Reviews My Life as a Courgette 29 August 2023 Today, I had the wonderful opportunity to get acquainted with the animated film "My Life as a Courgette" by Swiss director and animator Claude Barras. Being impressed after watching the film, I am eager to share my thoughts with you, which relate both to this remarkable work and to life in general. The main character of the film is a boy named Icare, the French version of Icarus, who asks to be called Courgette (which translates from French as "zucchini" in American English). Courgette grew up in a dysfunctional family and, due to an unfortunate accident, killed his alcoholic mother. Subsequently, Courgette ended up in an orphanage, which some other orphans unambiguously refer to as "prison." The plot of the film can be taken quite straightforwardly, without trying to look for any deeper meaning. However, I noticed an interesting thought that the director perhaps wanted to convey to the viewer: the orphanage serves as a sort of microcosm of our world, an allegory for the common misconception of seeing things in black and white. In this small world, there is no absolute evil; it exists somewhere far beyond its boundaries. If anything bad happens, it invariably stems from the larger outside world. Throughout my relatively short life, I've changed my opinion several times on one matter: I used to think there were no bad people. Later, I came to believe that there are indeed bad people. At present, I believe that there are neither good nor bad people. I understand that this idea may sound strange, so let me clarify. It would be a huge mistake to assume that the world can be divided into people who are categorically good or, conversely, categorically bad. Firstly, it is unclear which combination of factors makes a person categorically good or bad; secondly, people possess free will, meaning that any attempt to evaluate them and label them as "good" or "bad" stifles that freedom. At a specific moment in time, depending on the circumstances, we may indeed consider a person to be either bad or good. However, it would be more accurate to compare a person to a river: they are constantly in motion, flowing, and cannot be labelled as "bad" or "good". We say, "This person is bad!" Yet time passes, the person changes and becomes different. I do not believe that a person cannot change. Of course, they can. As a result, we have misled both ourselves and others: we labelled a person as bad, even though the individual is not inherently evil. Yes, there may be evil within them at a particular moment, but there is also good. Once, I had the opportunity to read the diary of Leo Tolstoy, and one of his sayings became a true revelation for me: "One of the most common misconceptions is to consider people good, evil, stupid, or intelligent. A person flows, and in them are all possibilities: was foolish, became wise; was wicked, became good, and vice versa. That is the greatness of human beings. And from that, you cannot judge a person. What? You judged, and they are already different. You can't even say: I don't love. You said it, but it's different now." Although this is an animated film about children, it raises some rather adult questions. For example, after landing in the orphanage, Courgette finds himself among little people who have experienced great misfortunes: he is surrounded by a victim of a paedophile, the son of a drug addict, the son of a thief, and a girl whose mother, an illegal immigrant, was deported. The mother of Courgette's girlfriend, whom he is in love with, was shot in front of her eyes by her father for infidelity, who then shot himself. Almost no one enters adulthood without some psychological traumas from childhood. Paradoxically, these often become the catalyst for either self-development or self-destruction. For instance, in 2014 my father passed away from stomach cancer: for a long time, this trauma brought me immense suffering. However, eventually, due to constant reflection and thoughts about my life path prompted by my suffering, I was able to grow up and take care of myself and my mother. I think if my father were alive, he would be proud of me. Interestingly, the film reminded me of my escape from Russia to Sakartvelo. For some time after the move, I had neither money nor a job nor desire, so I lived in "shelters" - special places for persecuted political activists where they can stay for a while, for example, until they find a job and new housing. People living in shelters are united by a common misfortune: life in exile and the impossibility of returning to their homeland. In the people who lived in the shelter, I primarily saw people. Living, feeling, suffering human beings. And these people are never unequivocally bad or good. Each of them possesses their own unique life context, which is impossible to evaluate without living someone else's life and experiencing everything the other person has experienced. This may seem obvious, but I catch myself thinking that I need to remind myself of this more often: each person contains both bad and good traits. And that's perfectly okay. C'est la vie. At one moment there will be more bad traits, and at another - more good ones. And this is why we should approach people with compassion rather than disdain. The theme of love is also easily traceable in the cartoon: stating the obvious, but it's easiest to be around people who have faced the same problems in the past as we have. Nothing brings us closer than the ability to endure hard times together. But, at the same time, it's equally important to experience happy moments together: this is exactly what the director of the cartoon is saying, hinting in no uncertain terms that the world isn't black and white, and it's impossible to live a full life considering people and the events connected with them as either black or white. Moreover, attempting such a categorical division into black and white deprives us of the opportunity to truly love people. For if we divide people into bad and good, then, obviously, we will only love the good ones and not love the bad ones. And in this case, our love will be full of falsehood: as I've already said, no one person embodies the quintessence of good or bad. No one can be definitively labelled as "good" or "bad". And if we consider someone unequivocally good and have the audacity to say that we love this person, there is no truth in that love. It's more appropriate to love both sides of a person: the good and the bad. For in this case, love becomes most similar to the love we should feel for ourselves: such love is unconditional, imbued with understanding and acceptance of the imperfections of this world. Understanding and accepting that the people we love have not only a bright but also a dark side, we become closer to them, as we free ourselves from the burden of idealization, which is always a deception. One of the manifestations of true love includes precisely the ability to accept a person without judgment for all their flaws, recognizing that we ourselves are not perfect. In this world, nothing is perfect. And it is precisely this that makes the world beautiful. Throughout my life, there have been people who at specific moments have irritated me or seemed bad, but now, looking back and analysing their motivations, I realise that they were mainly deeply unhappy individuals, scarred by fate. Can I judge them for living in this imperfect world among equally imperfect people, including myself? In reality, our world is one large, enormous refuge. In some sense, we are all orphans, and we all eagerly wait for someone who could share their love with us, who could take care of us and support us in difficult times, to appear in our lives. "If we hadn't ended up here, I wouldn't have met you," says the main character's girlfriend, whom he is in love with, at some point. And these words resonate in my heart in a special way because I can relate them to my own experience: for example, if it weren't for my anti-war stance and my protest, which led to the police pursuing me and subsequently forced me to flee the country - an peculiar form of misfortune - I would not have had the fortunate opportunity to meet Charlotte. And of course, this film reminds me how truly fortunate I am. I have a mum who I love and can call my friend. I love you, mum. I try to take care of you and will continue to do so for as long as I live. Thank you for everything. In summary: "My Life as a Courgette" is a wonderful animated film that captivates the viewer with its simplicity, sincerity, and friendly atmosphere. At the same time, it is imbued with pain contrasting with sporadic moments of genuine, heartfelt happiness. In general, it's a film about our lives. A film about how to be authentic. I definitely recommend watching it. Copyright (c) 2023 contact@renecoignard.com Powered by Weblog v1.17.7