When I was a child, I spoke as a child

Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World had me running to the library to get more books on philosophy when I was 15 or so and, I hate to say it, it might shoulder some responsibility for me steering towards the humanities in later life. The book was stunning in the way it threw open giant philosophical questions teenagers start to feel strongly about and need some friendly exposure to. It was rich, but not suffocatingly so, in terminology that a 15-year-old mind is ready to soak in enthusiastically in an attempt to come to terms with first strong doubts.

I was doubly thrilled then when Ale Kino! commissioned me to translate Through a Glass, Darkly, a Norwegian production based on Gaarder's 1993 novel I haven't read. It's a multi-layered story of Cecilia, a vibrant 13-year-old girl who is doomed to prematurely die of cancer. The film traces her last days, which coincide with Christmas, when her touch with the world becomes compellingly intense and beyond what most ordinary people can experience. She daydreams a lot, transporting herself and the audience to her earlier days when, still unspoiled by the illness, she fell in love for the first time while on holiday in Spain. Edging nearer and nearer death as days go by, she begins to see Ariel the angel who seems to be there to soften her untimely transition. With her prognosis worsening and hopes of recovery practically disappearing, Cecilia, thanks to Ariel's heavenly assistance and teachings, gradually makes peace with her fate and finally - hand in hand with the angel - crosses the boundary between life and death.

It's a touching film, even more so if you watch it for the second time, as I had to, very carefully, scene after scene, in order to translate it. Its warmth and profound understanding of fragile human condition is hard to overrate, though some may criticize it for sentimentalism and blending different spiritual traditions into one. As for me, it wasn't annoying in the least and I see tangible value in Gaarder's modern-day reflection on difficult moral problems and everyday tragedies that people face irrespective of their material comforts or technological advancement. His inclusion of the Bible, with its enduring strength as a source of wisdom and contemplation, makes Though a Glass, Darkly both appealingly old-fashioned and plainly moving. It's the First Epistole to the Corinthians that provides the philosophical backbone to the story, with the title directly taken from it and a number of references throughout the film, and Gaarder deserves praise for reaching out to the classics to reestablish them in relation to life in the 21st century.

Language and ideas to remember:
1. bone marrow = szpik kostny,
2. a looking glass is another way to say a mirror,
3. hernia = przepuklina,
4. to tingle = to have prickling, stinging sensation (Her foot began to tingle, so she shifted her position),
5. hydrogen peroxide = a mild antiseptic (woda utleniona)