A Love to Hide

This is not the first movie Sir showed us which has shaken me up, but never have I actually written about a movie. Today I had to. I want to put down my thoughts before they mellow down, before the emotions which are overwhelming quieten, before I become calm or rather as he always says before status quo is restored.

I don’t know what I want to write, but I need to think about this. Why did it break my heart to see A Love to Hide, I cried, I was shocked, I wanted to scream, how could humans be this way! And, why? Why can’t people let others live? Is it too much to ask for? A right to live? Is it that things are more important than humanity, than compassion, than love? Why is increasingly difficult for people to think about anything but themselves, to be kind, to look at others who are not like them as still human beings, to love. Why is it always me first? And slowly ‘only me first.. always’?

It was my first exposure to homosexuality in movies, I was happy I didn’t judge it, I loved it, the feeling of being able to love itself is great, doesn’t matter whom! The portrayal of love that Jean & Phillipe share is simply mesmerising, the scenes where they are having fun, innocent pure fun, happiness, companionship, which is every person’s right isn’t it? At a point I wished my love too became so true & simple. But is it actually simple?

The mess which sir was talking about was not at all a mess, it just showed that you have a choice, you can either love or hate, and we have a capacity of unlimited love & also of hatred. It’s the choice you make. So why did Hitler choose hate? I know it’s a very simplistic way of looking at things, but can you remain motivated enough to keep killing 5 million people, innocent people whom you have never met in your life, whom you don’t know, but still you kill. Did it never give him nightmares? Did all those soldiers & camp guards never feel a thing? Is it possible that you hate so much? That your feelings, the very feelings which differentiate you from being animals are so irreversibly lost?

At the same time the love shared by the 3 protagonists is hopeful, one of the most moving scenes is when Phillipe comes back & Jean tells him that nothing happened between him & Sara because he can’t, he loves him too much. Then the sequence on his birthday when Sara tells Jean that it is she who can give him children & not Phillipe & that too she mentions a son, it’s such a fundamental, crude fact that it makes you think for the future of their relationship, is the instinct to reproduce actually the strongest or has man been able to actually move beyond it? The reaction of Jean made me hopeful; he just says I forgive you because you are drunk, such a powerful moment! I don’t have words to describe what it conveyed to me maybe I have still not been able to understand it fully.

A love to hide portrays all kinds of human emotions. The scene in which the father puts up the board of ‘No Jews’ & the son still does what he thinks is right shows that if people want they can make a difference. I feel like I can go on about each & every moment of the film. The look in the eyes of Jean when he sees his lover, his friend & his brother on the station, the disbelief, the helplessness, the disillusion is so powerful it made me feel suffocated with emotion. Whatever little restraint I had dissolved in the scene where the person with pink triangle is killed, I couldn’t stop the tears, the pain, the anger & the disgust of belonging to species which can do that deliberately.

Another aspect was the ‘black sheep’. The actions of his brother Jacques are not uncommon to us. How much ever we deny haven’t we done deeds which we repent later on? Split actions out of negative emotions like jealousy, without realising the extent of harm, or the real bearing it would have on our future & us? There is still lot to think lot to write & of course as just the beginning of learning, but yes it is a start. And as hope is what keeps the world going I hope I do grow up, I do understand some part of the world & its complexities & then am able to be at least a little more at peace with not the world outside, but the one inside, at peace with myself. Or is it just an impossible fantasy?

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