Yellow Blue

Chapter 3- Let Them Eat Cake

A revolution in cinema is when you ditch the regular protocols for a period drama by combining a well-known historical figure with a punk rock playlist and you get Marie Antoinette. The film is as if the present-day emerges into the world of the past, leaving with an overall comical feel.  The typicality of such a film is to be well-researched, accurately, and respectfully presented. The lighting, music, costumes, and setting, are secondary factors in recreating the story.  Marie- Antoinette is a change for audiences and the historical genre itself, bringing not a memorable story but a memorable experience of a story. When thinking of the film you are mostly to remember the pastel colors used to give a dreamlike and reminiscent quality as though you're in Sofia Coppola's wonderland.  You would also remember the costumes and the luxuriousness of the Versailles but in my personal opinion what really makes this film revolutionary, is how Copolla meshed punk rock perfectly, with songs and lyrics mirroring the scenes. And that is how you create a revolution in film, by meshing two worlds in one piece of art. 
  Unfortunately, when you're a teenage girl who hasn't ever studied film seriously, and the longest film you made was a thirty-minute montage of summer events in a forest, no one's really going to trust you with a team of filmmakers and a high-quality set. Instead, I choose something a little more humble. I have my set, which mainly consists of my Nikon DR500, which is my holy grail, a few lights for filming, some tripods, and my bible. In it is everything, from camera tips to quotes from famous cinematographers, to ideas for a future film. 
   This morning I woke up at around 5-ish, although, did I even sleep? The hard bed and creepy creaks in the floorboards left me sleeping with one eye open. We live just a few minutes outside of the city, in a little village, that I have yet not learned the name of. I haven't seen much of it. On the drive to my new home, I saw a little. It's small, with few houses, but the houses that are there look exceptionally beautiful. You'd think they should be small, and almost wreckages, but they're not, it's like everyone put all of their money into their homes, forgetting the roads though. The roads are a completely different story. They're just mud and sand roads, with holes the size of Africa. The drive home was like going on a rollercoaster, up and down and up and down, at some point I thought I'd poop out my intestines. Luckily, my intestines are still intact. The Novak home is an orange, bungalow type of home, though, I wouldn't want to call it a cottage, it's different from western ones, but we definitely have ones like that back home.  It's got a small terrace and a small wooden gate that you wouldn't understand what it was trying to guard. There is a front garden and a back garden, the front has many herbal plants and some decorative plants such as rosemary and lavender, while the back has tomatoes, potatoes, carrots and other stuff I don't know the names of.  There's also a well, I think, a wooden shed, and a wooden garage, yes, wooden. Modesty is their motto, I guess.  Their cottage isn't too small, it's only got one floor with a red tile roof and windows that Lenin probably had. They're that old. The inside is twice as modest as the outside, I know, how could it get more quaint than it already is? It's alright, I'm here for the entire and rigorous experience that Ukraine has to offer...I think.  The bathroom where I took my, now routinely ice bath in this morning, has an old bath with strange stains and an old tile wall, and squeaky floorboards. The sink is in the shape of a shell, they probably tried to renovate the bathroom a thousand years ago. That would be my guess. The loudest part of my morning routine wasn't when I clenched my butt cheeks and tried to hold a shriek when I got into frozen water, but when I fell over the bathtub, trying to get out. Morning one in Ukraine and I've already completed the goal of embarrassing myself to my new family, that is if they heard, I'm hoping they didn't. After tiptoeing back to my bedroom, this is where I end up naked on my bed, only in my towel, shivering like a penguin. I look at the traditional Ukrainian shirt that Marina left on my chair yesterday. She explained that on the first day of school Ukrainians have to wear a traditional shirt. She recommended that I wore a skirt with the shirt, jeans it is. I make my bed, noticing the carpet on the wall, right, Slavs put carpets on their walls to show their wealth, well, Lithuanians did that too, but not as much, I think.  I get changed into my clothes, black ripped jeans and my white Ukrainian shirt. The shirt is, well, lovely, to say the least. It's a light and flowy white shirt with beautiful and minuscule red embroidery on the chest and sleeves of the arms. If I'm being honest, I would wear it regularly, it's so open and flowy, it's like having a soft breeze in your clothes.  I tuck the ends into my jeans, wait, is that disrespectful? Am I not supposed to tuck it in? Eh, no one will notice anyway. After brushing my hair into a weak ponytail that I twist into a knot, I dab some blush on my cheeks and pull my eyelashes up with my mascara that's as old as my dad's vintage record player.  Well, Ilona, this is as good as it's going to get, I think while staring at my milky reflection in the slightly cracked mirror. A little bit of cardio, maybe a facial or two and a pair of tweezers and I'd look half decent. Probably not though. I bite my lip doing my best not to frown, after all, I'm in Ukraine, I'm here with a goal not to please my vanity. After tieing my sneakers, I grab my small backpack, which's also khaki and covered in film-related pins and patches, my phone, and shove the camera into the backpack, just kidding, I wouldn't ever shove my baby into my backpack, I set it in gently.
  I peer through my door into the hall where the doors to the other rooms are, there's no one there, I quietly step my feet on the floor. GGRRKKK, I shut my eyes, cringing as the floorboard creaks. Deep breath,  I take a step when suddenly,
 "ARRRHG!" My body leaps out of my skin, my heart pound in my chest as I almost fall over my own feet. I turn around to the direction where the deathly yell came from.  A feeling of relief, irritation, and amusement begins to swell inside me. I turn to find an innocent thin smile and messy but gelled back hair, also in a white Ukrainian shirt, and jeans that are far too big. 
  "You frightened me! Is that how you yawn, or something?" I ask with my hand still on my chest.
   "Sorry, and nope, just how I say good morning," he shrugs. We hear stomps after stomps running into this hall. It's Marina with garden scissors. She's wearing an orange shirt and a floral skirt, flip flops, and a yellow headscarf. She must've suffered the same heart attack which I did because her expression is almost the same as mine was.
   "Have you lost your mind, screaming like a gorilla from dawn?! "She spits at the floor and leans on the wall with her hand, fanning herself with the other.
"Oh Ilonka, you're up," Marina strokes the top of my head then glares back at Mariyan who still looks like he's asleep.
   "I swear, you could've given me a stroke! Go fix your hair! It looks like a cat died there, or maybe two cats!" She orders him and turns back to me,  
   "Ilonka, let's get you some breakfast, before you go to school, alright?" She smiles and loops my arm through hers again. I tell her I don't eat breakfast and she looks at me startled and a little offended but smiles and tells me that we'll have a big Ukrainian lunch when we'll get back. Mariyan says that's good I don't eat breakfast since we're on a bit of a tight schedule. He tells me about the two people we're supposed to be going with while grabbing a piece of bread off the table and biting into it. Marina calls out to us while we leave the house into the fresh garden.  
  "And take care of her! Make sure to show her how to buy a ticket on the bus. Oi! You hear!?"
   Mariyan simply ignores her and throws his arm over my shoulder, it wasn't much of a throw, more like a reach down. I try not to notice the arm, it's probably a Ukrainian thing, friendliness.