https://hermes

https://hermes.csusm.edu/Mediasite/Channel/05d1404...

1.Describe some of the magic realist scenes. What are examples of the ways in which the explainable and the miraculous coexist side by side in the diegesis?

2. When is Magic Realism used in this film to recreate images of traumatic events and political violence? Describe specific scenes. How does it make you feel about the depicted events? Discuss the level of violence that the girl experienced -- death of her friends, having a gun trained on her, hiding from Nazi's, seeing people get shot, a boy is executed, etc. Why do you think it it looks "sanitized" without the blood that this would cause?

3. The only scene that we see which has blood and dismemberment, real effects of the war, is the bombing of the church. Why do you think this was the only scene? What was the girl's relationship to this event?

4. Why do you think it is told from the viewpoint of a child (or from the viewpoint of an adult woman who is recalling her childhood memories)? In end of the film, we see an adult woman (the grown up child/protagonist) with an infant on the bed. Given that the adult woman's story contains painful and frightening childhood memories - why is the adult woman retelling her story to her baby and not another adult?