Greinin er um margt forvitnileg lesning, einskonar hugleiðing um hvernig töframáttur kvikmynda getur birst manneskjunni í ólíklegustu aðstæðum.
Burris byrjar á því að lýsa eftirmála sprengingarinnar sem varð þann 4. ágúst 2020 og hvernig hún setti í raun allt líf í borginni á hliðina. Síðan segir hann:
Despite my proximity to the explosion, my body was spared. I was one of the lucky ones, but the stress and emotional turmoil I experienced were still immense. For the next few weeks, I caught myself randomly weeping, and every time I heard a loud sound like a plane or a garbage truck, I flinched and almost ducked for cover. In the midst of this madness, I needed an escape, an outlet—a window into another world. I needed some distance, some sort of reminder that my current reality was not the only reality. As strange as it sounds, I found myself looking for this escape in the most unexpected of places: Icelandic cinema.
I do not know exactly why Iceland suddenly came to my mind. I had briefly visited that country once before and had even seen a couple of Icelandic films, but all of that was years in the past. In this moment of crisis, some pleasant memory of Iceland must have drifted into my consciousness. I needed distance from my devastating surroundings, and what could be more distant than a tiny, volcanic island situated in the North Atlantic? It just felt so far away, so remote and removed from my suffocating present, and if my body could not physically get out of Beirut, perhaps through Icelandic cinema my mind could.
Síðan berst talið að Fúsa Dags Kára og hvernig aðstæður aðalpersónu myndarinnar minntu Burris á sitt eigið hlutskipti.
About 15 minutes into Virgin Mountain, it suddenly felt like the film was speaking directly to me. For Fúsi’s birthday, his mother’s boyfriend Rolf (Arnar Jónsson) hands him a box. Inside is a gift: a cowboy hat. With the sudden appearance of this prop, Virgin Mountain had my full attention. As someone who was born in Texas and spent the first two decades of life there, I drew unexpected meaning from this hat. It was a reminder of my roots—roots which, at that moment, had never felt so distant. Between the shock of the port explosion and the months of dreadful isolation we were experiencing because of COVID, home had never seemed so far away, and as ridiculous as it sounds, this piece of Western wear felt like a sign.
Burris ræðir einnig margar aðrar íslenskar myndir í grein sinni og virðist þekkja vel til íslenskrar kvikmyndagerðar.
Lesa má greinina í heild sinni hér.
Hér má fræðast um Greg Burris.
