Mouchette by Robert Bresson, adapted from the wondrous book by Georges Bernanos – author of The Diary of a Country Priest http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/06/diary-of-country-priest-based-on-novel.html - 10 out of 10

 

Mouchette by Robert Bresson, adapted from the wondrous book by Georges Bernanos – author of The Diary of a Country Priest http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/06/diary-of-country-priest-based-on-novel.html

10 out of 10

 

 

‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’ – Hamlet…having decided on that, there is the exhilaration of watching the film or reading the book, a marvel – as opposed to the Marvel Universe which I refute, in the future, an impossible task, seeing as they have invaded not just exotic planets and galaxies, but the small and big screens – but we can also shiver at the cruelty shown towards the protagonist and animals (such as the rabbits that I fear have been really killed for the production, there were no special effects, and that period was not into showing at the end that ‘no creatures have been harmed during the filming’…besides, this looks like a hypocrisy, given that humanity does kill billions and tortures them in the process, a horror detailed in Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/02/sapiens-brief-history-of-humankind-by.html by Magician Yuval Harari and other opera) and try to be ‘A Merit Finder, Not a Fault Finder in the narrative…

 

In feminist terms, Mouchette is the archetype, the quintessential victim at the hands of male chauvinist pigs, she has to suffer insults, indignities and it gets ever worse, she is abused, raped and her life is hell, in this small French village, about one hundred years ago – alas, it could be today in most places in the world, those that reject ‘Western norms and values’ and say that this is just for America and Europe and they have to keep to other standards, those that keep women in slavery in large parts of the world, in the name of their religion (see Iran, Saudi Arabia, those and other countries were a sexual orientation that does not agree with the majority’s view are sentenced to…death, at least in ‘aggravated cases’ presumably, where they do not seek a ‘cure’) it has not changed for millennia

Things have changed in large parts of the planet, Alhamdulillah, and for some it could look terrible, and outdated, this kind of things does not happen again they say – but there is the caveat mentioned above – albeit it has only been some years since the MeToo movement has exposed what happens in the screen trade, for a Closer Look at what happens there, you could no better than read the astounding Adventures in The Screen Trade http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/02/adventures-in-screen-trade-by-william.html by the twice winner of the Oscar for Best Screenplay, for Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and All The President’s Men, William Goldman, and there is still a long way to go before stories like Mouchette’s are history.

 

She is just fourteen and that exposes another disgusting, horrendous aspect of women’s’ and girls’ lives, that they were exploited, targeted, sexually abused from a very young age, and changes in the laws have been introduced over the past years, though again, this is true for ‘The Western World’ mostly, and even there you have aberrations, ghastly situations, for instance, in red American states, it was still legal until recently for marriages to be officiated between a girl of fourteen or so and a man (I do not think his age is of importance, but presumably, he could be much older) there is also the invasion of Ukraine, degeneration of large segments of the population of the US and the world to be deplored.

 

On the bright side, we have still a supremacy of the ‘western values” as analyzed in Why The West Rules for Now http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/10/why-west-rules-for-now-by-ian-morris.html a fabulous magnum opus by Ian Morris, only just as the title indicates, this is For Now, things are already changing fast, as the Russian invasion shows, the rise of the Red Dragon, with the tyranny it will bring to growing areas (taking Taiwan would be just a step, however much it will be opposed, indeed there could be World War III over this, perhaps the terminal one) and not just women will suffer.

We have to highlight the fact that it will be men (as always) that will bring Armageddon (let us hope not, but the clash appears inevitable, two of the latest copies of The Economist show you the details of that) down on women and everybody else, the specter of the suffering of Mouchette looks set to continue to haunt us, on a massive scale, China is no longer a ‘one party state’, for it has become a ‘one man state’, and they will – what am I saying they have been doing it already – confront America and whoever stands in the way.

 

And the Chinese way is not one favorable to women – actually, it has just one privileged class, the rulers, in particular the despot and they clearly promote a dogma where the powerful dictate, hence their stand on the Russian invasion, and everything else, where they say that the big country has the right to take territory and keep the others, the smaller ones, submissive, which is what the Red Dragon does, bullying states around, claiming islands that are not theirs, they have invaded Tibet, they crashed opposition, freedom in Hong Kong, Uighurs are placed in labor camps, the list is too long

Yes, this was supposed to be about Mouchette and her plight, the Hades she lives in, but I just got mad, and went off on the tangent of the heroine suffered, some of the pain was eliminated in the most advanced democracies, but there is still horror in so many realms and then there is the rise of the Empire of Xi, which will be apocalyptic for all of us, this was the point in a nutshell, and returning to the individual plight, the young woman is called a ‘pute’ by the vile people of the village, who are venomous and stupid.

 

Mouchette tries to fight back, alas, she is alone against the others, she throws mud at them, to vindicate the metaphorical and literal dirt they pour on her, she walks in the church only after she soiled the shoes thoroughly, the same thing inside the house of one of those villains, she is raped and her life is miserable, one can wonder how to resist in all this, where is the infamous ‘silver lining’, when all we can see are clouds all over the skies and then there is a real tempest, something like a hurricane coming down

She is resilient and admirable in her bravery, strength, determination with which she tries to survive in what is an unbearable atmosphere, when they all gang up upon you, there is no hope, one has to resort to faith in God, I guess, waiting for some help from above, expecting salvation, a life in the paradise to come…if you believe in all that, of course - http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world

 

Realini the Revolutionary signs this – this is the link to the Newsweek article that mentions Realini and his presence in the middle of the rebellion that took down Ceausescu http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html