How do you feel what is appropriate when appropriate? I read in the Gatopardo magazine a report to the pianist Ignacio Montoya Carlotto, the most famous grandson of Argentina. His life changed when he discovered that his biological grandmother was a grandmother with a capital letter: the mythical Estela Carlotto, a reference for the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo . Ignacio had been an appropriate baby, the son of militants killed by the dictatorship; however, he adored his parents, country people who had received him for adoption without knowing anything about his true origin. Suddenly his face has a mirror: it is very similar to Estela, someone in the world looks like him.

Ignacio becomes Guido, the name his mother gave him in captivity: he knows Maradona, the Pope, Cristina Kirchner . Its recovered DNA integrates the national lineage and becomes a triumphant symbol; but after the effervescence the pain begins. Ignacio loses his voice, has stitches in his stomach, flu, angina, infections; as if the name Ignacio were like an immunological barrier that, when falling, gave entrance to all kinds of ailments seizing his body. Knowing the truth does not solve anything , because it cannot be appropriated. A book comes out about him where they call him Guido, but he has already decided that it is Ignacio. As a trans who perceives herself in a certain way, who feels that her identity is not in the biological data of her body, Ignacio comments: «My body is an obstacle». He returns to his village and is secluded. Cross out the name Guido throughout the book.

I listen to Sabotage from Beastie Boys; one of the first appropriations I saw, Spike Jonze making the duo jump over rooftops like a policeman in the 70s. There are several mental operations that Ignacio has to do to save his brain in the movie of his life. Can Ignacio decide who he is and how to live? Ignacio had been appropriate within a few months of being born and then, as an adult, he had felt appropriate by an alien discourse, part of a world of values ​​and grudges that he finds alien. First, because he is incapable of hating his appropriators: he suffers thinking that his parents could end up in prison accused of crimes against humanity . From his period as Guido, Ignacio says: «He repeated phrases made. When I read or listen again it is as if there was someone dictating a script ».

I was watching Once upon a time in Hollywood , Quentin Tarantino, a master of appropriation . Memory is a majestic and extremely labile creature; the style of the brain is to reinvent memories that spill over each other, and Quentin knows it. Already in Pulp Fiction he puts Travolta to dance and shows his understanding of contemporary consciousness: we remember his other life as Tony in Saturday Night Fever , Travolta is his new role and also the roles of his life. The action always takes place on and off the screen, and that friction produces synaptic collisions of aesthetic euphoria: our relationship with the image includes the mental operations of the person in addition to the character. This is what Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino) tells Rick Dalton (Leo Di Caprio), when he recommends that he stop playing villain: "It is Rick who is hit on the floor, not the character." Rick drinks and cries, he thinks: I'm done.

In Érase ... each character remembers and edits his personal story. Cliff (Brad Pitt) is Rick's body double; Rick is still on the run, but Cliff is already a truncated star. Cliff climbs on a roof to fix an antenna and remembers destroying Bruce Lee himself. Spoiler alert : we are all brave and masterful in our imagination . What the characters do with their mental stories resembles what the director does with the capital story, of which the history of cinema is a double body. Extract the fairy tale of horror - by force of "fun" (change the course, entertain), edit, recompile the pain.

Tarantino had already done it in Damn Bastards : cinema was the fiery monster that devoured Nazism . Victims, carefully off the field are avenged; New dissimilar heroes emerge. When Brad and Rick watch Rick's films they see parts of The Great Getaway with Steve McQueen: Rick's face copied over McQueen's. Ignacio has to copy his face in the scenes of the old and renewed horror movie of Argentine history: of his parents wielding arms and jumping across the roofs like in the video of Beastie Boys, of his short baby life in captivity, of his parents killed by police forces, and later as an actor in an epic film where his role is Guido, the survivor: «I lived it as a movie where I was the protagonist but at the same time was absent, elsewhere» , Ignacio says. He is outraged at those who do not respect his decision: «I do not feel that I have regained my identity. In that case, the identity chart was completed. Ignacio cannot substitute one film for another - the true one is false if he erases the other, the one he built in his life.

Now, spoiler : in Érase ... stupidity is a substitute for evil and is on the side of the hippies, who made the revolution with an idealism crossed by cruelty. Susan Atkins exclaims to her Manson Clan buddies: «I have an idea! They, the ones who make movies, taught us to kill! Let's kill our teachers! Cliff doesn't know, but it's going to be Sharon's double body. Tarantino shows that there are many things to do with what we were taught, which are not reduced to repeating the slogans in revenge mode; that humans do what they can with the available roles, and that innocence exists. Tarantino claims, like Ignacio, the freedom to create the film of a destiny of his own, of a personal story.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • culture
  • literature
  • movie theater

Culture Women are more educated than men, it is demonstrated

Literature The RAE presents its first program of cultural events open to the public to undo "its mystery"

Literature Death Harold Bloom, the canon of the literary critic