So we need literature and art. What's more, what obscures Arenas is such a powerful symbol: the Guevara flag fluttering in the streets, cultural shirts, school bags, badges, including wallpapers and web modules on the computer. We put this head on the pinnacle of rebellion and personality, but never see anything else behind it. Such as the cultural control policies, the persecution of homosexuals, the stalking of teenagers on the beach, the public trials broadcast live on TV, and the loud speech of Castro from the loudspeaker. In a sense, in a country that represents some kind of distorted public power, the nation as a whole has become the currency that pays for a certain trend or opinion of others. Their voices were collectively replaced by a flag and an avatar, which could no longer be heard and perceived by the outside world. In lieu of rational concern is a consensual frenzy, which treats this indiscriminate group as a symbol of freedom. This kind of situation can only be called a joke of God, and the parties themselves can never laugh.
The effect of the film is not very good, it may be that the director deliberately pursues a rough documentary effect. Instead of telling the story as a tit-for-tat, passionate one, he flatly traces the trajectory of a writer's life. His barren childhood, promiscuous youth, sinister creative environment, exile, and then die. Schnagel doesn't stress in much detail the haze over the writer's head, because he himself lives in it. The power of the social environment lies in its ubiquity, in which people are sometimes helpless, and more often they are numb. Even if there is resistance, it is a daily operation that follows the trend, and if there is any romance, most of them are quickly buried and forgotten. The torment of the prison disaster certainly tempered an amazing will, but at the moment when the pistol was inserted into the mouth, anyone with a strong desire to survive could not help but collapse. For so many reasons, what can be discarded and what cannot be discarded, man cannot choose to bury himself in darkness, he wishes to return to the light, and returns to the light by any means.
The plan to enter the sea has all been tried. In the end, he was given the opportunity to escape to the place of freedom in his mind through the official "opening the door". This freedom is nothing but a prison. He doesn't have health insurance, and even if he did, HIV wouldn't take money seriously. Perhaps he finally realized that the only absolute freedom was to choose to face the darkness, before waiting for it to come.
Hugo whispered at the end of his life: Life is a battle of darkness and light. And Arenas needn't say anything more.
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