/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:
desire
estrangement
faith
hedonism
humanity
identity
language
music
nostalgia
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.
It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley (2025)
whether it's biodocs or biopics (and i'm mentioning this since it's my second artist biographical film i watch within a week, completely incidentally), watching biographical media on artists i've listened to, artists whose music i've assigned feelings and experiences to, always stirs a recognition that feels both grounding and emotionally unsettling.
the songs stop existing solely in my own consciousness and it reminds me of the fact that they belonged to someone else's reality before i stumbled upon them and started treating them as a personal monologue. even if what i feel isn't a perfect reflection of what the artist experienced, the mere echo of similarity is very comforting while i'm falling apart. in that overlap, though, there's a strange sense of permission, as if recognizing the origin of these feelings outside myself makes my own version of them more bearable.
also see Monsieur Aznavour, even though the only thing connecting them is edith piaf.
★★★★
❤︎
10 dec. 2025
I decided to make a woman of music and give myself to her. And at another point, I decided to make a man of music and give myself to him.
whether it's biodocs or biopics (and i'm mentioning this since it's my second artist biographical film i watch within a week, completely incidentally), watching biographical media on artists i've listened to, artists whose music i've assigned feelings and experiences to, always stirs a recognition that feels both grounding and emotionally unsettling.
the songs stop existing solely in my own consciousness and it reminds me of the fact that they belonged to someone else's reality before i stumbled upon them and started treating them as a personal monologue. even if what i feel isn't a perfect reflection of what the artist experienced, the mere echo of similarity is very comforting while i'm falling apart. in that overlap, though, there's a strange sense of permission, as if recognizing the origin of these feelings outside myself makes my own version of them more bearable.
[On Grace] It's basically a death prayer. I always describe it as, you know, not fearing anything, anyone, any man, any woman, any war, any gun, any sling or arrow aimed at your heart by other people. Because there is somebody, finally, who loves you for real. You can achieve a real state of grace through somebody else's love in you.
also see Monsieur Aznavour, even though the only thing connecting them is edith piaf.
The Green Ray (1986)
★★★★☆
❤︎
projected @home
11 dec. 2025
Le Rayon vert and Un homme
qui
dort stand as two individual but complementary halves of a greater oneness that is an essay on
self-estrangement. one speaks in scenery and experience and the other speaks in words and isolation:
delphine's
is rooted in hesitation and refusals, while the latter film's you deals with complete withdrawal,
if not
sublime surrender.
self-estrangement emerges when the self can no longer recognize itself in the mirrors the world holds up. the roles, gestures and narratives that society offers feel like costumes worn by someone else, leaving the individual suspended between authenticity and performance. it's in this state that one becomes both witness and subject.
we are born into a world already arranged. everything imposed on the self predates it. even without explicit coercion, these structures exert a moral gravity, as refusing them seems to risk exile from the shared human experience.
the truth, however, is very clear. belonging built on self-betrayal is no belonging at all.
this is the reflection i owed for when queysanne's work cut me open.
self-estrangement emerges when the self can no longer recognize itself in the mirrors the world holds up. the roles, gestures and narratives that society offers feel like costumes worn by someone else, leaving the individual suspended between authenticity and performance. it's in this state that one becomes both witness and subject.
Why make me do things I don't want to do?
we are born into a world already arranged. everything imposed on the self predates it. even without explicit coercion, these structures exert a moral gravity, as refusing them seems to risk exile from the shared human experience.
the truth, however, is very clear. belonging built on self-betrayal is no belonging at all.
this is the reflection i owed for when queysanne's work cut me open.
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967)
godard was obsessed with language, and, frankly, so am i. language is the most sinister natural institution, being both inescapable and weaponized. it does not merely reflect reality, as it is a material social relation embedded in class struggle. it arises naturally from human sociality, though it is immediately captured by ideology. the ones who rule through force also rule by controlling the categories through which reality is spoken and therefore thought. in this sense, language is the infrastructure of ideology: nothing material can enter consciousness except through linguistic mediation.
but this domination passes through the subject. a subject which may believe they are acting freely, following their own desires, but the truth is that these desires are already shaped by the social frameworks in which they are raised. in short, the individual imagines themselves free while speaking the phrases that bind them to capital.
how about using language for description. is it enough? never mind that, is it capable? is it pure? the idea that language can be used to solely describe, to neutrally record facts or "to let reality speak for itself" is a lie. every single act of naming is already bastardized. every "fact" arrives wrapped (merry christmas!) in concepts forged by material conditions. even the simplest statement bears the stamp of the social relations that produced it.
again, language does not mirror reality, but rather cuts it, reality always exceeding language (of course, relating to lacan’s orders of the borromean knot). what language gives us isn’t the thing, but rather a usable image of the thing, shaped by class and power. and so language is never pure as it is saturated with ideology. what is to be done? definitely not weep in silence, for this is a call to struggle. with the ideological seams exposed, we can reattach the words to material reality, to make language betray its masters. but this is a separate discussion to my main point.
if the machine is class society, then ideology and language are the head and tail of the ouroboros it forms. as i've already mentioned, language gives ideology its body and ideology gives language its direction. the machine consumes labor (i.e. the material relations of production. this cycle isn’t abstract, for it has a material base), but it runs on meaning. ideology stabilizes contradictions by offering linguistic frames that make exploitation tolerable and, in turn, language reproduces those frames automatically. even when one tries to resist, they often use the same language and concepts created by the dominant system. so, the machine, alongside oppressing subjects, it creates them.
what is the price of this demystification of language? because language is not an object we use from the outside, rather it being the medium in which we already live, to analyze it’s innards is to try to turn the conditions of subjectivity into an object of inspection. the moment language is made visible, showing itself as a force that has existed prior to the individual, that structures them and operates through them, that is the point of rapture which facilitates alienation. however, this is the unavoidable consequence of realizing that consciousness is not autonomous.
★★★★★
❤︎
25 dec. 2025
But first of all, what is an object? Maybe an object is what serves as a link between subjects, allowing us to live in society, to be together. But since social relations are always ambiguous, since my thoughts divide as much as unite, and my words unite by what they express and isolate by what they omit, since a wide gulf separates my subjective certainty of myself from the objective truth others have of me, since I constantly end up guilty, even though I feel innocent, since every event changes my daily life, since I always fail to communicate, to understand, to love and be loved, and every failure deepens my solitude, since… since… since I cannot escape the objectivity crushing me nor the subjectivity expelling me, since I cannot rise to a state of being nor collapse into nothingness… I have to listen, more than ever I have to look around me at the world, my fellow creature, my brother.
Say that the limits of language are the world’s limits, that the limits of my language are my world’s limits, and that when I speak, I limit the world, I finish it. And one inevitable and mysterious day, death will come and abolish these limits, and there will be no questions or answers.
godard was obsessed with language, and, frankly, so am i. language is the most sinister natural institution, being both inescapable and weaponized. it does not merely reflect reality, as it is a material social relation embedded in class struggle. it arises naturally from human sociality, though it is immediately captured by ideology. the ones who rule through force also rule by controlling the categories through which reality is spoken and therefore thought. in this sense, language is the infrastructure of ideology: nothing material can enter consciousness except through linguistic mediation.
but this domination passes through the subject. a subject which may believe they are acting freely, following their own desires, but the truth is that these desires are already shaped by the social frameworks in which they are raised. in short, the individual imagines themselves free while speaking the phrases that bind them to capital.
how about using language for description. is it enough? never mind that, is it capable? is it pure? the idea that language can be used to solely describe, to neutrally record facts or "to let reality speak for itself" is a lie. every single act of naming is already bastardized. every "fact" arrives wrapped (merry christmas!) in concepts forged by material conditions. even the simplest statement bears the stamp of the social relations that produced it.
again, language does not mirror reality, but rather cuts it, reality always exceeding language (of course, relating to lacan’s orders of the borromean knot). what language gives us isn’t the thing, but rather a usable image of the thing, shaped by class and power. and so language is never pure as it is saturated with ideology. what is to be done? definitely not weep in silence, for this is a call to struggle. with the ideological seams exposed, we can reattach the words to material reality, to make language betray its masters. but this is a separate discussion to my main point.
— Do you know what talking is?
— Talking is saying words.
— And what is saying words?
— Saying words is talking.
if the machine is class society, then ideology and language are the head and tail of the ouroboros it forms. as i've already mentioned, language gives ideology its body and ideology gives language its direction. the machine consumes labor (i.e. the material relations of production. this cycle isn’t abstract, for it has a material base), but it runs on meaning. ideology stabilizes contradictions by offering linguistic frames that make exploitation tolerable and, in turn, language reproduces those frames automatically. even when one tries to resist, they often use the same language and concepts created by the dominant system. so, the machine, alongside oppressing subjects, it creates them.
what is the price of this demystification of language? because language is not an object we use from the outside, rather it being the medium in which we already live, to analyze it’s innards is to try to turn the conditions of subjectivity into an object of inspection. the moment language is made visible, showing itself as a force that has existed prior to the individual, that structures them and operates through them, that is the point of rapture which facilitates alienation. however, this is the unavoidable consequence of realizing that consciousness is not autonomous.
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