La contadora de películas is a book by a writer from Chile who goes by the name of Hernán Rivera Letelier. More than a novel, it is a short story: roughly 100 pages to tell about the magic surrounding movies. Very briefly, it is the engaging story of María Margarita, a little girl who lives with her invalid dad and four older brothers in a poor mining village and who helps her family’s living by going to the movies and then arranging a show to repeat the movie for a growing audience. We look at her life while the movie give rhythm to the story: her life has ups and downs, mostly downs, but the movies in her head and in her shows make her feel special, important; because she is: she has a gift, a connection with movies.
This is a blog about films, not about books. Therefore, I will not go into how good this book is, how lightly it is written, even when there is nothing light about the situation, how properly the story is connected, going back and forth in time; how the reader actually feels he is talking to an older María; how nostalgic it is to see how the life of the village all went around work and movies, the only source of entertainment. And I could go on and on. What I would like to convey here is the true passion about films I felt reading this novel. Watching movies is already my favorite thing, but seeing them through María Margarita’s eyes was something else. To her, they are not a simple escape from reality, they are her reality, her job, her talent. Every movie is a story to tell, to improve and sometimes to invent. The moments in which she does her show are the ones in which she is herself, even if she is being John Wayne. The passages of this story I liked most are the ones were she describes the attention she puts into watching the movie, understanding them and loving them and how natural it all comes to her. Also, I found funny how, sometimes, she has to (or want to) make things up during a show: how many times has it happened to me to think “I wish that this movie had gone like this and then this, this and this could have happened”? I am sure I am not the only one. This made me think of how I often hear (especially from books’ lovers) that the movie, the visual display of a story, the being led through it step by step leaves imagination, fantasy and own impressions out. I am a book lover too and I can see the difference, but I think that these conclusions could not be more wrong.
And Hada Dulcine’s story is a great example of this. The movie itself is neither the beginning nor the end of the dream: it is just a part of it. After it, there is a whole infinite of thinking, elaborating and working on it to make it, in María’s case, a great performance. And in non-fictional people’s case? The imagination and creation work surrounding a film is probably aimed at creating a good memory, a good story to tell, a bad story to tell if the movie sucked; a way to apply what you saw to your life: even if what you saw is Superman inverting the Earth’s rounding cycle that can happen right? And you can be part of it: cutting here and adding there, anyone of us can perform, even if just in our head and not in a grim living room in front of tens of people, like María Margarita. The magic eventually ends for María: TV comes along and people are no longer interested in her shows. However, the dreams never ends, because she keeps it alive by telling about it to everyone who would listen. Just as we all do: keep the dream alive. And guess what? The book is going to be turned into a movie soon: let's keep our eyes open for it.
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