"Books don't change your life, if they're good enough, at best they can hurt and confuse you," Ferrante said.
The same goes for movies. Many times when we read books, watch movies, watch TV series, and watch variety shows, in addition to looking for things to do in our spare time, we want to spy on other people’s lives through this media channel, and reflect on ourselves by looking for commonalities in others. Trying to find direction for the bewildered self.
However, just as success cannot be replicated, the direction of life's destiny is even more elusive.
In "My Gifted Girlfriend", I realized more of this confused feeling. The show's main characters, Lila and Lennon, witness the changing fate of knowledge, the anxiety of adolescence, the figurative power of money, and, most importantly, the two of them, in their more than half-century friendship. An exploration and mapping of self-knowledge. In them, I want to see myself but I am afraid that I will be like this. This kind of entanglement and anxiety pushes me behind my thoughts to keep wanting to watch.
While chasing this drama, I also read the original novel together. Compared with the TV series, I personally prefer the original book, which will bring readers deeper and more intuitive thinking in the book.
Ferrante's Neapolitan series is essentially a novel about knowledge—about its possibilities and limitations. Intellectual knowledge, knowledge about sex, political knowledge. What kind of knowledge do we need to survive in this world? How do we acquire that knowledge? How does the knowledge we possess simultaneously change us, hurt us, and make us stronger? What do we want to know and would rather never know? What can we control, and what controls our lives?
Lila and Lennon have negotiated endlessly between their destiny, which has been dictated since their birth, and an attempt to control their own destiny. Lila and Elena and the other children in Naples have had an extraordinary understanding of the power landscape from an early age. They know who to respect and who to lose to, even when they realize they are capable of winning.
In that scene in an elementary school classroom, Lila—respected for her intelligence and her contempt for those she was supposed to show weakness—enzo rolls, the son of a fellow fruit seller. Enter a math competition. The boy barely speaks standard Italian, but after a complex calculation in his head, he speaks the answer in Neapolitan dialect, and Lila, the star of the class, beats Enzo. "Since then, Lila has shown some attitudes that are hard to describe," Elena said. "For example, it became clear to me: Lila can control the use of her talents."
Years later, when Enzo begins to reckon with his fate and the world, he will be Lila's savior. But after that math competition, the boys hated Lila for beating Enzo and started throwing stones at her and Elena—a violence that encompassed both anger and respect.
Years later, still in their childhood, Lila held a paring knife down the throat of Marcello Solara, a local man, in defense of Elena, who was being mocked by the boys in the neighborhood. The son of a Kemora gang member, and told him plainly that she was ready to go. This terrified Marcello, but it also inspired his lifelong love for her. This, too, is Ferrante's style - to trace the almost imperceptible line between violence and love.
"My Gifted Girlfriend" is the first film in Naples. It is the story of Lila and Lenon's youth. Will Lila live the class life she wants after marriage? What fate will Lennon's path of knowledge help her on? The confrontation between knowledge and choice, which one is the right outlet for the people at the bottom in this caged world?
With this series of questions, I can't wait to know the fate of the next two people. Find an exit for myself, but as I said before, what if I know the end? Can we really change our lives through a book or a TV show?
When everything happened wonderfully, and the dust settled and returned to the original point, maybe after watching four films, this work still brings us only confusion and overwhelm.
If all stories in the world are like this, what is the right way to do it?
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