咫尺天涯

I had read about this movie in a book, got interested in it and researched it on line, but that's when I found out that there’s ZERO resources with this movie in it ,not even on YOUTUBE, but luckly a guy uploaded it online on baidu without any chinese captions; Lucky me.

Now, I think the movie IS fairly great, and I want to discuss two pieces of the storyline which reminded me of some classic literature stuff which seemed to symbolize something from my point of view.First,I want to talk about that GUN;It seemed to be ''simply one of the BILLIONS of the movie props they act with'' but the more I thought about it the more suspicious this ''innocent prop'' seemed to be. Let me explain: The first time it appeared in this movie was when a teenager wanted to use it to shoot his stepdad, right? But remember that even if your stepdad IS every bit as tyrannical as he is but he is still your stepdad, AKA your father in law.Thus making it KINSLAYING, which is something that will end you up in Dante's hell.''By the way'' and later Cassiel took away that very gun as his ''first good deed'' but later on he used that same gun to rob a store. (And get himself a fake passport.)

Now, there is a famous theme in the Greek Mythology, Harmonia's necklace, with Harmonia, the daughter of Aphrodite and Ares marrying a greek hero Cadmus, and Aphrodite's LEGAL husband,Hephaestus forges her a necklace with a curse on it as his wedding gift. well__Harmonia and Cadmus were turned to snakes,Jocasta hanged herself，Eriphyle got killed by her own son__ I wonder what will happen if that pre-mentioned gun got passed on to SOMEONE ELSE__

Also,Thomas C.Foster once said that all stories are basically the same.So let me just say that I completely agree with him; some stories ARE the same if you strip them deep down into the bones. Nineteen Eighty Four and Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows do share a few of the MAIN themes, and Diary of A Wimpy Kid also got ripoffed for about five to six times. So let's face it:THE REASON WHY FEW GOOD BOOKS EXIST TODAY IS BASICALLY BECAUSE OF HOW MOST OF US CAN'T EVEN FIND OUR OWN WAY OF STORYTELLING, OUR STORIES KEEP BUMPING INTO EACH OTHER! (Sorry, I have gone too far about how every story shares a parallel to other stories.)

So which story may we find after we got rid of the location of this movie, the minor characters, the minor themes and stuff like that? Faust. Let me explain. Faust, as we all know, is about a guy who treaded his soul to a devil, Mephistopheles, in exchange for some sort of youth stuff. He later fell in love with a girl named Gretchen, but since he treaded his soul to the devil she died in jail. Then in the end of the book he got saved by god for some reason. While in Far Away, So Near___Well, I still am struggling to find out about what does Emit Flesti symbolize in the movie but HE tricked Cassiel into drinking brandy (Even though I don’t understand about how Cassiel had been living for BILLIONS of years without knowing what a brandy is__) and HE’S the one who keeps hurting him even after how Raphaella keeps begging him to let Cassiel go__Anyways, both stories have one guy (specifically a man of god.) getting tricked into leading some sort of corrupt life ,(Cassiel actually started BEGGING in order to buy wine, how ridiculous.) and then stuffs happen in order for them to redeem themselves in order for them to go to heaven, even though part of Faust’s redemption might have something to do with his last word__which they(at least Cassiel did) usually grasp at. Then in the end the go to heaven. Also, the beginning of Faust starts when Mephistopheles makes a deal with god about how he will win Faust over, and god’s like “I don’t care what you do to him since a true christian will always come around one way or another.” While in Far Away, So Near Raphaella seldom reproaches Flesti for misleading Cassiel, while god just watches over everyone and the only thing we know is that god exits in the movie. So I guess that’s something both stories have in common. Also when Faust finally died in Faust among the bunch of angels who greeted him was Gretchen. While in Far Away, So Close__

Well, of course Raphaella didn’t do any wrong stuff enough to get her to be a member of the “repenting ladies” crowd but this is one thing both of the stories have in common.

But one thing they do NOT have in common is that Faust WAS tired with his current situation,(He was old, tired, and had to spend his days burying himself with books at the time.) while even though Cassiel did save that girl HIS downfall has something to do with his own STUPIDITY; first of all he couldn’t even recognize the same guy who stole his armor and nearly ended him up in jail,(Also he was tricked into gambling by the same guy and thought that gambling IS just some sort of fun maths game) he got drunk in a bus station causing a random woman to slap him in the face, then he tried to redeem himself by doing stuff like__Pouring drinks for__a bunch of__GAMBLERS (he’s a waiter at the time)__And he lack the ability to separate the nice people from the BAD guys, and then he’s basically playing the scapegoat without knowing it from start to finish__At least Peter Falk has the ability to sense the presence of angels while Cassiel lacks the ability to separate angels from FALLEN angels.

But despite Cassiel’s flaws, at least he IS kind and loyal to his friends, and he does have the ability to mark his OWN salvation. And I do like the ending of the film; since despite the fact that they shot Cassiel in the end at LEAST he’s not officially K.O. yet. And I don’t expect every films to end with a “ And They All Lived Happily Ever After”, try imagine Orwell’s 1984 with a happy ending, then we will say,”oooh, it’s just a Disney film with R rated content’s.” OK, that’s it, the end.

P.S: I know that you’re not supposed to judge a person by how he looks but__