The book and the movie have somewhat different plots that are not that close to one another, but they share the common uses of magical realism devices of cyclical time, real and imaginary and life and death. In the book Cortazar uses photos to blur the real from the imaginary and create a parallel world that is difficult to differentiate from the real world. They can use these photos to potentially travel through time, where as in the book we do not see the main character doing that. We do a similarities in the photographers ability to see more and deeper into the world around him. We see these in his photo taking and at the end of movie when he watches the white faced people playing tennis with an imaginary ball. He at first cannot see the ball, but he eventually lets his perception of reality to skew and he can see the ball. In the movie we see the cycle of time come to full term where the movie both starts and ends with the white faced people. In the book cyclical timing is more evident.
The book and the movie have plots that are fairly different from one another. However they do share the common uses of magical realism devices of cyclical time, and the binaries of real and imaginary and life and death. In the book, Cortazar uses photos to blur the line between real and the imaginary. He also used photos to create a parallel world that is difficult to differentiate from the real world. The photos are also to travel through time which shows the fusion of time. But in the book we do not see the photos do any such thing. There is a similarity in the book in video in the photographer’s ability to see deeper into the world around him than others can. We see these in his photography and at the end of movie when he watches the white faced people playing tennis with an imaginary ball. He at first cannot see the ball, but he eventually lets his perception of reality to skew and he can see the ball. In the movie we see the cycle of time come to full term where the movie both starts and ends with the white faced people.
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