from probability to actuality : afterthoughts on Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits

When you take away all the embellishments from something, what remains is the essential thing. Stripped off all the filmy candour of photography and editing and narrative, Fellini's Giulietta/Juliet degli spiriti (Juliet of the spirits) is about a woman who desires to be loved and appreciated. Juliet's story, is the story of any woman who seeks love. But, like Fellini's Juliet, such a woman may be living a life that she is in the habit of living - a life of accommodation, rather than one of splendour and celebration. Juliet's story, without the definitions of gender, is the story of choice. 

Juliet chooses to think of herself as happy in spite of all the loneliness that creeps into her marital life. She makes that choice unconsciously since she believes that is how things should be. That is how many of us think of our lives. We think it is un-changeable and acceptance of anything that comes in the way is the only choice left to us. 

In reality, however, the choice is to step out of the fairy-tale like imitation of existence and accept the vulnerability of the world outside the manicured lawns. 

Fellini's Giulietta/Juliet degli spiriti (Juliet of the spirits) tells me to step out and perceive the trees as the life - rooted in the soil of the now, and yet free in the air of the imagination. 

Image : Trees at Radhanagar Beach in Andaman Islands. Photo taken in 2006. Copyright self 2010.