BACK FROM HELL - ROOM & THIRTEEN

I happened to watch the film Room and start watching the BBC 3 drama series Thirteen on the same day and the similarity of the topic they dealt with inevitably struck me. Both stories tell of young women coming back from hell. The hell of being abducted and taken captives  by manipulating, devious bastards. 

In both stories the focus is on the psychological aspect of being back to an ordinary life, the stress and the distress of being unable to fit or cope any longer. In both cases viewers delve into the protagonists' traumatic homecoming learning how difficult it is to victims to go back to normality. Very little or nothing is actually revealed of the horrors of their respective periods of captivity as victims of sexual abuse so, don't expect a claustrophobic, haunting experience while watching, if you decide to. It could be much more an occasion to see our ordinary lives in a boundless world and in total control with different eyes. 

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 - EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE

Our task today (and every day) is not to forget. Not to forget so that all those lives lost forever will make sense. For us if not for themselves. But how can we make sense of things that don't even make sense?
This is what Oskar wonders after his father died, killed in the attack to the Twin Towers on September 11, 2011.

Oskar Schell is only 9 years old. He is the protagonist of a 2005 novel by Jonathan Safrar Foer adapted for the screen in 2012: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. 

I saw the movie last week on satellite TV and I was happy I was alone at home because I was so emotional, touched , moved that I would have felt uncomfortable at being in a theatre surrounded by strangers. I loved this movie. I can't tell you much about the book it is based on, but it is certainly a good movie.

The main theme is trauma. Oskar (Thomas Horn)  has a simultaneous death wish (he hurts himself) and extreme need for self-preservation (his phobias and panic attacks). Oskar's journey "in search of  his father" (Tom Hanks) does not help him get over his traumatic experience but it helps him to build a new relationship with his mother (Sandra Bullock), for instance. In his journey throughout New York City  in order to discover what the key he found in his father's closet opens, looking for a guy named Black who might be related to the mysterious key, Oskar  has to face and overcome all his fears, happens to meet  people with complicated lives and big troubles, has to grow up until the final realization: he can't make sense of the things that don't make any sense, but  he can go on living preserving his father's memory and be a better man thanks to that.