Almost normal skin “Every object must take its place, and I must be who I am.”
He will go to university, then he and Solange will have two charming children, and he will work for two to make the family live in dignity. This is how Manu sees his future because he has Solange, the sun-like angel from the warm Balkan country. Her battle with the disease is already over, and he is still constrained by plaster and awaits recovery, seeing his place in the future life next to her.
Nothing separated me from the world: everything around me seized me from head to toe. Manu (Emmanuel) is the main character of the autobiographical novel by the Romanian writer Max Blecher. Radu Jude became the first filmmaker to pay attention to the work of Blecher and approached the legacy of the author with all possible attention of a real artist and a real historian. "Torn" or rather "healed hearts" - a sign of the time between the two world wars. Affected by bone tuberculosis, Manu enters a French sanatorium. A place of healing, a place of drugs – a refuge from diseases, from empty, petty and vile hearts, from Europe imbued with fascism and anti-Semitism. Manu and Solange seem to have missed several years - her three years in cast are already behind her, and he is only entering into a difficult struggle with an unexpected illness for him.
"Vilk engulfed the whole body instantaneously, like an inner melody completely changing the mind, flesh and blood."
Not yet covered with scar tissue, hearts continue to ooze passion on the tile floor. Plastering to pop music, dancing on crutches and a party with wine and playing in a bottle, surprisingly stopping in front of the bed with the patient. Reading political pamphlets approving the “mystical cult of the body” in a neighboring country, and the energy of a failed Napoleon, forced to be chained to a bed, going to fight the disease. If it wasn't for the disease, he would have gone into politics. Ideas about the conquest of the empire dissolve in the noise of waves, lulling the dreamy mind, previously calmed by the sea air at the walls of the hospital.
You see, the heart of a sick person during his life received so many stab wounds that it consists only of scar tissue.
Hospital, heal my heart. It is healed, so it cannot breathe. Why is Solange still here, among the sick and those smells that you want to wash off and quickly forget after discharge? “Here are all former patients who can no longer find themselves elsewhere.” When she got sick, her husband left her. Where, if not here, can you still find a living, not oozing poison and not scarred heart?
There were also many patients who came to Burke, in fact, only to lie among other patients, which alleviated their long suffering. Manu and Solange seem to have passed away for several years. He's behind on this path of suffering, and he asks her to turn around. Because she has no one to go after, she got through it first. “I am sick, and you have no reason to be sad.” May the sight of my illness give relief from your pain. You and all my friends. Turn around and try to wait for me.
“Every object must take its place, and I must be who I am” (Max Blecher, Adventures in the Immediate Unreality)
Lying down, it takes up a lot of space in the train carriage, causing inconvenience to passengers and the waiter. May the sight of my illness give relief from your pain. But you are preoccupied with your pain, your discomfort. And you'd rather be proud of that pain by wearing green shirts and enlisting in the Iron Guard. Starting next year, you will step over uncomfortable passengers and kill 400,000 Jews in Romania. 400,000 hearts. How many of them dreamed of having a family with two adorable children without wanting to scar? They had a place to live in the almost normal world of fascism.
This is almost normal skin, except that it is insensitive to cold, heat or touch. 8 out of 10
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