Can we talk, Denise,
soulmate?
Have you seen Rosellini”s
post-war trilogy? Alll about
the grief suffered by Romans and
Berliners at the end of
WWIi where the Nazi
Gestapo pursued Red
resistance fighters in Rome
just prior to Allied armies
entering the open city.
Heartbreaking. I begin to
cry no sooner than I recall Anna
Magnani
as a pregnant woman running
recklessly after the man she
was to marry that same morning
shot dead
in the street … the resistance
leader tortured to death … the parish
priest who helped them, God’s
children, shot by a firing squad
relieved at the end by Rossellini
showing the boys he cared for marching
away in rank order new soldiers
in the struggle the audience is left
to believe.
The remnants of Berlin at war’s
end depicts a city devastated and
its residents ruthless attempting
to survive by any means at hand
stealing, grifting one another, selling
anything particularly one’s self,
eventually killing, sons
fathers one another, sons
fathers themselves. Unrelieved
sorrow and suffering, not
triumphant or vengeful but
simply what was “Germany Year
Zero” bluntly concludes with a
beautiful blonde 12-year old boy killing
himself with the same poison he
used to kill his mortally ill father
no commentary, nobody marching.
the movie ends.
Grief and suffering which we have
yet to experience. Will we,
Denise? Can we bear and
accept it, resist it? Your
guess is as good as
mine or anyone’s.
Uncertainty
prevails as it should
with my
usual admonition “Don’t
mourn organize.”
Thank you.
Joe Hill and of course you,
Roberto and, dear Denise,
co-conspirators and my
inspiration.