/articles/concepts_through_film
i realised my film reviews are rarely about the film itself but rather about the concepts being explored. and, honestly, film reviews are my only excuse to talk about these kind of things and having it be put on display somewhere other than my notes app. here's some of them, hand-picked from my letterboxd:
faith
hedonism
nostalgia
desire
humanity
identity
Andrei Rublev (1966)
a self-imposed purgatory that questions whether you truly believe in the forgiveness you claim to receive. how can one's faith be undivided if God's absolution isn't comforting? how can one's faith be undivided if at the bottom of it lies nothing but fear?
with this said, doesn't "faith" become a ritual of submission rather than liberation? the believer (willingly or not) mistakes the echo of their own fear for the voice of the divine, making faith function as an internalized warden: policing thought, dictating emotion and sanctifying the structures that oppress. essentially, religion anesthetizes. rublev ceases his activity after witnessing the horrors inflicted by the raid of oppressors in the name of dealing with his sin. after he decides to resume his occupation, it is less of an act of spiritual triumph than the resumption of the illusion.
★★★★★
❤︎
15 aug. 2025
God will forgive you of course, but you mustn't forgive yourself. So live between forgiveness and your own torment.
a self-imposed purgatory that questions whether you truly believe in the forgiveness you claim to receive. how can one's faith be undivided if God's absolution isn't comforting? how can one's faith be undivided if at the bottom of it lies nothing but fear?
with this said, doesn't "faith" become a ritual of submission rather than liberation? the believer (willingly or not) mistakes the echo of their own fear for the voice of the divine, making faith function as an internalized warden: policing thought, dictating emotion and sanctifying the structures that oppress. essentially, religion anesthetizes. rublev ceases his activity after witnessing the horrors inflicted by the raid of oppressors in the name of dealing with his sin. after he decides to resume his occupation, it is less of an act of spiritual triumph than the resumption of the illusion.
Vivre Sa Vie (1962)
★★★★☆
❤︎
projected @home
28 nov. 2025
i decided to stop waiting for the state cinematheque to re-run this classic and finally
watch it at home.
could this be, in places, interpreted as an anti-hedonist manifesto? after all, nana's attempts to live freely and pursue pleasure often lead to suffering, exploitation and alienation. her choices don't result in fulfillment but in loss and objectification. it's in this sense that the film critiques the naive pursuit of immediate gratification, setting up a tension between living impulsively for pleasure and living thoughtfully with awareness of consequences, revealing that without a reflective lens, pleasure is often hollow and destructive.
could this be, in places, interpreted as an anti-hedonist manifesto? after all, nana's attempts to live freely and pursue pleasure often lead to suffering, exploitation and alienation. her choices don't result in fulfillment but in loss and objectification. it's in this sense that the film critiques the naive pursuit of immediate gratification, setting up a tension between living impulsively for pleasure and living thoughtfully with awareness of consequences, revealing that without a reflective lens, pleasure is often hollow and destructive.
Nostalgia (1983)
★★★★★
❤︎
1 nov. 2025
nostalgia is the most elusive emotion portrayed in a tarkovsky film for me to
articulate. it's the single emotion that never releases its grip from me, following me through every
moment, lurking as though time cannot dilute it.
and yet even that feels imprecise. it's not directed towards people, nor toward concrete scenes. i can usually trace causes, understand, accept, and arrange them in the calm order of reason, but here, rational thought finds no foothold. i cannot, with any certainty, identify what has been lost. i only recognize the persistent sensation of absence.
herein lies the paradox: nostalgia arises not from any objective event, but from the dim awareness that a certain mode of existence, unnoticed in its moment, has been extinguished.
similarly to poetry, this feeling can't be translated. the words i'm writing about it will never be able to fully explain it for i am subject to unconsciously sabotage my efforts of expression, be it out of fear or shame.
and yet even that feels imprecise. it's not directed towards people, nor toward concrete scenes. i can usually trace causes, understand, accept, and arrange them in the calm order of reason, but here, rational thought finds no foothold. i cannot, with any certainty, identify what has been lost. i only recognize the persistent sensation of absence.
herein lies the paradox: nostalgia arises not from any objective event, but from the dim awareness that a certain mode of existence, unnoticed in its moment, has been extinguished.
— So, what did God say to St. Catherine?
— You are she who is not, but I am He who is.
similarly to poetry, this feeling can't be translated. the words i'm writing about it will never be able to fully explain it for i am subject to unconsciously sabotage my efforts of expression, be it out of fear or shame.
Stalker (1979)
★★★★★
❤︎
27 oct. 2025
hope, faith and
desire. though often praised as signs of human vitality they are mechanisms that can enslave as easily
as they liberate. desire, above all, is deceptive. it doesn't direct itself towards the real object of
need, but toward the feeling of striving itself. the individual becomes enamored with one's own longing,
confusing pursuit with purpose, serving the continuity of personal dissatisfaction.
And then, can't you can't you see how shameful all this is? To humiliate yourself. To snivel and to pray.can one be pronounced at fault for their beliefs, though? hardly. for that is how they're socialized: taught from birth to mistake the fever induced by yearning for the cure. to expose this illusion is to acknowledge the condition and cast we've been given. in the end, we're all both God's fools and blasphemers. we all believe and we all betray in the same breath.
On the Silver Globe (1988)
from the birth of a religion conjured around memories of Earth, to the institution that swallows it whole. war, the only language humanity remembers firmly, first imagined as necessity, then as destiny. hierarchies rising, and the inevitable desire to destroy them. even love shown as structure instead of salvation, bound within ritual, desire hardened into myth.
the actions and lives of the astronauts manifest the impossibility of beginning again. everything destructive about humanity, the things we swear we would wipe away if only given another chance, persist. there is no new genesis, only repetition in different skies. to walk on another world is still to carry the ruins of this one.
★★★★★
❤︎
3 sep. 2025
Earth is what I feel for you.this film is an incredible showcase of the deconstruction of humanity in its essence. it tears apart every familiar aspect of life and builds it back up with nothing. given the possibility of a world without precedent, yet every gesture repeats the old patterns, as though history itself is encoded in blood.
from the birth of a religion conjured around memories of Earth, to the institution that swallows it whole. war, the only language humanity remembers firmly, first imagined as necessity, then as destiny. hierarchies rising, and the inevitable desire to destroy them. even love shown as structure instead of salvation, bound within ritual, desire hardened into myth.
the actions and lives of the astronauts manifest the impossibility of beginning again. everything destructive about humanity, the things we swear we would wipe away if only given another chance, persist. there is no new genesis, only repetition in different skies. to walk on another world is still to carry the ruins of this one.
Talking Heads (1980)
under this illusion, people may even come to internalize the very hierarchies imposed upon them, blaming themselves for it, performing the narrow roles society assigns to their identity. the only way to combat identity as a tool of oppression is to expose its material roots and build a political framework that makes abstract identity functionally irrelevant.
unrated
❤︎
28 nov. 2025
I'm an ugly brunette.
I'm not sure who I am.
I'm a bit of an egoist.
I'm rather uncomplicated.
So far, I'm a nobody.
I'm a student.
I consider myself a realist.
I'm a catholic.
I'm a real worker.
I'm caught between two mysteries. [natural reality and faith]
I'm a humanist.identity, when severed from class, functions like a set of ideological shackles. it fragments people into competing categories and gives them the illusion that these abstract labels are the primary forces shaping their lives, obscuring the common interests and redirecting their anger into symbolic/cultural battles rather than collective struggle.
under this illusion, people may even come to internalize the very hierarchies imposed upon them, blaming themselves for it, performing the narrow roles society assigns to their identity. the only way to combat identity as a tool of oppression is to expose its material roots and build a political framework that makes abstract identity functionally irrelevant.
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