This is a book by Ruta Sepetys which I got by a little gambling. God, this is probably one of the best book I've read in the past 12 months. It's a YA novel (extremely mature for this genre) about an opinionated, artistic girl named Lina who lived in Lithuania in 1941. World War II crashed and the whole Baltic countries - Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia - were under Stalin's regime (Soviet). People who were considered anti-Soviet, including Lina's family, were taken by NKDV secret police and kept for years as workers doing hard labor, treated like animals, traveled miles from home in unimaginable condition, and left to starve and eventually die in harsh winter of Siberia.
Ruta Sepetys has a unique writing style which I enjoyed very much. There are just necessary amount of details, with each chapters about three-four pages long. Every sentence hits me in the right spot without trying to be sentimental. It's just the perfect dose of everything. I realize it's not easy to touch this sensitive subject without taking sides or being whiny, but Ruta managed to do it. This book opened my eyes to yet another part of war I was never exposed to before. True, this is not an easy book. I read it in 2 days, and this book left me with uneasy, sickening aftertaste. I couldn't sleep the night I finished this and just laid in my bed, thinking. Everytime I tried to close my eyes, the scenes from the book played in my brain and it's just real and horrifying. This book left a huge scar in my heart and made me reflect about what human race could do to its kind. Is our security really worth the blood of others? Do we, under unusual circumstances, have the ability to hurt people without hesitation, without a sense of guilt? This is one of the brutally powerful book. It really did mess me up, but nonetheless, genius.
#2 Midnight in Paris
#2 Midnight in Paris
What can I say? This movie has the charm that catches you from the start. It's about a man who writes and appreciates beauty, likes Paris in the rain, a little eccentric, and longs for a life in golden era (Paris in 1920s), but currently is stuck with Hollywood job and life in Malibu with a materialistic-pragmatist soon-to-be-wife. They went to Paris and the man, couldn't stand the blandness of his wife and her friends, escaped to solitude and found himself keep going to the past (1920s and 1890s).
Midnight in Paris is thick with Woody Allen atmosphere, slightly more serious than his usual work, but the jokes get to you anyway. I love the yellowish palette they used which brought Paris to life. We see Paris shot from beautiful angles, dense with romanticism. We meet Hemingway and Fitzgeralds, Dali and Picasso. It's one hell of a fantasy. This, along with Pan's Labyrinth and The Little Prince, have become my top fantasy movies.
I myself kept saying that I was born in the wrong decade, but it's just a shattered illusion, a perpetual state of denial. I realized in the end, we ought to live in the now, no matter how screwed and shallow it seems to be. Every era has its own struggle which we sometimes overlook because of its glorification. All we can do is live - stop running, and find people who relate to us, whom we share our little worlds with. Dedicated to the romantic and the dreamer, the runaway and the searcher, this movie will make you see life from a different point of view.
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