Month: January 2018

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The bridges of Madison County – 1995

Last night I watched The Bridges of Madison County for the first time. Absolutely beautiful movie! I’m sorry I haven’t seen it before. Meryl Streep is always a magnificent actress and somehow she always portraits her character so I get goose bumps. The film pictures the four days where Meryls character Francesca meets Clint Eastwood in the part of a photographer Robert who have come to Madison County to photograph the beautfull bridges.

The four days they spend together and they fall so deeply in love with each other, and they way that Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood gets those feelings out on the screen to the viewers is amazing. You feel the passion, you feel the deep love they have, you feel how comfortale they are with each other, you feel the real Francesca when she is with Robert, you can see the future they could have together, you feel her frustration of not wanting to abandone her family, you feel her pain when she sees him for the last time, you feel her desire to live life, you feel the heaviness of his steps when he has to walk away, you feel that he is not ready to see her for the last time.

And when he says “This kind of certainty comes but just once in a lifetime.” it’s just heartbreaking and you want her – with your entire heart and soul – to pick up her bags and go with him. You want her to live the life that she dreams of and always have dreamed of. You want her to be happy, you want her to laugh and smile and be in love.

At the same time it is not difficult to understand the love she has for her family, her children. She is at the most difficult crossroad of her life: stay with her family which she loves eventhough her dreams are suppressed or to go with the man that can give her her dreams.

I think I may have cried a little after the film. Their acting makes the film so believeable and I was left with a feeling of me wanting to meet a photographer named Robert Kincaid.

Thank you Meryl Strrep and Clint Eastwood for a beautiful film!

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A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini

I borrowed this book from a colleague of mine that for some reason had it on his desk. He has read it several times and told me that I was welcome to borrow it. Who can say no to that!

I didn’t have any expectations to the book, I didn’t really know what it was about, except from what I read on the back cover.

It’s about Mariam and Laila, the two main characters of the book, two women in the midst of Afganistan during war and taliban regime, religious and male dominans. Mariam – a harami –  born outside of marriage and Laila born into a family with brothers gone of to war, a mother with severe depressions and a educated father who is no longer allowed to teach.

Circumstances – the war comes to Kabul – will that they end being married to the same callous, violent, physical and mentally abusing man Rashid. Mariam is unable to give him children and therefore she – in Rashid eyes – is not worthy of love and kind words. Not that he was a kind person before her several miscarriages. She is reduced to something that is there to wait on him, clean his house, cook him dinner and be used as his personal punching bag. After Rashids marrige to Laila his focus is moved to her and the fact that she is able to give  him children she is a shinning star – until it turns out that the first child she gives birth to is a girl.

The two women finally finds common ground after the birth of the girl. Since Mariam for years has been abused and degraded as a woman and  as a person by Rashid, she had at the beginning refused to connect with Laila. Mayby refused is the wrong word, Mariam hasn’t had any love in her life for years and was unable to find that side of her again until this beautiful baby girl was born. The friendship and mutual understanding between these two women, caught in the middle of war, fight for power, women degrading politics disguised as religious facts. Every time people needs to justify something outrageous they look for a religious script they can twist and turn the wording to make it fit to their insane ideas. Mariam and Laila are just trying to survive and to make their everyday functional and they are looked down at just because of the fact that they are born women. They are disposable.

Thankfully this story has a happier ending, Tariq, the childhood turned into adult love survives and Laila can start her live with the two children and the love of her life Tariq.

The story is told in a very respectful way. It is devastating how the war ruins so many peoples lifes, they are just trying to work, have a family life, enjoy their children, educate themselves, see the beautiful sites of their country. How religion is used as justification for undermining a certain group of people, when religion actually – mostly – tries to teach you love. It is heartbreaking to see that there is no help to find because your husband is allowed to do whatever he wants, eventhough he breaks you into pieces. It is heartbreaking to see that hospitals can no longer be used by women. It is beautiful to see how strong women are, the strenght of these women and how they rise from the ashes and keeps going, stand up after each defeat, and the friendship and love that triumphs the oppresion.

Beautiful book about the strength of people under the most devastating cicumstances.

 

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Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts

This is a book that I’ve been wanting to read for a long time. Finally I got my hands on the book and have so far read the first of five parts the book is divided into. The first part is about 150 pages and it kind of feels like the intro to the remaining story, but at no point is it boring. Eventhough you follow an everyday life of an exscaped prisoner in the midst of Bombay meeting what seems like people that you do not want to bring home to your parents, it sounds more like an adventure than a way down.

The following text will contain spoilers, so consider yourself warned.

Halfway through the book before he actually start his criminal path in life. I don’t condone his way of life as a criminal, but he puts so much emotion into his story. His feelings about what he do, how he feels about the people around him and how important they are to him. He loves to wonder about life, philosophize with equal minded, loves the diversity that India offers him.

Trough the book he gets more and more invovled in crimes and ends up in war, nearly dying of hunger and wounds, coming back to Bombay and continueing his path in a more hard core violent criminal environment.  In some way throughout the entire book he manages to write about his life in such a positive and loving way that I kinda forget how he gets through life. The love he has for the people he first met in Bombay – Prabaker – and the family he finds in the slum where he lived and worked as a doctor. The peace that he seeks when he sits by the seaside.

He seems a hard and distant man but at the same time he describes his feelings and emotions that he at the moment couldn’t find.

The book is some 850 pages but his writing is easy and at no point do you feel that it is too long. I especially enjoyed that he continued and respected his friendship with the Prabaker, Johnny cigar etc. in the slum. He takes in the Bombay life and feels it on his skin, in his head and in his heart. He feels he has found a family amongst these loving and embracing indian people.

So go find this book and read it, it’s a book about a mans journey to find himself again, finding his path in life, finding love again and allowing himself to feel.