By Lida Prypchan
As though guided by a time machine, I was ready in thirteen minutes to visit Juan, who was sick. “The noise of those machines is driving me crazy!” Juan yelled to me as I was going in. They gave me a seat on the terrace, across from which there was some construction going on. The workers observed me with curiosity, noting mine as I watched their tedious labor: they were feeding rocks, cement and sand into a wide-mouthed machine that narrowed toward the other end where it spewed out concrete. The mixer kept on turning, thousands of times, As those tired, sweating men came and went along the same path, just so they could sit down at a bar a the end of the month and drink away their despondence, thinking of the house they would like and didn’t have, let alone a stimulating job. They stopped the machine, suspecting a blockage and one of them stuck his arms inside. Deaf to his screams, the machine began turning again! Two workers managed to drag him out and took him to the hospital, where both his arms had to be amputated – his life forever changed, in a mere instant! The surprising thing is that even in the worst of circumstances the instinct for survival prevails. Our bodies may give out when we least expect, yet we take care of our hides as if we’ll last forever! Resignation and the drive to somehow be useful is what that man’s future will depend upon, for people who can paint with their feet or mouths don’t live useless lives. We sometimes acquire our skills under duress!
When I see what the will ban accomplish in the midst of great difficulties, I sense the desire to survive and am even more convinced that perseverance is stronger than fate. On the other hand, it’s sad to see a gifted person not taking advantage of his talents. For someone gifted with intelligence not to use it, is as bad as if he never had any to start with; or, pursuing this idea, a person who wastes his intelligence proves that he lacks it, because if he’s had any idea, a person who wastes his intelligence proves that he lacks it, because if he’d had any, some day he would have become aware of the fact. Anyway, it’s one thing to have the ability to appear intelligent and quite another to be intelligent. When I left the hospital I went back to Juan’s house. I sat down, staring into who knows what. That whole incident seemed like a dream, a nightmare. Instinctively, I turned on the television, where a documentary was showing shots of a huge car factory. The men fitting the parts and screws together looked like puppets. I switched it off, got up and drove to the movie theater. When I arrived I found myself watching a movie about a man pursued by a machine, tightening its nuts up faster and faster…I began to laugh without knowing why, whether from sorrow or mirth. I believe it was more from sorrow, because my head was reeling with a mental image of blood-stained stones, cement and sand intermingled with two mutilated arms that had been ground into mincemeat, some forlorn moans and in the center of the action, that infernal mixing-machine, spinning round and round like a drunken prom queen, and I was there too – incapable of action and conscious of my impotence.
The movie was Modern Times, filmed in 1936, with Charlie Chaplin (born April 16, 1889, died December 1977). To top it all, it was Tuesday the thirteenth. Modern Times is an extraordinary vision of man being devoured by machinery. It deals with the social problem of the working classes, the pariahs of life, about how the machine is turning man into an object, forcing him to his knees and becoming his executioner. But implicit within, and carried off with humor, one of the best teaching methods, there is also a very human message. For example, when Chaplin confronts the authorities in their attempt to jail the girl who stole a loaf of bread, he incriminates himself to protect her, and then cleverly extricates himself afterwards with his comic antics. How winsomely she convinces the restaurant owner to hire Chaplin as a singing waiter, and how charmingly she writes the words of the song on his sleeve – which he later loses – then encourages him from a distance to sing whatever comes to mind, with quite an outcome! It is the story of a beautiful relationship, rich in complexity, friendship and tenderness. The couple doesn’t experience the type of confrontation and competitiveness sometimes seen among couples today. On the contrary, they assume their roles naturally, without affection, encouraging and accepting each other on a mutual basis. Moreover, even though the movie is a comedy, it is not immune to the pathos characteristic of Chaplin’s work.
What finesse Chaplin had! He would graze with a fingernail the thin curtain separating joy from sorrow to prove that they are but different acts of the same play, for indeed, without sorrow one could not feel joy. In fact those who suffer the most intensely are able to experience the most joy. Since we are on the subject of acting, I should also point out the similarity between the expression of pain and that of pleasure. By adding the element of “intensity”, it could be said that extreme pleasure eventually causes pain just as extreme pain eventually causes pleasure.
