Heimwee naar de Dood is the second film essay by Ramón Gieling in which an attempt is made to illuminate the power and influence of an impossible notion; in this case death. Duende (1986) focused on a lecture by Garcia Lorca, but in this film the essay All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day by Octavio Paz is the point of departure: ‘For an inhabitant of New York, Paris or London, death is a word that is never spoken, because it burns the lips. The Mexican however is on good terms with her, sleeps with her, courts her; she is one of his favourite playthings and his most lasting love.’Death as trauma and death as return, as homesickness. One of the protagonists in the film, Olga Dondé, 53-year-old painter from Mexico City, is the bridge between the Western and the Mexican attitude to life and death. Her life is shaped by her attempt to survive the loneliness after the death of her mother, her brother and her son. She built a house in which she was to bring together everyone she loved, but with the exception of her daughter Lourdes, everyone has been lost to her and the house turned out to be a dream you can’t live in.Other protagonists in the film are the inhabitants of the village Zaachila in Oaxaca, Central Mexico, among them Nicolás Ramirez, the priest of the village and Melecio Varga (87), who wants to avenge his brother’s death.In the end all words remain attempts to avert death; words which are doomed to be no match for the mystery of physicalreality: Melecio dreams his death as a journey without a destination, a train thundering on, heading for nowhere.
