The Horseman on the Roof

I love Juliette Binoche. I'll watch any movie that she graces. This one takes place in France in 1832. The cholera outbreak has the villages in panic. An Italian nobleman has taken exile in southern France followed from his homeland by Austrian spies. He hopes to single-handedly free his country from Austrian control and is trying to raise money for the revolution in France.

This is not my favorite type of movie. I do tend to see a lot of wartime films, but they center on personal stories, the lives of people and families affected by the war. Movies like this one begin to lose me when they shift around with the ins and outs of war, the strategies, the camps, the chasing, the conflicts, the trumpeting. Who am I rooting for? Who's winning? Why are they attacking? What are they trying to accomplish? It's not the fault of the director or screen play. It's my own, for sleeping through history class. Furthermore I find that I don't do well with any movie involving petticoats.

While Angelo, the nobleman, is hiding out from the Austrian spies on the rooftops of rural France he takes refuge in the attic of Pauline de Theus, the wife of Marquis de Theus. She is awaiting her husband's return. She provides shelter and food for Angelo and they become partners as she looks for her missing husband and he tries to get home to Italy with money for the revolution.

The scenery is beautiful, these two beautiful people riding horses through mountains and countryside. I can't help but think of my nephew Blaise who has currently returned to his mother's homeland in southern France to work in his uncle's vineyard. He has also taken up training as an equestrian and is, as word has it, "a natural." Thank heavens for foreign films, I can imagine being there with him, the lucky duck.

I've Loved You For So Long

Is a murderer necessarily different from you and me? Juliette just got out of prison for murdering her 6 year old son. Rejected those years by her family, she is now welcomed into the home of her long lost sister. Her days are quiet and heavy, spent resuming the job of fitting in, looking for work, learning to love and be loved. No one has ever known the circumstances of the murder and no one asks. There is a young niece who asks a lot of questions of Juliette, mostly where she has been all her life. There is a brother in law who isn't completely comfortable with the idea of Juliette living in his home, with his children. There is a sister who is waiting to become a part of Juliette's life again.

The small things in life are presented here in each scene of Juliette's new life. An hour at the local cafe, a hopeful job interview, washing dishes in her sister's kitchen, teaching a niece to play a piece on the piano, a dinner with new friends. Life can be reclaimed after tragedy. There is always more love when we believe all is lost.

Life is Beautiful

The first time I saw Life is Beautiful I was shaken to my core. My friend Mary had invited me to go to a movie as she often did. We were homeschooling partners. She lives down the street and would take my son for a lesson or project and then I'd take hers. Our lives revolved around our families. I had a new baby boy. She had told me the premise of the movie at one time but I'd completely forgotten. I sat down and began to watch a love story, a sweet funny man, Guido an Italian Jew, who had come across the sweet shy woman of his dreams and he was determined to win her heart. It was Italy in the 1930s just before the German occupation and life was beautiful.

Guido wins the heart of his Italian lady who he calls "princepessa," princess. They have a beautiful little son and their life is beautiful until the movie takes a nightmarish turn and the Germans take the father and son. Princepessa insists to be taken with them. My heart began to break.

It was their son's 4th birthday and Guido, refusing to relinquish life's beauty, tells his son they are playing a game to celebrate. At every step of their unthinkable journey Guido remains bouyant, encouraging his son with his imaginative game to be the same. The crowded train ride was torturous. The boy wanted to go home and sleep in his own bed. For me this was an excrutiating scene. The simplicity of life and comfort, gone. A child needs a bed to rest his weary, confused body. At the camp, Princepessa is separated from the two and Guido continues his game telling the boy that they are participating in a contest, the winner of which would win a tank in the end. He lifts the spirits of his boy who he keeps hidden from the guards with his game throughout their days in the camp.

In the weeks following my viewing of this movie that bruised my heart with unthinkable pain and joy I would be shocked again hearing people speaking out against it. They said that Roberto Benini made light of one of the worst evils this planet has ever seen. No, it was the exact opposite. His movie was somehow able to introduce to me in a new way the horror of it all by holding fast to the beauty of life despite that horror. By showing the one that refused to go down with the ship, I could see more clearly the catastrophic evil that pulled millions of people, the Germans included, under to the destruction of their lives.

To know parenthood and the desperate consuming love and appreciation of life discovered there from the moment of conception is to know the immense tragedy of ignoring it.