figueroafernando Review of Never Gonna Snow Again

Never Gonna Snow Again (2020)

Nitzschean self-deception in Malgorzata

[9/10 · 7 February 2022]

Malgorzata and the self-deception foreseen by Nietzsche. Married by a contradictory rhythm of their lives, at breakneck and addictive speed, but at the same time with a heavy, even sclerotic, flow of their human, social, marital, family nature..., Zhenia's clients, ecstatic in a march unstoppable in their routines, their customs, allow the viewer, us who follow the masseur of the town near Chernobyl in the work, to witness the spiritual poverty in them, no matter how much they do yoga and tai chi, and stop smoke, or have children as true scholars in chemistry, or piano, but accuse their mother of being a w_-_--e and even those Olympiad champions have time to make homemade drugs and sell them to the neighbor. Nietzsche says in Beyond Good and Evil, in section VII, that the human being has that convenient will or disposition to look the other way when facing the obvious, to ignore, "a kind of state of defense against many of the things... a contentment with darkness". I agree with Miguel A. Reina, Malgorzata's voice in this work has echoes of Jonathan Glazer, only that the pessimism of the director of Cialo aka "Body" is finer, more subtle, his modesty is transparent and we can almost see that Malgorzata did not want what we are actually seeing to be seen: the self-deception of his characters and as a resource to soften, hide his criticism, he slips the fantastic scenes where the glasses are moved as telekinesis or the patients are put to sleep put in a trance with a Zhenia snapping her fingers while indulging in a fouetté en tournant, to camouflage these paranormal events with folklore and the popular dictum that those who survived Chernobyl would be loaded with radioactivity. For example, after the sad scene where, by hypnotizing her client, she seems to have also led her to a real regression, Zhenia sits solemnly at the piano and plays Chopin's insufferable Prelude e-moll opus 28 number 4, as if she also sensed that It will never snow again. Fortunately, and despite the director reserving the location of Zhenia, the snow will return. Fascinating work.