Terrible Beauty

I grew up by the sea, so close I could taste the salt of her sweat in every breath. The Pacific coast cradled my childhood and early adolescence, easing many moments of melancholy. I learned early to respect her like a good mother. She can carry life and take it away in a single wave. Her storms make a Florida hurricane look like a baby shower.  From her I glimpsed God’s nature: awesome power with depths beyond our knowing. The mightiest of men are but grains of sand in comparison. At least with God, all things work together for good to them that love Him.  With the sea, there is no such thing as mercy. I learned her tendency for indiscriminate ruin while walking along the beach: rusted ship beams, massive trees, trunks stripped down to their rings. At the age of nine, I discovered a dead body. A man, topless, pants tattered, lips blue, flies crawling in the corner of his mouth. His lifeless body marked my memory, affirming the number one rule all children from my coastal town learn at an early age: never turn your back on the ocean, (or God for that matter.)  This encounter with death became my first understanding of dichotomy, one that would later translate into an allegorical mystery: Is the sea of life a challenge to be conquered, a rival contestant, an enemy to beat? Or is this sea simply an inevitable calling to which we are destined to surrender?

Fernando Perez deftly draws on this inquiry from the opening of Hello Hemingway. Hilaria Bergointia stands at the edge of the sea, a scene rich with promise and hope. This is the portal through which the audience comes to appreciate her life, but it is through her own appreciation of Santiago, the fictional character in Earnest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, that her life in Cuba is fully realized. Hemingway, who lived close to Havana in La Vigia for 20 years, is a fictitious and silent cameo in this film, yet his writing speaks for him. His character, Santiago, speaks for his neighbor Hilaria:

Photo Courtesy: cubalavida.com
“He was sorry for the birds, especially the small delicate dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost never finding.  And he thought the birds have a harder life than we do, except for the robber birds and the heavy strong ones.  Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?”

Set in the year 1956, Perez establishes Hilaria as an outsider who by chance is able to peek into the American ideal from her window view of Hemingway’s backyard. All that separates Hemmingway’s position from that of Hilaria is a broken fence, marking the boundary between accepting reality and realizing her dreams.  She idolizes the writer, yet has little exposure to his writings. When her boyfriend invites her to visit Tomas, a bookstore shopkeeper, she is introduced to The Old Man and the Sea, and drawn into a world that mirrors her own internal struggle of at once wanting to be free and yet trying to conform so as to secure her freedom. 

Hilaria seeks to travel to the United States to continue her schooling, and has applied to a program that requires a rigorous background check. Everything must be in order, all paperwork complete and reviewed by a rather snobbish and elitist woman who views Hilaria with pity that borders on mild contempt. Unlike the other candidates, Hilaria does not attend the finest school, nor was she born into a “respectable” family. In fact, it is the circumstances surrounding her birth that puts her at a disadvantage. Her dossier notes two last names, a curiosity that leads to an unsettling discovery. 

The question of birth becomes central in this film. The obvious importance (though prejudicial), is explained in the interview process. Students traveling to America must have their “documents in order,” their papers need to be clear and concise “to ensure their well being over there.” The real objective in this subterfuge is “order.”  We are born into a certain order and are expected to follow that history concisely. If one’s birth is questionable, what chaos might we expect in her life?  It is from this position that Hilaria is placed, downstage struggling to defend her worth as a promising actress able to play a part in the American dream. The second and more subtle question is what torments Hilaria: can we change the placement unto which we are born? Hilaria’s place in life claws at the face of her American obsession. To remain in Cuba would mean submitting to one’s station, which for Hilaria would be as a coffee server on the streets of Havana.  She wants desperately to flee from this prospective future, and believes America is her only escape. She is reminded of this every time she looks out her window, taunted by he who both inspires and forsakes her, an American writer living lavishly in her homeland.

As she reads Hemmingway’s writing, she sees herself in Santiago, her life dramatizing the ultimate conflict of The Old Man and the Sea: our place in the natural order, versus man’s order and free will to take charge of his own destiny. The advice Hilaria is given seems both wise and hopeful, “Rest yourself, my little bird, and then go in search of your fortune like any other human, bird or fish.” Yet, in closing, as she strolls along the sea that is this time in turmoil, she concedes and feels “a strange peace.” She asks, “What does it herald?  Is it that failure awaits me?” This ending left me disconcerted. Can we make peace by resigning ourselves to fail?  As I write this question, I already know the death that can be found in dreams; it is the constant striving to achieve that keeps us at odds with our selves and the world around us. Going against all odds, at least in this regard, keeps us embattled, wearing us out, a slow and deliberate death.  I am reminded of those damned fools who chose certain destruction in The Storm rather than turning back without their treasured catch. Accepting failure could have saved their lives. Instead, they went full steam ahead, plunging into the greatest wave ever captured in a Hollywood film. Compared to this folly, I realize Hilaria is more daring, she accepts her failure and embraces a harder life, rather than pursue an illusion that will torture and kill her softly.

Photo Courtesy: wetstreets.blogspot.com

If Hilaria is a daring failure, Miss Ortega is mutinous pirate. In Who the Hell Is Juliette, the main character is not an actress, her story is as true as she is to herself, and therein lies the conflict. She begins by first setting the audience straight in the spelling of her name: Y-u-l-i-e-t. Her identity is spelled out while standing at the edge of the sea, which splashes up against the cement barricade like Yuliet’s personality: forceful, uncontrollable, aroused.  As with most “at-risk youth,” Yuliet’s abrasive and often inappropriate mannerisms are her only defense against a harsh reality set against her. Much of her story is told in the third person.  Whether this was intentional or an unconscious decision, narrating her own story helps to disconnect from her pain, of which there is much.

 

Yuliet’s first appeared on film as a child. She played in a music video with Fabiola, an older actress and model.  It is this history that Who the Hell Is Juliette? is founded. Director Carlos Marcovich asks, “What happened to that little girl?” The film examines the parallel lives of Yuliet and Fabiola, starting first with the color of their eyes: a striking sea green. The eyes cannot lie, and so they become Yuliet’s spy revealing the truth behind her act. Though she laughs when discussing her sexual practices with male tourists, her smile does not touch the sadness in her eyes. Fabiola, having a more privileged life, is free to be more honest when talking about her personal conflict surrounding her absent father, a second commonality she shares with Yuliet, whose father left for America when she was six months old. Her mother committed suicide not long after. Because of their matching conflict, Fabiola does what Yuliet cannot do for herself:  she cries.

It is often difficult in this film to determine what is an act and what is real, which I believe makes a good point. The distinction between the act and the actress is often blurry, as is the line between what is real and what is an illusion. Actuar, to act, suggests what is actual, what comes naturally. For Yuliet, what is natural has been distorted to such a degree that she cannot identify with reality any longer. In acting self-sufficient, indifferent and apathetic at such an early age and with such frequency, she risks losing her true self to this illusion: “God’s not coming.”  Fortunately, these character flaw are challenged by her own words, “I wish everyone could have what they want and no one would have to do what they don’t want to do.”  Though she may act otherwise, I imagine sleeping with old Italian men would be on top of that “don’t want” list.

If Yuliet’s wish could come true, how would the movie end? The director asks this question of Yuliet’s brother Michael who replies cryptically, “Let her die from whoring, but not hunger.” He laughs as he offers a final anecdote, “Or she becomes a Christian.” Yuliet’s script sounds surprisingly hopeful: to have “that life - married, beautiful, desired, wanted, chosen.”  Her inner longing is a beautiful clear sky reflecting a terribly violent sea, her true spirit confronting her act like Jesus saying “Peace, be still.”  A miracle it would be, but because it comes from within Yuliet rather than in response to her outside world, it is more likely to materialize. There is even a chance her brother’s final outcome could come true; Yuliet is exactly the type of woman God finds beautiful.



Regardless of one’s location, station in society, or personal history, there exists a tremendous struggle in life, viewed in the mirror of the sea. La Mar is the ultimate temptress, encouraging a desire to seek the promises that lie just beyond her horizon, but without any guarantees. The lives of Yuliet and Hilaria reflect this allegory: deep, ever changing and unpredictable, passionately treacherous, equally endearing. These attributes describe the natural spirits of these two young girls at odds with their external world. Their depth challenges shallow social orders, their diversity confronts systemic homogeny. The truth of who they are, however, can only be exposed when weighed against what anchors them. In other words, they need the storm to see if they are sea-worthy. Their stories exemplify the paradoxical nature of living - at once beautiful and yet terribly difficult to navigate because of its endless expanse of possibilities. Yuliet and Hilaria represent all women who see themselves as “other,” and are ostracized because of it. Their lives, whether real or imagined, answered that metaphorical mystery. Life is a challenge, though not any enemy.  Like love, life is a call to ripen. Surrendering fulfills our destiny.