Swept Away written and directed by Lina Wetmuller is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made – you have notes on films from The NYT 1,000 list and reviews of books from The GOAT site on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

Swept Away written and directed by Lina Wetmuller is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made – you have notes on films from The NYT 1,000 list and reviews of books from The GOAT site on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

8 out of 10

 

Swept Away reminds me of Robinson Crusoe, Vendredi ou La Vie Sauvage https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/vendredi-ou-la-vie-sauvage-by-michel.html and other stories, or motion pictures where the character, or personages are isolated on an island…Cast Away is another

 

Indeed, the idea of an island has been very appealing, many, perhaps most imagine that they would be so happy, if only they were to move on a place in the Caribbean, Pacific, with the palm trees, white sands…the problem is Hedonic Adaptation, once settled in such paradises, people adapt to the good and see the high prices, and other challenges

Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert has studied this and other situations in his marvelous classic Stumbling on Happiness https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/02/stumbling-on-happiness-by-david-gilbert.html there are some advantages to the fact that we adapt, because the unfortunate events do not result in misery, for ever

 

The other film that came to mind when watching Swept Away is Triangle of Sadness https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/rutan-by-ruben-ostlund-director-and.html the Palme d’Or winner of a couple of years ago, I think it won before Anora, we can check that, but nobody reads this far…did you?

I was even wondering if Ruben Ostlund did not take some inspiration from Swept Away, but then as aforementioned, we had had before this Robinson Crusoe and others who ended up on some island, ah, I just remembered another chef d’oeuvre, this one is part of The Modern Library’s Top 100 Best Novels of the last century

 

Lord of The Flies https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/12/lord-of-flies-by-william-golding.html by William Golding has this group of boys land on an island, where all hell breaks –‘when you have no rules, you have nothing’ explains the glorious author – in Swept Away we have a man and a woman landing in wild territory

At the start of the narrative though, we see she is rich, a passenger on this yacht (like in Triangle of Sadness) and she is mocking Gennarino Carunchio, an uneducated man who comes from the South of Italy- Raffaella Pavone Lanzetti keeps asking for fresh coffee, that he changes his shirt and the contempt is obvious

 

Reversal of Fortune (a great film with Jeremy Irons) they are alone on this island, and he is in control, he can get the food – she cries when he kills a rabbit – and it is time for vengeance, nevertheless, he goes too far, albeit we must consider the context, this is many decades back, before the Woke movement, killed anyway by the Orange Monster in the White House, what is left of it

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html  

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’