Honoring Giuseppe Tornatore

Giuseppe Tornatore: (Italian film director and screenwriter, Born 27 May 1956 in Bagheria near Palermo - Italy and currently lives in Rome).

But something will remain!

There have always been stories to tell
Stories that are stored in memory like an intertwined necklace.
At dusk, the pearls shine
Like an unsewn bobbin thread in the lap of an elderly mother, patiently waiting for her son's return from the city.

For a long time, she weaves,
He may come back
She weaves late at night what she has woven during the day. This kept hopes alive.

Young Toto grew up and became Salvatore.
The part of his hair is dyed white.
30 years of diaspora
Once again, he's coming back,
from exile to exile,
At the age of 55
In search of a forgotten love story
that he had left
yearning to see the darkness of the stairs
covered in dust and memories
lonely.
Under the heat of a midday tinged with pain, he walks through the alleys of Giancaldo.


Ciao Toto
"Do I leave or do I stay?"
After all these years
the mother seemed to Salvatore like a child. Small and tender hearted
time melts the body and lust, like a skilful jeweller.
but it keeps memories,
like trees, which die motionless, in pride.

Toto is back
in search of his shadows, which hid, within the walls of Cinema Paradiso.

Soon,
everything will disappear with an optical illusion,
behind a cloud of black smoke
dissolving
like the end of a majestic scene
slowly,
images, voices, laughter, tears and words will also vanish.
where nothingness will erect a wall of emptiness
overlooking the houses of the dead.

In the beginning was darkness and Chaos, and God created light and film.
and humans began to know love and sin.
Oblivion also was then created.

"Don't look behind you" said Alfredo the blind man to the young boy.
"Go far away and never come back,
It is an accursed land
haunted by tales
and failed love stories.
Life is not close to what you see on the screen.
Life is crueller than movies.
Leave, and never look back!
Your belongings are no longer there
They are scattered in the streets"

Before he died, he left in his will
a closed box that will be given to the boy upon his return:
a reel of stolen kisses
vintage images tinged with grey
all that remains of the forgotten old times.
Perhaps to remind us of the immortal wisdom, which Marcello said, his eyes full of tears, and wet with nostalgia: "Wine can also be made from grapes"

A distant light shines from behind him as he walks forward, torn between the beginning and the end
Lost between two stations of lost time;
between cities
houses
dreams and fates
he soothes his weary soul with Ennio Morricone's tunes, sadly repeating:
"Stanno Tutti Bene"
Everybody's doing well
Everybody's doing well

It's an old story, Giuseppe.
But sad!
Sad as the orphan in The Star Maker.
Her name was Beata
Her name was Pitié
So she sat alone,
crowned on a cloud of sand
as a daughter of the Virgin Mary
she dreamed of light
as half saviour of the poor
she dreamed of photos of Hollywood actresses.
Left profile, right profile, facing the camera, talking to the camera

Sadness is a hungry and crippled dog
barking in the empty streets under a warm rain of Sicily.

She took a break and then said
"Do I like to sing?"
Then she shouted
"Don't leave me alone in the world"

He said:
"I will always love you".

Silence
A bafflement in the waiting for nothingness

Absence
A faint sound of music in the night

Alone, on the steps, playing his elegy to the pianist, on a trumpet, which he will exchange in the morning for bread and water.
Hunger is hard, a middle-aged person can't stand it.

But, the time has come to tell crazy tales...
Exactly, in the middle between two lives
two trips
two men
one trumpet player and another?
A pianist, who has never touched the ground.
He was born by chance
No name
and lived with passion
without identity
and died quietly
on the transoceanic 1900, which drowned at the end of the cruise?
Because of it, the pianist touched the ocean floor
where he dies on the only ground he has ever known.
leaving us with nothing to know about his history!
Even his music
It was improvised
Now and here.

As if he was being taught by the waves.

He is gone, like a holy secret
Dead, as a pianist should.

The trumpet player stopped, and finished his tale.
Then he got up and walked away, mumbling an old melody

"Why is everyone leaving Giuseppe?"
I said
Because we are doomed to do so!
Forever?
Forever!
Forever?
Forever!
Like a movie reel, that goes on forever!