Amari in the land of giants, encroachers, and creepers

 Everything looks so beautiful! The ice-glazed mountains, greenery everywhere, birds chirping and flying away in the sky that looks more open and freer than anywhere else. As if this part of the sky is different. As if this place is different. So serene, so free, so relaxing! Amari couldn’t hold all this beauty, all this calmness inside her. She’s not used to such silence, such peace, such order from where she comes from.

Giant mammoths, rhinos, and several crawling and creeping bugs kept Amari on her toes. She kept running, trying to catch her breath but failing each time. 

“Run, Amari! Run!” the voice sounded familiar to her but also fading. Her heart felt like it would explode any minute. Her lungs couldn’t receive the air they needed, resulting in her organs retaliating and demanding that her feet stop running.

The sky was still so vast, so free, so beautiful, so clear, so blue, but simultaneously so mysterious! As if it could engulf the gigantic mountains, the mammoths, the bugs, the rhinos, and the girl who was desperately running without a direction. Could the same sky that looked so captivatingly liberating be incarcerating, too? Could being engulfed by the vast sky save Amari from those giants and creepers? The lush greenery that looked so bustling slowly encroached on Amari to take over her body like a shroud, to send her to oblivious death. What would she choose? Being mauled and trampled or being totally devoured and imminently engulfed? Are these choices any different from the ones she had to take back home? 

“Where? Where do I go? Where do I run, and for how long? Wherever I look, there’s danger, possible threats, impending death, and impeding roads and destinations. Perilous! It’s a perilous death trap. This place is a death trap!”

Amari kept repeating these words again and again. But the noise around and outside her was so loud that she could barely hear anything she was saying. Even the noises in her head were dead, buried in a corner of her ever-chaotic and deafening mind. 

Silence! Silence!

Amari took off the blue and green embroidered jacket she had brought from home while escaping. A jacket that contained her childhood, her nostalgia, remnants of what she called home, her parents' warmth, her siblings' laughter and company, and the scrumptious aroma of homecooked meals. It was the only thing that she could take with her while escaping. She tied it up around her waist as tightly as she could. She couldn’t afford to lose it. No! The only thing that symbolized a home that once kept her safe and let her sleep without the fear of losing people to destruction, chaos, and atrocity. The blue and green jacket had a beautiful scenery embroidered on it. Her mother embroidered the sky, and her father the green trees. A sky unlike the one that wanted to engulf her. Green trees, unlike the ones that tried to shroud her into oblivion.

Amari could see that her running would come to an end soon. No, not because she had a destination that would keep her safe or a safe place where she could hide herself from danger. That’s the thing about this place: you can never hide from danger! You can die or keep running until you end up where Amari would end up soon while crossing many obstacles.

A dark abyss, an infinite dark chasm that looked just like a black hole. All Amari could understand was that if she jumped, she would escape this place. But at what cost?

Where will this infinite dark chasm lead her to? What even is that? 

The creepers, giants, and encroachers were coming closer and closer…

The bottomless chasm was right in front of her. What would she choose? Is death escapable? Is death inevitable? Or is this a new beginning in the ending?

Right at that moment, she looked at her jacket. Something's inside the pockets.

What are those? Do they save her? Do they give her any clues? Does the jacket, the last symbol of her home that she escaped from, save her? With so many choices, a limited time, and a life-and-death situation, Amari has to make a decision.

Ah, childhood!

Auro watched a clip on Instagram today. It was a clip from the movie The Namesake. A father holding his son’s hand, taking him close to the sea. The mother with her daughter in her arms keeps telling him, “Don’t go so far that I can’t see you. He’s too little.” As the waves wildly crash on the shore, the father waves his hand in an assurance that he has listened to her concern and that they are safe. The child is safe. The child is safe with the father holding his hands. They are safe! The child is safe. The child is safe. The child is safe.

As they reach closer to the crashing and roaring waves, he suddenly remembers that there is no camera. They left the camera in the car. “What to do?”, the father asks his son. “The camera, it’s in the car. All this way and no picture, huh?” 

The child doesn’t move his eyes from the sea. 

He keeps looking at the sea. 

He doesn’t care about the camera, 

about the pictures, 

about the lost opportunity to capture a perhaps once-in-a-lifetime view. 

He is in the moment. 

The father scrunches down, gets closer to the child, smiles at him, and says, “We just have to remember it then, huh? Will you remember this day?” It is then when the child speaks as the intensity of the responsibility suddenly pulls him back to reality. But his eyes still don’t move. Eyes affixed on the sea, the child asks, “How long do I have to remember it?” “Ah, remember it always. Remember that you and I made this journey and went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go”, the father replies. 

All Auro could think was, “How long has it been since I left my father’s hand? How long has it been since my mother lost me from her sight? How do they feel knowing that they had to let go of my hands, let me go out of their sight? How scared have they been, for how long?

Am I scared? I don’t think so. Not since that night. Now I’m more afraid to let them see me. What do I tell them? How do I tell them? 

        I’m not your little girl anymore! I can’t be, not anymore!”

Auro can’t tell them that. So, she just sends this clip to her sister and writes, “Ah, childhood!”

She tells herself, “No, it doesn’t break my heart. It doesn’t break my heart.

…

As if it doesn’t break my heart.

As if 

it doesn’t revive the silent sob screeching in the corner of my heart 

that desperately, 

violently, 

brutally, 

inhumanely 

dumped my childhood somewhere without telling me, 

without letting me know where to find it if I ever needed it back, 

if my parents ever needed their little girl back!”

Humming in love, humming with love

 

 

Love looked at me like Van Gogh looked at the sky

With hope, with grief, with attention

With expectations and magic in eyes

With no space for condescension or pretension

With a sense of belonging that is too far to reach

And a little bit of longing that hums in a silent screech

rootless branches

 

That sheer feeling of despair that comes from the feeling of rootlessness. You know you don’t have roots, so you try your best, you keep trying your best, and in doing so you frantically try to branch out to as many places as possible. But at the end of the day, you know that you have no roots, so it does not matter how many times and much you branch out. It might all come off at the end of the day if just one storm comes. So, you are always careful, too cautious about not getting every part of you ripped out. You panic even at a minor inconvenience. What if this time not having roots cost you all the branches that you worked on so hard? And when these thoughts encroach your mind entirely, you either try to branch out more and more until you literally cannot carry the weight of them anymore or you go deep into the ground, searching for your roots or maybe just sit there with the despair of realization that no matter how much you search for them, they are just not there. That light feeling or the feeling of weightlessness from being rootless… you try to cover it up with the cumbersome branches. But when nothing works out at all, you curl yourself up under the ground and in an effort to not see anyone or to be seen by anyone, you let everything go

...

until you remember your branches are waiting for you. So, you pick yourself up and give life to your branches one more time, again! You let them grow. You decide you’ll wait until the storm finally comes and takes everything away or until you see some sign of life breathing under the ground. 

Till then, you keep branching out, keep growing, and keep giving life. Until when? 

You don't know...

You don't know...

You don't know...

Where’s the sky?

“Look mama, balloons! So many balloons! I can’t see the sky mama. I can’t see the sky mama!”

“But why are you crying, honey?”

“Because I can’t see the sky mama. The sky mama, I can’t see it. Please mama, the sky! Please, mama!”

The child kept crying and pointing at the sky. She kept pulling her mother, trying to somehow (anyhow) transfer her desperation and fear to her mother by pulling her hands and tugging her clothes. She kept asking her mother for help. Engulfed with despair, the mother didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t understand her child’s cry for help, she couldn’t see why not seeing the sky was like a life-and-death situation for her child.

“Mama, I beg you. Please, the sky’s almost gone. Do something, mama.”

“What can I do honey? I don’t know where the balloons are coming from!”

Slowly, there remains no sky, just balloons. Balloons everywhere!

“Mama…”- last cry for help.

The child sits down on the ground.

“Mama, shouldn’t I be happy to see balloons? I’m just a kid. Why is not being able to see the sky so scary to me mama? Why can’t I be happy like those kids?”

Both looked at the other kids following the balloons with a smile on their faces, childlike joy in their running feet, wonder and excitement in their eyes, while the mother and the child held each other’s hands with bewilderment and vulnerability.

Her mother replies, “Look at me! Don’t you see my helplessness?”

“I do mama. Do you want me to run after the balloons like the other kids? Would that make you a little less sad mama?”

“But what about you honey? What about what makes you happy?”

“Oh Mama, I think I have no hope at all. The sky, I can’t see the sky mama. I’m, scared! Not seeing the sky is scary mama. It shouldn’t be this way, right mama? Something’s wrong with me, right mama?”

The mother looks up, cheeks dampened, eyes questioning something or someone up there, while the child lets go of her hands and runs anyway.

Fearful Freedom!

 

A bird flew far from a tree to my window

a withered tree, a lifeless tree

It struggled to fly with one of its wings clipped

How? How?

How did it manage to fly?

It kept pecking at my window

Every morning I would wake up to the noise

I looked at it from my bed

struggling to get up

I would look at it as it stopped pecking

We locked eyes, quite a few times

each time I would look away with an urgency

Fear, there was an inexplicable fear

there were unspoken stories

radiating through the window

I dared not open the window

Scared, if I open it,

the bird,

it’ll vanish

or ask me to unclip its wing

it might ask me to pet it

to trust it

to let it in

it might even ask me to get up from the bed, when it’s hard to do so

only to not be there the next day to do the same

What if it asks me to look it in the eyes and not look away?

and just when I get used to it,

it asks me to let it go…

I got tired,

tired of the questions

I opened the window, looked it in the eyes

unclipped its wing, took it in my hands

Silence, deafening Silence

complete surrender on both parts

I asked it to fly away

it wouldn’t

it circled back in my hands

then sat again near the window, unbothered

An open blue sky

a bird free to fly

but rests near my window instead

when I touched its unclipped wing

it turned back

looked me straight in the eye

then flew away, still struggling

as if it forgot how to fly without one of its wings clipped

Up it went in the sky, slowly, fearfully

I woke up again the next morning

at the pecking noise

a bird with one of its wings clipped

a different bird this time

each time

every morning

it’s like a ritual now,

letting these birds fly

Until one day they all come back,

rest near my window and ask

What will you do with us now?

What do we do with this freedom?

How do we make sense of a world without struggle?

How do we fly fearlessly without anything holding us back?

the juncture, where home and I meet

 

Rustling trees and an open sky

Reminds me of my home,

a home that doesn’t exist

here or there,

that only exists in nostalgia,

in the soft pain inside my chest, that erupts every now and then

A home that is as alive as my childhood

Breathing gently into the corner of my youth, holding on to my growth

Loving the parts that are yet to heal, making space inside me to embody foreverness...

I am the rustling trees and an open sky

I am my nostalgia, I am (my) home

Light curve

 

When the lights went out,

I could hear them shout

Struggling to stop my mind and body from a deafening fight

I looked in the mirror

to get relief from the agony of the horror

Standing and basking in my own light

I recognized myself,

“There I am!

A lovingly crafted body, a beautifully crafted mind”

 

Neonstrous!!

Pumba kept thinking if he would choose a different life if he could. He kept looking at the triangular-shaped black box kinda thing until he finally decided to touch it. Once he touched the box, a neon-colored screen appeared with bold letters telling him all about the box.

“Dear you, who is now the owner of this remote. Push any buttons you want. All you get to know is that this is a remote control that comes with no instructions at all. YOU do whatever you want with it. YOU bear the consequences and cry, laugh, lament, regret, or rejoice. We just tell you that this is a triangular remote. Make smart choices, or not. We don’t care. That’s our slogan.”

Pumba already started to regret his choice. “Why did I touch that stupid box? I mean the remote. The rude, mean, and nonsensical remote. Has it started already? I’m regretting everything already. But I didn’t push any of the buttons yet. What if I don’t have to and it’ll still act like a bad nightmare? Should I just leave it? What if it gets worse? What if I am the only one who dies out of regret? Is that even a thing? Should I press the green button? Or the red one? What about the blue one or the yellow one? What if I press all of them together? Should I just throw it away? Destroy it maybe?"

The moment Pumba tries stepping on the remote to destroy it, the neon screen reappears!

“Foolish human! Look at yourself. Who’s destroying whom?”

Embrace me woman!

 I saw the red flag at the end of the road. I moved forward but it moved along with me. I moved as fast as I could. The red flag! It was still there. Glaring, grinning! Haunting every part of my body, dissecting my skin, creeping through the cells, reaching my veins, poisoning my blood. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was drowning and the only thing I could hold onto was a rope that was so thin that it would cut through my skin. Painful, lethal either way!

I kept running. I kept running until I couldn’t anymore. My legs and lungs gave up. I heard them scream in an asphyxiated voice, “We can’t do this anymore. You’re on your own.” I urged back, “Please I beg you. Don’t give up on me. Don’t give up on us. It’s coming closer. Please, I can’t do this by myself.”

“We’ll see if you can!”

I saw no other way but to let it reach me. It kept creeping and coming closer…and closer…and closer…

The red flag and me. Face to face.

“Embrace me, woman! Embrace me! Look at me. I’ve become a part of you. You can’t escape me. You can’t get rid of me. I’ll follow you wherever you go. How long can you run for?”

I stood my ground and replied with a smirk on my face, “You’re right. No more running. Look me in the eye. Do you see fear?”

water-sky-earth

 

I look up

and

I see an open sky with a sun peeking through the roof of a building. I feel the warmth of the rays. I also feel the cold air gently brushing on my skin helping me cool down a bit.

I look down

and

I see a reflection of the sky in the river while standing on my boat and marvel at the water taking shapes and colors of the clouds and sky. 

Nature has its own way of expressing love!

 

Survival Story

 

Shivering bones beneath my numb skin

A warm fuzzy scarf embracing my shoulders

Eyes drunk in mist and snowflakes

While humming in the silence of the snowfall and

leaving my footprints on the heaped-up ice along the walkway

I look back at my life and smile back at my survival

my soft voice murmured with a crackling voice 

“I have a story to write, a journey to recall”!

 Picture: Footprints on snow, taken by Piu Chowdhury

Epitaph

 A sunny afternoon

my notebook on top of the box on top of my bed

while noting down my thoughts about history and home

I was humming along with Lewis Capaldi 

“I just wanna be somebody to someone”

I don’t know if it was the sun

my right-on-track notes

the track playing on my headphones

or the words that Capaldi sang so beautifully

I was swaying so much in sheer happiness

that my handwriting seemed like it just came back

from chasing a butterfly that had no sense of direction

but soon after my playlist decided to move on to the next song

I stopped swaying

not because Capaldi’s song stopped

but because the song started something inside me

I realized that I was humming the wrong lyrics all along

Or was it really wrong?

I just wanna be somebody for someone

That, that was what I was humming

I just wanna be somebody for someone

not “I just wanna be somebody to someone”

I wasn’t singing along

I was singing my own song

I wasn’t only swaying to Capaldi’s beautiful words

but aligning with my own desires

I want to be somebody for someone

a (comforting) space probably 

a (peaceful) time 

a (happy) memory 

a moment (to cherish)

(loving) eyes 

(embracing) arms 

(selfless) love 

(safe) place 

 I want to be all those things and more if possible

to those who think they don’t deserve love

to those who just need a hand to come out of darkness

to those who just need someone to listen to them

to those who have never tasted freedom

and only need "a someone" to believe they can fight for it

wait, did I just find what I was looking for?

did I just realize what I want to do with my life?

did I just unveil why I am alive?

what meaning my life has?

guess what? 

just when I was in a daze 

drunk in drips of this moment of epiphany

I witnessed a surreal happening 

the universe professed its love for me

a cloud shaped like a heart

my very own blue and white heart

the universe has its own way of giving back, doesn’t it?

that too when it's least expected

this led me to write a letter, a note maybe…

to writer Atticus

Dear Atticus,

May I borrow your lines for my epitaph? And while requesting, may I also have the audacity to request to modify it a lil bit? 

“I hope to arrive at my death

Late,

In love,

And a little drunk”

BEAUTIFUL WORDS Mr. Atticus. Here's what my epitaph would say instead:

I arrived at my death

Late, 

In love 

And quite drunk.

I hope you won't mind Mr. Atticus.

Sincerely,

A poet in love

 

 

 Picture: An open sky, taken by Piu Chowdhury

The Labyrinthine Lemon

A sweet sugarcoated

yet zesty lemon

Tastes sour and bitter when

gone too deep

You can either taste it

or throw it.

There’s no other way to deal with it.

You can keep it

But its rotten smell

will never let you breathe.

Picture: Trees, taken by Piu Chowdhury

Movie Review on Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio: A journey of love, life, death and acceptance

Movie Review on Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio: A journey of love, life, death and acceptance

    Released on November 11, 2022, Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio is a stop-motion animated movie directed by Guillermo Del Toro and Mark Gustafsan. This movie has been nominated for multiple awards like Oscar, BAFTA, Art Directors Guild, Golden Globes, and many more (more information on awards can be found in this link). Based in Italy, this movie is about Geppetto and his son, the handcrafted wooden boy called Pinocchio. This movie represents the idea of knowing and accepting someone as they are and loving them without having to change them in order to meet societal expectations. It also shows the relationship between father and son and the many ways in which this relationship is challenged, questioned, explored, and at the end accepted and cherished. Geppetto is a gifted artist and carpenter who lives in Italy during World War II with his son Carlo. Geppetto loses his son to a bomb released by one of the airplanes returning to base. Geppetto’s love, mourning, and grief for Carlo make him desperately find Carlo’s presence in the boy that he carves out of a pinewood tree, named Pinocchio. Geppetto’s creation of Pinocchio looks monstrous on the screen through the shadows of him axing the tree in a scary way with Geppetto’s grunting noises. This is much different than what he looks like when he is a loving father to Carlo and “a model Italian citizen” (Pinocchio) to society. Contrary to this calm, loving, and stable Geppetto, Pinocchio’s creator looks unstable from being too drunk, filled with rage and impatience. Given life by the Spirit, the wooden boy becomes Geppetto’s son Pinocchio. They both have difficulty understanding each other. As Geppetto keeps searching for Carlo in Pinocchio and Pinocchio finds it difficult to not stay true to himself, they grow apart. In Pinocchio’s journey, he finds a friend and a companion in a cricket called Sebastian J. Cricket and a monkey called Spazzatura. Geppetto and Pinocchio’s love and understanding for each other grow over time. Geppetto realizes that Pinocchio can never be Carlo and that he loves Pinocchio despite that. The movie starts and ends in the same place with a closed shot of the pinecone in the frame. The beginning scene has a morose and cold tone with blue, and green colors on the screen. Whereas the end scene takes place in the same setting but has a loving, hopeful, warm tone with colors like orange, brown, and yellow. The trajectory from the beginning to the end of the movie marks the loop of a journey in which life and death exist and coexist. The journey from the coldness of the stories of the individual characters and the coldness in their relationship to the growth and warmth of their individualities and their relationships is traversed through the movie. The growth in the characters is shown in raw, intimate, and non-linear ways. Along with the other characters like Sebastian and Spazzatura, Geppetto goes through such growth too.

    Geppetto is a loving, caring, calm, and social being in the beginning. But when he loses Carlo, he becomes impatient, drunk, and angry. However, after Pinocchio comes into his life, he no longer wastes his nights and days drinking and goes back to working again. But soon his angry, impatient, and stubborn side shows up again when Pinocchio fails to be a real boy. Slowly with time, as Geppetto realizes the love that he carries for Pinocchio, his character grows into an understanding and loving father again. Geppetto is a perfectionist too. From choosing the pinecone that looks perfect without any of its scales missing to finishing the crucifix with perfection, he shows life to his son Carlo the way Geppetto looks at life. But an artist who walks on the marks of flawlessness and only carves perfect creations ends up building Pinocchio without perfection. He starts off carving Pinocchio with perfect ears and hair but leaves the precision unfinished from being too drunk, something that Guillermo mentions in the documentary Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio: Handcarved Cinema. This unrefined, imperfect creation of Geppetto becomes everything that he has a hard time accepting. This is one of the reasons he keeps telling Pinocchio, “Carlo never acted like this” (Pinocchio). Pinocchio is an outsider for both Geppetto and society because he does not fit the mold of a real boy suited for civil society. Geppetto chooses to carve Pinocchio in hopes of getting back his son Carlo, out of the pine tree that grows from the pine that causes Carlo’s death (Carlo goes into the church to get back the perfect pine that he found and at that moment bombs are dropped on the church killing Carlo). From the bark of that tree starts a new story of life, love, and family for Pinocchio, Geppetto, and Sebastian. A pine that causes Carlo’s death, grows into a pine tree that gives birth to Pinocchio, who changes the way the characters in the movie perceive life, death, love, and relationships. Even though Pinocchio is made to revive Carlo, he is nothing like Carlo. 

    Unlike Carlo, Pinocchio is not an obedient son who listens to his father. Pinocchio questions things around him. He does not simply listen to Geppetto or society because he is asked to do so. He tries to be like Carlo when he gets to know how much Geppetto loves Carlo. He says “I will be just like Carlo! I will obey and go to school, and I will be the very, very best at… whatever they do there” (Pinocchio). Even though Pinocchio tries his best to be like Carlo to receive Geppetto’s love, he fails at being anyone other than himself. He is so pure that he remains true to himself and ultimately teaches Geppetto to love him for who he really is. Pinocchio is curious about why certain things are done in certain ways and why certain standards are believed to be better than others. For example, he has a hard time understanding why he is not accepted by society just because he is carved out of wood, but the crucifix made out of wood is worshipped by the same people. He questions and challenges the ideas of normalcy and fixated standards. To others, he is an “abnormal boy” who “lacks discipline” (Pinocchio) and is either compared to Carlo or Candlewick (the ideal representation of a real boy, the son of a government official). It takes time for Geppetto to understand that Pinocchio is a boy who has his own identity. This boy sees the world through his own eyes and is “an independent thinker” (Pinocchio). But society fails to see this in him. Pinocchio becomes a star in a carnival organized by the antagonist Volpe. One of the reasons Pinocchio likes being the star of the puppet show in the carnival is because he gets accepted, seen, and loved by the audience for his show. From constantly being seen as just a wooden boy and an outsider, Pinocchio gets appreciated and celebrated by the kids in the carnival. This is the first time he gets to experience acceptance from people around him since he was made by Geppetto. In the fight between Geppetto and Volpe to claim Pinocchio as their own, Pinocchio comes under a car and dies. That’s when the audience of the movie gets to know that Pinocchio does not go through real death. His deaths are just “waiting periods” (Pinocchio). He will die many times and will come back to life again. The audience also gets to know that Pinocchio, for this very reason of not going through real death, will never be able to become a real boy like Carlo. This is Guillermo’s way of letting his audience know that transforming Pinocchio into a real boy is not what this movie is about. After his first death, Pinocchio becomes more convinced that he cannot become like Carlo, and he does not want to become like Carlo. It is as if he takes a new birth and does not want to pretend to be Carlo or force himself to be like Carlo to receive his father’s love. For the first time, he lets his father know “I’m not Carlo. I don’t want to be like Carlo” (Pinocchio). In a moment of rage and agony, Geppetto lashes out at Pinocchio calling him a burden. Pinocchio shows his love for his father in his own way by trying to unburden him of his worries. From here onwards Geppetto’s understanding of his love for Pinocchio for who he really is starts. Sebastian J. Cricket, a person of wisdom and knowledge, helps Geppetto in seeing what Geppetto could not see all the while Pinocchio was with him, which is Pinocchio’s love for Geppetto. Sebastian says, “Why are you so blind? So absolutely blind! The boy loves you. He has much to learn but he loves you for who you are. Would it kill you to do as much for him?” (Pinocchio). Geppetto not only recognizes Pinocchio’s love for him but also recognizes his love for Pinocchio. He searches for Pinocchio and in that search, he gets swallowed by a monstrous-sized dogfish. 

    This dogfish is a metaphor for the size of the obstacle that both Geppetto and Pinocchio must cross to find each other again. The uncomfortable slimy gut full of mucous inside the dogfish represents the unpleasant emotions and situations that they have to go through to understand each other. Pinocchio’s nose acts as a bridge that saves Geppetto, Sebastian, and Spazzatura to escape from the dogfish, which symbolizes the gap that they have covered through understanding, support, and care, in order to reach out to each other and help each other in coming out of the unpleasantness of their relationships. Even though Pinocchio is not seen or accepted as a real boy and is looked at as a wooden boy in the movie, he helps other characters in the movie to come to terms with their emotions, accept their emotions and be compassionate of others’ emotions. In an interview from the documentary Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio: Handcarved Cinema, Guillermo mentions Pinocchio is “really good at being natural, but he is incredibly intimate when he’s whispering or talking to the cricket or talking to Candlewick. There is an absolute pure emotion there.” The pure emotion and the intimate side that Guillermo includes in Pinocchio reflect that he does not need to be a real boy to feel emotions or to share intimate and meaningful relationships. It also represents that it is not Pinocchio who needs to change in order to be in the society, but it is the society that needs to change its constricted perspective in order to recognize the purity of Pinocchio’s character. This becomes clear when Guillermo expresses his motive for making this film in the documentary. He says, “Normally Pinocchio is about what Pinocchio learns in the world and then becomes a good boy and therefore becomes a real boy, and our Pinocchio is not that. He changes everyone because he is so pure. He changes Geppetto. He changes the cricket. He changes Spazzatura. He changes everyone” (Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio: Handcarved Cinema). Pinocchio, who does not even understand the meaning of death in the beginning, teaches the characters like Geppetto, Sebastian, Candlewick, and Spazzatura the meaning of life, family, father-son relationship, and the depth of loss and love. Throughout the movie and especially by the end of the movie, Guillermo makes it clearer that the motive of this movie is not to force Pinocchio into the mold of a real boy but to let others accept him as he is and for Pinocchio to grasp the meaning of love, life, and death. Pinocchio becomes a source of support, comfort, and care for characters like Geppetto, Sebastian, Candlewick, and Spazzatura. 

    Geppetto realizes his love for Pinocchio and Pinocchio’s love for him, despite the difference that Pinocchio and Carlo have. He literally crosses a sea to see Pinocchio again, survives the monstrous attack of the dogfish, and learns to accept Pinocchio the way he is. At one point, when he almost loses Pinocchio he says, “I was trying to make you someone you are not. So don’t be Carlo or anyone else. Be exactly who you are. I… I love you exactly as you are” (Pinocchio). Guillermo beautifully captures the moment when Geppetto and Pinocchio accept each other as they are and express their love for each other in front of the vast sea and the purplish sky with a hint of orange from the rising sun in the background. The frame is filled with Sebastian, Spazzatura, Pinocchio, and Geppetto, and the warmth of their embrace and laughter becomes as bright as the warm orange sun. Sebastian also goes through growth in his character while being with Pinocchio. Sebastian, a writer, traveler, scholar, and a person who lived with artists learns to come out of his own world, write a memoir that does not only involve him but the people around him too, and uses his wisdom to guide and save Pinocchio in his journey of adjusting to the human world. Candlewick, a young boy who is groomed to be a soldier in war by his father Podesta and who tries his best to match his father’s unreasonable expectations, learns to feel his emotions without guilt with the help of Pinocchio. He learns that he is allowed to feel scared or sad and does not have to compete against people to deserve his father’s love or to be accepted by his father as a son. What starts as a competitive relationship between Pinocchio and Candlewick shapes up into a loving friendship. Candlewick gathers the courage to revolt against his father for himself and for his friend Pinocchio. From not liking Pinocchio and competing against him for Volpe’s attention and admiration, Spazzatura too becomes Pinocchio’s friend and stays with him till his last breath. Both Candlewick and Spazzatura are loved and cared for by Pinocchio without asking for anything in return or without boxing them into categories of useless sons or unwanted beings. For the first time in their life, they experience genuine comfort, friendship, and love in Pinocchio’s presence, and like good and loyal friends they return the same to Pinocchio. This enables them to revolt against Podesta and Volpe and break free from the positions that force them into believing that they are inferior. 

    Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio is not just a movie about a father and son, but also an emotional journey of a boy who is forced to feel lost in the world that demands him to change. It is a vulnerable response to a society that cannot conceive of anything but perfection and constricted perspectives about humans and relationships. It challenges the stereotyped boxes of real, ideal, and perfect. It also questions the connection between never feeling scared or vulnerable and courage or strength. Through Pinocchio’s dialogues with Candlewick, Guillermo is saying that showing vulnerability is not an antonym for courage or strength. This movie will touch those hearts who deny settling with the roles that this society fixes for them. There are moments that are so profoundly meaningful that I had to pause the movie and think about what it means to be a human and what it takes to be a human. It is like a fresh breath of air in a world that requires a pure and free soul like Pinocchio to remain stuck in a place or role that suffocates him. I feel that this movie can be an inspiration for writers, directors, animators, and voice artists to present stories, characters, and themes that reach the audience in a way where they feel heard, seen, and understood. I also think that watching the documentary, Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio: Handcarved Cinema, on the making of the film after watching the movie will be insightful in understanding the motive of the movie because it gives a glimpse of the world of stop-motion and the way this movie is visualized, conceptualized and seen by the artists who created it. For me, Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio is a movie that I can go back to when life gets too difficult to understand and I can take refuge in the soothing and comforting dialogues of the movie. Whenever I feel like my creative juice is running out, I can replenish myself by watching the beautiful story and vision that this movie creates. 

Few quotes from Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio that stayed with me:

 “Well, in this world you get what you give.” 

 “I’ll try my best and that’s the best anyone can do.”

 “What’s a burden?” “It’s something painful you must carry even though it hurts you very much.”

 “But little did I know that death was not the end.” 

 “Every moment you shared with them may be the very last. You never know how long you have with someone until they are gone.”

 “I only wished to bring you joy.” “And you did, you did bring me joy. Such terrible, terrible joy.”

 “I was trying to make you someone you are not. So don’t be Carlo or anyone else. Be exactly who you are. I… I love exactly as you are.”

 “What happens, happens. And then, we are gone.” 

 

Works Cited

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio. Directed by Guillermo Del Toro and Mark Gustafsan, Netflix, 2022.

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio: Handcarved Cinema, Netflix, 2022.

“Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio 2022: Awards”, IMDb, https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1488589/awards/?ref_=tt_awd.

Picture: Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio (Netflix)

Book review on J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye: Seeing the world through Holden Caulfield's eyes

    Before starting my discussion on J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, I want to mention why I chose to discuss Salinger’s novel out of all the books I have read recently. I had difficulty finishing this book. Continuing to read this book became too strenuous for me. Too many details! Too much digression! Too many flashbacks! These things kept going on in my head as I kept reading. For some reason as much as this book gave me reasons to not go back to it again, it also gave me reasons to ponder why it has been so difficult to even think about holding this book again. That’s what made me write about this book. So, writing about this book is more of a selfish act than just a literary or creative act. Writing about this book is going through self-reflection. Writing about this book is a journey that I have embarked on to understand why Holden’s painful, long, and sometimes redundant narration hit me so hard!

    The plot of Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye, published in 1951 revolves around a boy called Holden Caulfield and his story before and after his expulsion from Pencey Prep School in Agerstown, Pennsylvania for failing in a few subjects a few times. As much as the plot discusses Holden’s failure of maintaining his status as a student in a prestigious school it also expresses Holden’s difficulty in understanding how “phony” (Salinger 12) the world, people, words in conversations, and human connections can be. He finds it difficult to stay in places or in between people who are not genuine. He even quits a school because he felt he was “surrounded by phonies” (17). Holden cannot go back to school after the Christmas holiday, and he decides to stay in a hotel in New York instead of going home. During his hotel stay and before he decides to go back to his home and see his little sister (the only person he feels an authentic connection with), he comes across different people, that give rise to conversations that Holden tries to hold on to desperately. He engages in conversations with taxi drivers, three girls in a room close to the hotel lobby, a prostitute, his friend Sally Hayes, two nuns, and his friend Luce from a former school. While meeting these people and visiting different places, he keeps thinking about his little sister Phoebe. He goes back to his home ending his stay in the hotel after he feels cold and lonely while strolling in Central Park for a while. He spends time with Phoebe and talks to her about the play that she is going to be a part of, the record that he bought for her but is broken, getting kicked out of school, and his decision to go away from home. After dancing with Phoebe for a while, Holden decides to leave as his parents come back home. He stays in one of his teachers Mr. Antolini’s house until he goes back home on Wednesday (as he is supposed to). He later decides to leave Antolini’s house as he could sense Antolini’s perverted behavior towards him and sleeps in a station. Holden decides not to go home on Wednesday and to hitchhike and go away. He tells Phoebe about this decision in a letter that Phoebe receives later. Phoebe meets Holden with a bag as she decides to leave with Holden, something that Holden disagrees with. Holden takes her to the zoo all the while trying to make her understand to go back to school instead of going away with him. They leave the zoo and go to a park. Phoebe rides on a carousel which makes Holden so happy that he almost starts “bawling” (234). The story ends with Holden’s reluctance to give a detailed description of what happens after he goes home, his selection of school, and his future plans. He ends his story by saying how much he misses the people that he has talked about so far and how funny it is that he misses them. The way Holden, the narrator of the novel, narrates the story tells a lot about Holden as a character. Even the first line of the novel is quite insightful in understanding Holden as a character. 

    “IF YOU REALLY WANT TO HEAR about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth ” (Salinger3)- the first line from Holden, where the narrator Holden establishes the boundary between the reader and the narrator. It insinuates that the narrator can tell his story from the beginning with detailed information about his life if the readers want to listen to his story. But in the same sentence, he makes it clear that he has no intention of doing that and draws a line between him and the readers. “I’m not going to tell you my goddamn autobiography or anything. I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy” (3). It’s as if he’s saying “I’ll tell you my story and ‘IF YOU REALLY WANT TO HEAR about it’ you have to get on this journey where you don’t know where and how far I’ll take you.” He takes his narration in the direction that he wants with full control. This also shows that this is the only place where the world does not get to intervene in telling him how to tell his story or live his life or fast forward his story or not show vulnerability or authenticity when it comes to conversations or worldly pursuits (like getting into a school or securing a career). Holden’s voice wanders through lots of digressions throughout the novel but he is very vocal and clear about how lonely and depressed he feels.

    He does not hide his depression and loneliness from the readers and gives them distinct examples of what and who makes him depressed or angry. For example, certain words like “Grand” (12), “I don’t know” (18), and “Good Luck” (19) make him feel terrible. Looking back at  Pency while leaving, and the emptiness of the hotel lobby, nuns eating only toast and coffee for breakfast, and sleeping in the waiting room of a station make him depressed. Holden also carries a deep sense of empathy and sensitivity in his heart. For example, he keeps wondering what happens to the ducks near the lagoon in Central Park once it gets all frozen and icy. He gets concerned if they would fly away or be taken away to a zoo for being safe from the ice and cold. Elkton Hills, one of the schools that he leaves had a headmaster called Mr. Haas, who was “phony” (17) and would behave differently with students’ parents based on their looks and clothes. Holden mentions “I can’t stand that stuff. It drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed I go crazy. I hated that goddamn Elkton Hills” (17). In other words, holden dislikes those who would fake their behavior based on the way people look or clothe. He dislikes it so much that he would leave the place to not be consumed by his hatred towards anything or anyone “phony”, a word that he mentions quite a few times in the book. He mentions how he fails the Oral Expression course in Pency because he could not bring himself to follow a rule where students have to yell “Digression” (202) if another student giving a speech digresses from the topic at all. He says, “I mean it's dirty to keep yelling ‘Digression’!” (203). He thinks that yelling digression while an anxious student is giving his speech is nasty. It shows his detest for being around people who are fake and inconsiderate of others’ feelings. He also says, “That digression business got on my nerves. I don’t know. The trouble with me is, I like it when someone digresses. It’s more interesting and all” (202). This can be another reason why he digresses a lot while telling his stories. He does not like to tell his stories in a linear way because his stories are not linear and the way that he perceives life and people are not linear. It can also be his way of revolting against rules that require students to humiliate another student for digressing from the topic of discussion. In Holden’s narration, two things that come across very strongly are his hold on the things that seem familiar and his desperation for engaging in conversations with strangers and seeking companionship in order to escape from the lethal agony of loneliness. 

    Holden’s entire story voices his desperate grasp on strangers out of the morose feeling of loneliness and depression. But at the same time, it reflects his lack of interest and growing annoyance towards things and people that lack integrity or authenticity, which leads him to find things that bring him close to some sort of connectedness. This can be why he keeps digressing and going into flashbacks; to find some sort of familiarity in the world where things and people keep changing, or to find connectedness in the world from which he feels severely detached. For example, he loves to visit the museum that he and his sister used to visit as a kid because it has a similar smell and atmosphere as it had when he was a kid. He also searches for certainty in the world even though he knows it might not be possible. His desire for some sort of certainty or assurance is asserted through his monologue, “Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that’s impossible, but it’s too bad anyway” (136). This monologue also shows that he is not delusional and knows what’s possible and what’s not, but still, there are some things he would like to keep safe. Like, the ducks in a freezing cold lagoon, Phoebe’s innocence, or saving children from losing their innocence or diving into the rat race of life mindlessly or meaninglessly. This is where he gets his love for a line from Robert Burn’s poem “Catcher in the Rye”. The line is, “If a body meet a body coming through the rye” (191). He misremembers the line as “If a body catch a body coming through the rye” (191) and he explains why he remembers the line in this way. It is because of his desire to become the catcher in the rye by saving kids and by catching them if they played in a field or rye and they start to run towards a cliff. Thinking about being the catcher in the rye is one of the things that makes Holden happy.

    There are a number of things that make Holden sad or depressed or frustrated, but very few things that make him happy, and the thought of being the catcher in the rye or listening to a kid singing a line from the poem “Catcher in the Rye” is one of them. It hints at his desire to save these kids from being lost in the uncertainty, frailty, or phoniness of adulthood once they transition from childhood to adulthood. Another thing that makes Holden so happy that he almost cries is when he sees Phoebe riding on the carousel. Even though it was raining profusely, and he was all soaked in rain from watching Phoebe going round and round on the ride instead of taking shelter from the rain, he feels “nice” (234) and content. He describes his emotions related to rain in one of the times when he visits his childhood museum. Holden expresses his love for the Museum of Natural History, a museum that he often visited with Phoebe when he was a kid. He explains how the auditorium of the museum smells like it is raining outside. He says, “It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn’t, and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world. I loved that damn museum” (134). He feels safe, comfortable, and nice thinking that if it were raining outside then he is in a place like a museum which is dry and smells nice. This emotion contradicts his happiness while watching Phoebe on the ride even though he is soaked in rain. But at the same time, it shows that his happiness leans more towards sharing moments with Phoebe. While watching Phoebe on the ride, he shares Phoebe’s innocence going round and round on a carousel and at this moment rain or being wet from the rain does not make him sad or unsafe. At this moment he does not think about saving the kids from the cliff or the phony world. He does not go back into his pattern of digressing into past stories to find familiarity or connection. He does not have to think about saving this moment in a glass jar to save it from being taken away or changed. Holden, for the very first time, lives in the moment and shares his happiness with his little sister who is happy just by riding on a carousel, without dreading the possibility that this moment might be taken away from him.  

    I feel that this book is about an individual who struggles to accept the hardships of not living according to the manual that the world provides him and who strongly rejects anything that he does not feel connected to. But somewhere between this acceptance and rejection he desperately tries to hold on to things that he can connect with, things that don’t make him feel lonely or depressed. To be honest I had a hard time finishing this book. I have a lot of bookmarks in the book where I have expressed how many unnecessary details and descriptions this book has and how it sometimes becomes boring or complicates the actual story (which I had a hard time figuring out). For me, Holden’s story is about a boy who cannot accept things as they are just because they have to be that way. He looks at life, people, words, emotions, and relationships from a perspective that often makes him look like someone who is not willing to grow up. But in the depth of all his questions and his dislike towards fake people and ridiculous systems (that look down on people and force others to do the same), he craves meaningful human connection, conversations where he will get some comfort of being understood (maybe that’s why he quits telling whole stories about anything from time to time because he believes that no one would understand him) and a sense of comfort and safety in knowing that there are some things that cannot be taken away (like the moment Phoebe goes on the carousel). For a reader who first found this book to be rather boring and somewhat going round and round like Phoebe on the carousel, I have come to understand the pain that Holden carries; his pain comes from not being able to accept the way the world works. I understand his desperate attempts to come out of situations and places that make him feel lonely and depressed and his innumerable mentions of his hatred towards phoniness. I understand that he wants to be the catcher in the rye because he doesn’t want any other kid or Phoebe to go through what he goes through. He wants to be there for them when they mindlessly run towards a cliff, even though there were times when nobody was there to catch him. He wants to be there for the kids in case there would be no one to save them. As a reader, there is a slight sense of comfort knowing that this boy who is holding onto so many thoughts, feelings, repressed emotions, and suppressed memories of childhood sexual abuse, could finally find his happiness in the carousel. Towards the end there is the insinuation that he consults a psychoanalyst, which also lets me know as a reader that there is someone to help him figure things out, to listen to him, and to let him speak without asking him if he has failed in yet another course. 

    I would recommend this book to anyone who has a hard time understanding the world, people, systems, and institutions and the many ways in which they force a monolithic understanding of success. I would also recommend it to people who find it difficult to connect or relate to anything or anyone, or to find stability and comfort in life. It is also a book that I feel is quite vocal about expressing depression and loneliness, something that those who connect to can read. I am glad that at the end of the review, I can understand that the reason why I thought I’ll never be able to touch this book again is that some of the troubles that Holden goes through to accept the world as it is, are mine too.

Few quotes from J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye that stayed with me:

 “When I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse” (7).

 “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it” (22).

 “When I was all set to go, when I had my bags and all, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down the goddamn corridor. I was sort of crying. I don’t know why” (59).

 “When you’re depressed you can’t even think” (102).

 “It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn’t, and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world” (133).

 “Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know it’s impossible, but it’s too bad anyway” (136).

 “‘Did you ever get fed up?’ ‘I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something?” (144).

 “I’m not too sure old Phoebe knew what the hell I was talking about. I mean she’s only a little child and all. But she was listening, at least. If somebody at least listens, it’s not too bad” (190).

 “lots of time you don’t know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn’t interest you most. I mean you can’t help it sometimes. What I think is, you’re supposed to leave somebody alone if he’s at least being interesting and he’s getting all excited about something. I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It’s nice” (204). 

 “‘I think one of these days,’ ‘you’re going to have to find out where you want to go. And you’ve got to start going there. But immediately. You can’t afford to lose a minute. Not you’” (208).

 “Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them – if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry’” (208).

Work Cited

Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Little, Brown and Company, 1991.

Picture: Carousel