Sifting through background on Skullfucked: The Akash Maharaj and Victor Cazares Story, we find a strangely poignant scrap in the form of a movie review and more comment banter. From Akash’s review of the Pedro Almodovar film Volver (published as a Facebook note in 2007):

Volver **** (best film of the year)

I have been called emotionally distant by any number of people and those who know me well know I can be very unsentimental - and yet I was profoundly moved by this film.

A number of characters ask the truth to be told, but then add, “Someday, you will tell me everything” the whole truth, the whole story is put off so that the community can reinvent it. Narrative creation is an act of recreation. Dead bodies don’t stay dead but come back for their rewrite and their redemption, stories are added to and altered with time… Over and over, Almodovar refuses to see the story straight through but rather filters it through a kind of memory process. Memory isn’t just what happened but what we think happened, and what we’d like to have happen. And so new voices are brought in to add their gossip, to rewrite or essentially, to return.

Poignant, coming from a man who, months later, would stand accused of a “narrative creation” of criminally fraudulent proportions, only to be undone by another “retelling,” from an ex-lover to the authorities. Naturally, the lover-Akash’s foil and rumored whistleblower, Victor-also makes an appearance on the note, with three film-buff-bantering comments at the onset of their relationship.

After the jump: Akash’s complete Volver note and Victor’s comments.

Akash’s note:

VOLVER

So sue me, I freaking love this film and I strongly want to encourage anyone who has not seen it to do so. I saw it again last week for the THIRD time and I can report that it holds up on each viewing (and even improves). Anyway, here’s my review of Volver. Oh and shut up Eugene! Yes, I know very well you were going to tell me to stop posting about this film, so I decided to stop you with a preemptive strike. And unlike our President, I DO have reason to believe you were carrying a weapon of mass destruction (your scathing wit).

Sidenote: I’m going to start posting film reviews here just for funzies Why not? Facebook obnoxiously announces whenever anyone posts anything and my friends are compelled to actually read my notes, so it’s like shooting readers in a barrel.

Volver **** (best film of the year)

I have been called emotionally distant by any number of people and those who know me well know I can be very unsentimental - and yet I was profoundly moved by this film. The ending, which I will not reveal, is beautiful, redemptive, satisfying and moving. This is not “slight” Almodovar as some have suggested, and if it’s a bit provincial, well so what? The provincial is just another space occupied by many lives in our world and it takes just as much skill to locate humanity within this space, as it is to find joy in the subversive. And that is exactly what Almodovar does - he gives the provicial back its soul, or rather, he returns it.

To return a soul implies a bodily vessel and there are certainly ample bodies on display here! Penelope Cruz is gorgeous but Almodovar is not just looking lasciviously at her. He insinuates that the body politic can be mapped unto the female body as something powerful, regenerative, and self-defensive. Kisses between women are fired sharply like bullets (terrific work on the Sound Mixing!) and shedding a man’s blood is figured coterminously with menstrual blood so that offspring (adding to the community and the story) is just as natural as an “offing” (taking away from the community and the story). These women can make and unmake the world around them.

There is such a palpable sense of community here - female yes, Almodovar’s Lysistsrata but why not? (The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane criticizes the film for this, narrowly suggesting that gender progress is the burden of anything outside patriarchy by accusing the film of being equally “too female” as some films are “too male.” But of course he doesn’t launch this criticism at “too male” films like say The Departed. So Lane is full of gender bias horseshit) Almodovar suggests that these particular women not only create a community but create a kind of communal narrative as well.

A number of characters ask the truth to be told, but then add, “Someday, you will tell me everything” the whole truth, the whole story is put off so that the community can reinvent it. Narrative creation is an act of recreation. Dead bodies don’t stay dead but come back for their rewrite and their redemption, stories are added to and altered with time, a character goes on television with a singular purpose and then rethinks it, the protagonist rethinks the fate of a closed restaurant, tells a lie about it and then comes clean, and the truth about a past event implicating the central characters - and including a fire, adultery and death - is retold and retold from different angles. Over and over, Almodovar refuses to see the story straight through but rather filters it through a kind of memory process. Memory isn’t just what happened but what we think happened, and what we’d like to have happen. And so new voices are brought in to add their gossip, to rewrite or essentially, to return.

Victor’s comments:

Victor Cazares wrote
at 4:55am on March 1st, 2007

i fucking loved volver. it’s his best film and i’m obsessed with all of them. if i weren’t pissed at ‘your people’ for producing, directing and writing “Water,” I’d be happy you wrote this. But as it is, I’m still so fucking disgusted that I watched Water, read the novelization of Water, read “Shooting Water” or whatever the book her daughter wrote is called, and then sat through a panel of Water–and then the movie was nominated instead of Volver. Everyone should learn to let Almodovar deal with women mourning their men and not try to do it themselves. Have you seen dark habits? You must. You simply must.

And i’m sorry I’m rambling. I’m totally kidding about ‘your people’ being responsible. It’s just deepa that’s responsible. And the Sri Lankan government. And I guess the Indian sub continent as a whole. and canada. there are so many people to blame.

i can’t get to them all.

Victor Cazares wrote
at 4:55am on March 1st, 2007

and i’ve totally invited you to parties to come hang out and get to know you as a fellow morse transfer and you’ve totally rejected me.

Victor Cazares wrote
at 4:56am on March 1st, 2007

and i take responsibility for alberto gonzalez. he’s my fault.

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