One thing struck me when watching this, and stayed with me:
Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga com’è bisogna che tutto cambi.
If we want everything to stay as it is, everything will have to change.
(My translation’s a little different to what I found on Wikipedia, etc., and I guess what’s in the film. They have ‘things’ instead of ‘everything’ in both cases.)
It’s actually been floating round my head more like: If we change (give in on) this one thing, everything can stay as it is.
The guy in the film who says this is a prince, thinking about the coming revolution/unification. It reminds me of Australian politics. How we’re given just enough concessions, made just comfortable enough, that no one cares about getting any of the bigger more important things we still need to fix / no one will risk losing things for bigger gains. ← speaking from the white middle-class here. The land of the mediocre status quo.
Tags: Film, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo, Luchino Visconti, Politics, The Leopard