I finished reading all the previous reviews to have a clear idea about what other people saw in this movie, and I must say that all that emphasis about the film being too different from the book doesn't show a great understanding of the cinematic technique. A movie is not a book. The visual, with long shots and close ups, the dialogue and the music, even the noises, take over all the written pages to express a single gesture, the full description of a landscape, or the design of a dress. A single close up can give us the essence of a full chapter.
This movie is sheer poetry.
Forget about the original book that helped to create this jewel of a movie, just watch this film, allow your senses to be absorbed by the two parallel stories --the contemporary and the historical-- and just absorb all that beauty offered to you in the story-line, the exquisite photography, the delicacy of sentiments expressed by these women (it is a terrible film for men's egos, because we come a very poor second compared with those women, overpowered by men's brutality and yet transcending the horrible handicaps imposed on them, like the tiding of their feet from early age, to convert them into defenseless crippled creatures, totally depending on men, and their virtual slaves for life).
The image of those bounded stomps, deformed to the point of becoming unrecognizable as human feet symbolizes too the humiliation some ultraconservative elements of society try to impose over minorities as if to say: "There, you'll go thru life bounded and suffering, freedom to be yourself will be denied to you because I want it so".
The total love among these "Sisters for life" was infinitely superior to the love these women could have had for their husbands. We see that in both cases --the historic and the contemporary-- and in both cases it lasted, strong, to the last consequences.
Contrary to other viewers, I didn't have the slightest problem in following the development of the two parallel stories, since it was done in a very natural, simple and honest way; both stories superbly intertwined to perfection till the final resolution.
¿A masterpiece? yes, I think so.
