The House of Sand

I watched a brazilian movie called House of Sand and it features two of my favorite brazilian actresses, who are mother and daughter. Fernanda Montenegro e Fernanda Torres are just perfect in this movie that sets place in the beginning if the 20th century at an amazing scenery in Brazil: Os Lençóis Maranhenses. Its basically a desert that changes constantly with the wind and it is really isolated, specially at the time that the movie is set. The story starts with the journey of this family to this place after the husband, Vasco, bought some land in the desert. He takes his wife, Áurea and her mother to live there. The story starts when everyone that is working for Vasco runs away and leave them alone completely isolated without any communication with the outside. This movie is about a journey of Aurélia to go back to civilization. But it is much more than that. It is a journey of choice between a kind of life that doesn't need anything material, and a life outside of that, the life as we know it. 

For years Áurea fights to get out of that place, to escape life as it is hoping that something different than that will be better. It made me think how we all do that. It doesn't really matter where we live, what we do, who we are or relate to, we always chase this dream of something better. It is always based on a past memory or something that we saw on tv or in a movie, or even of what we dream of having and being. I don't know if that is good or bad but I think that it may be too much of an obsession sometimes. Everything around us tells us to be different than we are, even if its to be skinnier, healthier, wealthier...Different can always be good to keep us walking, giving us an incentive to continue our journeys, but the same is great too, it gives us a certainty of who we are and why we are like that, it gives us time. Isn't time all we've been looking for? 

I've been living away from what I call home for a while and all I wanted when I came here was to make things different, to change my life in some way. Being away only made me think how I like being where I was. I probably needed to have this experience to realize this. I think I will probably be back home thinking how I wanted to be here. I think we are just naturally unsatisfied. Áurea gave me something to think: she gave up. She just accepted that the desert was what she was and where she was and she just stayed. I'm not sure if she was happy but I don't think happiness exists. I think happiness is something that comes and goes. I don't believe happiness is something we are, I think happiness is something we have for a specific moment or period in our lives and that it changes all the time. So why chase it so obsessively? Why not just accepting that and enjoying it when we have it? After all, the sand moves so quickly that what we call home will change all the time and it is completely out of our control. The moment we have the sand in our hands, it slips through our fingers and we have nothing again. I think I'll change when the sand requires me to. That will be my choice.