2 years ago

@guyduke maybe the filmmaker tried to say something you didn't get?

2 years ago

@guyduke the theme of the movie is how we all invent our own stories to explain our world. The girl had convinced herself that she must fast in order to save her brother from the eternal flames of hell. Later she convinced herself she had survived all this time because of mana from heaven. Many were convinced she was a saint, others that she was being murdered in degrees by her family. Showing the set at the beginning reinforces this idea. <br /> <br /> We all tell ourselves stories. Sometimes they are useful, and sometimes they can harm as well. I love the line the newspaper reporter says about the girl. "She is an actor."

2 years ago

@adammorgan <br /> &gt;the issue was not necessarily religion but fanaticism.<br /> <br /> I don't think so. It seemed to me that the issue is the defining element of all Abrahamic religions, which is the oppressive sense of shame/guilt, and the lengths people (the father, the mother, the doctor and the rest of the committee) go to in order to cope with the cognitive dissonance.<br /> <br /> If you've watched Sebastián Lelio's previous film _Disobedience_ (2017), you should be able to see a pattern emerging.

11 months ago

@adammorgan @adammorgan <br /> In the end the film was about transformation, and with it self-forgiveness. Shedding the skin to fly like a bird outside the cage, where there was only a rigid conformity. Dealing with trauma can leave one trapped within a mindset. The constant reference to ins and outs throughout the film, even with the lead-in and out revealing of the interior sets. One does not necessarily need the obsession to be a rigid interpretation of revelation of religion. It could be any belief that helps disguise the pain and serve as a crutch to think oneself unworthy, of life, of care, and of value. Sometimes, for a time, they are needed, but it the end a healthy mind abandons them and sees beyond construction (cage, fake sets) to the recognition that there is an outside, a place to look with an eagle's eye over your own trauma and see it from a view that enables you to forgive yourself, and move on. <br /> <br /> There is the issue of a kind of resurrection as a trope, and obtaining access to heaven, and in this film they were opposed in a very satisfactory manner in creating the arena for the transformation, without harming the belief system entirely. This was really well done. So, even if we can suppose some raised religious fervour among most of the villagers, we must equally recognise a doctor who is convinced that some as yet unexplained scientific phenomenon is responsible. Therefore both have their obsessions. Some X in which to look for a surface that they can bring them comfort. The 'out' of it in this sense, while they miss the 'in'. So in short a psychological release from Egyptian bondage to use religious terminology. A conversion: a renewing of the mind.<br /> <br /> The emigration scene at the end with the meal on-set and then the pan to the actress who played the sister looking at the viewer felt very intrusive., like a challenge. Reminded me that when we move away either briefly or permanently we in fact become free to be different. To reinvent ourselves.