Neverland or the perfect illusion

I publicly confess that I am not a novelist. I got tired of the corniness contained in some scripts and, in fact, transferred to the scenes. But I don’t know for sure why I’ve been caught ─or I’ve been caught ─ by the foreign telenovela on duty, billed by the popular Rede Globo, from Brazil, and titled lucky to live.

Nor am I a critical examiner of audiovisual achievements; I leave this task to my colleague and friend Julio Martínez Molina. My way of thinking about it is very pragmatic: if I like it, I like it!; otherwise I don’t spend a minute on them. It happens to me the same as with works of plastic arts.

But lucky to live It has a Don Alberto (Antonio Fagundes), owner of the Prado Montero publishing house, with enormous roots in literature, good books and the so-called classics, and transmits that attachment to the beautiful and dreamy Paloma da Silva (Grazi Massafera), a kind of earthly angel who is all devotion and spirituality, as well as a fighter and an exceptional mother.

The episodes lead the viewer by the hand and she, together with the lovesick Marcos Prado Montero (Rómulo Estrela), leads to a deep idyll, wonderful illusion and passion that gives the screen an “air of freshness”, of tenderness. and love, so necessary in these times of turbulence beyond the seas and also towards the interior of our archipelago.

The perfect setting for the romance is supposedly Never Land, a fictional island populated by pirates, Indians, fairies and mermaids, described in a fantasy novel written by Scotsman James Matthew Barrie (May 9, 1860 ─ June 19, 1937) for a play that was premiered in London on December 27, 1904.

In that distant and exotic place, the boys do not grow up and live without any rules or responsibility. They spend most of their time like this, having fun and having constant adventures. They call themselves the Lost Boys and are led by Peter Pan and his fairy Tinkerbell. The population also brings together fearsome pirates, Indians, mermaids, fairies, and other creatures that inhabit the jungles and deep waters. According to legend, if someone wishes to reach Neverland, he must fly until dawn to the highest point in the sky and turn to the second star, to the right.

And in the Brazilian telenovela, Paloma and Marcos “fly” and support tenderness and passion, and manage ─at least it happens to me─ that one also rises, even if only for a few minutes, and puts worries and occupations aside. caused by the many problems that afflict us daily.

It may be that due to the negative influence of daily inconveniences, the soul is somewhat saddened and the illusion is gone. Then, when the flashes of a beautiful, respectful and “healing” romance (in the case of Marcos) reach the eyes, spirituality is energized and thinking changes for the better.

About this work declared its director, Luiz Henrique Rios, to the site todotvnews.com: “lucky to live is a light and funny soap opera that talks about how precious life is and that you have to live it (…) The place of death as an end and denial is a cultural and non-existential issue”.

He also added: “Paloma and Alberto discover that life has no time. It has intensity, will and substance. They will live many discoveries together and, at the same time, she will transform her life and vice versa, which has consequences for all the people around her ”.

The soap opera has been recognized by specialized critics as one of the best of its genre in the last decade.

in good time it arrived lucky to livewith the pleasant Neverland, either by the sea or presided over by a leafy tree, with an intelligent script and permeated by pleasant literature and romance and a tenderness that marks the perfect illusion.

Neverland or the perfect illusion – September 5