Parallel Mothers: History refuses to shut its mouth

Lots to love in 'Parallel Mothers'/'Madres Paralelas' (2021), the latest Pedro Almodóvar film.

One plot thread concerns the uncovering of a mass grave for victims of Franco's fascist forces, very much a live issue in Spain where The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (which features in the film) has been leading the movement to uncover the stories, and physical remains, 'of thousands of civilians executed during the 1936-39 Civil War and the 1939-75 Franco regime. It is estimated that 200,000 men and women were killed in extrajudicial executions during the War, and another 20,000 Republicans murdered by the regime in the post-war years. Thousands more died as a result of bombings, and in prisons and concentration camps'.

The film finishes with a quote on screen from the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano

'No history is mute. No matter how much they burn it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth'.

The quote in its wider context is as follows:

'Does history repeat itself? Or are the repetitions only penance for those who are incapable of listening to it? No history is mute. No matter how much they burn it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth. Despite deafness and ignorance, the time that was continues to tick inside the time that is. The right to remember does not figure among the human rights consecrated by the United Nations, but now more than ever we must insist on it and act on it. Not to repeat the past but to keep it from being repeated. Not to make us ventriloquists for the dead but to allow us to speak with voices that are not condemned to echo perpetually with stupidity and misfortune. When it is truly alive, memory doesn’t contemplate history, it invites us to make it' (Eduardo Galeano, Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-glass World, New York: Picador, 1998, p. 210).