Impressions: 'Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed'
A Film by David Trueba
Living is Easy With Eyes Closed, directed by David Trueba, based on a true story, is about a schoolteacher in Spain, in love with The Beatles, who decides to take a road trip to the south where John Lennon is shooting How I Won The War. It is a turning point in Beatles history. They had just come off the road and there were rumors circulating they were breaking up.
However Lennon was working on a new song during the downtime — Strawberry Fields Forever. It still the Franco era, the radio in the schoolteacher’s car is absent of music, instead broadcasting religious programming. The Guardia Civil are everywhere and there is an unspoken, eerie feeling of oppression and fear. The other two characters, a teenage boy named Juanjo and a young pregnant girl named Belen, are each struggling with their own issues. Juanjo, a budding artist, is looking to express himself and be free. Belen is living at a home for abandoned women who are pregnant.
Both run away and hit the road, but have no idea where they’re going. The schoolteacher picks them up along the road and they travel to a seaside town where How I Won The War is being filmed. The film focuses on the dynamic between the schoolteacher and the two teenagers, which is warm and friendly, but each of them are alone and adrift in a society which doesn’t understand them.
It’s the peak of an era where music — and its messages — has significant impact on those who listen, particularly the song Help, which the schoolteacher uses in class to teach his students English. The song holds special significance to the schoolteacher because he sees it as his cry for help, as well as for those feeling stifled in a backward and oppressive country. There is a yearning to be free while navigating the obstacles impeding them — references to a Madrid vs. Barcelona football game (Catalonia always being very anti-Franco and in fact was the last hold out at the end of the Spanish Civil War); how the war affected the population nearly thirty years after it was over; and how Spain essentially stagnated as the rest of Europe moved into the twentieth century. There’s a lot to contemplate as one watches this brilliantly written1 and wonderfully realized film…and a must for Beatles fans.
Directed by David Trueba
Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed is available here
David Trueba is also a novelist.