What's up with the Yellow Pages?
What were they doing with the phone books?
Thanks
not positive but it looks as if because they always break up the junk on different pages, there's bound to be some shake left over. So that if they can't afford to always buy new product, they scrape the pages for remains...
but that is complete speculation because it seems a bit absurd.
either way it's mesmerizing.
loved this film.
Thanks.
I thought that at first. But later, it seemed to me they were scraping ink (maybe a particular color) off the pages to use to get a high.
A couple of other web sites echo your speculation, so maybe you're right.
I have mixed feelings about the film.
Plus
- it had a very realistic documentary "feel"
- I did some searching to confirm it was not a documentary
Minus
- I would have liked a little background explaining how Vanda ended up in that situation
Thanks for your reply.
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i find the blur between documentary and fiction a fascinating thing, and Costa pushes this boundary to the limit.
the artificiality is clear and consistent, which makes the intimacy of his images quite astonishing. Like Bresson, Costa's characters are "real," but so much so that they become ghosts, caricatures of people, blank slates upon which the viewer must cast his or her shadow of humanity. This is humanism at its finest because there is no contrived resolution, there are only faces, words, landscapes (mental and physical). Communication and the lack thereof, the possibilities of light, Costa's rigorous aesthetic is accessible thru its inaccessibility. Marked by its difficulty, Costa demands the experience of watching a film to be an endeavor of patience, of work, of contemplation (of boredom?). Is it everyone's cup of tea, is always my cup of tea, of course not. But his cinema is necessary, it is hopeful, and its difficulty is refreshing.
Anyway, that's my hyperbolic rant. I get a thrill and chill watching his latest works.
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You need to be explained why people end up in misery? why there's a whole neighborhood, whole cities, entire countries rotting from the inside out? The film isn't supposed to tell you this, you should know it by know... the film doesn't and couldn't preoccupy itself with those explanations... This is the kind of societies greed and corruption produce... And you see these people everyday in the streets...
About the film, you can't call it documentary of fiction or anything, because it does great in destroying those kinds of separations we make for films... it just doesn't matter... I guess Costa doesn't even think about those kinds of things... why people need these labels is something that baffles me, this isn't of the slightest importance... by some reason I think it relates to your problem of not having an explanation of how Vanda and her friends and family ended up in that situation...
Wow. I should think "Why" is a really important question. In fact, perhaps the only question really worth exploring.
And the answer "This is the kind of societies greed and corruption produce" is a non-answer. Greed isn't just a part of society. It is an integral part of the human condition -- every human, regardless of the kind of society he or she lives in. It can't be erased without erasing humans. Why do some societies thrive and others do not, despite the universality of human greed? As for corruption, why is it a bigger problem in some societies and not in others? That's a pretty important question. Why do some of the poor descend into lives of despair and drug addiction and others do not? Those are the questions we ought to be demanding an answer to.
Yes, but violence and lust are also part of the human condition like greed, and the point of society is to mitigate these drives to the point where people can live side by side without too much victimization. That's what society is, a structure for mitigating individual drives without erasing the humans involved.
That said, I think we're really on the wrong path blaming society for drug use. Sure there's some overarching factors, economic realities that drive people to refine the stuff, and limitations that can drive some people to figure they have little to lose in life. These things should not be ignored. But that's not really why people use drugs like heroin, it's less societal and more psychological - people use drugs because they feel really, really good. A woman once described heroin to me as a hundred times better than the biggest orgasm anyone's ever had. Put in those terms, it's not really surprising people would desire such a thing, perhaps the important question isn't why they do but why we all don't.
But the question of why we all don't again is a psychological one. I don't claim to have all the answers to this issue, but the essential factor seems to be the individual's capacity for risk. I don't know you, but I imagine I'm on very safe ground assuming you have something that's a guilty pleasure, because we all do something you that we probably shouldn't. All pleasure seeking involves a certain amount of risk which must be accepted or mitigated - and going through life not seeking pleasure is a drab existence, therefore we must accept risk. And risk is exactly what it means - in the course of seeking pleasure some of us are going to fall down and hurt ourselves. Heroin ups the pleasure stakes almost as high as can be, with corresponding great risk, I don't think it that surprising that certain people with a high capacity for risk assumption (which, as recent research has indicated, is very likely a genetic trait) would find it seductive.
I think the movie, despite its "you are there" reality filmmaking, sort of lies about this aspect - we can physically see the squalor and degradation, but we can't "see" how good something feels inside in the same obvious way, like a psychological budget where all we see are the expenses without the income. Of course you can't blame the filmmakers for this, the reality is heroin is seductive despite the squalor and in the words of the great philosopher too much reality isn't good for people. And so the film takes on the role of society I mentioned above, an entity mitigating the individual desires for pleasure/risk without erasing from our consciousness the humans involved.