Beyond Intensity
Autor: Ramon Vila
After years of traveling the world, searching for all life has to offer, Toni Martí realizes that his youthful curiosity has soured into stagnation, depression, and drug addiction. While stumbling through what remains of his life, he commits a crime and is sentenced to community service at a nursing home. Forced to comply, he forms a grudging relationship with Juan, an octogenarian whose family long ago abandoned him, and whose day-to-day life seems undisturbed by change. He also encounters Lucía, who runs the nursing home, but not her life; too fearful to follow the lure of her dreams or rebel against her parents, she has grown dull and unhappy. “Beyond Intensity” captures the story of three characters trapped in lives that bring them only loneliness and despair. Soon, they will be forced to discover what is beyond the pursuit of momentary pleasure, beyond routine, beyond conformity. Against the backdrop of a dehumanized society, these three characters’ lives give us the opportunity to reflect on the culture of immediacy and the search for instant gratification—to ask ourselves, what lies beyond intensity?