If you've seen any of Christopher Nolan's film direction prior to The Dark Knight (I've seen Memento (2000), Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006) - all screenplays co-written with his brother), one shouldn't be as surprised by the quality, intrigue, and tightness of this film. Its a different matter that Heath Ledger (rather, his character - The Joker) is the person who makes the film a dramatic confluence of the macabre, incredulous and scarily believable - even the Joker masks in this film are the scariest I've seen. Its also telling that the young admirable Mr.Ledger overdosed himself to death earlier this year. Upon release (and even before), there was an immediate insinuation that the intensity of his involvement with the Joker led to the overdose of prescription drugs, which he was taking for insomnia and depression. Unlike Bollywood, where actors 'get a break' through some influence or the other and then evolve (and sometimes never do), Ledger is one in the long legacy of the quintessential Oscar-worthy actor (as evidenced by his past performances), who takes method acting to exalted levels - read Brando, Nicholson (though not as the first Joker), Pacino, Heston etc.. Sometimes, I wonder if De Niro decided to switch to comedy in the past decade or so, simply to stay alive longer (he could simply be the successful businessman/restaurateur that he is but an actor of his caliber can't live without acting; and more Taxi Drivers and Raging Bulls and Scorcese's direction could drive even a De Niro to an early death). To endorse the current calls in Hollywood, an Oscar for the Joker is the only apt tribute to Ledger, even if it may seem a little sentimental (much like the lead characters in Il Postino and The Lives of Others passed away even before their films could be given their Academy Awards).
Nolan himself has expressed surprise at the film's success ($364 million US + $128 million Int'l, before the 3rd weekend! - btw, the production budget was $185 million!) and I think that this success has bothered the critics as well. Its reflective of the Joker's philosophy - ordinary people get disturbed by anything that does not play by the plan - its the Joker's prescription for his anarchist ways.(Couldn't find a free online version but WSJ's review "Too Far from Escapism" reproduced in the Mint, page L20, Aug 2, 2008 and the New Yorker one are 2 such reviews that suggest wariness of the dark path taken by a 'Superhero' film and, especially, what its success speaks of an American society, circa 2008. For the record, the NY Times & Rolling Stone were more laudatory and unperturbed in their reviews.)
For those of you who are interested in understanding the Director's mind, Nolan's Newsweek interview is a wonderful insight (you can also read anecdotes of the intensity of Ledger's method acting ways that I referred to above). However, to me as a viewer, it felt like a glorious Batman version of another memorable movie experience of mine - Unbreakable - by M.Night Shyamalan. Apart from the silly coincidence of Night and Knight, the common idea of the uncovering and the testing of the Superhero, by the Supervillain, is something that was not captured by any of the big film commentators. Even Nolan doesn't see these undertones perhaps (he's after all adapting an existing facade of the Joker). Though a concept of a hero and a irksome villain seems like common sense, even in their exalted 'Super' avatars, most (if not all) comic book film adaptations reduce this confrontation to a fantastical farce. The WSJ and New Yorker reviews are quite pathetic on one count - they seem to reminisce the lack of continuity of the Superhero idea on film - which is oh so boring and repetitive. This action-oriented Superhero is vintage and its better viewed for nostalgic reasons. However, all that every new Superhero release, once or twice a year, launched with a new name - Daredevil or Spiderwoman or Catwoman - achieves is greater heights in special effects and greater mediocrity in terms of performances and punchlines.
I, for one, am glad that the newer directors are not overwhelmed by technological wizardry and are questioning the role of a contemporary Superhero and what he should stand and fight for, rather than how. While its easy for the Superhero to squish the villains in sequel after sequel, remake after remake, such a Superhero can as easily be replaced by the more flamboyant James Bond! (I would hazard a guess that an average Bond flick makes more than any any Superhero sequel since the audience has figured this one out too). More interestingly, Nolan, and Night before him, record the story from the Supervillain's point of view. It is the age of the Supervillain! The Supervillain questions everything. In the absence of the Supervillain, the Superhero simply protects stagnancy and outdated values, without questioning them. The Superhero's job looks like that of a sophisticated janitor, cleaning up scum, if not for the gauntlet thrown by the Supervillain. And seldom do we have such a Supervillain, who questions the existence of oneself, of the current order in the world, of ethics, morals, of hypocrisy in society's rules. Samuel L.Jackson's portrayal of Elijah Prince in Unbreakable has striking parallels with that of the Joker. What adds to the dark convoluted beauty of these two Supervillains is that they are but mere mortals. The mind is their only weapon. No special powers, no gizmos, no gadgets, no genetic morphing and no single manifestation of the greed and fear that binds the ordinary person on the street.
In Elijah Prince, Shyamalan investigates the pristine concept that everyone wants to know their place in the world. Prince has a rare bone condition where his bones were extremely brittle, like glass ("I knew when the kids called me Mr.Glass"), and he was determined to find a alterego in the world - someone who was just as unflappable physically as he was vulnerable to a simple fall. The Joker is slightly different - he wants to breakdown all limits of the human condition and expose us for the animals that we can be - by putting Gotham through extreme moral tests that challenge the emotional limits of the movie's characters as well as the movie's audience! Nolan left us with a ray of hope (and I'm not talking Batman) when he refused to have ordinary humans blow up each other - the hope that, collectively, the human race may yet make the right choices and not be crushed by the first concerted effort of a single anarchist Joker.
These directors also expose our Superheros for their human vulnerabilities. Yes, even in fantasies, there is real grief. So what? And the execution of this element in The Dark Knight was violent, devastating and yet required. While Batman pulverized the Joker physically, the Joker hit back harder in every other way. But for sacrifice and loss, the measure of victory of good over evil is difficult to relish, if not measure (when wars are won, the body counts are always highlighted). These exhausting victories are what a Superhero should and will aspire to. Else they risk being reduced to sex symbols and quirky undergarment fashion icons. Ultimately, Superheroes should thank the Supervillains for stretching their limits, for being able to rise to the occassion, and for redefining their own purpose in contemporary society. Let's all thank the Joker for giving us a new and improved Batman!
Author's note: While the Superhero and Supervillain have been referred to as 'he', this is only for purposes of convenience of writing, and I eagerly await a flood of women superheroes and villains. I think their time has come and they can probably handle the emotional pressure much better than Bruce Wayne. Mr Nolan? Mr Night?
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Film Review (Doc): An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
Its high time that people be forcibly shackled to armchairs occasionally, their cellphones switched off, and them be placed in front of a screen that plays a formidable documentary - in this case, an eloquent lecture of An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore. Since we live in a free world, I suppose that I'm reduced to begging; begging every fossil energy-guzzler in the planet to see this film i.e. on an average, the more consumerist and rich you are, its likely that its that much more mandatory to see the evidence presented by Al Gore. People who "invest" so that their grandchildren can live off their business acumen and think that money can perhaps buy utopia, if not immortality, need to imagine a world that could change over a few seasons into an unrecognizable planet. Natural disasters - everyone knows their names and whereabouts by now - are on the rise every year and I am willing to look like a foolish alarmist and predict that we will see a few more devastating ones in the next 3-5 years before we turn around on our collective stance on Global Warming - An Inconvenient Truth.
Al Gore exhorts the Americans, the Chinese, and other large consumers of energy. He makes decades of scientific evidence understandable to the common man. That is important, since the magnitude of this problem needs the common man to act - governments and politicians do not have the economic will to act in the present, guided by lobbies and short-term solutions that they can shirk responsibility from after their days in office. Instead, they continue to defer to the future - a future of a planet which will come screeching to a halt before its time, if we don't respect a cycle of nature that we fool around with such disdain, in the name of progress and wealth creation.
Progress and wealth creation of a significantly nobler and higher degree is possible. And the realist in me believes that it is the more probable solution to global warming i.e. newer technologies and businesses that will destroy the old businesses on the strength of their economic supremacy, before those archaic destructive fossil fuels reduce life on the planet and humans back to a mass of dead carbon, than one of myriad life forms.
Well, enough said on the well-documented dangers of global warming. Please see the film to hear and learn more. What impressed me as much as the evidence presented is the presenter himself - Al Gore, the environmentalist and an evangelist for the possibility of a more sustainable planet for future generations.
As children, we are dreamers; we are highly impressionable and our formative college years then put us on the path to chase these dreams. Well, that is an improbable story. The real story is that educational institutions and systems are far more rigid, which when coupled with economic realities confronting parents, cripple most of those childhood dreams. Al Gore grew up as a rich farmer's son and graduated from Harvard and Vanderbilt Law. His life's as eventful as a US President's should be (well, add me to the list of conspiracy theorists who believe that he was the President before Dubya stole it) - enlisted and served for a short period as a journalist in the Vietnam War, continued as a reporter on his return, quit Law school to run for Congress, served on some very important committees including heading one critical piece of legislation that expanded the Internet (well, yes, we lost count of the satirical news coverage on his 'I created the Internet' gaffe in '98 but...), lost the '88 presidential nomination to someone called Dukakis, and came back in 1992 to serve two terms as Veep with Billy Boy...and of course, won the Presidential election in 2000.
So, he couldn't serve and finally bring one of his more passionate subjects - the environment, or rather its neglect - to the forefront. Dreams die early, his sympathizers and skeptics may have added. Most people in his shoes would've resigned themselves to their Governor, Senate or Congress constituencies and would've attempted to come back or at least stick to what they know best - politics! - case in point being Kerry, Dean, Edwards, Lieberman. Instead, the man turns down all Democrats' calls to run in '04 (that's when 9 others dived into the White House pool and fell on their stomachs). People, at least everyone I knew and spoke to in the US then, thought he was too sentimental and was relegating himself to the backpages of history, despite some fiery speeches lambasting Dubya, his war and his policies in the run-up to the '04 elections. And we could not have been more wrong. If Al Gore continues at this pace, he surely would leave a more important legacy: of driving sense into the richest, most energy-hungry nation in the world that they need to step up and stop a dangerous trail of irreversible damage to the planet. There is a small window of time to correct course.
Al Gore was fascinated with the subject in high school and college and people thought he was smoking another shade of green when he kept talking 'green', and this was in the early '90's. What few paid attention to was his emphasis back in the '70's and '80s on toxic waste and global warming, as a Congressman. These were yet the days of limited scientific evidence on rising temperatures and uncertainty over the long-term effects and dangers of the trends spotted in warming. Dreaming on, he continued with his agenda as VP but failed to push US to accept the Kyoto Treaty. Inept, lobby-driven politicians put paid to that effort in style - the bill opposing the ratification of Kyoto was voted 95-0! Al Gore has decided that politics is probably a weaker way to fight this battle, to fulfill dreams. He has made this presentation (similar to the film) over a 1000 times himself over the last few years, has trained over a 1000 volunteers, released this film in '06, has written a book of the same title, and appeared as Prez in a parallel world on SNL (Saturday Night Live) in May '06, a world in which he had tackled global warming and all of the other American woes.
Gore almost lost his son (6 years of age at that time) in an accident and lost his sister to smoking (lung cancer, of course). Such experiences change people. One questions the meaning of life, the importance of relationships with family, friends, country, mankind. Then one wonders what he or she can do in the short period that an individual inhabits the earth. Some resort to prayer and faith and wait for heaven, afterlife or Armageddon - take your pick. Others resort to action. When you hear this particular Gore, you'll be convinced that he only wishes to leave one legacy behind to his children and the world - a sustainable ecosystem that can support life as we know it, for at least a few more centuries. And he will seek no rest before he reaches his goal or his grave. For our sake, let's not just pray for the former, but join him in his pursuit.
Al Gore exhorts the Americans, the Chinese, and other large consumers of energy. He makes decades of scientific evidence understandable to the common man. That is important, since the magnitude of this problem needs the common man to act - governments and politicians do not have the economic will to act in the present, guided by lobbies and short-term solutions that they can shirk responsibility from after their days in office. Instead, they continue to defer to the future - a future of a planet which will come screeching to a halt before its time, if we don't respect a cycle of nature that we fool around with such disdain, in the name of progress and wealth creation.
Progress and wealth creation of a significantly nobler and higher degree is possible. And the realist in me believes that it is the more probable solution to global warming i.e. newer technologies and businesses that will destroy the old businesses on the strength of their economic supremacy, before those archaic destructive fossil fuels reduce life on the planet and humans back to a mass of dead carbon, than one of myriad life forms.
Well, enough said on the well-documented dangers of global warming. Please see the film to hear and learn more. What impressed me as much as the evidence presented is the presenter himself - Al Gore, the environmentalist and an evangelist for the possibility of a more sustainable planet for future generations.
As children, we are dreamers; we are highly impressionable and our formative college years then put us on the path to chase these dreams. Well, that is an improbable story. The real story is that educational institutions and systems are far more rigid, which when coupled with economic realities confronting parents, cripple most of those childhood dreams. Al Gore grew up as a rich farmer's son and graduated from Harvard and Vanderbilt Law. His life's as eventful as a US President's should be (well, add me to the list of conspiracy theorists who believe that he was the President before Dubya stole it) - enlisted and served for a short period as a journalist in the Vietnam War, continued as a reporter on his return, quit Law school to run for Congress, served on some very important committees including heading one critical piece of legislation that expanded the Internet (well, yes, we lost count of the satirical news coverage on his 'I created the Internet' gaffe in '98 but...), lost the '88 presidential nomination to someone called Dukakis, and came back in 1992 to serve two terms as Veep with Billy Boy...and of course, won the Presidential election in 2000.
So, he couldn't serve and finally bring one of his more passionate subjects - the environment, or rather its neglect - to the forefront. Dreams die early, his sympathizers and skeptics may have added. Most people in his shoes would've resigned themselves to their Governor, Senate or Congress constituencies and would've attempted to come back or at least stick to what they know best - politics! - case in point being Kerry, Dean, Edwards, Lieberman. Instead, the man turns down all Democrats' calls to run in '04 (that's when 9 others dived into the White House pool and fell on their stomachs). People, at least everyone I knew and spoke to in the US then, thought he was too sentimental and was relegating himself to the backpages of history, despite some fiery speeches lambasting Dubya, his war and his policies in the run-up to the '04 elections. And we could not have been more wrong. If Al Gore continues at this pace, he surely would leave a more important legacy: of driving sense into the richest, most energy-hungry nation in the world that they need to step up and stop a dangerous trail of irreversible damage to the planet. There is a small window of time to correct course.
Al Gore was fascinated with the subject in high school and college and people thought he was smoking another shade of green when he kept talking 'green', and this was in the early '90's. What few paid attention to was his emphasis back in the '70's and '80s on toxic waste and global warming, as a Congressman. These were yet the days of limited scientific evidence on rising temperatures and uncertainty over the long-term effects and dangers of the trends spotted in warming. Dreaming on, he continued with his agenda as VP but failed to push US to accept the Kyoto Treaty. Inept, lobby-driven politicians put paid to that effort in style - the bill opposing the ratification of Kyoto was voted 95-0! Al Gore has decided that politics is probably a weaker way to fight this battle, to fulfill dreams. He has made this presentation (similar to the film) over a 1000 times himself over the last few years, has trained over a 1000 volunteers, released this film in '06, has written a book of the same title, and appeared as Prez in a parallel world on SNL (Saturday Night Live) in May '06, a world in which he had tackled global warming and all of the other American woes.
Gore almost lost his son (6 years of age at that time) in an accident and lost his sister to smoking (lung cancer, of course). Such experiences change people. One questions the meaning of life, the importance of relationships with family, friends, country, mankind. Then one wonders what he or she can do in the short period that an individual inhabits the earth. Some resort to prayer and faith and wait for heaven, afterlife or Armageddon - take your pick. Others resort to action. When you hear this particular Gore, you'll be convinced that he only wishes to leave one legacy behind to his children and the world - a sustainable ecosystem that can support life as we know it, for at least a few more centuries. And he will seek no rest before he reaches his goal or his grave. For our sake, let's not just pray for the former, but join him in his pursuit.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Film Review (Int'l): Viridiana (1961)
[Spoiler alert: almost all of the plot is described below]
I oft receive an indifferent shrug during discussions that attempt to enunciate the role of art in shaping history. Bunuel's Viridiana is his liberation (with my limited knowledge, to-date, of his extensive legacy), of his art challenging morality & society, if not history itself, shaking it up and replenishing it with a few missing dimensions to the debate. I personally love Bunuel, simply for his primary objective, which is to trash every societal norm, perhaps even before questioning it.
[RANDOM THOUGHT & INSERT: I admire the Criterion model of creating DVD's - they are created for Collections. One could always read a film's history, its ups and downs and extras. But since it's a film that we're enjoying, its doubly more memorable to experience the nuances around a film, in a moving picture format itself. And then to digitally enhance the film and present all the embellishments of a Director interview, old footage, short docs (at times), trailers etc. make the experience of a great film come close to, dare I say, that of a great book. (I do think, though, that almost all the old trailers are terribly inexpressive though - that art evolved much later, with the music video generation). After all, these humble scribblings are about the experience of watching a great film, rather than writing about a great film.
I must add that a dream project would be to replicate anything close to what the Criterion Collection has done for almost 400 all-time classics already. Perhaps we can start with Ray, Ghatak, Mani Kaul, Adoor, Benegal, Nihalini, some Mani Ratnams et al]
What begins as a 90 min film lingers and seeps into a three hour sojourn, a Criterion-facilitated experience, that gives much to ruminate about. In the case of the Viridiana DVD, there are two wonderful interviews with Bunuel - one made for French TV and the other as a print insert of the DVD - and some insights from the lead actress - Silvia Pinal. And of course, a digital revival that no prior generation benefited from until now. The history surrounding the film is so intriguing that the film is but a sub-plot.
Bunuel was still in self-imposed exile in Mexico, opposed to Franco's regime in Spain. Bunuel made several films during this period, gaining very little exposure in the international arena. Silvia Pinal, a Mexican actress, was very keen to work with Bunuel but between finding a suitable role and the required funds, nothing materialized. Until Pinal convinced her husband to produce the film. Bunuel accepted and the film was to be shot in Spain. That was controversial for Spain and for Bunuel. For Franco, it amounted to letting in someone who denounced his regime and policies. Franco's popularity was on the decline and he viewed this proposal as a means of reconciliation, one that would muster positive public opinion. Bunuel's friends and admirers thought he had succumbed to the lures of personal grandeur and criticized him heavily for this idea. And so, the idea of shooting Viridiana in Spain was conceived. No one but Bunuel knew what he was dreaming up then.
Bunuel embraced surrealism (witness a colorful history with Dali, that ended with L'Age d'Or - will keep that juicy story for some other time) and communism with equal vigor and Viridiana is incomplete without both of its influences.
He begins the story with a girl training to be a nun - Viridiana. The uncle, who lost his wife on their wedding night, wants her niece - the same Viridiana - to visit him once before she takes her final vows. She obliges, given his past generosity, and the uncle is taken in by her beauty and her resemblance to her aunt - his wife. The uncle plots to force her to marry him which she vehemently opposes but grants him one last favor - to come dressed for dinner in her aunt's wedding dress. He deviously plans to drug her and rape her so that she can't leave. He leaves the plan incomplete but lies to her about having raped her. She is aghast, cries foul and yet decides to leave, convinced that she's impure now. His repentance falls on deaf ears and his truth is not believed. While she leaves, he smiles, plays his favorite notes on the piano, bequeaths his property to an illegitimate son and her and hangs himself with a skipping rope. He has yet succeeded in bringing her back to his home now.
All the while, we are led into this uncle's fetish for young feminine legs that includes the innocent child of the servant. The child's presence is further used to facilitate intrusions into accepted norms of morality - her curiosity leads her to the scene of the attempted rape and the little girl insists on skipping with the rope after the master has used it for his noose, oblivious of a need to respect his tool of suicide.
Viridiana returns, the son is delighted on his unexpected claim to this vast property, and sets his sights on Viridiana. She continues to experiment with redemption and is convinced that bringing the homeless and handicapped into the estate and giving them food and shelter for work would uplift their lives and hers. She gathers a motley set of beggars and the painful process of rehabilitation begins. What she doesn't realize is that even the beggars have hierarchies, desires and egos and these are more volatile and baser instincts than their need for roti, kapada aur makaan (food, clothes and shelter). The son, Jorge, meanwhile detests her methods and wants to enrich himself, both with Viridiana's company and by farming the expanses of the estate grounds. At this juncture, the film shifts about 3 gears up on the idea of surrealism and commenting on morality.
~ In that era of Spain, dogs were tied to carts and had to run along. If they stopped, they are strangled. This is shown in the film and almost seems inconceivable that its widespread. Reality...Surreal! When Jorge, who abhors the beggars, sees such a mutt's predicament, his compassion allows him to buy the dog off the owner. He barely completes the transaction and turns away when the next cart, with the next dog tied to it, shuttles past. This scene is a caricature of the moral stands attempted by Viridiana and Jorge.
~ The perpetually squabbling beggars are left in charge of a locked home as everyone inside leaves for an overnight trip to the city. Barely do they leave and two women have broken in through a window and are tempting the others in for a sneak walk through of the home and its lavish trappings. Admiration leads to more temptation - of a banquet, of dance, of music, of revelry with silver and fine crockery, of wine. Bunuel's artistic license allows him inclusion of beggars who don't exist and expands the scene to 13 of them, posing for a picture. The photographer lifts her skirt -a mock snapshot of the gathering of the beggars, all 13 of them aptly replicating Da Vinci's Last Supper. (Whoa!! The allusion to the event and the calculated vulgarity - Trouble? - No...the censors didn't mind)
~ The party devolves into mayhem, the masters of the house and their servant arrive the same night, earlier than expected, and the beggars begin to disperse frantically. Two of them try to take advantage of the situation and after tying down Jorge, attempt to rape Viridiana. The servant's run for help to the police and their return are a while away. So, Jorge pays the accomplice to kill the purported rapist, which he does. (Some of these beggars were picked up from the streets and are far from professional actors. Yet, there is little to give them away. The one who kills - a leper in the film - is a mentally unsound character in reality. Bunuel's boundaries between his two worlds are bizarre.)
THE FINALE
~ TAKE 1: Viridiana is dejected at her absolute failure at repentance. Jorge has already taken advantage of the single-mother servant. She admires this new young handsome master and is unperturbed by it. He is in his room, suggestively asking her to join him for a game of cards. A knock on the door. The servant turns, leaves the room. Its Viridiana, hair let down, in ample surrender to her suitor.
THE END - No! It didn't end this way. It was decided that the censors can't pass this - she sought redemption and instead, this woman seeking God is overtly submitting to the flesh - unadulterated blasphemy! Let's do a second take, they said. She can't be alone with him, they said.
~ TAKE 2: Viridiana is dejected at her absolute failure at repentance. Jorge has already taken advantage of the single-mother servant. She admires this new young handsome master and is unperturbed by it. He is in his room, suggestively asking her to join him for a game of cards. A knock on the door. The servant turns to leave. He asks her to stay. Its Viridiana, hair let down, in ample surrender to her suitor. She suddenly sees the servant - she was unprepared to admit her surrender to another. She recovers. He brings her to the card table. Asks the servant to join in and a simple dialogue ensues. History has judged that the dialogue implied a 'menage a trois'. Bunuel has never said so. The censors passed it.
The film was entered into Cannes at the last minute and was slotted for an inconsequential screening on the last evening. The winner was decided before its screening until Viridiana changed their minds - the two films shared the Golden Palm.
The magazine of the Vatican had a rep at Cannes and he found the film to be an outrageous blasphemy (is there another kind?). The Pope was furious and the chain of dismay reached the more conservative friars in Spain who protested to Franco. Franco himself wasn't believed to be too offended but to appease his religious quarters, the film found itself banned - all of this was within two weeks of Cannes. Every copy in Spain was destroyed....and so, it was believed; while some French dubbed masters were saved and shipped to Mexico. The banned film then found itself in the most unique situation of not having a nationality and therefore becoming impossible to ship to other countries since import laws mandated an origin. The efforts of the group headed by Silvia's husband finally enlisted it as Mexican. The ban was lifted in Spain only in 1977 by when Viridiana had already been seen worldwide to whispers of genuine admiration for the Bunuelesque. His critics and friends, who decried his acceptance of Franco's invitation, applauded all along. Viridiana revived the world's interest in Luis Bunuel, one that begin with Un Chin Andalou in 1929.
Bunuel was an enigma, a genius that no one could ever claim to fully conquer, in the understanding of him or his films. In the French TV episode that interviews Bunuel (and some friends who knew him more than others), one of Bunuel's friend uses an anecdote that is remarkably apt in characterizing his film-making. Bunuel was a self-proclaimed gun fanatic. He had over 80 (by the 60's) and he even cast his own bullets! He made them all - for each caliber of gun he possessed!! His son related a story that Bunuel wished to make a bullet with a charge so light that it flew just far enough to touch the jacket of its victim and harmlessly slide down to the ground. He then experimented with his creation. He used a target of wood and a whole block of phone directories lined up against a wall and let fire his gun. The bullet pierced the target, all of the directories, the wall and landed in the neighbour's. This, Bunuel's friend says, is akin to how he makes his films: Bunuel will tell you that 'I put in very little into it' and before you know it, it explodes beyond all conceivable proportions...c'est Viridiana.
I oft receive an indifferent shrug during discussions that attempt to enunciate the role of art in shaping history. Bunuel's Viridiana is his liberation (with my limited knowledge, to-date, of his extensive legacy), of his art challenging morality & society, if not history itself, shaking it up and replenishing it with a few missing dimensions to the debate. I personally love Bunuel, simply for his primary objective, which is to trash every societal norm, perhaps even before questioning it.
[RANDOM THOUGHT & INSERT: I admire the Criterion model of creating DVD's - they are created for Collections. One could always read a film's history, its ups and downs and extras. But since it's a film that we're enjoying, its doubly more memorable to experience the nuances around a film, in a moving picture format itself. And then to digitally enhance the film and present all the embellishments of a Director interview, old footage, short docs (at times), trailers etc. make the experience of a great film come close to, dare I say, that of a great book. (I do think, though, that almost all the old trailers are terribly inexpressive though - that art evolved much later, with the music video generation). After all, these humble scribblings are about the experience of watching a great film, rather than writing about a great film.
I must add that a dream project would be to replicate anything close to what the Criterion Collection has done for almost 400 all-time classics already. Perhaps we can start with Ray, Ghatak, Mani Kaul, Adoor, Benegal, Nihalini, some Mani Ratnams et al]
What begins as a 90 min film lingers and seeps into a three hour sojourn, a Criterion-facilitated experience, that gives much to ruminate about. In the case of the Viridiana DVD, there are two wonderful interviews with Bunuel - one made for French TV and the other as a print insert of the DVD - and some insights from the lead actress - Silvia Pinal. And of course, a digital revival that no prior generation benefited from until now. The history surrounding the film is so intriguing that the film is but a sub-plot.
Bunuel was still in self-imposed exile in Mexico, opposed to Franco's regime in Spain. Bunuel made several films during this period, gaining very little exposure in the international arena. Silvia Pinal, a Mexican actress, was very keen to work with Bunuel but between finding a suitable role and the required funds, nothing materialized. Until Pinal convinced her husband to produce the film. Bunuel accepted and the film was to be shot in Spain. That was controversial for Spain and for Bunuel. For Franco, it amounted to letting in someone who denounced his regime and policies. Franco's popularity was on the decline and he viewed this proposal as a means of reconciliation, one that would muster positive public opinion. Bunuel's friends and admirers thought he had succumbed to the lures of personal grandeur and criticized him heavily for this idea. And so, the idea of shooting Viridiana in Spain was conceived. No one but Bunuel knew what he was dreaming up then.
Bunuel embraced surrealism (witness a colorful history with Dali, that ended with L'Age d'Or - will keep that juicy story for some other time) and communism with equal vigor and Viridiana is incomplete without both of its influences.
He begins the story with a girl training to be a nun - Viridiana. The uncle, who lost his wife on their wedding night, wants her niece - the same Viridiana - to visit him once before she takes her final vows. She obliges, given his past generosity, and the uncle is taken in by her beauty and her resemblance to her aunt - his wife. The uncle plots to force her to marry him which she vehemently opposes but grants him one last favor - to come dressed for dinner in her aunt's wedding dress. He deviously plans to drug her and rape her so that she can't leave. He leaves the plan incomplete but lies to her about having raped her. She is aghast, cries foul and yet decides to leave, convinced that she's impure now. His repentance falls on deaf ears and his truth is not believed. While she leaves, he smiles, plays his favorite notes on the piano, bequeaths his property to an illegitimate son and her and hangs himself with a skipping rope. He has yet succeeded in bringing her back to his home now.
All the while, we are led into this uncle's fetish for young feminine legs that includes the innocent child of the servant. The child's presence is further used to facilitate intrusions into accepted norms of morality - her curiosity leads her to the scene of the attempted rape and the little girl insists on skipping with the rope after the master has used it for his noose, oblivious of a need to respect his tool of suicide.
Viridiana returns, the son is delighted on his unexpected claim to this vast property, and sets his sights on Viridiana. She continues to experiment with redemption and is convinced that bringing the homeless and handicapped into the estate and giving them food and shelter for work would uplift their lives and hers. She gathers a motley set of beggars and the painful process of rehabilitation begins. What she doesn't realize is that even the beggars have hierarchies, desires and egos and these are more volatile and baser instincts than their need for roti, kapada aur makaan (food, clothes and shelter). The son, Jorge, meanwhile detests her methods and wants to enrich himself, both with Viridiana's company and by farming the expanses of the estate grounds. At this juncture, the film shifts about 3 gears up on the idea of surrealism and commenting on morality.
~ In that era of Spain, dogs were tied to carts and had to run along. If they stopped, they are strangled. This is shown in the film and almost seems inconceivable that its widespread. Reality...Surreal! When Jorge, who abhors the beggars, sees such a mutt's predicament, his compassion allows him to buy the dog off the owner. He barely completes the transaction and turns away when the next cart, with the next dog tied to it, shuttles past. This scene is a caricature of the moral stands attempted by Viridiana and Jorge.
~ The perpetually squabbling beggars are left in charge of a locked home as everyone inside leaves for an overnight trip to the city. Barely do they leave and two women have broken in through a window and are tempting the others in for a sneak walk through of the home and its lavish trappings. Admiration leads to more temptation - of a banquet, of dance, of music, of revelry with silver and fine crockery, of wine. Bunuel's artistic license allows him inclusion of beggars who don't exist and expands the scene to 13 of them, posing for a picture. The photographer lifts her skirt -a mock snapshot of the gathering of the beggars, all 13 of them aptly replicating Da Vinci's Last Supper. (Whoa!! The allusion to the event and the calculated vulgarity - Trouble? - No...the censors didn't mind)
~ The party devolves into mayhem, the masters of the house and their servant arrive the same night, earlier than expected, and the beggars begin to disperse frantically. Two of them try to take advantage of the situation and after tying down Jorge, attempt to rape Viridiana. The servant's run for help to the police and their return are a while away. So, Jorge pays the accomplice to kill the purported rapist, which he does. (Some of these beggars were picked up from the streets and are far from professional actors. Yet, there is little to give them away. The one who kills - a leper in the film - is a mentally unsound character in reality. Bunuel's boundaries between his two worlds are bizarre.)
THE FINALE
~ TAKE 1: Viridiana is dejected at her absolute failure at repentance. Jorge has already taken advantage of the single-mother servant. She admires this new young handsome master and is unperturbed by it. He is in his room, suggestively asking her to join him for a game of cards. A knock on the door. The servant turns, leaves the room. Its Viridiana, hair let down, in ample surrender to her suitor.
THE END - No! It didn't end this way. It was decided that the censors can't pass this - she sought redemption and instead, this woman seeking God is overtly submitting to the flesh - unadulterated blasphemy! Let's do a second take, they said. She can't be alone with him, they said.
~ TAKE 2: Viridiana is dejected at her absolute failure at repentance. Jorge has already taken advantage of the single-mother servant. She admires this new young handsome master and is unperturbed by it. He is in his room, suggestively asking her to join him for a game of cards. A knock on the door. The servant turns to leave. He asks her to stay. Its Viridiana, hair let down, in ample surrender to her suitor. She suddenly sees the servant - she was unprepared to admit her surrender to another. She recovers. He brings her to the card table. Asks the servant to join in and a simple dialogue ensues. History has judged that the dialogue implied a 'menage a trois'. Bunuel has never said so. The censors passed it.
The film was entered into Cannes at the last minute and was slotted for an inconsequential screening on the last evening. The winner was decided before its screening until Viridiana changed their minds - the two films shared the Golden Palm.
The magazine of the Vatican had a rep at Cannes and he found the film to be an outrageous blasphemy (is there another kind?). The Pope was furious and the chain of dismay reached the more conservative friars in Spain who protested to Franco. Franco himself wasn't believed to be too offended but to appease his religious quarters, the film found itself banned - all of this was within two weeks of Cannes. Every copy in Spain was destroyed....and so, it was believed; while some French dubbed masters were saved and shipped to Mexico. The banned film then found itself in the most unique situation of not having a nationality and therefore becoming impossible to ship to other countries since import laws mandated an origin. The efforts of the group headed by Silvia's husband finally enlisted it as Mexican. The ban was lifted in Spain only in 1977 by when Viridiana had already been seen worldwide to whispers of genuine admiration for the Bunuelesque. His critics and friends, who decried his acceptance of Franco's invitation, applauded all along. Viridiana revived the world's interest in Luis Bunuel, one that begin with Un Chin Andalou in 1929.
Bunuel was an enigma, a genius that no one could ever claim to fully conquer, in the understanding of him or his films. In the French TV episode that interviews Bunuel (and some friends who knew him more than others), one of Bunuel's friend uses an anecdote that is remarkably apt in characterizing his film-making. Bunuel was a self-proclaimed gun fanatic. He had over 80 (by the 60's) and he even cast his own bullets! He made them all - for each caliber of gun he possessed!! His son related a story that Bunuel wished to make a bullet with a charge so light that it flew just far enough to touch the jacket of its victim and harmlessly slide down to the ground. He then experimented with his creation. He used a target of wood and a whole block of phone directories lined up against a wall and let fire his gun. The bullet pierced the target, all of the directories, the wall and landed in the neighbour's. This, Bunuel's friend says, is akin to how he makes his films: Bunuel will tell you that 'I put in very little into it' and before you know it, it explodes beyond all conceivable proportions...c'est Viridiana.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Film Review (Int'l): (Un Homme et un femme) A Man and a Woman (1966)
Love (of the most commonly described kind) is unfathomable - a word striving for constant reinvention through a person's lifetime. Every indescribable feeling crawls into its definition - two common extremes being a) variants of a dismissive infatuation that lasts a few days to a few years and b) the one other absolute, apart from Death itself. Such is love and A Man and A Woman, as conceived by Claude Lelouch, find (something akin to) it in this delightfully impulsive plot.
Its a romantic's tale of two solemn single parents simply bumping into each other at their children's boarding school, where they squeeze in independent weekend visits, between lives otherwise preoccupied by a unending memory of loss. The irony of their individual lives is that they continue painfully in careers which in some way were connected to the bizarre, accidental deaths of their spouses. Yet, that is all they know and it helps them stay faithful to their remembrance of love. While the Man invites himself into listless sexual encounters, the Woman further etches those lost moments firmly onto her mind.
The charm of Lelouch's youthful exuberance (he was 29 when he made this film) translates itself to the lead character, who takes every chance and every risk with this irresistible woman, not just because he's mesmerized with her disarming smile, but is also sincere about retracing a road to love; that he's long forgotten. The two children, with their infectious innocence and weekend spirits, accentuate the romanticism of an incredibly happy family that is being formed as the film progresses. While the story may sound cliched for someone who's reading this and hasn't seen the film, those who have, will yet smile at the unnameable hope that the on-screen love portrays. This mysterious depiction of love, captured by a desperate director and his unconventional methods, left film-lovers smitten worldwide. The film won several awards, including 2 Oscars and vindicated all those who supported Lelouch.
Claude Lelouch was making films since he was 24. His film prior to this one had failed to secure a release yet, leaving him on the verge of all sorts of financial trouble. To rid his frustration, he decided on his favorite de-stressing technique - a long drive in the cold French winter night. He didn't know where he was headed until he reached a small sea-front town in the wee hours of dawn. Still seated in the car, he spots the form of a man and his dog in the distance. His mind races to the possibility of life here, in this town, the cold, bleak beach as a setting to a man and a woman, their family and the sublime moments of silent unspoken love between them. That stretch of imagination is what you see on screen here. He filmed in Paris and in this very town. He knew Trintignant and signed him up for the lead role. His heroine's beauty was mandatory - to make the story convincing, coercing the 'race car driver' in the hero to step on the gas whenever she slipped away. He came across Anouk Aimee's picture (he didn't know her) and Trintignant asked her on Lelouch's behalf. She almost walked out on Lelouch's demands. Someone who'd returned a few days earlier from Fellini's shoot in Rome must've found Lelouch almost impish. She stayed, he shot from the backsides of cars, mixed color with B&W (to save costs on film!), plugged fascinating long shots (to filter out the annoying camera sound) and longish docu-shots of LeMans and race car practices and creating stunning visuals for his Homme et Femme. The music scored by French composer Francis Lai (academy award for Love Story) shapes our dreamy experience, more than we acknowledge. The film was done in a month, shot in 2-3 weeks, almost real-time since the story runs for that length of time. For skeptics, who insist that it isn't enough time to find true love, A Man and a Woman may change your mind. There is yet proof (a fictional account notwithstanding) that it's not about searching, its about knowing it when it happens to you.
Its a romantic's tale of two solemn single parents simply bumping into each other at their children's boarding school, where they squeeze in independent weekend visits, between lives otherwise preoccupied by a unending memory of loss. The irony of their individual lives is that they continue painfully in careers which in some way were connected to the bizarre, accidental deaths of their spouses. Yet, that is all they know and it helps them stay faithful to their remembrance of love. While the Man invites himself into listless sexual encounters, the Woman further etches those lost moments firmly onto her mind.
The charm of Lelouch's youthful exuberance (he was 29 when he made this film) translates itself to the lead character, who takes every chance and every risk with this irresistible woman, not just because he's mesmerized with her disarming smile, but is also sincere about retracing a road to love; that he's long forgotten. The two children, with their infectious innocence and weekend spirits, accentuate the romanticism of an incredibly happy family that is being formed as the film progresses. While the story may sound cliched for someone who's reading this and hasn't seen the film, those who have, will yet smile at the unnameable hope that the on-screen love portrays. This mysterious depiction of love, captured by a desperate director and his unconventional methods, left film-lovers smitten worldwide. The film won several awards, including 2 Oscars and vindicated all those who supported Lelouch.
Claude Lelouch was making films since he was 24. His film prior to this one had failed to secure a release yet, leaving him on the verge of all sorts of financial trouble. To rid his frustration, he decided on his favorite de-stressing technique - a long drive in the cold French winter night. He didn't know where he was headed until he reached a small sea-front town in the wee hours of dawn. Still seated in the car, he spots the form of a man and his dog in the distance. His mind races to the possibility of life here, in this town, the cold, bleak beach as a setting to a man and a woman, their family and the sublime moments of silent unspoken love between them. That stretch of imagination is what you see on screen here. He filmed in Paris and in this very town. He knew Trintignant and signed him up for the lead role. His heroine's beauty was mandatory - to make the story convincing, coercing the 'race car driver' in the hero to step on the gas whenever she slipped away. He came across Anouk Aimee's picture (he didn't know her) and Trintignant asked her on Lelouch's behalf. She almost walked out on Lelouch's demands. Someone who'd returned a few days earlier from Fellini's shoot in Rome must've found Lelouch almost impish. She stayed, he shot from the backsides of cars, mixed color with B&W (to save costs on film!), plugged fascinating long shots (to filter out the annoying camera sound) and longish docu-shots of LeMans and race car practices and creating stunning visuals for his Homme et Femme. The music scored by French composer Francis Lai (academy award for Love Story) shapes our dreamy experience, more than we acknowledge. The film was done in a month, shot in 2-3 weeks, almost real-time since the story runs for that length of time. For skeptics, who insist that it isn't enough time to find true love, A Man and a Woman may change your mind. There is yet proof (a fictional account notwithstanding) that it's not about searching, its about knowing it when it happens to you.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Film Review (H'wood): Babel (2006)
ba·bel: a. A confusion of sounds or voices, b.A scene of noise and confusion.
Babel numbs! And leaves you motionless. Gradually, consciousness returns to the limbs and the few moments, after the end credits emerge, feel like an hour. And if I remember accurately, the sensation was similar at the end of the other two films. Its something that Innaritu refers to as a common thread between his films' characters as well – that the proximity, engendered in their relationships, is shaped by moments of sorrow, pain, loss and helplessness, not those of happiness. I stumble into the nearest Barista and an espresso down, the cords with the fictional characters finally melt away.
{By now, most who've seen this film know it to be the last in the (sometimes known as 'Death') Trilogy. The two other films – Amores Perros (2000) and 21 Grams (2003) – were probably viewed by most Indian film lovers on DVD, if at all. While I missed the theatrical windows as well, despite being in the US then, I did follow through with the DVDs.}
Guillermo Arriaga's screenplay and Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu's direction are the vision behind what we see over these 3 films and 6 years. While Inarritu calls them a trilogy since he believes that all three films are about parents and children, I still believe that the consistent themes across them are interlinked fates and lives and their influences on the emotion we know as Love - love of many kinds. He paints Amores Perros on a canvas of the blood and gore of dog fights and throws characters with different shades of love, hate and respectability into it. He then attempts more tragic moments of death in 21 grams and experiments with the English language (not his native tongue) and is ably assisted with outstanding acting by Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn and Naomi Watts (21 grams is also believed to be the exact weight lost at the moment after the last breath). But to think Babel “addresses global concerns (his words in an interview) apart from the implicit political and social comments” is absurd. (Later in that interview...) he 'confesses' that Babel is “basically a quartet, basically about four stories about parents and children, those intimate and complex relationships in which I think we can find everything—all the drama, all the joy, all the hope, all the pain, all the complexity". Yes, its four stories. Ignore the attempts to connect them all and they are very poignant stories, gut-wrenching, posing the challenges of raising a child in an increasingly complex world – one in which borders disappear for commerce but are erected higher for understanding other cultures and people. (Inarritu, in his personal life, also made the choice to leave Mexico for the United States, with his family, and his perspective is ingrained in the depiction of cross-border complexity in Babel.) Babel also combines two curious elements of acting. The superstars in Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett fade away behind the characters, from personas that usually seem unflappable to very fragile ones, seeking compassion from the viewer. The other was that a lot of actors on location are not professionals, but volunteers selected from speaker announcements at mosques and markets. This was unintended but when it succeeded in Morocco due to a lack of shortfall in casting, Inarritu was delighted to use it in Mexico as well.
The other element that has been a editorial delight in the films, most apparent in 21 Grams and less so in Babel, is the juxtapositions of non-linear sequences from different characters' lives (he has so many to choose from). It leaves room for the audience to be sucked into the temporal anomalies and achieve balance – an engrossing aspect of being a spectator at the cinemas.
Good filmmaking evokes all the senses to participate, something that Inarritu promises to do for a few decades ahead. To think that we've only watched his first three full-length features is proof of that. However, good filmmaking does not guarantee a good story. The script still holds centrestage. The prime example that comes to mind is the disappointment of M.Night Shyamalan and the chronology of his films over a similar 8 year period – they went from superlative to mediocre. Shyamalan's films are dominated by the script and there isn't an overriding need to tickle all the senses. In fact, certain senses are almost subdued deliberately – he almost wants the dominant participants to be the mind and heart. In that, Inarritu is different, choosing fascinating landscapes and lending some of the leading composers (western and Japanese) of our time for Arriaga's screenplay. It would also be incorrect to attempt a comparison of this trilogy to any contemporary filmmaking. All 3 films have stunning moments – of storytelling, of acting, of the range of human emotions, and the ability to keep the tension at the edge of a butcher's knife. Yet, the need to connect the stories or to label them a trilogy seems more forced with each story. In Amores Perros (also released as 'Love's a Bitch'), a tightly interlinked Mexico City neighbourhood is a believable concoction of human emotion. In 21 Grams, the location of 'anyplace in suburban America' lends credence to the characters but the improbability of their emotional states is sometimes suspicious while in Babel, we are drawn into a new pinnacle if one measured the amplitude of each relationship, but the impossibility of coincidence is stark. With the trilogy completed, and with the best of talent signing up, one hopes that Inarritu's obsession with connected souls and lives has drawn to an end, and another era of storytelling emerges from the Babel.
Babel numbs! And leaves you motionless. Gradually, consciousness returns to the limbs and the few moments, after the end credits emerge, feel like an hour. And if I remember accurately, the sensation was similar at the end of the other two films. Its something that Innaritu refers to as a common thread between his films' characters as well – that the proximity, engendered in their relationships, is shaped by moments of sorrow, pain, loss and helplessness, not those of happiness. I stumble into the nearest Barista and an espresso down, the cords with the fictional characters finally melt away.
{By now, most who've seen this film know it to be the last in the (sometimes known as 'Death') Trilogy. The two other films – Amores Perros (2000) and 21 Grams (2003) – were probably viewed by most Indian film lovers on DVD, if at all. While I missed the theatrical windows as well, despite being in the US then, I did follow through with the DVDs.}
Guillermo Arriaga's screenplay and Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu's direction are the vision behind what we see over these 3 films and 6 years. While Inarritu calls them a trilogy since he believes that all three films are about parents and children, I still believe that the consistent themes across them are interlinked fates and lives and their influences on the emotion we know as Love - love of many kinds. He paints Amores Perros on a canvas of the blood and gore of dog fights and throws characters with different shades of love, hate and respectability into it. He then attempts more tragic moments of death in 21 grams and experiments with the English language (not his native tongue) and is ably assisted with outstanding acting by Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn and Naomi Watts (21 grams is also believed to be the exact weight lost at the moment after the last breath). But to think Babel “addresses global concerns (his words in an interview) apart from the implicit political and social comments” is absurd. (Later in that interview...) he 'confesses' that Babel is “basically a quartet, basically about four stories about parents and children, those intimate and complex relationships in which I think we can find everything—all the drama, all the joy, all the hope, all the pain, all the complexity". Yes, its four stories. Ignore the attempts to connect them all and they are very poignant stories, gut-wrenching, posing the challenges of raising a child in an increasingly complex world – one in which borders disappear for commerce but are erected higher for understanding other cultures and people. (Inarritu, in his personal life, also made the choice to leave Mexico for the United States, with his family, and his perspective is ingrained in the depiction of cross-border complexity in Babel.) Babel also combines two curious elements of acting. The superstars in Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett fade away behind the characters, from personas that usually seem unflappable to very fragile ones, seeking compassion from the viewer. The other was that a lot of actors on location are not professionals, but volunteers selected from speaker announcements at mosques and markets. This was unintended but when it succeeded in Morocco due to a lack of shortfall in casting, Inarritu was delighted to use it in Mexico as well.
The other element that has been a editorial delight in the films, most apparent in 21 Grams and less so in Babel, is the juxtapositions of non-linear sequences from different characters' lives (he has so many to choose from). It leaves room for the audience to be sucked into the temporal anomalies and achieve balance – an engrossing aspect of being a spectator at the cinemas.
Good filmmaking evokes all the senses to participate, something that Inarritu promises to do for a few decades ahead. To think that we've only watched his first three full-length features is proof of that. However, good filmmaking does not guarantee a good story. The script still holds centrestage. The prime example that comes to mind is the disappointment of M.Night Shyamalan and the chronology of his films over a similar 8 year period – they went from superlative to mediocre. Shyamalan's films are dominated by the script and there isn't an overriding need to tickle all the senses. In fact, certain senses are almost subdued deliberately – he almost wants the dominant participants to be the mind and heart. In that, Inarritu is different, choosing fascinating landscapes and lending some of the leading composers (western and Japanese) of our time for Arriaga's screenplay. It would also be incorrect to attempt a comparison of this trilogy to any contemporary filmmaking. All 3 films have stunning moments – of storytelling, of acting, of the range of human emotions, and the ability to keep the tension at the edge of a butcher's knife. Yet, the need to connect the stories or to label them a trilogy seems more forced with each story. In Amores Perros (also released as 'Love's a Bitch'), a tightly interlinked Mexico City neighbourhood is a believable concoction of human emotion. In 21 Grams, the location of 'anyplace in suburban America' lends credence to the characters but the improbability of their emotional states is sometimes suspicious while in Babel, we are drawn into a new pinnacle if one measured the amplitude of each relationship, but the impossibility of coincidence is stark. With the trilogy completed, and with the best of talent signing up, one hopes that Inarritu's obsession with connected souls and lives has drawn to an end, and another era of storytelling emerges from the Babel.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Film Review (H'wood): Capote (2005) / Book Review: In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (1966)
My guess is that the film inspired at least a few uninitiated readers of Truman Capote, such as yours truly, to become avid readers of his brilliant story-telling capabilities, especially given a glimpse into his eccentricities and clairvoyance in picking a concept. I started this piece within 5 minutes of flipping over the last page of TC's In Cold Blood - the writing of which formed the backdrop for all of the film's screenplay.
The last two words in the book are an uncharacteristic "THE END" and I'm convinced by the film's depiction of his 6 years (1959-65) that TC was thus relieved of his ordeal of writing this story. In Cold Blood was to herald the birth of a genre that TC christened as the 'non-fiction novel'. And after reading it, I'm surprised that we didn't see the genre blossom to its true potential; instead it seems to have degenerated into a bloody mess of gruesome murder reporting - a killenovela. TC himself offers some evidence of why it is a very difficult concept to execute and the film captures this ordeal painstakingly. The other, seemingly worrisome, explanation is that its impossible to stay the course of '100% Truth'. TC claimed in an interview that the story was 100% accurate and opened it up to the scrutiny of the naysayers, who're perpetually on standby. Their investigations thereof seem to find extrapolations of the Truth. I think the findings were bound to be obvious. Capote claims a 94% recall of all conversations in the film, and this was true i.e. that he claimed it. There are many who would vouch for his photographic memory, if a memory could ever be called that. He never took notes and had some assistance from Harper Lee every evening in his hotel room where they recounted the day, one of talking to every character that was remotely related to the killings in Kansas. But, unless one had a recording device, how is one to judge the veracity of a historic account - does the subject of the interview, the non-fictional character, know exactly what he or she uttered, especially under strenuous circumstances. We all know that the same experience is a different memory in every onlooker's mind and so, who is to say, with certainty, what the Truth is or what the Truth was. The truth, according to each person, is what one perceives as reality, guided by one's morality, ingrained knowledge, depth of understanding, emotional state, biases, and psychological makeup of the mind (another brilliant and subtle fictional book, entirely on this subject, is Naguib Mahfuz's Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth).
Informed with this possibility of minor aberrations from the Truth, one can yet marvel at the elements pieced together by the author. He seeks to observe and weave the interplay between fate and chance, family and abandonment, the roles of responsibility and recklessness in a child's upbringing; while also alarming the reader with a chilling account of mass murders, explained eventually by nothing but a single irrational moment.
Capote, the film, is based off the late '80's biography by Gerald Clarke. The simplicity with which the script flirts with each of TC's more humorous idiosyncrasies and then improbably pans in conflicts in his relationships and his artistic integrity is a good example of a tight screenplay and direction. Most of the credit should go to one man though - Philip Seymour Hoffman. In this Oscar-winning role, he is delightful, especially if you've caught the true-life TC, in his TV interviews or the DVD extras, and can admire the screen likeness. Capote was a natural entertainer in person, as rivetting as his books, as he assumes his role of the mantlepiece of every NYC society gig from the fifties through the seventies - from Studio 51 to Cosmopolitan and New Yorker, the latter two being generous beneficiaries of his short stories. It also captures his friendships with Jack Dunphy and Harper Lee and the rest of the film is about his relationship with the book i.e In Cold Blood.
For all of these reasons, the film takes away a lot from the genius of the book itself and focuses on the impact of writing it on the author's life. The book, therefore, continues to surprise you even after knowing the plot upfront while the film leaves you closer to understanding facets of Capote hidden from the public eye. The newspaper story of the killings triggers a whim, a journey through destinations long forgotten in his teens, and in Kansas, he finds this uncharacteristic multiple murder to be a life-changing experience for a small town. Using his charisma and his established name, he manages access to every person and angle of the unfolding drama. He enjoys the hunt, just as the killers perhaps did, in a different sense. But when two improbable characters turn up as the indisputable guilty and the villains of his novel, he's unknowingly sucked into a story that intrigues him, and then torments him, and eventually becomes a life-changing experience for him.
His troubled childhood and that of one of the killers, Perry Smith, kindle compassion in his heart when the death sentence is handed out as a routine matter. Understanding the killers on death row is much needed fodder for his book but the deeper he delves through innumerable prison visits, the more stretched time is, and Capote is reduced to a lesser version of his original self. He never did complete an entire book (numerous, delightful short stories though - one such compilation is Music for Chameleons) until he passed away in 1984. Not having death as a certainty to complete his stories deterred him perhaps.
Truman Capote was obviously no ordinary writer. He was either unusually gifted or destined to write or both. He was an abandoned child, growing up in trailer parks, staying with a relative, and discovering Nelle Harper Lee to be a neighbourhood kid (yes, Lee of To Kill a Mockingbird fame) who was then published before he could reach 20! The film and his books are testament to who he was. Cherish them.
The last two words in the book are an uncharacteristic "THE END" and I'm convinced by the film's depiction of his 6 years (1959-65) that TC was thus relieved of his ordeal of writing this story. In Cold Blood was to herald the birth of a genre that TC christened as the 'non-fiction novel'. And after reading it, I'm surprised that we didn't see the genre blossom to its true potential; instead it seems to have degenerated into a bloody mess of gruesome murder reporting - a killenovela. TC himself offers some evidence of why it is a very difficult concept to execute and the film captures this ordeal painstakingly. The other, seemingly worrisome, explanation is that its impossible to stay the course of '100% Truth'. TC claimed in an interview that the story was 100% accurate and opened it up to the scrutiny of the naysayers, who're perpetually on standby. Their investigations thereof seem to find extrapolations of the Truth. I think the findings were bound to be obvious. Capote claims a 94% recall of all conversations in the film, and this was true i.e. that he claimed it. There are many who would vouch for his photographic memory, if a memory could ever be called that. He never took notes and had some assistance from Harper Lee every evening in his hotel room where they recounted the day, one of talking to every character that was remotely related to the killings in Kansas. But, unless one had a recording device, how is one to judge the veracity of a historic account - does the subject of the interview, the non-fictional character, know exactly what he or she uttered, especially under strenuous circumstances. We all know that the same experience is a different memory in every onlooker's mind and so, who is to say, with certainty, what the Truth is or what the Truth was. The truth, according to each person, is what one perceives as reality, guided by one's morality, ingrained knowledge, depth of understanding, emotional state, biases, and psychological makeup of the mind (another brilliant and subtle fictional book, entirely on this subject, is Naguib Mahfuz's Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth).
Informed with this possibility of minor aberrations from the Truth, one can yet marvel at the elements pieced together by the author. He seeks to observe and weave the interplay between fate and chance, family and abandonment, the roles of responsibility and recklessness in a child's upbringing; while also alarming the reader with a chilling account of mass murders, explained eventually by nothing but a single irrational moment.
Capote, the film, is based off the late '80's biography by Gerald Clarke. The simplicity with which the script flirts with each of TC's more humorous idiosyncrasies and then improbably pans in conflicts in his relationships and his artistic integrity is a good example of a tight screenplay and direction. Most of the credit should go to one man though - Philip Seymour Hoffman. In this Oscar-winning role, he is delightful, especially if you've caught the true-life TC, in his TV interviews or the DVD extras, and can admire the screen likeness. Capote was a natural entertainer in person, as rivetting as his books, as he assumes his role of the mantlepiece of every NYC society gig from the fifties through the seventies - from Studio 51 to Cosmopolitan and New Yorker, the latter two being generous beneficiaries of his short stories. It also captures his friendships with Jack Dunphy and Harper Lee and the rest of the film is about his relationship with the book i.e In Cold Blood.
For all of these reasons, the film takes away a lot from the genius of the book itself and focuses on the impact of writing it on the author's life. The book, therefore, continues to surprise you even after knowing the plot upfront while the film leaves you closer to understanding facets of Capote hidden from the public eye. The newspaper story of the killings triggers a whim, a journey through destinations long forgotten in his teens, and in Kansas, he finds this uncharacteristic multiple murder to be a life-changing experience for a small town. Using his charisma and his established name, he manages access to every person and angle of the unfolding drama. He enjoys the hunt, just as the killers perhaps did, in a different sense. But when two improbable characters turn up as the indisputable guilty and the villains of his novel, he's unknowingly sucked into a story that intrigues him, and then torments him, and eventually becomes a life-changing experience for him.
His troubled childhood and that of one of the killers, Perry Smith, kindle compassion in his heart when the death sentence is handed out as a routine matter. Understanding the killers on death row is much needed fodder for his book but the deeper he delves through innumerable prison visits, the more stretched time is, and Capote is reduced to a lesser version of his original self. He never did complete an entire book (numerous, delightful short stories though - one such compilation is Music for Chameleons) until he passed away in 1984. Not having death as a certainty to complete his stories deterred him perhaps.
Truman Capote was obviously no ordinary writer. He was either unusually gifted or destined to write or both. He was an abandoned child, growing up in trailer parks, staying with a relative, and discovering Nelle Harper Lee to be a neighbourhood kid (yes, Lee of To Kill a Mockingbird fame) who was then published before he could reach 20! The film and his books are testament to who he was. Cherish them.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Film Review (B'wood): DON (2006)
[Spoiler alert: almost all of the plot is described below]
Over 12 months since my last post here! It doesn't mean that I haven't seen film that is compelling or moving enough to write about in the past year. Instead, it's the not-so-easy process of relocating between continents, even if you're coming back to your home country.
I've returned to a bold phase in the post-independence history of India. And to a population that is getting younger, on an average, with every passing day and will continue to grow younger for a while longer. In the midst of all this promise, I'm yet unable to resist a smile on what Farhan Akhtar managed to pull off. So, I'm compelled to start posting again with DON.
His DON doesn't die; in fact, he comes back to life in his original skin. His DON doesn't get arrested, doesn't repent, doesn't lose family members, doesn't pay for tricking the heroine into loving him - he just refuses to be the norm! In a year when new ideas in mainstream Hindi cinema have found public acceptance more than ever before, even a Nagesh doesn't risk a sad ending in Dor, even a Rakeysh Mehra cruelly ends the lives of the lovable Rang De Basanti cast, who took the law into their hands.
And here is Mr.Farhan Akhtar - he's done something he will find hard to surpass through a lifetime of making films - pulling off his childhood fantasy...by staying true to script on his rendition of DON.
As a film, DON had few gaping holes but many flaws. There were some surprisingly poor performances - from Om Puri and Boman Irani - and not so surprisingly, from Arjun Ramphal and Vijay (the look-alike). However, the women and DON were in their element and made the film as entertaining as possible (most viewers knew the outline of the story), catering to a 2006 audience, as opposed to its 1978-born cousin. It was a remake from that perspective - super-slick and almost 007-like in its treatment - and it was bound to ride on the back of unprecedented pre-release publicity (the newly discovered 2006 Bollywood business model).
Critics didn't know what hit them - they tried some weak comparisons with the original and pooh-poohed acting, music and attributed box-office success or foreboded the lack of it to a 'twist in the tale'. BullS**t! What they couldn't obviously reveal in the reviews was the twist itself but it was impossible for them to publicly admit that Farhan had done more justice by tinkering with the script than the original could ever have.
The original could've passed off as 'VIJAY' instead of 'DON' - no fault of Amitabh's. Amitabh's rendition of coolness was, and is, unparalleled (I think Shah Rukh had to work much harder to get to his DON image even close, except for the final pan-away cigarette shot, where he exuded this ruthless look - would love to see an Amitabh version of it). The result was a very entertaining first 30 minutes in the the original DON and the anti-hero emerges as the archetype for 70's coolness.....who then dies a meek death? Enter Vijay - and the ensuing typical story line & impossible transformation to DON. Trapped between Bollywood scripts & coincidences, Vijay and Roma run away merrily at the end with a celebratory paan in cheek.
Squashing the myths & multiple miracles that meander through a Hindi film script, Farhan simply dedicates himself to one impossibility - an invincible DON. Presented with the most powerful hero and villain that can be on the same stage at once, the audience marvels at his brilliance, i.e. DON's brilliance, as they leave the theatre. Furiously working back the clues.... "oh! there were some blurry background cartoons, did you see them?", "he touched Isha's hand!", "ah! he couldn't recognize the kid, that was a giveaway"....the audience quietly absorbs the climax on the drive home. A remake, they said. Wow! All the masala delivered to order and an audacious villain kept alive for a sequel! (Note: This guy - DON - was more than a regular anti-hero, he was a villain in the original and is as evil in the remake. He's no Sarkar or Godfather - he's not into charitable causes.)
Note to Shah Rukh and Farhan on a proposed sequel: You caught the audience unawares and left them cheering for DON. Death to the wimp Vijay (ah! the hero, wasn't he) and the audience didn't bat an eyelid. Next time around will be more difficult. Its not everyday that a Bollywood film audience goes home after cheering for the anti-hero while he menacingly sneers - fancy-free, with his woman on one arm, a smoke in the other, and rid of all his enemies. Cheers to Farhan Akhtar!
Over 12 months since my last post here! It doesn't mean that I haven't seen film that is compelling or moving enough to write about in the past year. Instead, it's the not-so-easy process of relocating between continents, even if you're coming back to your home country.
I've returned to a bold phase in the post-independence history of India. And to a population that is getting younger, on an average, with every passing day and will continue to grow younger for a while longer. In the midst of all this promise, I'm yet unable to resist a smile on what Farhan Akhtar managed to pull off. So, I'm compelled to start posting again with DON.
His DON doesn't die; in fact, he comes back to life in his original skin. His DON doesn't get arrested, doesn't repent, doesn't lose family members, doesn't pay for tricking the heroine into loving him - he just refuses to be the norm! In a year when new ideas in mainstream Hindi cinema have found public acceptance more than ever before, even a Nagesh doesn't risk a sad ending in Dor, even a Rakeysh Mehra cruelly ends the lives of the lovable Rang De Basanti cast, who took the law into their hands.
And here is Mr.Farhan Akhtar - he's done something he will find hard to surpass through a lifetime of making films - pulling off his childhood fantasy...by staying true to script on his rendition of DON.
As a film, DON had few gaping holes but many flaws. There were some surprisingly poor performances - from Om Puri and Boman Irani - and not so surprisingly, from Arjun Ramphal and Vijay (the look-alike). However, the women and DON were in their element and made the film as entertaining as possible (most viewers knew the outline of the story), catering to a 2006 audience, as opposed to its 1978-born cousin. It was a remake from that perspective - super-slick and almost 007-like in its treatment - and it was bound to ride on the back of unprecedented pre-release publicity (the newly discovered 2006 Bollywood business model).
Critics didn't know what hit them - they tried some weak comparisons with the original and pooh-poohed acting, music and attributed box-office success or foreboded the lack of it to a 'twist in the tale'. BullS**t! What they couldn't obviously reveal in the reviews was the twist itself but it was impossible for them to publicly admit that Farhan had done more justice by tinkering with the script than the original could ever have.
The original could've passed off as 'VIJAY' instead of 'DON' - no fault of Amitabh's. Amitabh's rendition of coolness was, and is, unparalleled (I think Shah Rukh had to work much harder to get to his DON image even close, except for the final pan-away cigarette shot, where he exuded this ruthless look - would love to see an Amitabh version of it). The result was a very entertaining first 30 minutes in the the original DON and the anti-hero emerges as the archetype for 70's coolness.....who then dies a meek death? Enter Vijay - and the ensuing typical story line & impossible transformation to DON. Trapped between Bollywood scripts & coincidences, Vijay and Roma run away merrily at the end with a celebratory paan in cheek.
Squashing the myths & multiple miracles that meander through a Hindi film script, Farhan simply dedicates himself to one impossibility - an invincible DON. Presented with the most powerful hero and villain that can be on the same stage at once, the audience marvels at his brilliance, i.e. DON's brilliance, as they leave the theatre. Furiously working back the clues.... "oh! there were some blurry background cartoons, did you see them?", "he touched Isha's hand!", "ah! he couldn't recognize the kid, that was a giveaway"....the audience quietly absorbs the climax on the drive home. A remake, they said. Wow! All the masala delivered to order and an audacious villain kept alive for a sequel! (Note: This guy - DON - was more than a regular anti-hero, he was a villain in the original and is as evil in the remake. He's no Sarkar or Godfather - he's not into charitable causes.)
Note to Shah Rukh and Farhan on a proposed sequel: You caught the audience unawares and left them cheering for DON. Death to the wimp Vijay (ah! the hero, wasn't he) and the audience didn't bat an eyelid. Next time around will be more difficult. Its not everyday that a Bollywood film audience goes home after cheering for the anti-hero while he menacingly sneers - fancy-free, with his woman on one arm, a smoke in the other, and rid of all his enemies. Cheers to Farhan Akhtar!
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Film Review (Int'l): (Cidade de Deus) City of God (2002)
Rio de Janerio - home of the Carnival - a city filled with an unparalleled mystique in one of the most fun-loving large nations of the world. I've never been there (will get to it) and when one is exposed to the City of God (based on an actual neighbourhood in Rio by the name - Cidade de Deus), its a stark reminder that there are two versions to every megacity's story, if not more. Mumbai, New York, Chicago or Tokyo - every city has films based on them - either one that romanticizes the beauty of the city or one that romanticizes the crime. City of God is a hard-hitting, yet wonderfully written and directed, film that does the latter.
The film was so well-acclaimed that it made it to the Oscars a year late since it was overlooked the first time (oh well...that was thanks to the persuasiveness of Harvey Weinstein whose Miramax distributed it). I saw it very early on in 2002 and then on DVD recently, which allowed for the added bonus of watching a documentary that speaks of the reality in Cidade de Deus - the constant balance achieved between drug peddlers, drug buyers and the police along with the corruption and guns that maintain the status quo. It may sound unbelievable, even after seeing the entire film and references to real people in the end credits, that the film is based on that very reality. Within the end credits, there is even the original interview with 'Knockout' Ned, a high-flyer in the film, whose entry into the drug 'industry' is one of many stories that intertwine around that of the protagonist.
Fittingly, the protagonist is a photographer, documenting the mayhem visually as it unfolds. Fernando Meirelles (who made his first English feature this year - 'The Constant Gardner') resorts to non-linear narration that gives us an entertaining history lesson on the development of the favelas (planned slums in the 60's). The most notorious of these, even today, happens to be Cidade de Deus, where gun-totting boys begin hitting the streets and rival gangs as early as age 5!
Li'l Ze (aka Li'l Dice) puts in a delightful performance and so do cool characters such as The Tender Trio (Shaggy, Goose and Clipper), Rocket (the protagonist), Benny (the coolest Hood), Shorty, Steak, Penguin, Angelica, Stringy, Blacky, Carrot , Tuba and Knockout Ned. Other lessons taught to us, as the narrative progresses, are the process of drug packaging for pot and coke, the distinction between Hoods and the Runts whose ages define their place in the hoods' power structure, and the hierarchy of the drug peddling system - 'errand boy' to 'lookout' to 'dealer' to "vapor" to "soldier" to 'manager' to BOSS!
While it seems that the meaningless violence contained in each of these mini-ecosystems (the favelas) can be construed as self-sufficient for these young boys and men to justify their existence and needs, I can't think of a better film that shows the oft-repeated cycle of an eye-for-an-eye, albeit justified by economic ends (the drug trade in this case). The mob films pale when faced by the City of God - suits aren't cut the same way as vests (baniyaans) and slick pistols can't offer a bullet of resistance to the rounds of semi-automatics. Slick and rapidly paced, to the point that the (anti-)heroes rise and fall faster than the tides, its a desperate story - one that shows a strata of youngsters ostracized by society, building a parallel one and thriving in it with no value placed on human life. Emotions, such as love, do surface when the odd gangster is smitten by it but there is no room nor respect for it in the hood. Each kid begins to assume that the rules of the favela are the rules of life. If one is lucky to escape it, they join the rat race outside the favela. If not, they thrive in the rat race within. The characters know fear, and yet, they are fearless since they truly live for the moment and die in a moment.
The film was so well-acclaimed that it made it to the Oscars a year late since it was overlooked the first time (oh well...that was thanks to the persuasiveness of Harvey Weinstein whose Miramax distributed it). I saw it very early on in 2002 and then on DVD recently, which allowed for the added bonus of watching a documentary that speaks of the reality in Cidade de Deus - the constant balance achieved between drug peddlers, drug buyers and the police along with the corruption and guns that maintain the status quo. It may sound unbelievable, even after seeing the entire film and references to real people in the end credits, that the film is based on that very reality. Within the end credits, there is even the original interview with 'Knockout' Ned, a high-flyer in the film, whose entry into the drug 'industry' is one of many stories that intertwine around that of the protagonist.
Fittingly, the protagonist is a photographer, documenting the mayhem visually as it unfolds. Fernando Meirelles (who made his first English feature this year - 'The Constant Gardner') resorts to non-linear narration that gives us an entertaining history lesson on the development of the favelas (planned slums in the 60's). The most notorious of these, even today, happens to be Cidade de Deus, where gun-totting boys begin hitting the streets and rival gangs as early as age 5!
Li'l Ze (aka Li'l Dice) puts in a delightful performance and so do cool characters such as The Tender Trio (Shaggy, Goose and Clipper), Rocket (the protagonist), Benny (the coolest Hood), Shorty, Steak, Penguin, Angelica, Stringy, Blacky, Carrot , Tuba and Knockout Ned. Other lessons taught to us, as the narrative progresses, are the process of drug packaging for pot and coke, the distinction between Hoods and the Runts whose ages define their place in the hoods' power structure, and the hierarchy of the drug peddling system - 'errand boy' to 'lookout' to 'dealer' to "vapor" to "soldier" to 'manager' to BOSS!
While it seems that the meaningless violence contained in each of these mini-ecosystems (the favelas) can be construed as self-sufficient for these young boys and men to justify their existence and needs, I can't think of a better film that shows the oft-repeated cycle of an eye-for-an-eye, albeit justified by economic ends (the drug trade in this case). The mob films pale when faced by the City of God - suits aren't cut the same way as vests (baniyaans) and slick pistols can't offer a bullet of resistance to the rounds of semi-automatics. Slick and rapidly paced, to the point that the (anti-)heroes rise and fall faster than the tides, its a desperate story - one that shows a strata of youngsters ostracized by society, building a parallel one and thriving in it with no value placed on human life. Emotions, such as love, do surface when the odd gangster is smitten by it but there is no room nor respect for it in the hood. Each kid begins to assume that the rules of the favela are the rules of life. If one is lucky to escape it, they join the rat race outside the favela. If not, they thrive in the rat race within. The characters know fear, and yet, they are fearless since they truly live for the moment and die in a moment.
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