Finally watched Coco!
I had movie night at Tania and Achilleas’s place today-I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but they’re fellow students in my department and we get together maybe once a month or so to just chill at their place and catch a movie.
The last few times I watched all three Back to the Futures because Tania couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen them (and couldn’t let that continue). Today it was Coco. And oh boy, that was a complete sob fest. It’s one of those movies that just build the emotions bit by bit so that at the crucial moment, they just break over you like a flood.
But I like crying over movies and books (maybe because it’s a safe emotional outlet you know? And I guess it’s important to have those, especially when dealing with emotions in real life situations is so stressful and painful for me.) So I loved Coco.
And I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been writing long fic so much more now, but I’ve got loads better at guessing the plot twists before they happen.
I figured Miguel was going to guess about Ernesto de la Cruz being related to him from the moment he appeared, and then I knew the moment he actually got to Ernesto that his dad was going to be someone else-and on the heels of that, OH HECTOR. I don’t know, maybe it was late (I almost never get this stuff, like I totally did not see Hans coming in Frozen).
Still, guessing the twists didn’t take away the punch. I still bawled when Hector did his reveal about Coco, and of course at the end when he finally crossed the bridge.
On a different note, I was fascinated by all the commonalities the Mexican culture had with Chinese traditions (Tania’s Mexican, so I got a running commentary of the historical and traditional significance of the different backdrops yay). The honouring of the ancestors, the ghosts ‘walking’, even some of the lanterns and dragon-like decorations (I even spotted one that looked very much like a Chinese dragon head). It’s just fascinating to me how two different cultures half a world apart can share such similarities in their traditions. I know there are certainly still many stark differences (I don’t know enough about Mexican culture to do a proper comparison) but it is a lot more similar than comparing, say these views and themes with the ‘leave home and strike out on your own’ narrative that appears to be part of ‘Western’ culture. (And I say that in inverted commas, because considering Mexico IS West to me, the world really can’t be so easily geographically divided.)