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dikanamai:

dikanamai:

Working on a new gifset, I’ve noticed again this beautiful detail in the post-cenote scene:

The way Hector shakes his head briefly when Imelda says “You leave me alone with a child to raise, and I’m just supposed to forgive you?”…

… and the way Imelda shakes her head with horror when she sees him collapsing by the final death’s spasms.

Both gestures are very, very subtle, it’s easy to miss them while watching the movie. But you find a lot of little treasures like these ones when you’re working frame to frame.

I’m still astonished of how awesome the body language is in Coco, at every level, from Hector’s histrionics to Imelda’s grimaces.

So I’m
going to reblog this to add some thoughts, now I’ve got some more time.

I think
this is one of the most important scenes in the whole movie, for two main
reasons:

a) How
Héctor manages Imelda’s anger. This has been said many times before, but let’s
repeat it again: he accepts all she has to say without a word to excuse
himself. He’s aware of his own mistakes, he’s aware of her pain and all the
troubles she had to go through. He never tries to undervalue her feelings,
which always made me think he knows pretty well he wasn’t a saint in the past.
The movie never tells us what happened exactly when Héctor left his home to
tour with Ernesto. We can see in the papel picado intro that Imelda is not
pleased, but she lets him go with a goodbye kiss. She wasn’t mad at him then.
But what about him? What was he thinking about, leaving his wife and his
toddler alone like that? He likely was quite an asshole, or a pretty
irresponsible brat at least. And it’s ok, he knows it. He’s had almost a
century to think about how stupid he was. His behavior has no excuse. All of us
love Héctor, he’s a good man, he’s a great guy who’s suffered A HELL unfairly,
he doesn’t deserve all the crap he had to endure… but he’s not perfect either. And
that’s a great lesson, because good people aren’t flawless or infallible. Good
people are people, and they make mistakes and mess things up. So Héctor was an
idiot back then and he accepts his fault with sincere remorse.

But when
does he try to cut Imelda’s speech? The only time he tries? When she says ‘I’m
just supposed to forgive you?’. And he shakes his head and tries to speak,
because no, you don’t have to forgive me, I’m not here to beg your forgiveness,
I just want you to know that I’m sorry. And he says it later: ‘This is my
fault, not yours. I’m sorry’.

It’s a pity
the Spanish translation mess this moment, because he says perdóname (forgive me)
instead of lo siento (I’m sorry) and no, it’s not the same. When you ask
someone for forgiveness, you’re forcing that person to make a decision
regarding your actions. You’re forcing them to absolve you or not, so you put
the responsibility on them. But when you say I’m sorry, you’re expressing your
own regret for whatever you made, as well as your own responsibility. And you
don’t ask anything for the other person; giving you their forgiveness depends entirely
on them. That was what Héctor did here: expressing his regret, asking for
nothing. And this is one of the greatest moments of this character, what actually
makes him a really good man.

b) How
Imelda realizes the weight of her own actions. I have the theory that Imelda
kept Héctor away in the Land of the Dead not just because of her resentment,
but also because of pure fear. Her life was far from easy; she had to make hard
decisions to make it bearable. But what if Héctor pops up now with a perfectly
acceptable excuse that explains everything and turns all her pain into a waste
of time and energy? What if all she did was also stupid? I think she’d be
utterly unable to process that. So, as we say in Spanish: ojos que no ven,
corazón que no siente. She refused to listen, clung to her pain and her own
version of what happened and went on. At least a part of herself would think
that’s more tolerable than seeing her whole world upside down.

We see a
glint of that fear in this scene, too, when Miguel says Héctor was murdered.
She almost breaks down, but she braces herself again quickly and goes on with
her mantra of OK, BUT YOU LEFT. The problem? Hector’s dying. Again. And she
hadn’t count on that. Even after all she did, after how hard she tried to
forget him, she didn’t think for a moment about the final death. That’s written
in her face (how horrified she looks), when she sees Héctor collapsing at her
feet. Perhaps she thought he’d be around forever, away but safe and sound. She
never thought her decisions could kill him again. She never allowed herself to
think about it. And now the reality slaps her in the face and she shakes her
head too, as in denial. You’re losing him again, gal. And this time it’s also
your fault.

And then
she softens. She stops yelling, stops pushing him away, and listens. And she
looks so damn vulnerable, so broken. She doesn’t forgive him (she can’t, it’s
still too early for that, and Héctor accepts it too), but she lets him apologize
and accepts his apology without further arguments. What a face she makes when
she hears his ‘I’m sorry’. And she agrees to help. All that happens after this
is like a shock therapy for her, to take her out of that loop of anger, pain,
fear and such bad feelings. By the end of the night, she’s already forgiven him,
and that’s the great lesson about Imelda: even knowing she was rightfully
furious, she understands she also made mistakes and she’s up to fix them. And
that’s not easy; that’s so damn difficult after so much time. But she leaves
aside her resentment, she embraces music again, all just to save her family.
Because family comes first, even if that family is a bit messy.

So what do we take form this scene? The
acceptance of our own faults, the way to apologize respecting others’ pain, our
right to be upset and even so the importance of forgiveness, at its own pace.