To me, one of the most important themes throughout this movie was restlessness and impatience. So many of the problems throughout the film stem from these two things. This is mainly seen in the relationship between Paolo and his wife, but once Paolo slows down and begins to enjoy things as they come, the plot resolution becomes clear. Part of the reason Paolo is constantly with other women is because he is like a child emotionally, he gets very restless staying in the same place or situation for too long and must find something else to occupy him. While this certainly does not justify his actions, it provides some reasoning as to why he would always be out cheating on a woman whom he loves very much and who loves him very much. We get a look into the early days of their relationship when Paolo describes the start of his relationship with his wife to his daughter. Through the recollection of the start of their relationship, we see a shift in Paolo’s mind and he begins to understand the error in his ways. He sees the issue with his impatience and how it almost cost him his wife. Before he has this conversation with his daughter, he is spacy and constantly checking the clock, albeit with good reason, but after they are done and his daughter says he can leave, he asks “Has it already been ten minutes?” In this scene, Paolo begins to understand that life is not always about how fast you can live, but if you can enjoy the smaller moments with the people around you. Another extremely relevant place we can see this theme of impatience/restlessness leading to problems within the plot is in the beginning scenes of the movie. Paolo dies quite literally because he does not want to wait what is probably 30 seconds at a traffic light. If he simply had the patience to wait at the light, the entire plot of the movie would not have happened. Without his impatience though, he would not have inevitably learned his lesson and changed his ways, so while it was problematic, it was necessary.
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