Rosario Tijeritas

Forgive me the length of this blog. I tried to make it shorter but I found that Rosario Tijeritas had more little labyrinths that what I thought.

Rosario Tijeras, the hero of the novel named after her, the femme fatale that confuses love with death, the cinnamon mestiza with an unconfessable past and entrails of ice, the liar, the murderer, the prostitute, the Mary Magdalene and the Mata Hari of underdevelopment, the ethereal fantasy of our self-pitying narrator, the mysterious Venus of Medellin, partially embodies all these labels and at the same time escapes them to sit on a throne that the eyes of our desperate narrator have made for her. In Jorge Franco’s novel, she is portrayed as a legend more than a woman through the polarized scope of Alejandro, the narrator. She is a legend more than a woman, not only for her mighty character and courage, but because, although her sexuality constantly glows in her presence, she transcends the limits of gender. She drives, kills and commands in a world of violence led by men. Even the rumors express the doubts of her true sexual identity. Gossip raises her from her mere human condition to suggest that she has a son with the devil, and the true reason in Alejandro’s mind for this fallacy is not the impossibilities of conceiving a child with Satan, but the fact that such a fatal woman is too fatal to be a mother.

Through the novel we only see a few moments where Rosario is viewed from a different angle to briefly realize that she is a woman, a woman of the streets, just like all the people that surround her, just like her brother and her “previous master.” Alejandro uses her love to sink into the underworld of Medellin, which at this point has ceased to be an underworld and has bloomed into the streets and daylight of a society where drugs, violence and sex are the meal of every day. The writer does not directly address this, but I believe the book attempts to subtly suggest a commentary on the butchering of morals. Although there is not a concise criticism of this socio-political reality, the story of debauchery of Rosario, Emilio and Alejandro leads to a deep hole of sorrow and loss, which suggests a decadent existence.

Love gets mixed up with death. One is directly related to the other. Rosario kisses her victims before they die, and I think that Rosario is unknowingly in love with Alejandro. Her dichotomy of being cold and brutal, yet liking such romantic music is a proof that she is a full, regular, complicated person. It is her dark past and her guerrilla reality that would not allow her the feelings of love, yet she realizes that Alejandro is different than everyone else. No matter how she feels, she is bound to a certain destiny of loss, and this is too intrinsically entwined in her. At the beginning of the only part that could have led to a change, when she is planning to run away with Alejandro they get arrested and eventually she gets killed, while she is being kissed for a change... “The earlier one gets to know sex, the greater the possibility that things will go badly in life. That’s why I insist that Rosario was born a loser, because she was raped before her time…” This shows the narrator thinks that there was a certain fate that Rosario had to follow.

Just like the writer describes Rosario, as being mysterious and having many different faces, the book shows us different contradictory sides of Rosario. Even though the whole novel is narrated through the subjective voice of a pathetic man suffering from “unrequited” love, there is also a clear suggestion that his view is polarized, and there are brief events that let us see different sides of her. I think that Rosario Tijeras is more of a Rosario Tijeritas and a third world country Venus more than a Greek Aphrodite. Regardless, the novel remains as a statement on the subjectivity of love and as a monument for her.

Pantita

One of the most interesting things that the book Captain Pantoja and the Secret Service proposes is the narrative method. Mario Vargas Llosa appeals to a certain curiosity and complicity of the reader by using such an extreme version of telescopic narrative. Throughout the book it is the reader who must hold the thread of the storyline, given that the information is provided to us in segments and from different voices.

The choice of language is also a key point to the wholeness of the novel. Since it has such a strong ethnical setting, theme and group of characters, the language adds a certain plausibility to the story that could only be told through that specific choice of idioms and formal language. This along with the telescopic narrative that jumps from character to character sets a humorous feel to the novel that works very well. For example, Pantaleon with his voice, being so serious, methodic, military and devoid of emotion is placed in a situation where he has to deal with prostitutes and bucolic pimps, making the ridiculousness of the situation sound in a formal tone.

Captain Pantoja and the Secret Service is surely a success as a work of art. It has the balance that every good piece must have, and the author narrates it in the most accurate voice and method.

The Kiss of the Spider Woman

In the novel The Kiss of the Spider Woman, Manuel Puig, employs a very experimental narrative by telling the story mainly through dialogue with research-form footnotes as support along the book. He also includes the narration of several movies along the novel to accentuate and draw metaphors of the two main characters, whose intrinsic differences end up bringing them very close together. The novel is very well crafted and the relationship between the characters is humorous and complex. In the adaptation of this film, Hector Babenco, attempts to portray this, yet it is something particularly difficult to do in the limited cinematic time. The relationship of the characters in the movie seems much more theatrical and shock oriented than the way it develops in the novel, which follows a much more natural course. The film is surely attempted and achieved some interesting objectives, yet the excessive theatrical aspect blocks the plausibility that the book has. Regardless of these issue, the main problem that the movie faces is the language change in an attempt to reach a wider audience, yet remain in a Latin setting. Those are two things that in my opinion cannot merge. There are great adaptations that are translated to other languages, but they are also transported to that correspondent setting. The movie would achieve a greater verisimilitude if it would take place in an English speaking country, with no fake accents, and it could still remain appealing to the wide Hollywood audience, although that would end in a much more distant adaptation, which would have been hard with Puig as an active part in the making of the film. The film would have also worked a lot better if it was further from Hollywood, given its independent and experimental nature, and made into a true Latin American movie. The film does stand on its own, but at the moment of comparing it to the novel, it has a very far feel to the original impact that the book causes, and it has very little of the novels subtlety.

Memories of Underdevelopment

The Cuban film, Memories of Underdevelopment, has a strong political presence, for its social issues very evident and blunt. Although, it escapes from being a propaganda film or from having a heavy-handed political statement very gracefully, for its statement has more a social tone than a political one. “The only possible way to attain objectivity is through well intentioned subjectivity,” says the Peruvian writer Alfredo Bryce Echenique, and this film is a latent proof of that. It makes a criticism from a loving, amiable point of view, a criticism not only of the revolution, but of mankind and ignorance. It shows both sides of the story from the perspective of a true artist that believed in the revolution, but soon realized that it was just another futile human enterprise, and for that reason, it was to bring human strength and weakness upon itself. It criticizes one, but at the same time all, undeveloped countries, peoples conformism and ignorance. This film has a deep exploration of the main character’s state of mind, which is also very present in its original text, Inconsolable Memories, written by Edmundo Desnoes. This is very interesting from a cinematographic point of view, given that when we watch the movie, it is almost as if we were experiencing everything from Sergio’s perspective, the main character. He is a man who wont leave all that he despises so much for the precise reason that if one hates is because one loves. Like the valsesillo criollo says, “Odiame por piedad yo te lo pido, odiame sin medida ni clemencia, odio quiero mas que indiferencia, porque tan solo se odia lo querido.” As he stays in his Havana apartment and he is trying to cope with the present situation of the country, there is a similar battle going on within his mind and the movie does a great job of translating that from the book to the screen.

Borges and Bertolucci on the traitor and the hero

The true relevance of the level of faithfulness in adaptation is, in my opinion, trivial compared to other aspects of the piece. There are several evident differences between “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” and The Spider’s Stratagem, though most of them fall more on the technical aspect.

Although the plot is basically the same, their approach on it is very different. Borges’ story seems like a document with a certain sense of abstraction where we are shocked by the fine line that divides the hero and the villain, while The Spider’s Stratagem is more of a personal story. They both focus on this main topic that “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” proposes; yet Bertoluccis’ film has this element of the personal path of the main character in his film. Athos is both in search and in the shadow of his dead father. This idea I find very interesting, for it has been a recurring theme through the history of humanity. Starting in texts as ancient as the Genesis or much of Greek literature, the idea of a repetitive fate comes up, and in this case Athos is searching for the truth of that previous destiny, and simultaneously he is been haunted by it. This happens to such an extent that at the end of both pieces one could even argue if the main character himself is a traitor or a hero, because of the decision of holding back the dark truth about the murdered man.

Regardless, the main idea of both pieces is the meager difference that lies behind the curtains of a traitor and a hero. In the Scorsese film Taxi Driver this is very evident, as Robert De Niro, in the private life of his character, portrays a total villain, and ends up in a pedestal, while he missed dark fate of jail or death by an inch. To a certain extent all works of art are nothing but an expression of one side of the artist, a mere projection of the inner complexity of a human, and the truth is that we all have a traitor and a hero inhabiting our minds.

On the Theme of the Traitor and the Hero

The concept of a circular, redundant, inherited existence is haunting, not only for Borges, but for all of those who have thought about it. The earth functions in cycles and mere repetition of events, and the traitor and the hero are the same and vice versa. Borges also pays much attention to the idea of Destiny, to the idea that everything is written, crafted and thought long before is occurrence.

I must agree almost entirely these ideas (I say almost entirely rather than entirely because that would just be a self inflicted, foolish verdict). The fieldwork I have done to come to such conclusions is based on simple observation and reading. If you take all the stories mentioned in this story by Borges and apply them to each other, you have evidence. Take history, any event, as singular as it may seem, and it still reinvents itself as time goes by. Men and women function in cycles, the world functions in cycles and the earth cycles around the sun, and this process is blown to infinite repetition. If this is not enough, I think of smaller slices of reality, like the ages of a human, who is more similar than a child and an elder? But I guess coming to such conclusions from this story is drifting away too far. I am just genuinely interested in the adaptation of this piece, and in seeing how these concepts of the story are translated to the screen.

On The Devil's Drool

My points of view will surely be very affected after watching the film “Blow-Up”, but there are a few thoughts that roamed through my mind after reading “The Devil’s Drool”, by Cortazar. First I have to say as a sort of a disclaimer, as a back door or a escape route that, above all my meager opinions, is my devotion to art and truth, so as long as the artist is acting sincerely and attempting to express a certain degree of truth, all else is freedom. I think that the essence of the piece is what should remain immaculate when adapting literature to film; if this is not the case, then one might as well create something different, or not call it an adaptation at all, given that by the term adaptation we are directly implying that it is that very piece, that short story or novel (with inevitable technical differences), that we want to take to the screen. Of course there must be freedom of expression for the filmmaker, but the essence should remain untouched.

Cortazar’s story is fantastic and evidently very cinematic. I am particularly fascinated by his interest in stopping time, his idea of how a photograph is a minuscule slice of time. Not only that, but how time can be figuratively malleable, taken around in circles, stopped, captured and even transposed. Especially at the end, when he is staring at the blown up picture, his way of approaching the story is surreal. He meddles with the characters own perception of reality, which ends up being absolutely necessary for the completion and full understanding of the story.