Professor Saidiya Hartman wrote that "the afterlife of slavery means that black death is the normative condition of civil society" in the context of the Black American experience. I think Mari Selvaraj is expounding on a similar principle in both Vaazhai and Pariyerum Perumal. There's the joy, the friendship, the laughter, the tears, the everything of everyday life -- but when your people are seen as disposable by civil society, death and loss are ever-present.
I'll first mention the only…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
I did not expect to love this as much as I did. I thought this was going to some incomprehensible arthouse thing but I ended up thoroughly falling in love. There's something so open and tender about this movie, in part because it struck a great balance in how much information it reveals. It's very much a character-driven piece where Nanami's interiority is given the most focus, but there are hints of something larger and trickier entrapping the characters, which…
This was so incredibly special to watch. I want to watch this again in a big screen in a dark, quiet room with the birds singing outside.
I really love that this is a movie so personal to Alice Rohrwacher; she watched the tombaroli at work as a young girl and saw firsthand the change from reverence to hunger in locals' approach to these ancient tombs. Of course, tombs have always been fair game for archaeologists from oppressor communities; this…
I really appreciate Chris Columbus for making sure both these movies had legitimate emotional pathos instead of just 2h of straight slapstick insanity. That being said, it's time to call CPS.
