Butterfly's Tongue Ideology

The “Butterfly’s Tongue” is a film directed by Jose Luis Cuerda that transports us to Spain during the Second Spanish Republic and draws a clear and authentic image of the years before the civil war and the transition to it. The main focuses of the film are education, the new generations, and the continual battle (first "civilized" and then violent) between two completely contrasting ideologies for trying to control these two fundamental social elements. Cuerda masterfully manages the scenic positioning of her characters in several of the scenes to demonstrate this ideological struggle. An undoubted demonstration of this is the arrangement where the little Moncho (Manuel Lozano) is in the midpoint, while Don Gregorio (Fernando Gomez) and the

The film of Cuerda manifests this idea through the personage of Rosa (Uxia Blanco), which plays the mother of Moncho. This imposing and articulate woman displays her conservative inclinations by being portrayed as a lady extremely devoted to Catholicism. The comparison between this convinced personality and the irreligious character of Ramon, Moncho's father (Gonzalo Uriarte), further underscores Rosa's conservative humor. Although she accepts and respects the leftist connection of her husband. With different images, gestures and actions, the director conveys his disagreement and disagreement, mainly with the atheistic character of the doctrine. There are two scenes in the film, which are used to highlight the traditionalist and anti-republican attributes of Rosa. The first presents Rosa prompting her family to shout insults to Republican prisoners who are taken to the wall. This act can be interpreted from a point of view of family protection, but if it were only something feigned, we would see this lady shouting all sorts of scorn, instead we witness how she is only mad at what really irritates her Republican ideology: his atheism. The second scene arise when they find out of the outbreak of the war. When this occurs, Moncho's mother grabs all the left-wing propaganda in her house and discards it, not without first clarifying to her son that his father never gave a costume to the teacher. To a certain extent, we may also think that these actions are the product of fear and a maternal intuition of family protection, but in an unconscious way we can perceive in Rosa a certain internal joy to know that possibly "the impious republic" has its days counted. We see how the intentional stage positioning is also used masterfully to demonstrate the differences that exist between Rosa and her husband in this scene. Both characters are divided by a pole, to the right a despondent, sad and disconsolate