The Legend of 1900 A Musical Fantasy About Eternity
The Legend of 1900 (1998)
Genre: Drama, Music, Romance
Director: Guissepe Tornatore
Length: 2:45 min
Stars: Tim Roth, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Bill Nunn
The alluring improvisation of Tornatore ‘The Legend of 1900’ is a great tribute to ‘story’. particularly in the age that mainstream Hollywood cinema is increasingly boosting the gravity of special effects on the expense of undermining the role of a good story in cinematography. Throughout the movie he refers directly or subtly to story as a concept, as secret and even as a symbol of life. The first scene of the movie commences with a thought provoking line when Max (Pruitt Taylor Vince) quotes response of 1900 to his question. Max asks 1900 why never he quits the ship. He replays “you are not done in life as long as you have a story to tell and somebody to tell him that”. Tornatore takes story as life, a never ending journey.
The Legend of 1900 is story a baby is born in a ship while nobody knows who are his parents. Danny Boodmann (Bill Nunn) one the crews accidentally finds him and decides to bring him up. He calls him 1900 inasmuch as he is found in the year 1900.
This is beginning of 1900’s life story which is all passed on the ocean. For all of his life he lives in a ship that commutes people from Europe to to the US. 1900 is the permanent dweller of this ship no matter who attends or who quits the ship.
One day coincidentally he ends up in the first class part and hears somebody playing piano. This became the turning point of his life. He falls in love with piano and find a medium to express himself. From that time on he plays piano on the ocean for the rest of his life. By playing piano he becomes sad, happy, finds friends, falls in love and in one world, experiences the life. Piano connects him to people from different walks of life from poor Italian immigrants who fancy to go to the US to a famous senator who everyday anonymously comes to the third class part of the ship to hear him playing. ABove all, the music makes him find the best friend of all time, Max. The relation they develop is a flawlessly profound friendship full of memorable moments. One of the fantastic climaxes of the movie is the monet Max points out that his most irreplaceable asset in life is the story of 1990. The story that they both lived that together with all those memorable moments. At list four times in the movie we hear that story is a secret. Also, overall scenario of the movie proceeds by many substories which all together form the story of 1900. It is like a biography of 1900 written from perspective of Max. Undoubtedly Max is not neutral in narrating this story. That’s because he deeply loves and respects 1900. Nevertheless, story of 1900 is a sacred and valuable secret in his chest. The secret that he never wants to betray it or disrespect it. It reminds one the famous sentence of the Iranian Author Sadegh Hedayat when he says: “Value of a man equals to the words that he has in mind but cannot mention them”.
However, the biggest secret of this move is about why 1900 never leaves the ocean and steps on land. 1900 (Tim Roth finally opens up to Max and reveals the secret. In this scene which looks like a moment of revelation, 1900 remarks that he always travels for sun. By comparing himself with people who leave in the land he points that summer they wait for winter and in winter for summer. But he is the only one who always wanders in the ocean to seek for a flawless aim, namely, the summer. Maybe summer in his words denotes eternity. The eternity which one can feel when is in the middle of ocean, the eternity that is visible when sky and ocean reach to each other in the horizon. In such a moment we never know is that the the sky or the ocean that we are looking at.
In the spite of his happy life on the ocean, in a melancholic scene he decides to leave the ship. Though, when he is still on the ship stairs and sees the gloomy and blocked view of the New York, changes his mind and returns to the deck. When Max asks him why, he responds: “I could not see the eternity”. It is as opposed to what everybody expects to see in New York, city of crowd, skyscrapers, money, opportunities, etc. But what 1900 intends to see is nothingness, eternity and unblocked horizon.
