Shannon Murphy
Babyteeth

The ways of the Lord are infinite. There is no love other than the love of God. Only love can save us, love is the connection with our soul.

Bought the online viewing, the movie starts, I begin cynical, I begin condescending, I judge, I mock. Watch out!, says my wife... she's so right, I arrive as a fool. The end tears me apart, it disintegrates me, mercifully the director reclaims the absoluteness of the only substance that nourishes us, love. It's been since Hana-Bi that I haven't felt such a blow. I cry uncontrollably for half an hour, the father caressing his daughter's bald head with infinite feeling: my child, have a good journey up there, you knew love. I feel like I want to tear everything from inside me, to scream my pain to the sky, to disappear... Halfway through the movie, I was still the "tough guy", the one who perseveres, the one who makes it, the strong one... Then they tear me like a sheet of paper into a thousand pieces, and I can no longer find myself.

Shannon Murphy immediately takes us arm in arm with death, we know it's coming, and all feelings are amplified, and everything is soul. The ray hits unexpectedly, it cannot be otherwise, love is blind, it's true, it's true... such light. To live by nurturing love, this alone is enough.

This cradle of bliss shifts our perception from watching the clock to floating in the timeless, and this atmosphere of ecstasy distracts us for a while, we delude ourselves that we will remain like this forever. Contrasts of situations that defuse moments that weren't dramatized, there's no need, love cannot be logically explained. The Australian air throughout the film prompts us to look "beyond".

And I don't think it's a coincidence that the two young protagonists have names starting with M, Milla and Moses, invoking sacred geometry where the alphabetic symbol M corresponds to the dual opposition between good and evil. And if we want to associate the symbolism of the T, we say it is linked to two concepts, one is "measure" (To Egyptian) and the other is "life" (Ti Sumerian): everything is measure, "life is measure". The two T's represent the pillars of the temple, the feminine pillar of severity, the masculine pillar of sweetness, Milla's parents and the pain of the genealogical tree. Temple pillars and time correspond to the real and spiritual power that acts through the "original sin".

Then the symbols of the T's and M's are linked to the MA TER (ternary programming) of the third planet from the sun: TER RA. The larger the base of the pyramid, the more solid the power of the triangle, the more distant from us the "macula non est in te". The temple-pyramid is an astronomical clock, and the function of contemporary ritualistic elements, including the use of symbols and the obligation of secrecy, is to measure the time of all human beings, marking the time measure imposed on the planet.

The physical world is based on illusion, temporality, duration, but eternity is a higher level of being. Man frees himself from illusion when he can tear the veil of maya (the High Priestess, the second major arcana with columns J & B) through love and death and seeks the absolute Being. Milla at dawn is free and looks from her fresh ethereal state as a passed one, with impersonal joy, at her "loved ones" sleeping blissfully.

There is no melodrama, no one escapes, there is no sermon. The moral? It's in line with avoiding moralistic monotheistic reprimands: "the moral is always the same, have a snack with Girella", Moses would say. It's the first love, the most beautiful, the one you never forget, the one that always accompanies us, the one that "opens the gates", the first "hallucination".

Then the "lady" arrives, and that's enough, without consideration, without sensationalism, without pity, without calling it by name, just pure pain. The detachment arrives and I, being a father, return to that one prayer I tell myself: May I not outlive my children.

The ending of the last Pirates of the Caribbean film comes to mind, where the pirate Barbossa sacrifices himself to save the rediscovered daughter who recognizes him a moment before the ocean waters close over him and Salazar. Hector's beatific and calm look towards Carina before the end, that look... And again the "fireworks" of Kitano, and Ben Gazzara in despair in "My Son, My Dear Son".

And I understand why we have the heart as an involuntary muscle, because if the death of a child were to happen, we would want to voluntarily stop it as parents, but as I said before, divine designs are inscrutable and it would continue to beat despite everything, and we must submit to conscious pain for our growth. The illusion in believing we can stop everything by immortalizing in photos the eternal that only love can give us, the awareness of the evanescence of this hope.

I'm annihilated now, I hang my head in despair while sobbing, watching the characters by the sea, a remembrance song delivers the final blow. The infinite tenderness of the father, in that smile he couldn't let out, in that caress that accompanies Milla upwards, in that awareness that his daughter lived because she knew love, because she loved. The presence in nurturing the daughter's feeling through the mother's total devotion, her tremendous despair that tears everything apart, including us, everything. Moses who knows "that one" well, always having her near, but cannot control the disorientation before the end.

I went to caress my children who were sleeping, I couldn't stop the tears, I didn't want to...

"I love your eyes, my friend,
their splendid play of flames,
when you suddenly raise them
and, with a celestial lightning,
look of light all around.

But there's a stronger charm:
your eyes turned down,
in the moments of a passionate kiss
and, among the half-closed eyelashes,
the dark and dim fire of desire."