On the surface, The children of Isadora is the story of a mother who has lost her children in a painful accident, but on another level, it is the story of inarticulate pain and an attempt of embracing this pain. I’ve never seen such a graceful, delicate way of dealing with devastation. The choreography that embodies the core of the movie is indeed a minimal one and, likewise, the movie itself too. There is very little speaking, almost no explanation (at least verbally) but still, incredibly articulate. So you won’t find much of talking or any description, explanation, commeting in the movie; its almost the story is there only if you too, just like the dancers, believe it to be there. You have to visualize the pain, the loss, the children, the mother…
The structure of the movie is made of three parts. in the first part, there is the student who reads the story of Isadora Duncan’s loss of her children and that how she created a choreography after the accident, stemming from her personal tragedy. As she reads the book we, the viewer, hear that Isadora wants to create something beautiful from this horrible incident and so she starts to dance. Reading the book carefully, almost mesmerized by it, the student examines Duncan’s thoughts, feelings, and moves closely. And so the student creates a choreography based on Isadora’s writing taking her time.
Then, we see a middle-aged dance instructor and her student going over this choreography and getting prepeared to stage it in a theatre. It is at this point that we get an insight into the moves that make the dance. There are few of them: the hugging, the caressing, the loss, and the farewell. there is no talking or mimic really, but only the moves of the hands and arms and the spine convey the emotions and the absence of the children. The kind gestures of the hands beautifully emphasize the value they give to what they hold: the lifeless bodies of the children. There is also a scene where the two characters sit on the shore and talk about Isadora and the instructor says what affected her the most about the choreography- a thing that Isadora herself said- by remarking that the dance does not belong to her and that it belongs to everyone and so everyone should create their own moves for it, their own way of expressing it. Thus the pain transforms, it takes the shape of a unique expression on the hands of each person.
After the play have been staged, the only person who cries in the theatre is a black middle-aged woman, whom the camera follows non-stop after it. She, like the other characters, does not talk much we only guess her emotions and psychological state, but a general atmosphere of melancholy can be felt in her face and actions. She goes a long way to arrive at her house, eats pasta in a restaurant, pauses a second and gazes at the misty moon, walks slowly, and late at night comes to her home. It is only then that we understand she too, is a mother who grieves to the loss of her child. As she slowly changes her clothes, (there is something that we see in each and every scene that I think is remarkable, and that is the fact that whatever done is done as if it’s a holy thing; with the utmost care, consciously and slowly; therefore I think the idea of process is a key theme for the movie) the camera follows her face, her hands, and her feet patiently. Then, she draws the curtains, and midway, she drops her hand to start to softly swing them…her movements become more precise as she continues and mimics the choreography that has affected her so deeply. It seems that she tries real hard to visualize her boy’s head on her hands, lying and smiling peacefully; then, she bends, rocking her arms, lies down the body, and says goodbye for the last time- just like Isadora had dance behind the blue curtains of her studio, she too, dances with her pain. It is for sure, a subtly speaking story.
