Barbara and Amor

I watched the movie in the end. Please read these things after watching the movie but you will not miss anything if you do not read these comments while the song above of Barbara is strongly recommended for some feeling of melancholia of the French and also to have an understanding of the dialectic of love a bit more....

It is very hard to make comments on the movie. It is a complicated story.
I cannot keep on interpreting it from the eyes of a person who is grown up in Turkish society and who has lost her mother in a similar way.

The first Turkish comment: The attitude of the daughter bothered me so much, coming a few times, crying, making a mess and leaving. And that she left all the responsibility to the father. When I think about it we were trying to be there all the time with mom. As I had written before when my mom was sick, my brother (and his Spanish girlfriend Natalia) stayed with her for 6 months or so. It was very difficult. I sometimes would go and make my mother listen to the music she likes (Zeki Müren). And I would lie down with her when she was in coma (once or twice I did that). Because she did not want to stay in the hospital but home ("The Loneliness of the Dying"). And when I was lying near her, getting more depressed and depressed, my sister would grab me by the arm telling me that I should write my thesis. I should study, continue so on and so forth. I would listen. But even if she was sick and could not talk, and like a person in a coma, her presence would give me the feeling of being home and a feeling of peace.

Knowing that she was alive (does not matter in which state) would give me some kind of security.

That is why it was difficult for me to understand why he had done this all of a sudden. And he did not stop seeing even that her legs were moving, lets say after the moment of craziness goes away he continued and pretended as if she was somewhere and writing her letters. He was telling her a story silently, in a bit of agitated manner and she calmed down, and at the moment she calmed down, he killed her. It was because he could not take the fact that she was not responding anymore, or that he could not take her situation like that (seeing her like that) I do not know, in short was it because of selfishness that he made it? Because in the end, the worst thing is not the situation of the left behind but the one who is dying. 

I do not know what you would think but we (because of our feelings) most of the time try to avoid bad situations and like the daughter some would escape. But he did not escape either. He stayed with her and he left, too. However, he could have lived with her till her last breath. Why not? Maybe he could not stand her leaving him alone by herself? He took strangely control over her life, always kind, always nice, always understanding and caring and it was too much that she was dependent on him. So if she had died by herself, it meant that it would be her decision, not his decision. 

He got too dependent on her even if she was sick and could not do anything. And he could not take it. Then can you call it love if it quits at the last moment or if it is selfish at the last moment? Can you call it love still? Maybe yes. Love is also a selfish feeling in the end (whatever that means).

But from a realistic point of view, he was doing everything he could do. Nobody helped him that much. The nurses would be coming to help but nobody would be so kind with her as he is. And he took the burden of more than 1-2 or 3 persons. 

Thinking of my mother's case, when I saw that they started to feed her from the nose and they had got these tubes into her nose at the time to her stomach, I could not get over it, I could not get over the pain and coughing she had even if she could not talk. I went into my bedroom, I laid down, I felt like losing my patience and power and at that moment I also felt extremely sad but numb. Maybe the moment he killed her felt very numb, suddenly all the things lost its meaning. Suddenly it became too much. I escaped. Did he have a chance to escape? He lived with and for her. 

And he did many things that no man would do maybe when they get old, because generally women are the care takers... in French society too it might not be so common but the daughter could have been. Daughter was in a materialistic mood, even though the old couple wanted to be left to themselves, she was too detached she was too self-centered. She could not hold her mother's hand. She could not touch her neither kiss her. She could not do anything neither theoretically nor practically. That is shocking.

I always questioned if the couples (if they stay as good couples) they act as if the children are out of them, and they are to themselves, if it would have been a healthier structure in the Turkish society where the family and children matter so much. Because for Turkish women children come first, father is a secondary figure most of the time since the marriages end up a bit oddly (not like with love and care taking etc). But then if this kind of relationship between father and mother create this kind of a child, who is too independent, I cannot imagine a person whose mother is so insignificant??? 

Even when the old lady was in her bed, she was saying "mum" all the time. Because whenever we have pain or we are in trouble we look for the mum, like most of the mammals. Mother is the healer. Mother is the forgiver and the one who loves without reciprocity, opportunity or interest. But in the movie the mother and daughter relationship was shocking. The girl said " I am sorry for your situation dad". While she did not give a shit about what was happening to her mother. When the father talked seriously, "let's talk seriously" she did not have solutions. How cold it was, how striking it was.

Did he still love her when she said "hurts"? Did he kill him because she had too much pain? Did not he have more stories to tell? Maybe yes, maybe he finished all the stories. And in order to create new stories, he killed the bird, he did things around the house, he lived another life with and without her so that he could tell new stories. For me it was love, who said that love would not be violent and selfish and also desperate?

If he had stayed with her till her own end, by destiny, by the hour determined for her, maybe he would not have been ready for it. He got sick of not seeing her healthy, he dreamt of her playing the piano, but she was not there. Why not wait for her death? If love is patient enough and caring enough? why not wait till she goes away herself? That is the question I cannot answer.

In a weird way, he loves her a lot and in a weird way, love has something to do with wanting to get rid of that person, because that person is too time-occupying, too strongly felt, too much into him that the only way to get rid of that person is to get rid of her or him.... because that person already lives within you. And when you lose the real contact you do not need it anymore because s/he will always be there. Too much love makes one lose connection with reality at the same time.

We have all these legends ... where a guy looks for a girl for his life, he goes through the mountains, he crosses the seas and he is in the desert and she appear to him, he does not recognize her because she had already become a dream. Maybe it is a love story with a bad ending. What can one say? Can we judge it? Do not know.