Confession: I'm not waiting for Godot, but I like that brand of strong coffee named Beckett...

“What I believe to be true I must therefore preserve. What seems to me so obvious, even against me, I must support.” (Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays) 

I support Beckettian theatre, readings, film adaptations, anything and everything connected. I must, even if it is all against me: from the core of the philosophical approach in his plays, to the honest pointing towards a bare reality of inner life or the mere elitism that comes with it (a false elitism if you ask me, Beckett's plays aren't made for specific social categories, over-endowed brains etc, he's addressing to no one, yet to everyone if there to receive his messages). Ah, even people. No sigh.
Also, I dare say I feel close to Beckett's personality (no reasons exposed here though) and will rant a bit on....hmm, I didn't even plan what to write about, boom the absurdity!!!  But I keep on, keep on...typing. Beckett, just like Picasso, refused to explain his art which is only a gift in the end: each has to see with his/her own eyes. Mine see the following... Anguish, anguish, anguish! I'm an existentialist with a diploma (with honours!), letting the a flood of thoughts rolling...so...

First roll: How Beckett is perceived depends most possibly on a very intimate part of one's being: the amount of realism contained in each personality, the level of alienation and/or the magnitude of existential tremor. Any existentialist who might read these lines knows that existentialists are the most sensible people, and that...we understand among ourselves...Beckett must have been one of us, and surely his plays scream on that note.
Sometimes I wonder why isn't Beckett more popular, that is in the broad view of the term? Loved. I've seen highly educated people making a grimace or put a look of contempt when only hearing Beckett's name... I've not seen anyone outside academia or at least well read people even mentioning Beckett. It pains me. But I think I can find the root of this, and it's something which might apply to a whole miriad of modern and postmodern writers: this type of writing, despite the fact that it comes from within and it's that roughly cut from human feel, it comes in a form hard to digest doubled by a general need (greed?) to consume forms of art which distance audience from realities. In this sense, it's no wonder that Edwardian and Victorian writers are even today hard to be replaced from people's preferences, given that they ENTERTAIN and leave space for a happy ending in their works, i.e. these bring a solution (any solution, but one!) which adds a little hope in audience's mind. An audience which lives in a world as grey as the one depicted by Beckett...so who or how many would want to come back to that when ''consuming'' art? Beckett's plays offer not this opportunity of escaping the reality as most art/distractions do. Keep rolling.

Second roll: Beckett is like an espresso. It shots straight into your head, fully awakening your conscience upon the world you live in (if you're a dreamer), or simply reminds you that what you see by yourself it's true (in case you're not a dreamer). I think Beckett's plays timeless: watch one, read one and think not it was written many moons ago. It's contemporary and you know it. It will enhance your sense of reality, like it or not. The strongest espresso you've ever had. You'll feel Beckett creeping in the neighbourhood of your perception, singing with you in the chorus that hymn of anguish and frustration. You'll feel awake until it will hurt you. And that's the point when audience divide, when you decide where you go; it's too much to bear, that some would rather step away and find refuge elsewhere by saying they don't understand Beckett ..or it's exactly what you know you bear daily and hoped for, reading somewhere the lines you couldn't write, but which tell you you're not alone, and the lines are given to you as a friendly pat on the shoulder accompanied with a ''I know, my friend, we're all in deep ***t, I'm in it too''. How to blame Beckett for being one of the apostles of soul fragmentation...when he was there, seeing it rise and fall and rise and fall...the tides of being. Smiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiile!

Third roll: We're all vagabonds, you just have to know if you are a Vladimir or an Estragon (from ''Waiting for Godot''). These characters are aware of nothing but themselves.Through them, you, me, we... witness man reduced to the basic needs, animated by nothing but hope. A bloody hope, named Godot! Doesn't it sound familiar? Wink, wink! Bang! Intermezzo: “A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.”( Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays)
You must not forget that Godot will never come, so if you decide not to be a vagabond anymore, act. Be a Godot yourself, or stay a numb vagabond...sometimes you might get flair and inspiration and your own ironies and jokes will warm you (watch play below, you'll know what I mean! watch, re-watch!PLEASE!), but that will lead you nowhere. Wait for Godot if you please, but I'm not coming. Along.

Fourth roll: This rant is nothing but a leaf in that almost barren tree (same author, same play! WATCH PLAY!!!) ... an episode of yet another recording of the solitude of man in the world, as man has nothing but himself and other few men to count on/venture together in life's adventures. The existentialist cry,  frail and weak as it may seem, if it's all you know, let is how in its stong fragrance, like a Beckettian espresso. Drink!

“From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all. But whether or not one can live with one's passions, whether or not one can accept their law, which is to burn the heart they simultaneously exalt - that is the whole question.”( Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays) 

''In the war you never know, you just go where they tell you. ''

 TALVISOTA 

Better known as ''The Winter War'', this is a film made in 1989 having in focus the Russian attacks over the Finnish territories in the infamous year 1939. Besides the filmographic quality and the acting, what impresses me above all with this film (which I've watched a few times by now) it's the soul fragmentation in human tragedy which the soldiers have to face step by step as the story evolves. I will not comment on the political background of the events, even if these were at the core of the story itself and were the real cause for the real events of the Winter War.

These soldiers are simple people, most of them farmers, taken initially to military manoeuvres from their homes in an atmosphere of incertitude whether an armed conflict will take place or not; they soon themselves involved in the ''real thing'', leaving their dear ones at home, confronting themselves with shortages of all sorts, dealing with different kind of superior officers, watching the death of their relatives and friends on the field, losing hope, losing sleep, lacking adequate food, becoming good mates of lice, getting a rare occasion to have sauna, but gaining trust and bonding to what only extremes situations bring in people's life: solidarity, materialised in this case in the form of camaraderie - which is the only good thing in war, if anything is good in them.
Progressively, the world they knew shatters, including the hope of returning to the life they had before. Among the biggest defeats which all soldiers must face, they lose the understanding of those at home, who without being confronted to the bleak world of the trenches, fail to understand these farmers, now soldiers, defending their native lands. They've not seen bodies blown by bombs for instance and their perspective on the confrontations stays stuck at a level of superficiality and in best cases, worries for their sons who fight. Yet if a son returns (as it's the case of Paavo Hakala) he's not seen and treated as he should be, as the family's understanding of the ways of the war and world and view on life differ to the extremes. Paavo goes back to the front lines and dies.

In Talvisota I see what I see in all war films (better or worst produced): they represent a tool of keeping alive a  conscience of the atrocities of war (any of them) and of the uncaring political regimes, no matter of their political doctrine. It's yet another film on a cruel reality represented by the lack of care of those who command and the so called political interests, to which adds the direct impact on the innocent people who by duty for their land go to war. I also believe that it's easy to judge, sitting in a chair and typing this on the computer and that it's hard for any of us to walk in their shoes, of those who fought and some died for their country, no matter where or which country that is... unless ourselves were ever to be confronted to such a situation. It's not those who fight, but those to command that should be blamed, in my opinion. People fight because...well, for instance, would we nowadays permit to a neinghbour or a stranger to enter by force in our house and live there as they please, taking our house and goods etc? As superficial as the example is, it is how I understand that a man transforms from a  farmer or anything else to a soldier: one has to defend what is theirs. Talvisota is a lesson in that sense. That lesson seems to be found in the final scene of the film, which I find the most tragic of them all: Martti Hakala's look contains that lesson and the numbness when it is announced that the fights are over. He's not the man he used to be prior to the war and the world will never be the same either.

This film, just like most of the war films are a reminder if we have eyes to see: that it should not all happen again. But how ironic it is to think that and hope that people and compromised politicians would change: only in the last couple of months there were news of conflicts in too many parts of the world.
Why does it have to be that simple people turn to soldiers each generation? Why do they have to die and those who don't have to reach the top of human pits of solitude and desperation...and find that there's no god, no family, no friends except in ther mates and their rifles?
As wise people put it: History Lessens.