My Threshold for Hardship is Bugged: Extra Edition - 'Cinema Paradiso' and That Beloved Dimness

https://youtu.be/BvD8EiibPVo?si=jGhLVxNgkddIaOmS

At the beginning of the movie 'Cinema Paradiso,' accompanied by Ennio Morricone's melody, the sea is visible beyond curtains swaying in the wind.

Every time I watch those slightly grainy, light-saturated images, I invariably recall the scenery of my hometown.

■ A Veil of Light and the Calm of the Shadows

A large red bridge spanning the blue sea.

The scenery in my memory is filled with overflowing light, its outlines dazzlingly blurred as if covered by a white veil.

On a sunny afternoon, I would walk home, digging my toes firmly into the ground to keep from stumbling against the strong sea breeze. The outside was piercingly bright, and the cool, dim interior when I finally reached home was more comfortable than anything else.

The contrast between that 'veil of light' and 'deep darkness' from an era before the word 4K existed. For me, 'calm' was undoubtedly found within those shadows.

My family home was a small retail shop in town. Just as the cinema where Alfredo worked was a place of rest for the townspeople, our shop was also at the center of the town's daily life.

I wouldn't enter through the front door of the house, but would slide open the shop's door with a rattle and say, 'I'm home.'

In one corner of the shop was a raised tatami area where my grandfather would watch an old television while minding the store.

'Grandpa, it was so hot outside! Give me an ice cream!'

I would grab one that was chilled to the bone from the showcase. That was a privilege allowed to me as the shop's child.

To me at the time, that shop was pride itself. A certain boast I could hold as a child, proudly saying, 'We have lots of candy here.'

■ Those Days When I Could Love Innocently

When I entered the living quarters in the back, the sound of my mother's knife echoed, and I could feel the presence of my family somewhere. Just as Toto loved the projection room, I, too, innocently loved this house and my family.

My father wasn't a drunkard yet, and there wasn't a single reason to dislike my family home.

I would throw myself onto the tatami, eating the melting ice cream, and surrender to a pleasant drowsiness. Back then, the darkness of our home was a place where I could just be a pure child.

I first watched 'Cinema Paradiso' when I was in high school. Influenced by friends who loved movies, I started watching art-house films to act more mature.

I remember being moved by Morricone's music and the famous final scene, and recommending it to my father back when he was still 'normal'.

That was when my father said to me, 'So you've started watching movies like this, too.'

I still remember the color of my father's eyes as he narrowed them, looking at me with a mix of pride and dazzlement at his daughter's growth.

■ A 40-minute chasm, further than the universe

However, just as Toto felt a sense of stagnation in that town as he grew up, the scenery of my childhood home that I was looking at eventually changed as well.

The population declined, the business lost its vitality, and in inverse proportion, my father's alcoholism accelerated.

My father would keep pouring himself drinks from morning till night. At dusk, drunken customers would be drawn to the place as if by a magnet.

The candy shelves I had once been so proud of were, before I knew it, painted over by that scene filled with the smell of alcohol.

It was only after I became an adult that I began to feel a damp 'humidity' in the dimness of my childhood home that I had once found comforting.

I became a working adult and left home. Even though I lived only 40 minutes away by car, I rarely went back. The home I had once been so proud of became a place I didn't want to step foot in, a place I was ashamed of.

That 40-minute distance was, for me, a chasm further than the universe.

■ A small bone stuck in my throat

I rewatched this movie every few years. Each time, this line from Alfredo felt like a small bone stuck in my throat, never quite sitting right.

I left home. I rarely go back. But even after many years, the reality waiting for me in my hometown is my alcoholic father. What would come of reuniting? That cold thought never faded away.

■ A clear winter day, the catharsis that arrived

My father died on a cold winter morning. It was a stunningly clear day without a single cloud.

When I saw that piercing blue sky, the words that descended into my heart were, 'I forgive everything.'

It wasn't the hatred or emptiness I had carried for so many years, but the ultimate catharsis that arrived in the midst of overwhelming light.

As I felt the sadness of losing the father who had once been kind, it was the moment the weight of having an alcoholic father in my heart vanished, and my world was finally liberated from monochrome.

After my father passed away, the family shop no longer opened its shutters the way it once did. Now, my mother keeps the shop running all by herself, in a small, modest way.

However, the light no longer streams into the shop as it used to.

■ Returning to the Beloved Dimness

In the final part of the film, Toto watches as the cinema is demolished and turned into rubble. My family home hasn't even become rubble; it is simply and quietly losing its color.

Yet, by witnessing that 'end,' the small bone that had been stuck in my throat finally slipped away.

I was finally able to reclaim the memory of my proud self from back when I was in high school, talking about movies with my father, without it being tainted.

The final scene. The montage of cut kiss scenes that Toto watches in the projection room. As I listen to the 'Love Theme' playing, I trace my own memories as well.

There, I find fragments of a time when I could simply and innocently love that house and my family.

As the person I am today, I cross the large red bridge over the blue sea. And then, I return to that cool, beloved, dim entryway.

(Afterword/Links)

Thank you for reading until the end. Here is the origin of this 'bugged threshold.' You can find the first episode, which was so chaotic that my postpartum life as a solo parent seemed like a 'calm,' right here.👉https://note.com/okame_non_alc/n/n8ad895cea485