Dream Conversations

Ticket of No Return

Ticket of No Return

From Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954).

This clip is from a short film “The Stories That Prepared Us“ by Now You See It. It is “a telling of the story of the Coronavirus through moments in critically-acclaimed film and television.” It even had a clip from Osmosis Jones!

Listening to Diego Luna and Guillermo del Toro, as well as seeing films from the Guadalajara Film Festival got me interested in Mexican films other than Y tu mamá también and Pan’s Labyrinth. To be honest a couple of short films horrified me (The Cats, Cerulia). And I had to see them at night because the premiere is in the wee hours of the morning where I live!

Sharing my notes while listening to his interview below:

What he said about the difference between this online film festival and everyday film streaming service is true. There is a sense of community here as we saw the films premiering for the first time online together... unlike streaming and then just exchanging views with people in the same room, or our own circles on social media, the whole world became our community. Thank you for organizing this! And hopefully, this will be the first of many :) I also agree that this time has given us the opportunity to see the truth of who we are. It’s like a lens through which we can see what we’ve built in terms of community, in terms of how we communicate... it’s a chance to reflect who we want to be in the future. How are we gonna relate to the planet we live in? How are we gonna tell stories? How are we gonna raise our kids? He spent his life going somewhere, to festivals around the world, connecting with the audience and now he had to stay at home with family, the space he created and actually look at the window, find the reason to look out the window. Life is about simplicity. We try to cover so much ground and access everything. To be honest, for Diego Luna, happiness is not there. This experience (pandemic is showing us that) Happiness may be in the everyday moments we spend with our loved ones at home. “I have really happy moments with my kids every day.” And even this is a privilege. Not everyone have the comfort of a home, being with loved ones... confinement is not the same for everyone. There’a fear and anxiety because he was trying to let go of what he was and what his goals were before, but there’s beauty in what we’re living. Sometimes we need cinema to help us digest what is happening.

This is how it feels like with all that’s been happening the past 3 months. I’ve been working from home since March, and our management had extended the setup until the end of August. I’m grateful for the free time this has given me to read not just news but also for leisure. It has made my workday more efficient--less bathroom breaks and pacing myself so I don’t run out of things to do before I have to time out, for fear of being judged if I finished early and just lounge around, waiting for the end of my shift. I can spend more time in bed, less time at my work desk. If it’s not for the crippled economy, limited mobility, and general feeling of anxiety from governments (and even certain “leftist” groups in my country) taking advantage of the pandemic to fatten their pockets and forward political interests, I‘d say 2020 is a step forward--for mental health, for management, for the environment.