O poeta das palavras e das imagens...

Ou quando ambas se fundem numa perfeição cinematográfica de extraordinária beleza...

One day, while taking a look at some vistas in Dad's stereopticon, it hit me that I was just this little girl, born in Texas, whose father was a sign painter, who only had just so many years to live. It sent a chill down my spine and I thought where would I be this very moment, if Kit had never met me? Or killed anybody... this very moment... if my mom had never met my dad... if she had never died. And what's the man I'll marry gonna look like? What's he doing right this minute? Is he thinking about me now, by some coincidence, even though he doesn't know me? Does it show on his face? For days afterwards I lived in dread. Sometimes I wished I could fall asleep and be taken off to some magical land, and this never happened.

- Badlands

Nobody’s perfect. There was never a perfect person around. You just got half-devil and half-angel in ya. She promised herself she’d lead a good life from now on. She blamed it all on herself. She didn’t care if she was happy or not. She just wanted to make up for what she did wrong.

- Days of Heaven

This great evil. Where does it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us? Robbing us of life and light. Mockin' us with the sight of what we might've known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed to this night?

I remember my mother when she was dyin', looked all shrunk up and gray. I asked her if she was afraid. She just shook her head. I was afraid to touch the death I seen in her. I couldn't find nothin' beautiful or uplifting about her goin' back to God. I heard of people talk about immortality, but I ain't seen it. I wondered how it'd be like when I died, what it'd be like to know this breath now was the last one you was ever gonna draw. I just hope I can meet it the same way she did, with the same... calm. 'Cause that's where it's hidden - the immortality I hadn't seen.

My dear wife. You get something twisted out of your insides by all this blood, filth and noise. I want to stay changeless for you. I want to come back to you the man I was before. How do we get to those other shores? To those blue hills? Love - where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us? No war can put it out, conquer it. I was a prisoner. You set me free.

One man looks at a dying bird and thinks there's nothing but unanswered pain. That death's got the final word, it's laughing at him. Another man sees that same bird, feels the glory, feels something smiling through it.

- The Thin Red Line

They are gentle, loving, faithful, lacking in all guile and trickery. The words denoting lying, deceit, greed, envy, slander, and forgiveness have never been heard. They have no jealousy, no sense of possession. Real, what I thought a dream.

That fort is not the world. The river leads back there. It leads onward too... deeper... into the wild. Start over. Exchange this false life for a true one.

- The New World

«Hiroshima Meu Amor», meu amor!

«Hiroshima Mon Amour» (1959) – assim mesmo, sem qualquer vírgula, «para atenuar a violência» do choque entre as palavras Hiroshima e Amor –, essa obra-prima imprescindível de Alain Resnais, esse verdadeiro monumento de modernidade cinematográfica, contém das mais belas frases da história do cinema. Pelo menos ditas daquela forma, naquele contexto, por aquelas personagens...

Aquilo que começou por ser um documentário sobre a devastação nuclear de Hiroshima, na esteira do sucesso de «Nuit et Brouillard» (1955), acabou por transformar-se numa extraordinária meditação sobre o amor, as memórias, o tempo e a guerra. Alain Resnais apresenta um majestoso e moderno trabalho de realização (basta atentar na imagem inicial, onde se entrelaçam dois corpos em grande plano), mas são também os diálogos escritos por Marguerite Duras que conferem a este filme uma aura de indizível beleza. Seguem alguns exemplos:

- «Tu és como mil mulheres numa só».

- «Daqui a uns anos, quando te tiver esquecido e quando outras histórias como esta, pela força do hábito, voltarem a acontecer, lembrar-me-ei de ti como do esquecimento do próprio amor. Pensarei nesta história como o horror do esquecimento.»

- «Ele virá direito a mim, vai agarrar-me pelos ombros, vai abraçar-me… Vai abraçar-me… E perder-me-ei.».

- «Devora-me. Deforma-me à tua imagem para que um outro qualquer, depois de ti, não entenda mais o porquê de tanto desejo. Vamos acabar sós, meu amor. A noite não vai acabar. O dia não se erguerá mais sobre ninguém. Nunca mais. Finalmente!»