Roger Ebert : The Quintessential Film Critic

Roger Ebert : 1942 ~ 2013

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

I don’t expect to die anytime soon. But it could happen this moment, while I am writing. I was talking the other day with Jim Toback, a friend of 35 years, and the conversation turned to our deaths, as it always does. “Ask someone how they feel about death,” he said, “and they’ll tell you everyone’s gonna die. Ask them, In the next 30 seconds? No, no, no, that’s not gonna happen. How about this afternoon? No. What you’re really asking them to admit is, Oh my God, I don’t really exist. I might be gone at any given second.”

Me too, but I hope not. I have plans. Still, illness led me resolutely toward the contemplation of death. That led me to the subject of evolution, that most consoling of all the sciences, and I became engulfed on my blog in unforeseen discussions about God, the afterlife, religion, theory of evolution, intelligent design, reincarnation, the nature of reality, what came before the big bang, what waits after the end, the nature of intelligence, the reality of the self, death, death, death.

Many readers have informed me that it is a tragic and dreary business to go into death without faith. I don’t feel that way. “Faith” is neutral. All depends on what is believed in. I have no desire to live forever. The concept frightens me. I am 69, have had cancer, will die sooner than most of those reading this. That is in the nature of things. In my plans for life after death, I say, again with Whitman:

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

And with Will, the brother in Saul Bellow’s “Herzog,” I say, “Look for me in the weather reports.”

Raised as a Roman Catholic, I internalized the social values of that faith and still hold most of them, even though its theology no longer persuades me. I have no quarrel with what anyone else subscribes to; everyone deals with these things in his own way, and I have no truths to impart. All I require of a religion is that it be tolerant of those who do not agree with it. I know a priest whose eyes twinkle when he says, “You go about God’s work in your way, and I’ll go about it in His.”

What I expect to happen is that my body will fail, my mind will cease to function and that will be that. My genes will not live on, because I have had no children. I am comforted by Richard Dawkins’ theory of memes. Those are mental units: thoughts, ideas, gestures, notions, songs, beliefs, rhymes, ideals, teachings, sayings, phrases, clichés that move from mind to mind as genes move from body to body. After a lifetime of writing, teaching, broadcasting and telling too many jokes, I will leave behind more memes than many. They will all also eventually die, but so it goes.

O’Rourke’s had a photograph of Brendan Behan on the wall, and under it this quotation, which I memorized:

I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don’t respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.

That does a pretty good job of summing it up. “Kindness” covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

One of these days I will encounter what Henry James called on his deathbed “the distinguished thing.” I will not be conscious of the moment of passing. In this life I have already been declared dead. It wasn’t so bad. After the first ruptured artery, the doctors thought I was finished. My wife, Chaz, said she sensed that I was still alive and was communicating to her that I wasn’t finished yet. She said our hearts were beating in unison, although my heartbeat couldn’t be discovered. She told the doctors I was alive, they did what doctors do, and here I am, alive.

Do I believe her? Absolutely. I believe her literally — not symbolically, figuratively or spiritually. I believe she was actually aware of my call and that she sensed my heartbeat. I believe she did it in the real, physical world I have described, the one that I share with my wristwatch. I see no reason why such communication could not take place. I’m not talking about telepathy, psychic phenomenon or a miracle. The only miracle is that she was there when it happened, as she was for many long days and nights. I’m talking about her standing there and knowing something. Haven’t many of us experienced that? Come on, haven’t you? What goes on happens at a level not accessible to scientists, theologians, mystics, physicists, philosophers or psychiatrists. It’s a human kind of a thing.

Someday I will no longer call out, and there will be no heartbeat. I will be dead. What happens then? From my point of view, nothing. Absolutely nothing. All the same, as I wrote to Monica Eng, whom I have known since she was six, “You’d better cry at my memorial service.” I correspond with a dear friend, the wise and gentle Australian director Paul Cox. Our subject sometimes turns to death. In 2010 he came very close to dying before receiving a liver transplant. In 1988 he made a documentary named “Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent van Gogh.” Paul wrote me that in his Arles days, van Gogh called himself “a simple worshiper of the external Buddha.” Paul told me that in those days, Vincent wrote:

Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map.

Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?

Just as we take a train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star. We cannot get to a star while we are alive any more than we can take the train when we are dead. So to me it seems possible that cholera, tuberculosis and cancer are the celestial means of locomotion. Just as steamboats, buses and railways are the terrestrial means.

To die quietly of old age would be to go there on foot.

That is a lovely thing to read, and a relief to find I will probably take the celestial locomotive. Or, as his little dog, Milou, says whenever Tintin proposes a journey, “Not by foot, I hope!”

~ Roger Ebert, Life Itself : A Memoir

Roger Ebert has taught the world, how to make love with cinema. He had lived a beautiful life, soaking himself to the hilt with world cinema and intimately interacting with its auteurs. The art of cinema is the only gift bestowed upon humanity by this contemporary civilisation, which is otherwise decadent and moribund. And Roger Ebert breathed life into the art, by compelling the makers of cinema to become more responsible and sensitive to their art and aesthetics, with his intellectual acumen and razor-sharp criticism. He will continue to accompany the lovers of cinema forever. His three most important books 'The Great Movies' (In 3 Volumes), 'Awake In The Dark : The Best of Roger Elbert' and 'Life Itself : A Memoir' have taught the nuances of cinema as well as life, with illuminating insights and profound contemplation. A few hours before death, Roger wrote, 'So on this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. I'll see you at the movies!'. My heart is filled with an immense gratitude for you, Roger Ebert. Thank you, Roger. See you at the Cinema! 

~ Sathyu

Dibakar's Shanghai : Too Clever By Half!

Dibakar Banerjee's Shanghai

There are no saints anymore. Everyone has begun to succumb to the seductions of power, lust or greed for money. The contemporary Indian life has become a mélange of grey shades of morality. Who is without sin amongst us, to become the first, to throw a stone? None. The complicity is too deep. Seemingly so. Dibakar's latest movie Shanghai attempts to bring out this grave reality of 21st century India. With his earlier film Love Sex aur Dhoka, Dibakar Banerjee had set the bar high. In LSD, Dibakar could successfully blend creativity with intelligence and had been fairly successful in making the first Indian diegetic  movie, based on the precepts of the counter-cultural movement in Cinema, the Dogme-95. But his latest movie Shanghai does not appear to be as artistically convincing as LSD, though it is definitely an interesting take on the complex, post-modern reality of Indian life. 

Dibakar, along with co-writer Urmi Juvekar, have spun an Indianised story to create Shanghai, by adapting the Greek political novel Z written by Vassilis Vassilikos in 1967. The novel Z was subsequently immortalised into a cult French film by the same name, by the legendary Greek director Costa-Gavras in 1969. Roger Ebert, the first film critic to win a Pulitzer, had reviewed the movie Z thus : Z is a film of our time. It is about how even moral victories are corrupted. It will make you weep and will make you angry. It will tear your guts out... Costas-Gavras has told the story in a style that is almost unbearably exciting. Z is at the same a political cry of rage and a brilliant suspense thriller. It even ends in a chase : Not through the streets, but through a maze of facts, alibis and official corruption. Truly, Z was a fascinating as well as a disturbing film. It was my wonderful senior and a connoisseur of world cinema, Mr.S.P.Swain, who gave me its DVD and made me to watch it for the first time long ago at Bangalore. It is even more startling to note that Gavras was just 36 years of age when he had directed that masterpiece!

The story of Shanghai revolves around the debate upon the inevitable dilemmas of modernity : urbanisation and development. And how it shapes up into multiple hues of grey amidst the wily politicians, the career bureaucrats, the shady social activists and the subaltern underdogs. In the process, the moral fabric of everyone gets corrupted and compromised in some form or the other. The varied forms of duplicity and hypocrisy galore into each and every pore of all those who participate in the game - the beneficiaries as well as the deprived. From each according to his ability, to each according to his greed! No one is spared from getting possessed by the haunting ghosts of modernity. The tale of Shanghai is about the politics of development of a new Business Park in an imaginary Indian town. For which land has to be acquired from the locals comprising of the poor peasants, the slum dwellers and the land mafia who are being out-manoeuvred by the business, political and bureaucratic classes of India. An equally manipulative social activist enters to mediate the game and gets dramatically eliminated, thereby unfolding the contours and textures of the movie that follows.

Shanghai is the leitmotif of post-liberal fantasy of every CPM card-holder in India. As Shanghai is not only the largest city by population in the world, but also the showpiece of the booming economy of the People's Republic of China. A small fishing port at the mouth of the Yangtze river, it had slowly emerged over the centuries into the Paris of the East, predominantly as a result of the liberal reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping, who is considered to be the prime architect of the socialist market economy in China. The Shanghai Disney Resort Project which will be the biggest of all Disney projects in the world, is now under construction in the city of Shanghai with the sanction of the Chinese government and is expected to become functional by 2016. Environmental hazards, displacement of local fishing communities and emigration of natives out of Shanghai keep happening on an increased scale. One such illustrious emigrant of Shanghai is Wong Kar-Wai, whose splendid movie In The Mood For Love narrates the story of such a displaced Shanghainese community in Hong-Kong and the nostalgia for their lost city. No wonder that the irony behind the metaphor of Shanghai, has captivated Dibakar Banerjee, the Delhi-born and brought-up Bengali art-cum-ad-film-maker, who has incidentally made a cute commercial for Coca-Cola and some not-so-cute promos for Channel V and MTV.

Dibakar has reasonably well captured the specters of modernity in all its splendor and glory, its pathos and agony, its melodrama and melancholy. There are no value judgements passed, except the expression of cynicism and angst, with an overpowering sense of impotency and helplessness. The rage, though muted, has flown with incessant ease all through the movie. The taut screenplay and the powerful cinematography, along with the brilliant performances of almost all actors have made the movie shine with flashes of brilliance. Except that, the unfortunate role given to one of my most favourite lasses, next to Nandita Das and Kôngkôna Shen Shôrma, the eclectic  Kalki Koechlin, can only be described as tragic. But the movie Shanghai, which openly draws its inspiration from Z, ends up becoming a tad silly, in comparison to the masterpiece of Gavras which had come more than four decades ago. The narratives embedded in Dibakar's Shanghai fail to create the desired impact which it strives so hard for. The pastiche of meticulously crafted screenplay, visually powerful cinematography and perceptive performances of actors do not thread its way through. Instead it gets more and more desperate towards the end. Inspite of its too clever attempts to portray the darker and meaner shades of the urban underbelly of Indian democracy, it fails to get blended into a wonderfully woven work of cinema. Leave alone Z, it does not even reach the artistic heights which, Anusha Rizvi's Peepli (Live) or Abhinay Deo's Delhi Belly on one side, and Anurag Kashyap's Dev.D or Dibakar's very own LSD on the other, could achieve so seemlessly well. The film Shanghai lacks the vision and the beauty of a great work of artistic cinema. Don't get smug and rest upon you own laurels, dear Dibakar!

Movie Rating : 6 out of 10

Ra.One & 7-aam Arivu : Two Moronic Techno Monsters!

Ra.One (Hindi)

Shahrukh Khan : A desperado running amok?

After a series of flops, Shahrukh Khan wanted to resurrect his delusional King Khan image which is fast eroding in the highly competitive and creatively combative Bollywood movie-making industry. To settle scores with his falling stars, he initially tried a few directors and finally employed one to make this 3-D movie called as Ra.One, rhyming as Raavan. Shahrukh should have consulted Mani Ratnam to understand the curse behind the name. Unfortunately he didn't. We are therefore subjected to undergo the torture of sitting through the movie, wearing those smudgy stereoscopic glasses, as a form of divine retribution during Diwali by the ghosts of ten-headed Raavan. The film starts in the most boringly possible way ever made in the history of Hindi cinema. And it continues to carry on with the same pace and tedium till the very end. A remarkable three-dimensional feat in wasting technology. Ra-One, G-One, Lucifer, Kickass, HART, Akashi, Aiyo! and Aiyo!! These are not just terms or cliches from any of the kids' computer games. They sum up the entire script and screenplay of the film. During some of the song and dance sequences, one gets to watch the titillating gyrations of Kareena Kapoor with the 3-D effect! That remains the only solace, insufficient though! The entire hyped-up attempt of Shahrukh Khan to create an Indian science fiction superhero film ends up as a creative disaster. Tragic.


Movie Rating : 2 out of 10     

7-aam Arivu (Tamil)

Murugadoss : A mimicry artist aping to become a director!

The Tamil film industry has become creatively challenged ever since the advent of film-makers like S.A.Chandrasekhar's protege Shanmugam Shankar, Balu Mahendra's favourite disciple Bala Palanisamy and S.J.Suryah's assistant Arunsalam Murugadoss. They, along with their cohorts, have collectively set a trend where loud-mouthed propaganda and intellectual mediocrity gets renowned as works of great cinematic endeavour while successfully churning out third-rated trash. Mere technical finesse by coupling brilliant cinematography with a good soundtrack would not make up for good cinema. Which oddly seems to be the case with these crop of younger directors. The latest in the offing from this bunch is 7-aam Arivu by Murugadoss. The first episode of the film begins with a chauvinistically biased portrayal of the story of Bodhidharma, who was a descendant of a Pallava king from Kanchipuram. The historical fact that he was also called as The Blue-Eyed Barbarian in many of the Chinsese texts and the controversies sorrounding his biographial accounts get conveniently buried in the Tamil linguistic zealotry generated in the movie. This part of the film ends with interviews  of many contemporary road-side Tamilians who express their naive ignorance on the subject matter, upon which the director warms up to profoundly explore during the remaining part of the film, the storyline of which is set in present-day Chennai. The hero of the film, who works in a circus, happens to be the descendant of the historical Bodhidharma. The heroine, who is a PhD scholar doing research in genetic enginering, happens to discover the missing link. Her mission : to perform the task of genetic re-engineering on the DNA chain of the hero so that the lost valour, the immense medical knowledge and the vast technological wizardry, which remain hidden in the legendary gentic code of Tamil chromosomes, are rediscovered for the utmost benefit of mankind. To this effect, the heroine delivers an inspiring lecture, interspersed with a few choicest Tamil abuses, which gets unfortunately censored preventing the Delhi Belly effect! Employing his noku-varma technique of marital art, the Chinese villain keeps staring at the camera, thereby looking at the director first and the audience next, benumbing the drained sensibilities and left-over intelligence, to sail through the film. Here, the villain gets transformed into a comedian, which is a staple diet of every Tamil cinema. But such an inventive transformation, no doubt, can be made possible only by a Tamil gene! The grand finale of the film is yet another gutturally repulsive speech delivered by the hero on the greatness of Tamil history, Tamil anthropology, Tamil sociology, Tamil polity, Tamil economy, Tamil geography, Tamil mathematics, Tamil astronomy, Tamil science, etc., etc., the subjects which the director Murugadoss had struggled hard to pass through during his school days! The saving grace of the film are the stellar performance of Surya, the tantalising cinematography of Ravi K Chandran and the enjoyable soundtrack by Harris Jayaraj. Shruti is too plastic in her expressions and too trite for her role. Hope she follows the footsteps of her national award winning Marathi mother rather than falling into the claptrap of her Tamil father. Long live the Tamil chromosomes of the Tamil director so that it can wreck more such Tamil havoc upon the Tamil cinematic future!

Movie Rating : 3 out of 10

Paris, My Love : Faubourg Saint-Denis ~ Tom Tykwer

Our relationships are as shallow as our lives. We do not know how to relate with one's own self. As a consequence of it, we just grope in the dark when it comes to relating with any Other. We live a life of conveniences and compromises. As long as it does not disturb the fundamental axis of our negotiated spaces, the show goes on. Pretty well, that too. We contrive stories to suit the nefaroius designs of our mind. And couch them in endearing terms and ennobling references. With the cunning of reason, we concoct extremely clever narratives on love and care, on responsibilities and duties, on give and take. In actuality, we only create a make-believe world where everything is faked and feigned. Behind every facade of courtship, there is a secret bargain hidden underneath. Which is tragic. But grossly real. The irreconcilable contradictions both from within and outside creates a fractured self which is drenched in inexplicable anguish and miserable loneliness, against the backdrop of the deafening silence of the universe.


Do all intimate relationships undergo crises of sorts and keep on floundering? Why should the bubble finally burst into pieces and plunge into nothingness? How many intimate relationships continue to flourish weathering the rough storms? Is it humanly possible to withstand the travails and turbulences of any relationship and still continue to be in love? One of the most profound chapters on love is in J.Krishnamurti's Freedom From The Known. ( http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/freedom-from-the-known/1968-00-00-jiddu-krishnamurti-freedom-from-the-known-chapter-10 ). But apart from getting insights into the psychological understanding of one's own self and the intricate mechanisms of the mind, which might be possible on a serious reading of J.Krishnamurti and Erich Fromm, it is also imperative for a spiritual quest in order to comprehend the meaning of living and loving. Else, we would have to continue to wallow in the deceitful and treacherous manoeuvres of the human mind and carry on with the vanity of the self into an eternally perpetuating void.    

Paris, Je t'aime (Paris, My Love) is a collage of 18 short-films directed by 22 different directors of various nationalities on the city of Paris which they all love. Each short film is about 5 to 7 minutes of duration with a remarkable story-telling on various facets of Paris with the multiple meanings in the lives of its human beings. Emmanuel Benbihy, who is mainly behind its production in 2006, had also produced a similar movie of short-films on the city of New York entitled New York, I Love You in 2009. In New York, I Love You, except Fatih Akin's short-film on the life and muse of a painter, the rest of them were a damp squib. May be because, the nature of New York city itself did not inspire the artists as much as Paris did and continues to do. I do not know. Paris, Je t'aime is a collection of short-films containing many delightful vignettes on the denizens of Paris and the splices of their broken contemporary lives. Though I have many other personal favourites in this collection on Paris, Faubourg Saint-Denis by Tom Tykwer stands out as a unique testament on love from the rest.

The story of the short-film by the German director Tom Tykwer gets unfolded in the neighbourhood of Faubourg Saint-Denis, which is an urban district in the city of Paris. Francine (the enigmatically beautiful Natalie Portman) who is an aspiring actress, telephones to her blind boyfriend Thomas (Melchior Beslon) and tells  him that their relationship is over. Thereafter, the director delves us into a series of flashbacks, as the nostalgic images of their shared memories dazzle through the mind's eye of Thomas starting from their first encounter. Thomas recollects their wonderfully joyous relationship filled with passion and turbulence. The sudden phone call from his lover makes him reminisce about their torrid past. While he is sieves through the  weft and warp of his love life, we too travel down the memory lanes and by-lanes. The short-film ends with another phone call from Francine, when he comprehends the intensity of how much he misses her and finally how the blind lover even starts seeing her. When Tom Tykwer felt creatively exhausted and personally adrift after his real life break-up with his lover Franka Potente, he created this moving portrait on love.  

_____________________________________

Faubourg Saint-Denis ~ Tom Tykwer :


- "Yes?"

- "Thomas, listen!"

- "Francine?"

- "Listen!

There are times when life calls out for a change. A transition. Like the seasons. Our spring was wonderful, but summer is over now and we missed out on autumn. And now all of a sudden, it's cold, so cold that everything is freezing over. Our love fell asleep, and the snow took it by surprise. But if you fall asleep in the snow, you don't feel death coming. Take care."

- "Francine... I remember it exactly

It was the 15th of May

Spring was late to arrive and rain clouds were gathering

And you were screaming ~

Francine: "Let me out. Please! Bruno? Bruno you bastard! Bruno, i'm dying here! Please Bruno! Bruno Please! I can't take it anymore!"

Thomas: Hello!


Francine: "Why can't anybody hear me!"


Thomas: I hear you! Who is Bruno?


Francine: I'm rehearsing, can't you see?


Thomas: Umm no, sorry.


Francine: No, no, i'm sorry.


Thomas: You are an actress?


Francine: Trying to be... I've and audition today


Thomas: At the conservatoire?


Francine: Yeah.


Thomas: What kind of scene was that?

Francine: It's... it's from this pretty bad movie i was in once. It's my only one so far but... i'm this prostitute who gets beaten and raped by her pimp and then he locks her in this dark cell all day long and she goes nuts, but at the end they still get married.

Thomas: A pimp and a prostitute?


Francine: (Sounds a bell) Shit! it's ten?


Thomas: So?


Francine: I have to be there at ten.


Thomas: I know a shortcut, come on!


Francine: Wait! Wait!


Thomas: This way.


Francine: Are you sure?


Thomas: Straight!


Francine: That was fast. Thanks!


Thomas: Good Luck!


And of course you were accepted

You left Boston and moved to live in Paris

A small apartment on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis

I showed you our neighbourhood, my bars, my school

I introduced you to my friends, my parents

I listened to you as you learned your lines

I listened to your singing, to your hopes, your desires

I listened to your music

And you listened to mine

You listened to my Italian, my German, my bits of Russian

I gave you a walkman and you gave me a pillow

And then one day, you kissed me

Time passed, time raced

And everything seemed so easy, so simple, free

So new and unique

We went to the movies

We went dancing, shopping

We laughed, you cried

We swam, we smoked, we shaved

From time to time you screamed, without reason

Sometimes with reason

Yes, sometimes with reason

I walked you to the Conservatory

I studied for my exams

I listened to your singing, to your hopes, your desires

I listened to your music

And you listened to mine

We were close, so close, ever closer

We went to the movies, we went swimming

We laughed together, you screamed

Sometimes with reason, and sometimes without

Time passed, time raced

I walked you to the Conservatory

I studied for my exams

You listened as I spoke Italian, German, Russian, French

I studied for my exams

You screamed, sometimes with reason

Time passed without reason

You screamed without reason

I studied for my exams

My exams, my exams, my exams

Time passed

You screamed, you screamed, you screamed

And then

I went to the movies

Alone

Forgive me, Francine!"

Thomas: Yes?

Francine: Hey what happened? You're gone all of a sudden. You hung up? Was it that bad? Thomas, are you still mad about yesterday?

Thomas: No...

Francine: Tell me, was it believable?... I see, shit! It doesn't work like that huh? How are you supposed to say: "our spring was wonderful; but summer's over" without sounding completely melodramatic? Ughh Whatever! The director loved it, so i have to find a way. Thomas, are you listening to me?

Thomas: No, I see you..

APRICOT : Do You Remember Your First Love?

Do you remember your first love?

Do you ..

Well. I think, I do.

The opening paragraph of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's splendidly beautiful novel Love In The Time Of Cholera starts like this ~

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.

The aroma of not-so-ripened guavas always remind me of my fancy for love during my adolescence. It was a time when fairy tales were real, when innocence ruled the heart and when the clear blue sky blessed you with its beatific smile. My first puppy love was a Teacher in the primary. I was in my fifth grade then. My maiden angel descended from heaven and smiled at me. She had just joined the school. She might have completed her college then and would have been appointed by the strict headmaster to teach the kindergarden. Wearing those playful strands of white jasmine flowers on her long plait, she was spreading an ebullient mirth in the air which was fragrant all around her. She had that mesmeric wheatish complexion, which overwhelmd my infatuation. Calf love can have no bounds for its illusions. I was too sure that she took a liking to me. For there was a glow in her face whenever she glimpsed at me. I believed that her eyes became more expressive and her smile more enlivening at my very sight. All I needed was just an affirmation of my love. During those days, as were their wont, my Gods kept on conspiring against me. Until one day, they finally relented.

It was a fine morning. One such morning when you are happy enough to be born on this Earth. And feel elated for having been gifted with those eyes, which can observe the sun gleaming on the dew drop atop a blade of grass. Morning prayer was routinely going on in the school ground. Standing in their respective queues of classes, with eyes closed, everyone was parroting those lines uttered in feigned solemnity. It was the first and the last time when I had ever prayed at school. That if I open my eyes and look at the Teacher, she should do the same. My heart was pounding and my eyes were hesitantly twitching to open. I gathered my wits and slowly unlocked my eyelids. And looked at her. My Gods answered the call by opening the gates of heaven. She had not only looked at me, but also gave that soulful smile. It was an eternal glimpse that would remain etched in my memory. My first love was thus validated in heaven. But like some of those sad fairy tales, this too ended abruptly. Before any further progress, she stopped coming to school. There was a talk in the school that she was going to get married. Her moronic parents had arranged a dimwit groom and cursed my love into oblivion. My flight of fancy overcame its dismay by consoling itself that afterall it was an arranged marriage forced upon her. For I did not have any iota of doubt that if at all she was given the choice of her love, she would have definitely chosen me!

Apricot is an independant short film directed by Ben Briand. In a short span of about ten minutes, this film transports the viewer into a nostalgic trip of one's personal universe. A chance encounter with a stranger occurs for a girl with a guy. They sit and talk over coffee in a hotel. He feels intuitively connected to her. And wants to know more of her. He probes her about her first love. She prompts him back to tell about his, for which he says he was not able to remember. However, she asks him to recollect and narrate when his turn comes and goes down in her memory lane. A poetic flashback with a reverberating soundtrack follows. The conversation gets a little more personal and a rich tapestry of human emotions get woven to evolve into a relationship between them. This wonderful short film has a fabulous story telling style with the hand-held camera capturing all the myriad hues and colours expressed by  two human faces. Apricot is an amazing work of cinematic art made in the genre of short films, which is an interesting domain of experimentation for those who do not want to get compromised with the commercial compulsions of mainstream feature film oriented cinema. The artistic beauty of Apricot lies in the way in which it captures not only how the human mind recreates its past memory but also how it encounters the present much more mysteriously.

Last Tango In Paris : Bernardo Bertolucci

Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango In Paris is a disturbing masterpiece which keeps visiting my mind during various occasions of living. Described as pornographic and obscene, this controversial film was banned in many countries. The film revolves around two characters Paul (Marlon Brando) and Jeanne (Maria Schneider). It is about experimenting with an anonymous relationship, a blind date, an one night stand, which turns into a torrid passion for both involved. In the process, the myriad colours of human love explode with all its highs and lows, its ecstasies and agonies. In this particular sequence, the fluidity of love gets depicted with an irreverential tone and tenor, apart from mocking at the hypocritical conventions of social life. It is one of the most poignant moments in the history of narrative cinema.

Priceless (French) : A Beautiful Journey In Romance

~ Stills of the French Actress Audrey Tautou ~

It has been a long time since I had a lazy weekend. Without travelling. Without reading. Without any binges or consequent hang-overs. It is indeed fabulous to sleep on and on. To escape the tyranny of the clock has been one of the cherished longings of my life. And I could indulge in such luxuries only once in a while. It certainly helps. To reinvigorate and rescue some sanity from the maddening life. I slumbered this Sunday away and woke up in the middle of a beautiful dream which am not able to recollect. It must have been beautiful for I woke up with a smile inside the quilt. It was dark and the sound of the rains falling from the skies embraced me with a warm welcome, held my hands and took me to the real from the ethereal. Both being unusually tantalising. Like Charles Baudelaire, I was tempted to ask the wind and the wave, ask the star, the bird, or the clock, ask everything that flies, everything that moans, everything that flows, everything that sings, everything that speaks, ask them, what time it is! And the wind, the wave, the star, the bird and the clock will all reply: “It is Time to get drunk! If you are not to be the martyred slaves of Time, be perpetually drunk! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please.” When I saw the time with a vengeance, it was half-past One in the afternoon. A Cheshire Cat smile adorned my mischievous face, for I felt like having vanquished the wicked tickling time!

The idiot box has resurrected itself with some intelligence after the arrival of two interesting channels : NDTV Lumiere and UTV World Movies. Thanks to the marketing brilliance of Prannoy Roy and Ronnie Screwvala, we get to see some amazing movies from the world cinema. It is a real leap from those good old Doordarshan days when we used to watch the regional Indian movies on Sunday afternoons after the news for the hearing impaired and some world movies on late Friday nights after a long wait. With the advent of the DVDs, this niche market is becoming more sophisticated with the demand and supply chain veering towards a reasonable equilibrium. These days, you can acquire a Fritz Lang or a Jacques Tati, a Wim Wenders or a Fatih Akin with so much ease. This was unimaginable until a few years ago. Hope it should not take much time to get a Pier Paolo Pasolini or a Sergei Parajnov from a Landmark shop, rather than depending upon torrentz downloads and the subsequent sub-titling labour involved in the process. During the last few months, both the Tamil and Hindi film industry have started churning out muck after muck. The latest ones being Mani Ratnam's Raavan and Punit Malhotra's I Hate Luv Stories. With the kind of reviews both had got, I chose to stay indoors and enjoy the rains instead of getting into a masochistic exercise of watching some trash. Surprisingly, during such times, the rain god blesses you doubly well. That is how I got to watch the French movie Priceless on NDTV Lumiere this Sunday.


Jean works as a bartender in a hotel and pretends to be a rich man. He woos Irene, whose sole aim is to enjoy all the riches of life and make it big. She loves to be solicited by the rich and the lonely lot, by trading her seductive company. After a romantic rendezvous with Jean, Irene discovers the real net worth of Jean and dumps him. The forlorn Jean pursues Irene with a few encounters which end up becoming comic rather than striking any warm note in the heart of Irene. Jean becomes a gigolo and gets picked up by a wealthy widow. The wealthy old lady pampers Jean to satisfy her whims and fancies arising out of her need to care and to be taken care of. Jean starts leading his dream-come-true lifestyle, which is otherwise unaffordable. Meanwhile, Irene becomes an escort of a rich patron whose is again lonely and lost in the material world. Both the weird pairs come to stay at the same luxurious hotel. This paves way for Jean to meet Irene on the sly. Irene teaches Jean the art of digging more money and favours from his client. The trick works for a while but gets discovered by the smarter old lady who is a past master in the game. The old lady ends up by merely warning Jean not to act coy henceforth, as she finds herself entangled in her emotions towards Jean. Gradually, Irene and Jean start missing each other amidst their swanky and opulent lives which they have started indulging themselves. During the middle of a night, when their respective clients are fast asleep, both Irene and Jean escape to the sea shore in the vicinity, have champagne and start feeling an overwhelming intimacy towards each other. They wake up at the dawn and without expressing a word to each other, return to the hotel. I leave the rest of the story to be relished by watching the movie only.


What enchanted me the most in the movie is the way the characters are portrayed. The opulence of the rich is not portrayed as villainous and ugly. And the longing for the riches by the under-privileged is not run down over with any moral sermoninising. Both have their own charms and their own truths. Every character is handled with an empathy and a genuineness worthy of itself. Though the movie ends in a happy note with the triumph of true love over money, it has been nuanced with all the richness of the wealthy. A very interesting facet of the movie is that though both the lovers might be sleeping with their respective clients as a professional hazard, they don't moralise about it at all and their love for each other grows more and more passionate. The director has accomplished this with such ease and finesee that one may not find it incongruous in anyway! That is no ordinary feat by the brilliant director Pierre Salvadori. And the real discovery for me is Audrey Tautou. She is a wonder of a human being, encapsulating all the myriad expressions moulded into a single beautiful face. The most memorable character in this movie Priceless is Irene, which has been performed remarkably well by Audrey Tautou. Am yet to watch any of her other famous movies like Amelie, The Da Vinci Code or Coco Avant Chanel, to name a few. Hope to watch them soon.

Simple but endearing romantic movies like this are a delight to watch. Especially when it rains!


Movie Rating : 8 out of 10

The Japanese Wife : A Lyrical Epic On Celluloid, Almost!

Model Aparna Sen : Photographed by Brian Brake in 1961
Actor Aparna Sen : In one of her early Films Activist Aparna Sen : With Medha Patkar & Mahasweta Devi at Nandigram Director Aparna Sen : Flanked by Raima Sen & Moushumi Chatterjee

Dear Aparna,

Writing a letter to you is like writing to a family member, whom i've never met or talked to. It is like writing to a distant cousin, the daughter of my mythical uncle, about whom i have only heard a lot from the folklores of my village. While growing up in a village and shepherding the flock, one gets to listen to the heroic stories of an illustrious uncle who dared to leave the countryside in search of a far away land long ago. And who has later made quite a mark for himself by pursuing his passions. Though he might never return to the village, we keep talking about him and his great feats in life. And not just that. When this uncle of ours happens to have a beautiful and intelligent daughter like you, won't our adoration magnify in multitudes? So everytime you turn a new leaf in your life, it adds to the repertoire of our folklore. It has now become almost an obsession, more so, after our beloved uncle's cute, little, sweetie-pie, grand-daughter has started to endear all our hearts to no end.

I grew up reading your father Chindananda Dasgupta's brilliantly written critiques on Indian cinema in the Sunday Express Magazine of the good old Indian Express duing the mid-1980s. It was an altogether different Indian Express when the Gail Wynard of India, Ramnath Goenka, was alive. When Arun Shourie was a worthy journo before metamorphosising into a careerist politician. You won't beleive it, but am still preserving some of those newspaper clippings of your father's articles since my school days. I vividly recollect one of those articles entitled Sculpting In Time, reviewing the book and cinematic works of Andrei Tarkovsky, about whom I am yet to fully comprehend! The contribution of your father Chidananda Dasgupta to the creative spurt in Indian cinema by founding the Federation of Film Societies of India in order to introduce World Cinema to every nook and corner of the country is immense. The two fastidious film critiques who shaped the taste of moviebuffs and whose impact can be felt for decades are your father Chindananda Dasgupta and Iqbal Masud. Indian cinema owes a lot to both of them for eternity.

Your accomplished acting skills in Satyajit Ray's Teen Kanya and Mrinal Sen's Ek Din Achanak were alone seen by me. What a remarkable transition in a span of three decades! You had performed remarkably well in both the films. I became an ardent admirer of yours after watching your maiden directorial venture, 36 Chowringhee Lane. I could not get to see your Paroma, Sati, Yugant and Paromitar Ek Din. Out of these four, I am very eager to watch Paroma and Paromitar Ek Din, which are being critically acclaimed. Your 15 Park Avenue is an interesting attempt. But the most lovely one which you have directed next to 36 Chowringhee Lane is Mr. & Mrs. Iyer. It is an amazingly subtle film on the mutual care and affection between two human beings, against the communal backdrop of Hindus and Muslims in post-Independant India. I feel like watching it again and again.

Now let me recapitulate the latest film directed by you, The Japanese Wife.

The protagonist Snehamoy lives with his widowed aunt, after losing both his parents, in an idyllic house at the banks of river Matla in the Sunderbans. Seeing the address from the pen-pals' club in a magazine, Snehamoy writes to a Japanese girl named Miyage while completing his graduation. They become close pen-pals. And start exchanging hundreds of letters, pouring out their hearts, in Bengali and Japanese accented English respectively. Snehamoy joins as a school teacher in the village. Their relationship grows compatibe through the exchange of poetic letters, photographs and small gifts. They keep writing to each other whatever they feel and want to share - from the very ordinary to the most intimate. After many years of such devoted correspondence, Miyage proposes to marry him. Snehamoy broods over it for almost a month and writes back to her accepting the proposal. She sends him a silver ring with her name engraved on it and he sends her a pair of conch-shell bangles and vermillion powder to wear at the parting of the hair. They thus get symbolically married, without meeting each other, even once.

Snehamoy's aunt initially brings home Sandhya as a prospective bride. But Snehamoy is steadfast in his commitment to Miyage, which gradually gains the acceptance of his aunt. Sandhya gets married elsewhere and after a few years, she returns as a widow with a small son Paltu, coming to live with Snehamoy's aunt in the same house, as she is also her God-Mother. The silent Sandhya brings a new rhythm in the life of Snehamoy. His disheveled room in the upstairs gets tidied up and Sandhya's son Paltu becomes fondly attached to him. Paltu discovers the colourful kites sent by Miyage to Snehamoy and Sandhya beats up the boy for opening the gift box in the absence of Snehamoy. Together, Snehamoy and Paltu organise a delightful kite festival in the village. The hesitant Sandhya starts feeling that she is a burden to Snehamoy. She expresses it, while they get back together in the boat, after buying provisions for Paltu's thread-ceremony. Snehamoy chooses to remain silent. This nonchalance evokes muffled whimpers from Sandhya during the very same night. Snehamoy goes to sit near her and gently strokes her head, which lean towards him with a consummate yearning for solace. In a trice, she gathers herself and vanishes into her room. A ruffled Snehamoy loyally reports this incident to his wife Miyage and testifies his fidelity for her.

Upto this first half of your movie, you have woven the colourful threads of myriad human emotions delightfully well. After the intermission, your movie starts to falter so clumsily, much akin to the inability to hold the telephone receiver by Snehamoy, while attempting that long distance call to Migaye. It is not just the telephone line which gets cut abruptly. But it is actually your screenplay which plonks there. I've not read the story by Kunal Basu. But the screenplay adaptation by you flounders in the second half. The manner in which Snehamoy starts running from pillar to post in search of an elixir to cure Migaye's malignancy from divergent systems of medicine and the hackneyed sense of Indian windowhood as epitomised by the triad at the end of the movie are grossly affected. Not to say about the redundant contextualisation of time through a discussion about fax and internet with a PCO operator and the television images getting beamed in the saloon and the clinic. They are too trite. Poor Snehamoy is forced to keep his conjugal vows by masturbating in a parked boat so as to rest on his oars till he breathes his last. Thou shalt not spell out such a feminist retribution, Aparna!

In spite of these essentially script-oriented flaws, you have chiselled out on celluloid the lost innocence of an era in all its pristine glory and grace. An era when people intensely communicated through letters and anxiously waited for the bell of the postman's bicycle. The theme of your film somehow reminds me of Michael Radford's Italian epic movie Il Postino based on a fictional account in the life of Pablo Neruda. Your film would remind the upcoming generation that human beings can actually be good, simple and true. Without enrolling into any of the spiritual superbazars or indulging in any mental gymnastics. Just be naturally and spontaneously caring. Our contemporary life has made these fundamental attributes a rarity. In such testing times, your movie The Japanese Wife would stand as a testimony on humanism. The cinematography, music and casting are splendid. Your artistic finesse to make the river, the boat, the bicylcle, the umbrella and the cat speak their own languages is marvellous. The refusal to take money by the cart-puller, who drops the Japanese Wife at home, touchingly captures the instinctive goodness of the village folk. The background score resonating the calls of various birds of Sunderbans, including that of Aakkaatti, enriches the authenticity of cinematic experience. Yet another interesting beauty of your movie is that, never once in any of these passionate letters, the much maligned phrase I Love You, is explicitly expressed. Your movie is a nostalgic tribute to the art of letter-writing and to the fast waning simplicity and innocence of human relationships.

Thank you for being what you are.

Hope to get much more from you in future.

With Warm Regards,

Sathyu

Movie Rating : 9 out of 10

Angadi Theru (Tamil Movie) : A Non-Stop Torture

If your planetary position is not good, it screws up your Sunday. Not just badly. But miserably. I should have quietly gone to watch Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor which was screened today morning by the Enlighten Film Society. There would not have been any second thoughts if Bertolucci's Last Tango In Paris or The Sheltering Sky or even Stealing Beauty were screened. I can watch all these three masterpieces of Bertolucci endlessly. Since I had already seen The Last Emperor more than twice earlier, I was reluctant to go, as there is not much to relish over and again in it, apart from the cinematographic finesse of Vittorio Storaro. Last evening, Mani, my new literary friend in Mumbai, told me about the release of a Tamil movie Angadi Theru by one of the upcoming and promising director Vasantabalan. Since it is being screened in a cinema hall nearby, my misfortune seduced me to watch it. And to undergo a non-stop torture for more than two and half hours. I could not exercise the choice of walking out of the hall due to various reasons and therefore I have to purge it out my system by writing this review. At the outset, let me caution you to not to read it any further and undergo the same suffering!

The plot of the film has two gruesome accidents as its turning points. The first accident happens at an unmanned railway cross resulting in a train crushing to death the hero's father along with a dozen of others travelling by a vehicle. The second accident happens in the city of Chennai where an over-speeding lorry crushes to death another set of more than two dozen pavement dwellers who were sleeping on the roadside in the night. In between the first and second accidents, the poor hero gets more than two hundred and fifty slaps from the manager of a super market continuously for more than 10 reels of film print. After the second accident, both the legs of the heroine gets mutilated. The hero finally marries the heroine and the films ends much to the relief of less than a dozen of unfortunate victims sitting as audience inside the hall.

There is a crippling psychological complex afflicting some of the upcoming directors like Bala, Ameer and Vasantabalan and upcoming writers like Jeyamohan and Ramakrishnan and agit-pop essayists like Charu Nivedita in Tamil society. It is called as megalomania. It is nothing but a mirror-image of the Dravidian cultural iconography getting reflected on the other side of the spectrum. These creative persons are reasonably young and energetic, promising and talented. Unfortunately, they have started falling into the self-delusional traps of grandeur and have started believing that they have grown beyond criticism. By touching a hilltop hither and thither, they have begun to assume that they have already scaled the greatest of all mountain peaks. The domain of cultural and literary criticism in Tamil Nadu is left with a harrowing void, where there is none to point out that the Emperor has no clothes. In such a philistine scenario, the prevailing theme seems to be you scratch my back and I scratch yours. As a result, one cannot expect the second movie of a young director like Vasantabalan to be creatively more mature than his maiden venture. It is also unfortunate to mention that the dialogues for this film penned by Jeyamohan, for whom I have my greatest personal love and regard, has nothing worth mentioning either. How can one prevent the recurrence of such tragedies in Tamil cultural space?

Movie Rating : 1 out of 10

Note : But for the 0.5 score for the female lead actor Anjali who shows flashes of brilliance and 0.5 score for one beautiful song (Aval Appadi Ondrum Azhagillai) cinematographed beautifully, the rating of the movie ought to be 0 out of 10.