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Monday, November 3, 2008
Monday, December 11, 2006
Day Four: Dazed and Confused
Black Gods and White Devils
You sit through two hours of cinema, trying to whack your head, trying to figure out if you can find a frame of reference for all that is unfolding on screen. Poor man slays rich man for trying to cheat him. 'Exploitation film' you think and prepare yourself to watch a full-blooded B-grade allegorical tale of the oppressed vanquishing his oppressor. A wild eyed black man declares himself Saint Sebastian and tries to incite an uprising of the oppressed. You draw parallels with the recent Dalit upheavels. A mutiny that is indicative of a healthy society, or so I read. The upheavel is brutal, a family is tortured and killed by a crowd in throes of fanatisism and bloodlust. Is it a critique of fanatisism or is it actually advocating a violent uprising? The reeling of the brain has begun.
It all gets hyper-ventilating and brutal from that point on. The Saint makes wild prophecies of islands and blood and death even asking for human sacrifice, which our hero concedes to offer. In a most disturbing scene, a newborn is cruelly stabbed in the heart as an offering to the Higher Powers. You flinch, try to focus your thoughts. All reason seems to slip away. The Saint is murdered and a contract killer murders all his followers save the hero and wife who meet up with a blind man (Homer, perhaps? An Odyssey/Illiad of sorts?) They run into a raging revolutionary dressed up like Jack Sparrow who also declares himself to be St. George and seems to have an obsession with cutting of upper-class heads. He renames our hero 'Satan' (???) and forces him into ghastly deeds like chopping of 'manhoods' and pilaging of woman. Here, the hero shows his first sign of disillusion but the madman saint goes on a explanation that is so muddled, so out of the blue, so absurd that I don't think the hero really got what the hell was hapenning? I didn't. And it all manages to tumble haywire into a bloody shootout at the climax.
I got up from the chair and had that distinct buzzing pain in my head of striking the edge of a window sill on your bare skull. And to make matters worse, the guy next to me jumps up in absolute ecstasy sayng that it was the 'best movie he had EVER seen'. I was ready to faint on cue.
He proceeded to explain the movie in the context of a Tribal uprising during the British Raj in which individuals seemingly woke up one morning and christened themselves Rama and Hanuman and declared that they had been assigned by the Gods to carry out the holy duty of chopping off the heads of policemen. It's a kind of small revolution of sorts, he said.
Too late, too little.
By the time I was already squeamish in the stomach, almost pukish, my head reeling with the bizzare and intense imagery that populated the movie. I had been churned like never before.
As I wake up this morning, I realize what a powerful experience the movie was. I just couldn't choose to ignore. I couldn't walk out. I couldn't zone off. In it's on brutally absurd way... it rivetted and disturbed me and like Rent boy would put it in Trainspotting- completely fuckin scoobied me!
I've decided I'm not going for another Glauber Rocha film any soon. I wouldn't last through it. Maybe later, maybe when I get 'Black God' out of my system. And that's going to take some time.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Day Three: Whats up, Kamikaze
HONOY BONNY and PUMBKIN
HONOY BONOY: I'm not a communist?
PUMBKIN: I'm not saying that one should mechanically follow the ideology
HONOY BONNY: You're not getting me. I'm a Marxist..
PUMBKIN: Okay...
HONOY BONNY: I follow Marx and he never laid down a pattern for parlimentary politics
PUMBKIN: But look at the world. Everything is postmodern. What we need is a kind of postmodern communism..
HONOY BONNY: I dont trust the politicians. Fucking girls at night and the next day telling this-that-yeh-woh
Animated video for 11th IFFK plays. All is quiet.
Chapter 2 3.15pm
Whispering of the Gods
Every film fest has its effant terrible- a movie that exists primarily to challenge the audience sensibilities, to desecrate all that is held holy and infallible, to shock, to cause you to squirm and flinch uncomfortably in your seat as you take in the raw morbidity of it all. The success of such movies can be gauged by the statement they manage to make in the space that they create for themselves through nihilism and shock value. This is the primary difference between an 'Irreversible' and a 'Blaise Moi'.
Of course, it goes without saying that it offers a lot of fringe benefits to the superficial and perverted viewer.
'Whispering of the Gods' by Tatsushi Omori is that beast of a movie that IFFK has chosen to unleash on it's audience. It starts with the camera gracefully panning a herd of bulls as they trudge across the Japanese countryside. The serene sequence cuts to a scene in which a bible-reading priest is being masturbated by his protege, Rou, a disturbed young man who has recently commited a double murder. What is perplexing is that Rou has no qualms in confessing to his brutal crime and absolutely nothing by way of guilt. Instead he uses it as a reference to question his religion.
Rou's life in the monastery is rife with decadence. His duties involve shovelling shit and tending to chickens. Every inhabitant of the monastery seems to be getting his/her kicks from some form of perversion ranging from homosexuality to peadophilia to beastiality and there's a local scoutmaster who has a thing for another's saliva and vomit. The movie is replete with scenes amped with sexual perversion and shock value. There's a graphic incident of a pig castration and later, disembowelment... even after the disembowlement, one of the monastery residents holds the pigs dead heart in his hand while he attempts to please himself. The shock is not restricted only to the visuals. The confession scene where Ruo confronts the senior pastor who is on the verge of death with his own warped view of sin and morality is one of cautic blashphemy in which the very foundations of religion are attacked.
'If one confesses to a future sin and later doesn't commit the sin, isn't it disrespect to the sacrament of forgiveness' asks Ruo to the shaken pastor after he reveals his plans to deflower a nun.
Like most of such movies (Irreversible), the nihilist philosophy the movie advocates does ring vaccuos but the success of the movie exists in the fact that it makes a brave and commedable arguement. On more than a few occasions, when some dog is not biting of a priests' balls after an oral session, it makes you ponder on the nature of guilt, sin and forgiveness.
Chapter 1 9.30am
Takeshis
Cult Japanese director Takeshi Kitano had just completed his pop opera version of Japanese popular culture hero 'Zatoichi: The Blind Samurai'. His blind massuese was incongruosly peroxide blonde, a gambling addict and the adventure he set out upon involved other absurd elements including a vengeful cross dressing giesha and an all out rousing tap dancing session for a climax. In the light of this return to critical and commercial success after the failure of his ill thought off attempt at a Hollywood crossover 'Brother' and another mediocre effort 'Dolls', Kitano with true irrverence unvieled the poster for his next undertaking with a poster at the 2005 Cannes film fest. All it said was 'TAKESHIS' in large, bold letters with the mysteriously hokey tagline- 500% Kitano- nothing to add.
The movie begins with American soldiers entering a bombed out complex strewn with Japanese soldiers. One american comes face to face with the fallen body of Kitano and the scene cuts to the quintessential Kitano sequence- a yakuza shootout after which Kitano walks off as the last man standing. The credits start to play and the camera pulls back to reveal it to be movie playing on a TV in a room where the real Kitano and cronies are playing a bout of mahjong. During the conversation that ensues, almost as if by some cue that exists only in the Kitano sub-conscince, the movie starts to jump cut to pure absurdity. When Kitano's secretary tells him that she'll be a nice girl, the scene cuts to her writhing naked. When an assistant makes a sympathetic comment on cab-drivers, he spends the rest of the movie as a cab driver, without the least bit of explanation or provocation. The madness and irreverence gathers momentum when Kitano runs into a bleach headed doppelganger who aspires for a film career of his own and is a big fan of the real Kitano. Kitano acknowldges hsi doppelganger, offers him his autograph and even sets upon to ponder on his existance. Perhaps, he works in a convinience store, he remarks. Presto, doppelganger does work in a convinience store. At this point, reality and illusion are completely blurred. The real Kitano's stalker begins to follow the doppelganger, even cars meant for Kitano land up at his residence. Is the real Kitano having a dream? Is it maybe the doppelgangers' dream? Is it the deconstruction of the Kitano persona? Is it a movie within a movie. Or a movie within a dream within a movie within a movie? Arrange that which ever way you want, but it won't help frame the movie. Every five minutes, the movie abandons one focus for another, swivelling the unsuspecting audience from orbit to orbit making it impossible to watch the movie with any kind of a frame of reference.
There are great moments of inspired outrageous absurdity. The nightmare taxi drive through a dark alley involving two overweight comedians in skirts, a newspaper salesman, his crossdressing son and some strewn bodies of the dead. A quintessential Kitano shootout which is captured through a top shot and the orange bursts of gunfire are juxtaposed with the constellations in the sky. The impromptu ballet of amazing grace and beauty that Kitano's secretary perfroms as she walks down the beach to pick up a football that has rolled in, the serene blue of her dress flowing against the beautiful Okinawa backdrop. A standout moment of comic surrealism, happens after an audition where an old proffesional extra and a yakuza's son turn up to try thier hand at a role of a grouchy noodle chef for a Kitano movie. Later, when the doppelganger enters the restraunt, he finds in place of the cook, both the old man and the yakuza repeating the dialogues, each in thier own way. Absurdity hits fever pitch during a prolonged session of tap dancing when a dead yakuza turns up to perform an apopletic version of 'the robot'. Even the DJ console morphs into a naked woman and later the naked woman with the DJ playing at her breats, is superimposed on the writhing naked secretary. It all ends, of course, in yet another bullet ballet.
Also present throughout are references to Kitano's body of work. The bleached head, the crossdressing son, the tap dancing are obvious references to 'Zatoichi'. The kid can also be traced to 'Kukijiro'. The beach sequence is somehow reminescent of 'Hana-Bi' while the movie Kitano is shown to be shooting bears refernce to 'Sonatine'. While keeping the fanboys cheering, the scenes perhaps represent thier presence in Kitano's head or even maybe is a bizarre representation of how he was inspired to make those movies.
At an hour and fifty, the movie seems to push on for long. Every time the movie seems to come to a close, there is an eye opened, a dream ended and yet another one going on. But each time the movie drags on, Kitano makes it worthwhile by introducing another rewarding scene which furthers twists the maze that is the movie.
Inventine, unique, absurd, beautiful, terrible, self-indulgent, clever, bloated, funny, irreverent... "Takeshis" is a haiku on speed. And with that, Kitano once again succeeds in proving himself to be as emigmatic and original as ever.
Definately, inspite of the days remaining, inpsite of movies by Almoldvar, Makhmalbaf and Liang (waiting for appaluse... you know who).... i have seen The movie. Perhaps, in my book, it is one of THE movies ever.
An Appology
What happened to HONOY BONNY and PUMBKIN?
Never saw them. Just like I couldn't see Paradise Now. Because the theatre was spilling. People love their movies here.
HONOY BONOY: I'm not a communist?
PUMBKIN: I'm not saying that one should mechanically follow the ideology
HONOY BONNY: You're not getting me. I'm a Marxist..
PUMBKIN: Okay...
HONOY BONNY: I follow Marx and he never laid down a pattern for parlimentary politics
PUMBKIN: But look at the world. Everything is postmodern. What we need is a kind of postmodern communism..
HONOY BONNY: I dont trust the politicians. Fucking girls at night and the next day telling this-that-yeh-woh
Animated video for 11th IFFK plays. All is quiet.
Chapter 2 3.15pm
Whispering of the Gods
Every film fest has its effant terrible- a movie that exists primarily to challenge the audience sensibilities, to desecrate all that is held holy and infallible, to shock, to cause you to squirm and flinch uncomfortably in your seat as you take in the raw morbidity of it all. The success of such movies can be gauged by the statement they manage to make in the space that they create for themselves through nihilism and shock value. This is the primary difference between an 'Irreversible' and a 'Blaise Moi'.
Of course, it goes without saying that it offers a lot of fringe benefits to the superficial and perverted viewer.
'Whispering of the Gods' by Tatsushi Omori is that beast of a movie that IFFK has chosen to unleash on it's audience. It starts with the camera gracefully panning a herd of bulls as they trudge across the Japanese countryside. The serene sequence cuts to a scene in which a bible-reading priest is being masturbated by his protege, Rou, a disturbed young man who has recently commited a double murder. What is perplexing is that Rou has no qualms in confessing to his brutal crime and absolutely nothing by way of guilt. Instead he uses it as a reference to question his religion.
Rou's life in the monastery is rife with decadence. His duties involve shovelling shit and tending to chickens. Every inhabitant of the monastery seems to be getting his/her kicks from some form of perversion ranging from homosexuality to peadophilia to beastiality and there's a local scoutmaster who has a thing for another's saliva and vomit. The movie is replete with scenes amped with sexual perversion and shock value. There's a graphic incident of a pig castration and later, disembowelment... even after the disembowlement, one of the monastery residents holds the pigs dead heart in his hand while he attempts to please himself. The shock is not restricted only to the visuals. The confession scene where Ruo confronts the senior pastor who is on the verge of death with his own warped view of sin and morality is one of cautic blashphemy in which the very foundations of religion are attacked.
'If one confesses to a future sin and later doesn't commit the sin, isn't it disrespect to the sacrament of forgiveness' asks Ruo to the shaken pastor after he reveals his plans to deflower a nun.
Like most of such movies (Irreversible), the nihilist philosophy the movie advocates does ring vaccuos but the success of the movie exists in the fact that it makes a brave and commedable arguement. On more than a few occasions, when some dog is not biting of a priests' balls after an oral session, it makes you ponder on the nature of guilt, sin and forgiveness.
Chapter 1 9.30am
Takeshis
Cult Japanese director Takeshi Kitano had just completed his pop opera version of Japanese popular culture hero 'Zatoichi: The Blind Samurai'. His blind massuese was incongruosly peroxide blonde, a gambling addict and the adventure he set out upon involved other absurd elements including a vengeful cross dressing giesha and an all out rousing tap dancing session for a climax. In the light of this return to critical and commercial success after the failure of his ill thought off attempt at a Hollywood crossover 'Brother' and another mediocre effort 'Dolls', Kitano with true irrverence unvieled the poster for his next undertaking with a poster at the 2005 Cannes film fest. All it said was 'TAKESHIS' in large, bold letters with the mysteriously hokey tagline- 500% Kitano- nothing to add.
Nothing to add indeed.
If 'Being John Malkovich' showed you what it felt to be a character in Malkovich's head, 'Takeshis' takes you up, close and personal into that place where every Kitano cultist craves to be- in that warped peroxide head. Like Kitano told a bewildered audience after the premiere at the 2006 Venice Fest, it was never about making sense, in fact, he has made every effot in just the opposite. Sense has hardly anything to do with 'Takeshis'. It exists only because it is Kitano.
The movie begins with American soldiers entering a bombed out complex strewn with Japanese soldiers. One american comes face to face with the fallen body of Kitano and the scene cuts to the quintessential Kitano sequence- a yakuza shootout after which Kitano walks off as the last man standing. The credits start to play and the camera pulls back to reveal it to be movie playing on a TV in a room where the real Kitano and cronies are playing a bout of mahjong. During the conversation that ensues, almost as if by some cue that exists only in the Kitano sub-conscince, the movie starts to jump cut to pure absurdity. When Kitano's secretary tells him that she'll be a nice girl, the scene cuts to her writhing naked. When an assistant makes a sympathetic comment on cab-drivers, he spends the rest of the movie as a cab driver, without the least bit of explanation or provocation. The madness and irreverence gathers momentum when Kitano runs into a bleach headed doppelganger who aspires for a film career of his own and is a big fan of the real Kitano. Kitano acknowldges hsi doppelganger, offers him his autograph and even sets upon to ponder on his existance. Perhaps, he works in a convinience store, he remarks. Presto, doppelganger does work in a convinience store. At this point, reality and illusion are completely blurred. The real Kitano's stalker begins to follow the doppelganger, even cars meant for Kitano land up at his residence. Is the real Kitano having a dream? Is it maybe the doppelgangers' dream? Is it the deconstruction of the Kitano persona? Is it a movie within a movie. Or a movie within a dream within a movie within a movie? Arrange that which ever way you want, but it won't help frame the movie. Every five minutes, the movie abandons one focus for another, swivelling the unsuspecting audience from orbit to orbit making it impossible to watch the movie with any kind of a frame of reference.
There are great moments of inspired outrageous absurdity. The nightmare taxi drive through a dark alley involving two overweight comedians in skirts, a newspaper salesman, his crossdressing son and some strewn bodies of the dead. A quintessential Kitano shootout which is captured through a top shot and the orange bursts of gunfire are juxtaposed with the constellations in the sky. The impromptu ballet of amazing grace and beauty that Kitano's secretary perfroms as she walks down the beach to pick up a football that has rolled in, the serene blue of her dress flowing against the beautiful Okinawa backdrop. A standout moment of comic surrealism, happens after an audition where an old proffesional extra and a yakuza's son turn up to try thier hand at a role of a grouchy noodle chef for a Kitano movie. Later, when the doppelganger enters the restraunt, he finds in place of the cook, both the old man and the yakuza repeating the dialogues, each in thier own way. Absurdity hits fever pitch during a prolonged session of tap dancing when a dead yakuza turns up to perform an apopletic version of 'the robot'. Even the DJ console morphs into a naked woman and later the naked woman with the DJ playing at her breats, is superimposed on the writhing naked secretary. It all ends, of course, in yet another bullet ballet.
Also present throughout are references to Kitano's body of work. The bleached head, the crossdressing son, the tap dancing are obvious references to 'Zatoichi'. The kid can also be traced to 'Kukijiro'. The beach sequence is somehow reminescent of 'Hana-Bi' while the movie Kitano is shown to be shooting bears refernce to 'Sonatine'. While keeping the fanboys cheering, the scenes perhaps represent thier presence in Kitano's head or even maybe is a bizarre representation of how he was inspired to make those movies.
At an hour and fifty, the movie seems to push on for long. Every time the movie seems to come to a close, there is an eye opened, a dream ended and yet another one going on. But each time the movie drags on, Kitano makes it worthwhile by introducing another rewarding scene which furthers twists the maze that is the movie.
Inventine, unique, absurd, beautiful, terrible, self-indulgent, clever, bloated, funny, irreverent... "Takeshis" is a haiku on speed. And with that, Kitano once again succeeds in proving himself to be as emigmatic and original as ever.
Definately, inspite of the days remaining, inpsite of movies by Almoldvar, Makhmalbaf and Liang (waiting for appaluse... you know who).... i have seen The movie. Perhaps, in my book, it is one of THE movies ever.
An Appology
Sorry about yesterday. Couldn't write my blog. Was busy.
Chapter 3 6.30 pm
Will o' The Wisp
Louis Malle's 1963 tale of alcohol, disillusion and nihilism is as classic as it gets. Bouyed by a literate script abounding with great dialouge, fantastic black and white visuals and a terrific performance by Maurice Ronet as an alcoholic writer in the throes of depression.
Writer Alain Leroy had lived a charmed life- parties, friends, a beatiful wife until he lost it all by succumbing to alchocol. When the movie opens he's cured but is afraid to leave the clinic. But being inside the clicnic has changed the man he once was. All whom he encounters during the movie, recall him as a fun-loving, spirited, handsome young man and point out how sad he seems to be. There seems to be only one way out of his sadness, he decides- death, but not until he makes a trip to Paris to catch up on his old friends. It is here that the movie seethes with anger while whelling up in melancholy. All his free-wheeling freinds seem to married, settled, earning steadily and living a predicatble, borgeous lifestyle. The remaining who still maintain thier old lifestyle seem to be living a fool's dream, choosing not to come to terms with the reality of the times. As Alain, moves across Paris, on the last day of his life, his nihilism turns absolute.
The movie is replete with individual scenes of great beauty and depth- when Alain fiddles around nuerotically in his room, mumbling to himself, his final drunken outburst of sorts, the last phone call he recieves from a woman he likes. Malle's reputation of being a great chronicler of conversations is more than evident as he ever so gracefully orchastrates dialouge and action.
What happened to HONOY BONNY and PUMBKIN?
Never saw them. Just like I couldn't see Paradise Now. Because the theatre was spilling. People love their movies here.
What the...
I discovered my long lost cousins have spectacular livers. Hence, no 'day two' as of yet.
I discovered my long lost cousins have spectacular livers. Hence, no 'day two' as of yet.
Friday, December 8, 2006
Day One: Life in the stalls
It stepped in from beyond the door. Bruised lips on a rotting pig head, tiny wired flashlights for eyes, a gaping void where a stomach should be lined with hungry teeth and in this void an apparation of two dancing spirits calling out to your flesh like a siren. The hole begins to squirm. A grotesque piece of scabbed tongue licks the teeth. There is a twitch, a spasm... the apparitions giggle. The pig takes another step inside.
It was around this point I was pushed back to my senses. Even with the relief that it was all a dream, the door was open at a very horror movie slant that lead to spiral staircases still looked foreboding. It had all the horror film geometry to it that indicated the presence of something evil and foreboding beyond. For a moment, I was pulsing with pure fear.
Two minutes down. I was ecstatic. What a perfect start to a film festival? I decided for myself that I had experienced a Guillermo Del Toro fantasy. As if my obsession, my ponderings, my readings had succeeded in opening a lil portal in my brain with opened into a cobwebed catacomb that was the imagination of Del Toro.
After years and years of dreams that were nothing but attention-to-detail recreations of real life incidents like the 'dramatic recreation' scenes of a late night crime program (without all the great sleaze), I had my first taste of the fanastic and the grotesque. A certifiable nightmare. I have successfully shrugged myself of my wholesome childhood and preparing myself for the nuerosis and psychosis of someone mildly deranged.
Auspicious beginnings.
The Deep Focus stall is occilating between mild fun and a pain in the ass. Just like any other sponsor. Sure I love Deep Focus for sponsoring my little Kerala soiree but still it's too much of a liability. But as a true management student, I've been lying my ass off trying to get the magazines to fly off the stands.
Top 5 Adjectives of choice:- consumate, intense, profound, definative, brilliant
Believe me.. they go for it.
3.30 pm
I was torn between Zanussi's Persona Non Grata and Sissako's Life on Earth. Poland and Mali. I have heard people gushing about Zanussi. Sissako had a nice write-up in Hindu. From the synopsis, 'Persona Non Grata' seemed to be a good way to start a Film Fest.. a political thriller embroiled in human emotions whereas 'Life on Earth' seemed to be elusive.
Two fingers. Chose one.
It's stupid, childish techinque. Next thing you're gonna call me your besht fraand.
Do it. You talk too much.
Right finger.
It was around this point I was pushed back to my senses. Even with the relief that it was all a dream, the door was open at a very horror movie slant that lead to spiral staircases still looked foreboding. It had all the horror film geometry to it that indicated the presence of something evil and foreboding beyond. For a moment, I was pulsing with pure fear.
Two minutes down. I was ecstatic. What a perfect start to a film festival? I decided for myself that I had experienced a Guillermo Del Toro fantasy. As if my obsession, my ponderings, my readings had succeeded in opening a lil portal in my brain with opened into a cobwebed catacomb that was the imagination of Del Toro.
After years and years of dreams that were nothing but attention-to-detail recreations of real life incidents like the 'dramatic recreation' scenes of a late night crime program (without all the great sleaze), I had my first taste of the fanastic and the grotesque. A certifiable nightmare. I have successfully shrugged myself of my wholesome childhood and preparing myself for the nuerosis and psychosis of someone mildly deranged.
Auspicious beginnings.
The Deep Focus stall is occilating between mild fun and a pain in the ass. Just like any other sponsor. Sure I love Deep Focus for sponsoring my little Kerala soiree but still it's too much of a liability. But as a true management student, I've been lying my ass off trying to get the magazines to fly off the stands.
Top 5 Adjectives of choice:- consumate, intense, profound, definative, brilliant
Believe me.. they go for it.
3.30 pm
I was torn between Zanussi's Persona Non Grata and Sissako's Life on Earth. Poland and Mali. I have heard people gushing about Zanussi. Sissako had a nice write-up in Hindu. From the synopsis, 'Persona Non Grata' seemed to be a good way to start a Film Fest.. a political thriller embroiled in human emotions whereas 'Life on Earth' seemed to be elusive.
Two fingers. Chose one.
It's stupid, childish techinque. Next thing you're gonna call me your besht fraand.
Do it. You talk too much.
Right finger.
The 20th Century has reached it's final dusk. In the village of Sokkolo, Mali... everyday life moves with the beat of the mundane. Someone gets his hair cut. Others ride around on donkeys. A group of people try to hold a conversation over a faint phone line. A group of young men just park themselves in chairs listening to the local FM air critiques on European Civilization interspersed with songs, the local public airing their problems and broadcasts from France updating them on the latest in the millenial celebrations. The Eiffel Tower it seems has a huge signboard on it that is ticking towards 'zero' ringing out the end of a millenium and the beginning of the next.
In his entry for the '2000 AS SEEN BY...' project, Mali Director Abderrehmane Sissako presents ordinary reality in a poetic warp. He begins with infusing everyday reality with a gushing sense of eloquence and meaning. There seems to be quirky beauty to every scene as life moves on in the little African village... incomplete strands of stories that he leaves to drift. It is this sense of drifting life that renders the movie it's unique heart.
For the first part of the movie, Sissako seems to revel in the attention-to-details. The craning of the young man's neck when a woman crosses his path, a woman's facial expressions as she posses for the camera... it is these tiny details that the movie forges a sense of comforting warmth. Even the background score seems to be composed of the bumps and grind of daily life.
There is discernable change in the mood when the movie enters its second half as the world crosses over to the new millenium. In an incisive scene, a passerby remarks on the sadness of a woman's face in aphotograph that had not not been evident till then. Sissako lets us in, very gradually, to the view the bleeding heart of Mali. Still employing the same visual aesthetic, he employs a harsher more powerful voiceover that offers poetic rambles on the state of Mali and Africa as a whole. Suddenly, the very life that appeared so easygoing and quirky, appears frail and broken. As the rest of the world celebrates the new millenium, the two telephones that the village has refuse to function with clarity. The people themselves have resigned to thier fate chosing to blame abstarcts like luck and destiny. Also, the village is reeling under a bird epidemic. The harvest is about to ripen, the birds are eating them away and the goverment is as apathetic as they come. Daily life in Mali, pretty much seems like hell with not much respite in sight.
For the second half, Sissako has employed a beautiful baroque score to replace the minimal one employed in the first half. But it is the juxtaposition of beautiful images of light pastels and occasional dash of bright colors with the violence of poetry that evokes the hurt and the pain.
Sissako signs off the movie with a eloquent cry for help, for brotherhood, for peace. Life may go on, he seems to say, however wretched, however painful. But the real shame is in that we allow it to go on that way.
A great movie.
Following the screening, we packed off for the Opening ceremony.
It was a typical affair- lamps were lit, there were ten different votes of thanks in Malayalam conotations that crackled and sputtered like a brand of Cackle pop had been poured into all the mouths in the dias and my major grouse ended up being that jury chairman, Elia Sulieman (director of the madcap 'Divine Intervention) was not even offered a chance to speak.
Then came the dreaded part:- The cultural extravaganza.
Suddenly, I found myself developing Acute Attention Deficiancy. I began wishing I was watching it all on Doordarshan just because my parents wanted me to imbibe culture and that I could change the channel the moment they walked off.
To stay or not to stay.
I stayed. That's something a fetish can do to you. A group of ten girls came in dancing wearing kasava sarees and all of a sudden I began to feel.. quite.. polygamous. I wanted them all.
Then came the Theyyam dancers. The dance began to be pushed to a fever pitch. Chendas pounded, rising scream through the crowd. A group of kalaripayitu dancers came out prancing to the chenda beats. Reminded me of Kurosawa and his Kodo drums. Why havne't we done it yet??
Then came the centerpeice.. A dancer in the guise of a 15 ft Murugan on stilts. A sight to behold. The chendas, the lighting, the photo flashes... it was a dark carnival of the Gods. It was as rousing a opening ceremony as I had ever seen. Spectacle.
The opening film played later.
Sounds of Sand. A Belgian production set in Africa about a family on the run in the unfreindly deserts in search of water. Well-meaning but uninvolving. And much too involving to watch whilst standing so. So uninvolving that I have yawned about 10 times just while writing this little paragraph. Stop.
They had flown the actor down and it was a real shame that the movie turned out to be such a squib cause he seemed to be a real nice guy. Sad things. Little ones. Go a long way.
Before i pronounce zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
that's day one.
Thursday, December 7, 2006
The First Casualty
This is the reason we evolve. A basic human state of disatisfaction, of greed. This is the basic fundamental reason of pre-human to neo-homo sapien. Want. Need. A fundamental urge. I'm sick of trees and fruits, I want to eat cake.
Here I am. Trivandrum. The International Film Fest is about to start and I spend the night before cribbing on how I'm going to miss the first day, first show of the Indian premiere of The Prestige.
The Prestige. Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale playing rival magicians riffing of one and other. As i write this, I feel more than justified in my asinine doddering. Let;s face it, the subtext isn't tradition versus modern, science versus superstition.. It is quite plain... Wolverine v/s Batman. It is as primitive and as fanboy as a subtext can get.
If you don't really get it yet, there's David Bowie playing Nikola Tesla. If you still don't get it.. there's Scarlet Johansen. And she's as voluptious as they come.
'The Prestige' releases in all major centres on the 8th.
And this is how i spend my night before the festival.. chewing nails and praying that 'The Prestige' pulls in enough to let the fickle multiplexes to hold on to it for atleast a week.
Saturday, December 2, 2006
'Hellboy' unleashes the 'Deadman'
A movie on a comic about a dead trapeze artist brought back to lifeto solve the mystery of his death may seem more like a high conceptidea for the late nineties which would primarily function as theparade grounds for FX giants like ILM to parade the lastest in FXcraze that hit the marquee post-Jurrasic Park. Massive digital recreations of hell and it's digital denizens, a climactic showdown packed with every kind of CGI illusion and trickery that can be stuffed in with the emphasis more on the greenscreen freakshow thanin the story. Eg:- 'The Crow' (undead rockstar on vengeance vendetta)and 'Spawn'(as i recall, some sort of undead white collar governmentofficial).
Perhaps it is good in a way that good ol' 'Deadman' was left undisturbed until now. CGI cosmetic no longer sells a flick. Big dumb blunt instruments no longer draw in the throngs. Unlike in the testerone fuelled violent orgies of the Arnold and Stallone days, the audience has began to seek an emotional connection to theprotagonist. This is the age of the Superhero deconstuction in cinema like it was for the comics between mid-80s to a decade hence. Batman,Superman, James Bond.. none have been spared the darker hues and the morality crises. Lost loves, ethical quandries, disillsionment, a violent rebel streak.. Superheroes are no longer clear thinking crusaders of humanity but move from adventure to adventure in a stateof introspective daze andwith a baggage of guilt. What will be most interesting is to see what 'Deadman' will bring in as opposed to 'TheCrow' and 'Spawn'.
Another news that is the stuff of pure joy is that Guillermo DelToro of 'Hellboy' fame has been attatched to direct. Yeah! Yeah!Yeah! It'll be interesting to see what he brings to the movie. Going by his recurring themes, the ethical quandry that Deadman will face will be regarding his mortality, identity and purpose. I sincerely doubt that a director of Del Toro's caliber and enrgy will be content with merely treating it was a revenge flick. Rather expect a meditation on revenge a la Kill Bill channeled via Mike Mignola and the Bible. Another interesting aspect that i'm curious about is how Del Toro will use the trapeze artist's circus background to unleash nightmares and dreamscapes of cranivalesque grotesqueriequite like Fellini doing a Lovecraft story.
So the point is... I"M AS EXCITED AS CAN BE!!!
Ain't It Cool news:-
Guillermo Del Toro's adaptation of DC Comic's DEADMAN takes a stepforward!!!Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with news on Guillermo Del Toro'sadaptation of DC Comics' DEADMAN. What a great melding of materialand director. If you don't know, DEADMAN is about the ghost of amurdered circus acrobat. His soul can possess any living being,thanks to a Hindu goddess, so he possesses people to protect theinnocent and solve the mystery of his own death.Warner Bros is making the flick and they've hired a guy by the nameof Gary Dauberman based on a spec script (a zombie western) to workwith Guillermo on the script. Good luck Gary! Can't wait to see thiscome about... certainly after HELLBOY 2, no?
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