their damndest to smash through.