I had stories that needed more space than the hour and a half or

Hear the words of Manuel Puig, the Argentine writer who wove cinema and literature together, who confessed: “I had stories that needed more space than the hour and a half or two hours a movie gives you.” These words are not merely about film or novel, but about the eternal struggle of human expression: the yearning to give voice to truths too vast to be confined, to create art that cannot be caged by the narrowness of time. Puig’s cry is the cry of every soul who has felt their vision too large for the vessel they were given.

For what is a story but the unfolding of human experience, woven with all its contradictions, passions, and depths? A film may dazzle with its brevity, compressing a life into fleeting moments, but some stories demand more—more breath, more silence, more room for the beating heart. Puig reminds us that certain tales cannot be rushed, for they are not fragments but epics. To force them into too small a space is to suffocate them; they must be allowed to grow as vines upon a wall, sprawling, twisting, expanding, until they reveal their full pattern.

History bears witness to this struggle. Consider the mighty tale of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Could such a saga, encompassing the rise and fall of families, the sweep of nations at war, and the inner turmoil of the soul, be told in two hours upon a screen? Impossible. It required the vast plains of a novel, thousands of pages, to hold its breath and scope. To shorten it would be to betray it, to diminish the immensity of its truth. Thus Tolstoy, like Puig, knew that some visions demand a greater canvas.

Puig himself turned often to the novel as his chosen form, for it offered him the depth and expanse denied him by the cinema’s brevity. His works, such as Kiss of the Spider Woman, were born of this conviction—that the richness of his characters, their longings, their entrapments, their dreams, could not be bound by mere hours but needed chapters, conversations, and pages to bloom. His was not a rejection of film, but an acknowledgment that every medium has its limits, and that a true artist must choose the vessel that can carry the weight of their vision.

The lesson, O seeker, is clear: do not be content to shrink your vision to fit the limits imposed by circumstance. If your truth demands more space, create more space. If your story cannot be told in minutes, then let it breathe in hours; if it cannot be told in words, let it be sung, danced, or painted. Never allow the narrowness of form to diminish the greatness of content. The medium must serve the message, not the other way around.

Consider also your own life. How often do you confine your own story to the small frame others allow? How often do you silence the parts of yourself that need room to speak, to grow, to be? Puig’s words teach that you must not shrink to fit. If your soul demands a broader horizon, seek it; if your work requires more time, take it; if your heart longs for deeper expression, grant it. The world may offer you two hours, but your truth may require a lifetime.

So let Puig’s wisdom ring like a call: your stories need the space they deserve. Do not fear their size, do not apologize for their scope. Find the form, the time, the place that can contain them, and let them be told in their fullness. For only then will your art, your life, your voice resound across the ages—not as a fragment hurried and incomplete, but as a whole, shining creation, worthy of remembrance.