"ILHA DAS FLORES-THE CYCLE-tomatoes, money, pigs, humans, garbage..."
Created | Updated Nov 4, 2004
The film "Isles of Flowers"; by director Jorge Furtado is a profound sarcastic and comical commentary about life. It begins with a Japanese guy who cultivates tomatoes and it culminates with the poor Brazilians scavenging at garbage (not fit to be made into sauce) dumps. It can only be described as transcendental. The randomness of it all terminates in unity. Humans a carbon based by-pedal species with pulsable thumbs, the pulsable comment caused to me to have a big grin. When I saw the poor Brazilians, it reminded of an essay that I read not so long ago entitled "Dumpster Diving." In this essay the Dumpster diver fella gave a 101 on what was safe to eat from a Dumpster. You may have noticed that I capitalized the word Dumpster each time that I used it. The diver said that he had investigated where the word Dumpster originated. He found out that it was trade marked by a Dumpster company that created the word and used it always capitalized.
I believe that one of the points in this film was to get across the notion of capitalism. Products exchanged for cucro led me to this conclusion. The house-wife selling perfume so that she could buy tomatoes and feed her family, somewhat reminded me of my mother. A business oriented woman.
Then of course the film branches out very extensively. One of the things that struck me was the part regarding to Cesio. An element that is used to create atomic weapons, the big mushroom explosion brings back thoughts of death and chaos that make me think of the Twin Towers tragedy. On an Albert Einstein documentary (that I bought for forty one cents about a week ago), I saw the man who dropped the atomic weapon on Nagasaki. Interviewer: "Captain Behan, what was your most outstanding experience in this historic flight?" Captain: "I suppose it was when the clouds opened up over the target of Nagasaki, the target was there pretty as a picture. I made a run, let the bomb go, that was my greatest THRILL." I can only think that he expressed the event on that form because he is a soldier. And as a soldier his mind must have been drilled into a narrow path.
The description of land as that of having an owner and a fence was very interesting and true. This took me to a history reading that I just completed yesterday. It said that the first inhabitants of America had no notion of property. They were nomadic and until they became agriculturally inclined they discovered the aforementioned.
The only thing I did not like was the reference to Jews. Displaying them on a 3 second frame was not appropriate. I cannot explain why I felt that way. It is just something I could not escape.
A cycle was embedded in the film. It was the cycle of the makings of living things and a cycle of life. From a tomato to a garbage field on Brazil, who would have ever thought of such a thing. I definitely enjoyed the film as I hope that you enjoy what I wrote.
1 cucro=profit
2 the Albert Einstein film is entitled: "A EINSTEIN: HOW I SEE THE WORLD"
3 Yes, I'm an Albert Einstein fan
4 This essay was written for an assignment after I saw a movie entitled "Island of Flowers" at the Universite.
5 The professor in the class is a self proclaimed anarchist. He has a Masters in art.
6 The Island of Flowers is in Brazil. It is know a garbage dump field, were garbage trucks discard their load. There are poor brazilian there. They scavenge for what ever they can eat there.
Researcher Ford
