Chaos!

I was trying to understand today, why is that that I love Paris so much.

There must be something that makes me love this place, because here I feel at home (Brazil), not just the fact that I can find Caipirinhas in every bar, but I also feel good walking around the streets, somehow it’s like I knew this place before. What it is about this city that makes me feel this way and why is that other cities like Chicago don’t make me feel the same way?

Maybe the films?

French films are my main passion in life, but not every French film, they also have bad ones, and even though I love Amelie to death, that one is not even close to the top of my list.

During the 60s, even though it started in the late 50s, the movement called La Nouvelle Vague, in English would be the French New Wave, began throughout France, but mostly in Paris, that’s where all the great French filmmakers were. You might know the one of the main directors that started this movement, his name is none other than Jean-Luc Godard, a filmmaker, a philosopher, a genius, with his movie  “`A Bout De Souffle” (Breathless), Godard revolutionized international cinema.

The style, the themes, they are all so different, and most importantly, what I love the most and praise the most in this world, it broke most of the rules from the Classical Hollywood Film Structure. Thank God for the French!

Hollywood movies are interesting, and some can be good, but most of them are crap. If you love Avengers, I’m sorry but please stop reading, and please do feel offended, unless you are actually interested in watching French films and gain some French culture, then, be my guest. I respect that, I would love to know what you think about them! 

With jump cuts and new angles to shoot close-ups for instance (from behind someone’s head, usually a close-up is right in front of the person’s face), the French New Wave was provocative; it attacked society, politics, and culture...  (The Vietnam War was one of the main events criticized in those films, and they weren't fans of America because of that).

The films can teach you so much about life from romance, to even growing up, the coming of age thing (for the latter watch "Les 400 Coups", in english, "The 400 Blows" by François Truffaut, it's a masterpiece). The characters are extremely flawed at times, yet they’re fun and lovable, they’re not concerned with how they look, they just are themselves. They’re real people, and French films are very much realistic in many ways.

French films shaped my life and who I am today. I don’t respect all rules, to me rules are meant to be broken. And why am I saying all this? Because that’s the French life! France is chaotic, you can see that from their history itself, just the French Revolution is chaotic. They hate rules, they like to argue, and yet, most of my arguments with my French friends have never put an end into our friendship, on the contrary, it has only expanded my views, gave me more knowledge, and made me respect them even more.

So while writing this I found out the answer to my question of why I love this city so much. Not just because of the history, culture, people, art, cute buildings, the romance, and something even more important to me, not just because of the films, which at first, I thought it was the main reason, but no, it’s the chaos.

The breaking of rules, even when to cross the street in a red light (something that is not common at all in Germany for instance). 

The chaos in this city is inspiring to me. It’s not just chaos, the chaos here usually leads to something, as the quote says, “Destruction is a form of creation”.

Chaos here has led to a Republic, then an Empire, and then back to monarchy, republic... of course all that through a bunch of Revolutions.

Chaos has led to new art, from impressionism to Dadaism...

Chaos here, to me, has no bad connotation. The French are used to it, they know how to handle it, and they love it. They understand tragedy, they love to feel miserable in their little apartments in Paris, or their bad jobs, to them these are reasons to live, reasons to fight against the system, a reason to complain as well, yet it helps them tell a bad moment from a good one.

If they didn’t like it here that much, they would have moved, afterall Province is cheaper.