the WatchMen

Yesterday it was my sister's birthday, also women's day. Because I love my sister I wanted to do something that would get me closer to her. We live in different countries, so it was a matter of a re-inforcing the closeness by doing something that if we did together we would both enjoy.

So, I went to the movies to see 'Watchmen'. It had to be 'Watchmen' and nothing else because that is something that fundamentally I wish to share with my sister on her birthday, her love of cartoons, comics, manga,...

You know Sis, I liked the watchmen. I liked the fact it had been impossible to film for two decades, involving two failed attempts of different production companies, more than six directors also failed to bring it through the screen. The complex, deep, thick, violent, hopeful tale of the watchmen.

There is a group of films I like, some 70s films that end up with the question of 'man' facing 'his' own destiny, and 'society' being challenged or challenging such 'man': mostly are sci-fi, but not all, good examples of the kind of 'questioning' on human values are Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, those desolate endings...but there are many more...

Watchmen returned some of that flavour back for me with that particular ending. This time, however, the message was autmost powerful in the opposite direction, in Planet of the Apes, singularly, that desperate man is left contemplating the dessolation of his present past and future; here in Watchmen that 'man' (complex in its interpreative meanings of his non-face, destitute, incarcerated, abject) has sacrified himself, and when all it is lost, it is his diary that speaks to us, word and voice, it is that diary that opens up all possibilities for a future, for a position of no-compromising.

Flawed, compromised characters abund in the film, but it is filmed beautifully and it does capture so much of the original comic book, and so much of a radical understanding of the world..so hard to film...amazing choice of soundtrack.

I liked many more other things about the film...but for me, I thought of my sister as I watched it, I thought of the many cartoons we have read together, the ones I have read because she has left them for me to read, piles of cartoons everywhere in the house, and what it meant for both of us....and the watchmen and watchwomen...