A lighter post for a change

Some of my blogging friends noticed that my posts recently are on a heavy side. I have been aware of the fact that I am overly preoccupied with issues of a serious nature and that this has impact on subjects of my blogging. At the same time writing is some sort of therapy for me and the way to clarify for myself bothering me issues. I also know that I skirt around the real things which are serious challenges around my health. I have cancer and go through the regular treatments that are not much fun. There is also a lot of unknown ahead of me. One could say; isn’t it so for anybody? Yes, but the remnants of a mathematician in me come to think about probabilities and those are not in my favour. So, I worry and try to find answers how to live well with the situation I am in. This spills to my blog in some ways.

It is not a light start to what was going to be a light post, but my intentions are to write about Ladies in Black, the Australian film which is lovely, funny, intelligent and finishes with a number of happy ends. Just what the doctor ordered and I really enjoyed.

                                     

For my current mood it was a panacea of the first sort and I give it my personal, very subjective 10 out of 10.

The film is about Australia in 1959 when reffos (post war refugees from Europe) were finding their way to embrace the new life and becoming millionaires. The conviction that Australia is the land of opportunities, great weather, freedom and the place where if one wants to, one becomes a millionaire without much of a problem. I must say that I feel the same about the possibilities in this country, especially at the time of the action of the film. And especially concerning reffos from Hungary who came here after the horror of times of 1956. With their abilities, fresh outlook, knowledge of European ways and often good education they were bound to be successful and very rich as a result. I believe that statistics would confirm that. I often thought that my clever father and talented mother would have made me a millionaires’ daughter if they came of Australia after the war. Coming in 1979 I was not that clever or lucky, but I still have lived a good life here (at least in some aspects).

One of my favourite scenes of the film is the exchange between two Hungarian men who admire the weather and one of them raises his hands towards the sky praising the weather and the water views from the balcony of his house exclaiming: isn’t it wonderful! The other asks: Are you happy then? And the answer is somewhat hesitant: I would not be that trivial.

Very European, funny and very silly in fact. Also, this is how I was and perhaps still am. One must have some complicated Dostoevsky's feelings to be considered a sophisticated person. Pure happiness is for simpletons. Hmm…

Ladies in black are ladies who work in a prestigious department store for well to do Australians. The head of the fashion department is a reffo, a very stylish one with Parisian experience and exquisite taste in cloth.  She takes under her wing a young and very clever girl who took the job in the department store during the holidays after her HSC. She passed the exams with flying colours and will have a great future ahead of her. Very different to her mother as a new era is only  just starting for women in Australia. Germain Greer will soon start to provoke and change girls’ psyche. Our heroine wants to be a poet, or and actress, or… a novelist. She reads Anna Karenina and she wants to go to uni. Her father says that no daughter of his would go uni and we are observing the change in his thinking under the influence of salami and wine that he is introduced to and comes to the conclusion – I can get used to it. We all know that he will change his mind and that his clever daughter will go to uni after all. With his blessing too. In the meantime, she will be introduced to European society with Hungarians in majority, learn to dress well, drink champagne and deal with being kissed on the hand. I never liked this type of greeting, especially in Polish winter when one had to take off one’s glove in very cold weather to let a man, who she was saying hello to, clumsily kiss the frozen, shaking hand. Now I think that those times had a lot of charm even (or especially) this continental kiss on the hand. And Sydney of 1959 seems very attractive in the charming old fashion way.

                                                  

Lovely film that will be forgotten soon as it is just charming fluff.