This is one of my very favorite works of mine.
The origin
The task consisted in watching an amazing exploitation documentary film called Mondo Cane in order to make an essay film from that same footage. I made a list of ideas, relations and notions that came to my mind while watching the film.
I kept thinking about three of them:
- The sons of the sons have sons who never met the father of the father of their father, and so on, repetitively.
- The father, in his ecstasy, does not think it is possible.
- The mother never existed.
The video
These phrases made me think of something my great-grandmother said when the Sandinista revolution exploded. Everyone was excited because they were rebelling against the Somoza dynasty, who basically owned the country and its people. ” It sounds thrilling, of course, but this so-called revolutionaries… It won’t be long until they forget about Nicaragua, and it will be worse, because of war, they will have no resources, but each of them will end up filthy rich”. Of course this happened, each of them on his private island. Thousands died and killed. Acting out of passion, under the proud premise that we will do it better, forget it.
At the same time, I was thinking of this human thing of ungratefulness. Louis CK makes it more clear than I could in a minute.
Those nihilist final moments in Mondo Padre, that voice crying for meaningless existence. Well, good luck having meaning when you wipe out the foundation of your culture, its higher values.
The outcome
The grass is always greener on the other side. I thought of this phrase for days, and how much it pisses me off. And scares me as well. I wrote a letter to the fictional man who coined it, but it is painful to read. A really bad piece of correspondence.
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