International Programs

Sometimes there are movies that do more than just tell a story; sometimes they make a character come to life in such a way that the audience is profoundly moved. In this thesis I have compared and explored two movies that truly impacted my view on life. Il Postino and Mar adentro were films that I had never heard of until two wonderful college professors introduced me to their tragic but wonderful stories.
One, Il Postino, tells of a poor, Italian man who befriends a poet and wins a woman's heart with poetic words. The other, Mar adentro, tells of a quadriplegic, Spanish man that fights for 30 years to end a life he no longer wants nor needs. Both speak of pain, love, loss and poetic justice in their own ways.
In this thesis my intention is to point out the similarities in the films and to share their stories and characters. The ideas behind these films are ones that anyone could relate to just as easily as they could dismiss them. These are two distinctly different tales with very striking similarities.