Like Crazy/ La Pazza Gioia (2016)

Beatrice, gardening.

OLGA’S NOTES:

Note1: A genuinely funny, warm and tender film about mental illness. Not the macho, brooding, edgy, boisterous sort we’re used to seeing portrayed on the screens, but the whimsical, frantic, irresistible kind – the kind that mostly befalls the women. The dangerous kind. The kind of madness that’s capable of destroying the worlds.

My views on the barbaric and brutal ways the so called modern medicine is “dealing” with mental illness aside, I find the idea of a facility where women are invited to participate in daily activities such as gardening, dancing, cooking and just being themselves without any outside pressures very attractive indeed. “Like Crazy” could teach us all a thing or two when it comes to treating each other, and especially those less fortunate than ourselves, with compassion, dignity and sacred humanity.

Note2: The correct translation for La pazza gioia would be Crazy Joy. So why translate it as Like Crazy, which is not only wrong, but also a bit offensive, considering the subject? The lords of film-title translation seem to be the law unto themselves, capable of taking a perfectly fine title and translate it into something completely different, often hilarious and seldomly better than the original. I understand that it is not always easy, possible or even desirable to translate a title word-for-word, but it makes next to no sense to translate “Wings of Desire” (1989) as “Nebo nad Berlinom” (The Sky above Berlin; former Yugoslavia), or “Thelma and Louise” (1991) as “Un Final Inesperado” (An Unexpected Ending; Spain). 

Saying that, the original title of Kusturica’s magical realism coming-of-age masterpiece “Dom za Vješanje” (A Home for Hanging; former Yugoslavia), makes so little sense even in its mother tongue, it is just as well that someone’s decided to come up with a completely new angle and release it into the world as “The Time of the Gypsies” (1988).

Just don’t call us the Italian Thelma and Louise!

HELENA’S NOTES:

Note1: Chinese title-translators rule: 

“Full Monty” (1997) = Six Naked Pigs

“Knocked Up” (2007) = One Night, Big Belly

“Finding Nemo” (2003) = Seabed General Mobilization

“The Blair Witch Project” (1999) = Night in the Cramped Forest (giggity but true, that forest did seem to be pretty cramped for, you know, a forest)

And the best? 

He’s a Ghost for “The Sixth Sense” (1999) and Oh No, He Has a Penis! for “The Crying Game” (1992).

No spoilers there, then.

Note2: Did someone say magical realism coming-of-age masterpiece? Because that basically sums me up. I mean, that novel Olga wrote about me. You know, the one with a very long title.

Freedom is.