Vivir Es F'cil Con Los Ojos Cerrados Review (Tragicomedy, 2013)

The movie "Vivir es fácil con los ojos cerrados" is a tragicomedy production.

IMDB rated the movie with 7.0 / 10.

According to Google Users - 94% of the people watched the movie liked the story.

Director: David Trueba

Actors: Javier Camara, Natalia de Molina, Francesc Colomer, Ramon Fontsere, Rohelio Fernandez, Jorge Sans Ariadna Gil, Violeta Rodriguez

Live is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see. It`s getting hard to be someone but it all works out, It doesn`t matter much to me.

Spain, 1966. Full-bodied and good-natured Antonio (Javier Camara) teaches English at a school in the small town of Albacete. He is a fan of the Beatles and prefers to teach students on the example of Beatles songs. He also teaches them to understand what the texts of the famous four mean. 

Meanwhile, the Beatles are on the verge of disintegration: the contradictions between the members of the band grow, John Lennon is in a creative crisis and decides to start a career as an actor, for which he comes to the Spanish Almeria to star in Richard Lester's film "How I Won the War". 

Antonio, who records the words of the band's songs by ear from the radio, decides to take advantage of John's arrival. He travels by car from Madrid to Almeria to try to meet John and clarify some of the texts. 

On the way to the gas station Antonio meets a young pretty girl named Belen (Natalia da Molina), who hitchhikes south to Malaga: she escaped from a strict boarding house for girls. Antonio offers to throw Belen to Almeria, and from there she somehow gets to Malaga. Belen, who does not like the man who carried her before, is in his company. 

After a while on the road Antonio discovers a voting teenager Juanho (Francesc Kolomer), who has a hairstyle "under the Beatles." Juanho ran away from home in protest at the fact that his strict father-gendarme demanded from his son to cut his hair.  

They come to the coast. Antonio and Belen take two rooms in the hotel room, Juanjo Antonio adjusts to the small bar "El Catalan" which is owned by the Catalan Ramon (Ramon Fontsere). Juanho works in the bar during the day, and at night he can sleep in it. 

Now Antonio will have to try to meet with John Lennon. 

***

The 2013 film, which was to some extent iconic for Spain: it has as many as seven nominations for the "Goya" award, of which six were prizes: for best film, best actor for Javier Kamara, best actress-debutant Natalia de Molina, best director David Truyuba, for best screenplay and best original soundtrack. Also that year this film was nominated for an Oscar from Spain. 

At the same time, the picture is quite simple and even simple. A resilient teacher in the company of a rebellious decision against the decisions imposed on her beautiful girl (it quickly turns out that she is pregnant and that her mother sent to a specialized institution, where they solve problems with "fallen women") and rebelled against the tyrant father of a teenager go to the coast, where they spend literally two days, and then leave. 

During the trip and during these two days, each of them understands something important for himself. Antonio demonstrates to everyone else that the Beatle principle of "All You Need Is Love" is important to him, which he understands as the need to care for people who need his help. At the same time, he helps people so that they do not even understand that they are doing something special: Antonio - a man very cheerful and good-natured, he constantly jokes and sometimes jokes at his fellow travelers, but his jokes are never offensive. 

This film is very tuned and atmospheric. It seems to be nothing special, but in the process of viewing you really imbued with all this atmosphere - the road to the south of Spain, the south of Spain and the Mediterranean coast, a small village with a squalid hotel and a bar, which is owned by the god news what ways here got A Catalan Ramon. It's like you're in these places with the movie's heroes, and you really care what's going to happen to them: whether Antonio can meet John Lennon, which seems incredible, how the fate of the Belen girl will happen, what will happen to Juanho, who is still a teenager and can not live without a family. 

At the same time, it will not be clear to a foreign audience how iconic this film is for Spain and why it has received so many awards: it seems to be really - nothing special!

But for the Spaniards - it's 1966. This is still Francoist Spain: before the resignation of Caudillo Franco remained seven years, before the coming to power of King Juan Carlos, who turned the country from authoritarian to democratic and himself renounced any real power, there were still 10 years left.     

Some political reforms will soon begin in the country, but in 1966 it was still same Spain with the strict totalitarian control of the inhabitants of the state and church, where the church wielded great influence (because it was backed by Franco) and where churches were given care of the education of youth, where the church was actually uncourtalike, children in Catholic schools were beaten by teachers, and numerous cases of pedophilia among the church at various levels were carefully hushed up. Where there could be no divorce, where a woman could not leave her husband, even if he beat her and the children with a death battle, where a woman could control neither her fate nor the fate of her child.

And when you know all this, you look at these people in 1966 with a completely different eye: Antonio's teacher, who has never raised his hand on his students and who is clearly beaten when students are beaten by a padre-director, to Belen, who refuses to consider herself "fallen" and does not want to give her child to shelter just because she is not married, and Juancho, who defends his right to wear that hairstyle. that he likes. 

It's, you know, a completely different story. These people have challenged the surrounding system, and those Spaniards who remember what Spain is under Franco, these nuances are very clearly felt. 

Moreover, there is also "El Catalan" - Catalan Ramon, who with an obvious challenge periodically releases phrases in Catalan, and more recently Franco for the Catalan language shot. In 1966, of course, the Catalan was not shot, but nevertheless it was and was very recent. 

However, even if you do not understand all these subtleties, the film is really very good. And he is good at mood and sensations. Conversations, which are between the main characters, on the one hand, seem to be thrifty, but they discuss quite important things. Antonio, who is a modern-day Don Quixote with a set of Sancho Panza. (Well, he's not that fat, by the way, I'll note, just fat - because a bachelor and eats hell knows what.) Belen - charming absolutely: she, on the one hand, somehow does not show itself, but there and the situation itself shows that she does not intend to sag, and some episodes with her demonstrate it quite clearly. 

The guy Juanho - quite like such a typical 15-year-old, but he really is a personality, and it clearly manifests itself. Even the fact that he ran away from his family with an oppressive father at the age of 100, says a lot about him. And they will have a small and rather touching episode of a very short-lived mutual passion.

Musical accompaniment in the picture - wonderful absolutely, and it clearly draws attention to itself. (No wonder the film won the award for Best Original Soundtrack.) It's very much to the place - mostly there's a Spanish guitar - and it really adorns the film. 

Unfortunately, in Russia, this film was not released in the license, and in dubbing, I did not find it at all. In the original, it is a very interesting pronunciations: such Madrid at Antonio, Catalan at Ramon, South Spanish at the owner of the hotel, which did not understand the whole trinity. 

But it can at least be seen with fairly adequate Russian subtitles. I watch any films in any language with Russian or English subtitles. This allows you to fully understand the original color. 

I do not know if my readers will want to see this film in Spanish with subtitles, but I liked it very much, and I tried to explain what exactly interested me in this picture.