One inspiring film: Spectatator
These past s 5 months in Australia, I have probably watched most amount of film, I have ever watched in my whole life. Partly because of loneliness, partly because of tiredness and dullness of academic life, I love to watch films. Some films are just fun. You watch a$nd forget. But some films make a lasting impressions in your life. I think, I will forever . remember this Italian movie: Spectator.
The girl secretly watches her neighbour everyday. He is her companion, that she never dares to have. She is lonely. She follows him sometimes, without any serious intention. One day, she knows the man is moving to Rome. On an impulse she takes a train to Rome. She had accidently discovered the man's work address. There she meets a woman, with whom her man has relationship. The girl purposively gets bruished by the woman's car. Then, strike up an aquaintance. Somehow, the girl ends up working after woman. The relationship between man and woman ends somehow. The man begins to be aware about the girl. One day, he waits up for her, just to meet her. He goes after her and says that: I don't know why i am following you, and you don't know me'. That moment is the most intense scene in the film. The girl falls into man's arm and cries and says, 'don't say anything'. At this point, it seems they will have now an happy ending together or get married or something like that. But girl leaves Rome to leave to Turin, where she came from. She leaves a letter explaining everything to woman. But woman does not say anything to man. The man knows she has gone back without explaining and puzzled.
The ending of the film is puzzling, but surprisingly familiar. The spectator is about loneliness, about fear. About how difficult it is to get someone who can understand you in your life. How sensitive relationships are. It also deals with the myth of 'impossible love'. In my analysis, the woman wants to preserve the memory that the man indeed came after her and wanted to know her and may be even love her. But she does not want to pursue a relationship with him, though that was highly possible. She was probably afraid that the memory she has of him, will turn different if she has a relationship with him in real. She just wanted a relationship with him as a spectator. It is a safe relationship, a kind in which you need to know only about your own feelings. The spectator doe snot need to care about the one who is being 'spectatored'
The movie left with me a deep sense of loss to see that the girl did not go back to the man. She did not encourage him in any way, though every emotions in her wanted that relationship to happen.
I admire the way Italian films show human relationships; in raw, in reality. Showing that there are various possibilities to end. And like life, Italian films mostly have no proper endings.
