Little Ashes: Thoughts and Questions
Robert Pattinson is an awesome actor. I’ve read that because he was the only non-Spaniard on the cast or crew, he spent all his time learning how he should play Salvador Dali. He’s such a beautiful guy but isn’t the kind that takes “cute guy” parts, except for Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He has said he was nothing like Cedric as a student and actually kind of hated guys like that. He’s so thoughtful in the work he puts into his characters, he really showed anxiety and love as the dazzling Edward Cullen. Little Ashes is about the relationship between Dali and poet Federico Garcia Lorca. Rob went all out in portraying the unconvential behavior of the self-proclaimed genius.
The ways in which Dali the student stood apart from others is very obvious. He’s a little shy and but not too shy to act upon his views of himself and the world. He knew he had something to communicate in his art, and a fresh way of doing so. He also had little patience for the societal norms and outdated ideas. His behavior didn’t change, even when he gave up his fashions from the last century to catch the eye of Lorca, who was attracted by Dali’s passion for new ideas. Dali really enjoyed shocking people but there was something he never communicated, something painful from his past keeping him from intimacy. As years past, his behavior grew more bizarre though he *seemed* to publicly denounce liberal views. What he gained in artistic popularity, he lost in personal freedom. He abandoned the relationship with Lorca to pursue artistic success. Lorca continues to write, expressing himself openly in art and politics, and dying for his ideas after theater successes. Dali takes an older, Russian wife and seems to continue a strange facade.
Parts of it made me quite sad. There was obviously some pain in Salvador’s past that inhibited him. He was outspoken and openly unusual but he was missing a peace that comes with being your whole self. There was also the dichotomy, in Lorca, between his Catholic faith, and his love for Dali. It seems so painful to love someone when everything, and everyone around you says it’s wrong.
Then there were scenes that were unpleasant to watch; an unclothed Dali in front of the mirror talking to himself (leaving just a little less to the imagination, which I prefer to use), and an love scene, sans love, between Lorca and his friend Magdalena who wished she were more to him (I hate watching those), with Dali in the room aching over his refusal of Lorca. I’m curious what Rob thought about filming those scenes, maybe it was “just work”, maybe I don’t want to know, maybe it was just as hard for him to act as it was to watch.
I think it was very well done, worth watching, and ended well. It was certainly thought-provoking, and is the kind of movie that stirs the need to find honest self-expression. The script is in English except for Lorca’s recitations. He speaks his poems in Spanish and underneath, he translates into English. There are no subtitles. I found it was easier to understand if I closed my eyes. I often have a hard time “getting” poetry, but I at least wanted to hear it clearly. The scenery and cinematography are beautiful. The film made me curious about Dali, an artist I have never given much attention. From the works I found online, he was an amazing painter, in all the styles he tried. His signature works almost look real, and I find the way he painted genious, but I don’t like the images themselves. One of the ideas of essentric I found is that a person operates outside the norm in ways the rest of us don’t understand. He was just a bit of a nut.
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