Film Review
This movie tells a simple and a little threadbare story: During the war, a very fascinating widow in a common town of Sicily made all men crazy and all wives be jealous. She lived in the haze of desire and envy, and finally had to degenerate because of basic living. After the war, she was evicted from the town. All people except “me” just laugh when her disabled husband came back to look for her, and only “me”, a ignorant boy, gave her husband the direction and told him the truth.
The biggest characteristic of this film is that it shows the world in the angle of boy Renato. The beautiful Malena is the goddess during his puberty and the start of his sex consciousness. He lost himself in her beauty just like all other men in the town. Everyday after school, he always ride his bicycle to the side of the road, just waiting extremely attractive Malena to pass by him; Every night, he would climb to the high roof to see a lonely dance of Malena in her living room. All he could do were wait, focus and fantasy. Compared with his fantasy, when he had “close contact “with Malena, his heart was agony. Just like that you love white snow in the winter, but you have to leave black footprints on it, which was filled with the color of destiny. No matter how we interpret it, it’s warm that Malena helped a boy grow into a man. It’s surely that the director didn’t simply intend to depict the burgeoning of Reneto’s sex consciousness. What is more important is that it shows weakness of humanity, desire and jealousy in the reality world.
Malena’s beauty, on the one hand, made people love her, or rather, the so-called love is the excuse of desire; on the other hand, the beauty made people hate her. The film was inundated with expectation and insult as well as slander and worship. Her beauty lighted the fire of desire and jealousy and became the obstacle of her life. She had to sacrifice her body so as to win the lawsuit, get the food and even gain the basic living rights. She struggled and fight against the dark reality, however, when her husband was said to be dead and even her deaf father didn’t believe her chastity, how could she survive with her faith?The moment when she chose to cut off her long and black hair represents that she had given up all her belief and remaining hope toward this world. Was she doomed to be lonely and suffer misery just because of her beauty? No, because the weakness of humanity determines that beauty can’t take root in mundane world.
After the end of the war, the prostitute who served for the German was driven out of the town.All women finally could use the most malicious words to curse Malena without any oppositions. They beat her and tore off her clothes while all men just kept silent or showed pity for her. All of them were same cruel and nobody truly had loved her except the young boy and her alive husband. At that moment, Malena burst into tears without any struggles and she just tightly hugged herself, crying and shouting heartbrokenly. I think the cry wasn’t simply because of the hurt and pains, but her longtime outburst. She used the tears to scour all scars and to prove that she was still alive.
After many years, Malena came back to the small town with her survived but disabled husband. What people saw wasn’t a beautiful and young married woman, but a common middle-aged woman. She became a little corpulent and her clothes and hairstyle were very plain. When she appeared in vegetable market with basket, something incredible happened: all women began to talk with her friendly and even gave away her gifts with enthusiasm as if they were very close friends. I don’t know the exact reasons why those people changed their attitudes so greatly, however, as far as i am concerned, maybe because they felt guilty about what they had done toward Malena or perhaps their envies vanished as soon as they found Malena turn into a common woman just like them. I think one of the movie themes is to expose the ugly of humanity: sometimes the real beauty can’t easily exist in this impetuous world. From another direction, the film reminds us to keep truth, goodness and beauty in our life.
The film Malena isn’t beautiful or romantic, and it just like an old story. It touched me a lot and i won’t forget the forever beauty: Malena.
