Many
of us would claim ourselves as “movie lovers”, where we enjoy spending time having
movie marathon alone or with friends, watching movies for few hours without
showing any sense of exhaustion. Some of us would even show up in cinema during
every weekend, just to have a relaxing time enjoying the latest movie. However,
do we ever question ourselves, how much and deep do we love movies? Are we
willing to make it as a dream or career that becomes an important part of our
lives, or just an interesting activity that carried out during leisure time?
“Cinema Paradiso” is a
1988 Italian movie that portrays the life of a true movie lover, named Salvatore
di Vita (nickname: Toto). Using flashback technique, this movie displays the
love and passion of a young man towards movies since his childhood, which shaped
him to become a successful movie director in future. The movie started with
Toto receiving the passing away news of his friend, Alfredo. Feeling shocked
and grieved, he reminisced about his life in his born place, a village named
Giancaldo in Sicily. In this small village, he learnt about his love for movies
and also got to know one of the most important person in his life, Alfredo.
Toto and Alfredo knew
each other in a local theatre named Cinema Paradiso. Their relationship is
quite complicated, yet warm and touching. They were like friends, teacher and
student, and father and son. Alfredo offered warm and cares towards Toto when
he was punished by his mother because of his passion towards movies. He taught
Toto the skills in film-projecting and also shared with him his life-learning
knowledge. Toto would tell Alfredo about his love problems and take good care
of him after he was blind because of a fire in cinema. Although it is quite
cruel for Toto when Alfredo urged him to leave the village to pursue his dream
and promised that he would never look back and come back to the village even
with successful results, I can see the love of a father and teacher who wishes
his son and student to do well in future and how hard he is to make that decision
to push away his precious kid just to let him grows. The most touching part of
the movie is the last scene, where Toto realized that the gift that Alfredo
left to him before he passed away was actually all the snipped kissing scenes
that he asked when he was a kid. Making these scenes into a movie, Alfredo
wanted to remind Toto to feel love again even though he was heart-broken in his
first relationship. From these, I learn that love could beyond blood-line.
“Cinema
Paradiso” is a very interesting and meaningful movie as it reveals the real
life of village people after World-War II. War brings a lot of harm. It takes
away plenty of innocent lives and destroys the hope of many families. It turns
Toto’s mother into a widow and Toto and his sister into children who lost their
father. Although Alfredo sometimes played the role of father in Toto’s life, it
could not be denied that Toto still lost his real father in his early childhood,
which would affect his life development. Besides, from the movie, I could see
how narrow-minded and bias some villagers are towards different culture and
believes. It was shown in the movie where a family was being discriminated and
left the village because they are communists. Children were even being taught
not to be friend with them by their parents. Adults would discriminate
communists in the workplace without any reasons just because of their identity.
Furthermore, a “high status” man who sat at the upper level in the cinema would
spit towards the crowd sitting at the lower floor who he thought were lower
classes than him to show his discrimination. All these scenes had shown people
in these period of time were lack of tolerance towards people who are different
from them, which I do not agree as we should treat everyone in this world
equally without prejudice and discrimination.
I was
being inspired after watching this movie as it shows the real life of a person
in pursuing his dream. Although Toto experienced lots of happiness and sadness
in his childhood and adolescence, he did not give up but still passionate and
determined enough to make his dream comes true, which is to become a successful
movie producer. Life is full of ups and downs. It is our determination and
believes that make us strong enough to withstand the pressures and pass through
all the life obstacles successfully.
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