Vorige maand was ik onder de indruk van La Meglio Gioventu, een Italiaanse familiekroniek die zich afspeelt tussen 1966 en de tegenwoordige tijd. Het riep bij mij de herinneringen op aan het epos Novecento dat ik een jaar of twintig geleden voor het laatst zag. Anders dan La Meglio Gioventu is Novecento typisch Italiaanse cinema met veel schilderachtige fotografie. De cinematografie is die van het brede gebaar, dus met veel pans. Ook al is de landstreek waar de film zich afspeelt van een indrukwekkende saaiheid (een dijk langs rijen aangeplante bomen), door de atmosferische opnamen krijgt het iets verhevens en tijdloos. Eigenlijk wel jammer dat de film in het engels is opgenomen.
Sommige beelden uit Novecento zouden bijna uit een communistische propagandafilm kunnen komen: close ups van getekende boerenkoppen en wapperende rode vlaggen. Bernardo Bertolucci heeft van zijn rotsvaste geloof in het socialisme dan ook nooit een geheim willen maken. De fascisten zijn in zijn film ondubbelzinnig de slechterikken. In de linkse jaren van polarisatie toen Novecento werd opgenomen (1976) had men met dit zwart-witbeeld dan ook helemaal geen moeite.
Bron: rug.nl
Una giornata particolare
Afgelopen weekend deed NRC Handelsblad Una giornata particolare (1977) van Ettore Scola aan zijn lezers cadeau. Net als in Novecento vormt het fascisme in deze film een decor. Maar terwijl Bertolucci met Novecento ook een politiek pamflet heeft gemaakt, is Scola’s film een indringend verhaal geworden over twee mensen die de gevangenen zijn van de omstandigheden en troost vinden bij elkaar.
The year 2006 marked several dates related to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, such as the 125th anniversary of his death, the 160th birthday of his wife Anna, the 145th anniversary of his novel „The Insulted and Humiliated,„ the 140th anniversary of „Crime and Punishment,„ the 135th anniversary of „The Devils,„ and the 125th anniversary of „The Brothers Karamazov.„ Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria, representative of the Moscow Patriarchate to the European institutions shares his views on Christian contents in the great author’s creative work with Interfax-Religion.
However, all these shortcomings do not reduce Dostoyevsky’s importance as a greatest writer in the history of humanity. He managed to penetrate into the innermost depths of the human being, to raise the most difficult and important questions about the meaning of life, God’s existence and the relationship between human freedom and God’s justice. After he had served his term of hard labour he remained a deeply believing person and Orthodox Christian till his death. Yet, judging by his works, the question of God’s existence remained open to him. The main story of all his novels, „Crime and Punishment,„ „The Devils,„ or „The Brothers Karamazov,„ is that of whether God exists. The scale of moral values offered to the human beings depends on the answer to this question. That is why one of his characters says: „If there is no God, anything is permitted.„ In other words, if there is no God, there is no absolute scale of moral values, and all the values are relative. I think that Dostoyevsky’s power is in that he showed in all his works that salvation and morality are impossible without God. Only faith in God guarantees moral survival of every human being and all humanity. I had believed in God even before I got to know Dostoyevsky’s works, but the author contributed to my growing in the faith, in Orthodoxy.
Answering this question, many educated Russians would mention the rites, — but we hardly need wasting time on this sort of nonsense. Not much closer to the truth, however, is another opinion, fairly common among those who are better versed in theology. They would tell us about the filioque, about Papal supremacy and other teachings rejected by Orthodoxy, and also about the teachings of both Latin and Orthodox faiths which are rejected by the Protestants. It would turn out that Orthodoxy has no specific substance of her own, equally unfamiliar to all of the European confessions. But because they have originated one from another, we might expect that there are certain treasures of Christ’s truth which cannot be found in any of them: a heresy born of another heresy must keep some part of the parent if it is not returning to the True Church.
