Machuca.

   

We live in a world of contradictions. So much so that contradictions are actually central to our existence. And we know it. Searching for solitude in a crowd and looking for company in isolation. Wanting to have everything one day and the feeling of all of it being useless the next. The need to love and be loved and the reality of every feeling being ephemeral. Of having people close to share all that passes and to see them going away every now and then.

Mustering all our energy trying to hold on to things all the time, while also learning to let go in the background. That is what we are. Trying to be consistent can take up one’s life and yet to no avail. This write up is about a movie that brings all these thoughts to mind. One that, through a fragile and unexaggerated friendship, tells us how incomplete every notion is, and how momentary. The contradiction of communism and capitalism. Our weakness and struggle with these contradictions. And being perpetually caught up in it. This one tells us how deeply a matter of politics can affect lives of people, friendships and their ideas of the world. How small things get related to big things and how friendships are not immune to differences in colour, class or cultures.

It is about Machuca. This movie will not blow your mind. It is subtle and silent for most part. But if you notice properly it has a lot to say. Based in Chile during the rise of communist ideals among the lower strata of society aiding them to ask for more rights and opportunities, it observes a frail friendship walk through the tumult and eventually succumb to the circumstances. To the forces of man’s nature. Politics. Politics of nations, ideals, families, and classes. While showing a fairer side of the communist ideal it deals with how inequality affects lives. But the stand on ideals is more or less inevitable in any society in one way or the other. It is born out of the same contradictions.