daisies. ajab prem ki gazab kahani. of time and the city. neelkanth nirala. sharira
terrific in its irreverent frivolity, ‘daisies’ was a blast. two girls decide to go ‘bad’ and dump hopeful elderly men as lovers, gaily destroy a well laid out feast and generally run around doing naughty things to the ‘establishment’. when it was made, it was a critique of the soviet iron hand over czechslovakia. today it rails against ‘the man’ using surrealist imagery and mad cap pop humour.
‘ajab prem ki gazab kahani’ is only redeemed by the prettiness of ranbir kapoor and the easy going nonchalance of katrina kaif. they salvage the nonsense around them that makes character speak loud and shrill when they have to be funny and a plot that no one bothers to make sense of.
liverpool is the stage of a coming of age documentary drama in ‘of time and the city’. using mostly found footage and gorgeous soundtrack and a reminiscing voiceover terence davies tells its story and his. he longs for the past like all of us watching cities transform into beings we no longer know. t is unashamedly sentimental and lovely to watch- but nowhere as brilliant a journey as guy maddin’s similar bittersweet paean to his hometown ‘ my winnipeg’.
after a week since seeing ‘neelkanth nirala’ on stage i am still ambivalent about it. at one level the same anxiety of loss – this time of language- as a classical form- i understand. after all don’t i also dramatically rue the complete illiteracy of coming generations. i could not wholeheartedly participate in this grieving for the loss of what has after all become the national language; nor could i get incensed by its reactionary tone (the devoted wife/ daughter)- given my own anger at similar posturing by the mns- but this time for marathi. the trope of suffering artist turning away from worldly fame and fortune has been seen before too many times and this play did not add much beyond. perhaps the theater as a space flattened the characters even more- but then there was the language itself. the cadences and rhythms, the over reaching metaphors whose ambitions and registers we are to embarrassed to speak in. the language was beautiful.
so stylized and precise it left me cold- ‘sharira’ where dancers from kalakshetra danced to live music by the gundecha brothers at the ncpa. fantastically mounted, the bodies of the dancers stood still and moved slowly through incredible postures in excruciating slow motion. the eroticism only exploded once in a while when their humanity- impatience, irreverence, anger- were allowed to break through the stone like perfection of the movements. the music filling the room was beautiful.
new phone photos / The Man's Woman and Other Stories. eccentricities of a blonde girl . gigante
informal cities
shop at cpaa
mami 2009 amit dutta's new film 'The Man's Woman and Other Stories. was, like 'gandha', structured around three short stories. the stories though were much better than the ones in 'gandha' and the film making also way more ambitious. self consciously formal and carefully constructed, the highly stylised film made profundity of every single moment with super wide angle shots, slow pans and tracking shots and sudden cuts, until everything was weighed down by a gravitas that made you feel like there was more that was beyond your own meager understanding. 'eccentricities of a blonde girl' by manoel de olivera made nothing out of another short story about a love affair between a girl in a balcony and the accountant who stares at her from across the street. tedious. i am a little tired of these low budget love stories that are steeped in the everyday lives of marginal characters. in 'gigante' the love affair is between a shy, huge security guard and a clean woman in a mall. he falls in love with her over a surveillance camera and stalks her until they finally meet at the end on a beach.
informal cities. gandha. soundtrack for a revolution. genoa.la pivellina. the girlfriend experience . bank robbery
on saturday with photographs and videos that ranged from the rooftop shanties in hong kong to a housing colony below a bridge in manila discussion at the ‘informal cities’ revolved around the role and responsibility of the artists as ‘voice for the oppressed’. often, as it was destined to be, aesthetic questions kept jostling for space against the sloganeering.
at mami on sunday we started off with ‘gandha’ a marathi film with three episodes about the sense of smell. while the first was charmingly over the top when a typist in a college falls in love with the smell of agarbattis from a student, milind soman and sonali kulkarni in the second episode where he is hiv positive and smells of medicines was too soap opera for me. in the third episode neena kulkarni sits aside in ‘that time of the month’ and listens and smells the birth of a child in a house in rural maharashtra.
speaking of the sanctity of good intentions standing in for any aesthetic ambition; ‘soundtrack for a revolution’ intercut history channel footage about the civil rights movement with the ‘we shall overcome’ style chants of the protestors. in between these talking heads gave us struggle stories that we have heard too many times before and contemporary r&b singers like wyclef jean, the roots and joss stone sang updated versions of the songs. not nice in spite of the incredible voices.
in michael winterbottom’s ‘genoa’ way finding in the labyrinth of the medieval italian city becomes an allegory for the process of healing after the death of a family member. two lovely girls and their father played by colin firth spend a summer in the city of narrow lanes between tall buildings where every street looks the same.
the gritty realism of many new european films i am seeing nowadays focuses on the lives of the those living on the edge of the mainstream. in ‘la pivellana’s case it is a group of circus performers living in mobile homes surrounded by animals. shot in that grainy hand-held way that all these films are, the plot concerns a little girl abandoned by her mother who is found by a family and raised for a few months. everyone in the film is invariably and tryingly sweet and caring despite the relentlessly bleak surroundings.
yesterday we saw two films, starting off with steven soderberg’s terrific ‘ the girlfriend experience’. unclassifiable in any genre- somewhere between reality television and fiction (as if there is such a difference) the film follows a high end escort in new york as she navigates her life between her live in boyfriend, her many clients and her image as projected on the internet.
after a few drinks are ‘firangi paani’ the estonian film ‘blank robbery’ looked really tacky. grainy as hell, the story did not make watching the film any easier. some conman comes out of jail and fails at trying to come clean when his nephew forces him to rob a bank with him.
new phone / dogtooth . rage . my blueberry nights . ratatouille
i was so complete idiot yesterday when i left my phone alone for merely a second while i opened the car for the guy to change the tires. in that millisecond it was gone and i was forced to carry out ridiculous body searches on the guy who had just passed by. i was so embarrassed. that effectively meant that i had to get me a new phone and i got one with a better camera but way slower in response. oh well, live and learn.
meanwhile the film watching just got more intense with the main festival that started today- and we are already two films down. sally potter’s ‘rage’ purports to be a story shot on a cell phone backstage of a fashion show. fashion models (including a deliciously camp jude law), designers, businessmen, cops and all sorts of fixers speak against a blue (or pink/orange/red) screen to the camera over seven days while accidents and murders occur on the ramp. it must have been the acting that redeemed the film because i really liked it – in spite of its pretensions and the fashion industry expose storyline and characters. but ‘dogtooth’ took the claustrophobia of domesticity and made it horrifying- but never unbelievable and always with a nasty sense of humour. two girls and a boy are kept captive in an ideal house- swimming pool and sundeck- by their parents. complicated plots are woven to make prisons inside the prison- rituals of celebration and rewards, competitions and games. only one outsider is allowed to enter to satisfy the sexual urges of the boy. it would be unwatchable if it was not so brilliantly funny in parts and shockingly dark in others- like the killing of the cat, or the scene where the elder girl finally gets a name ‘bruce’ by watching jaws, or the removal of the dogtooth by the dumbbell.
without christopher doyle wong kar wai has gone crazy with darius khondji over ‘my blueberry nights’. the scenes in the bar where the two would be loers meet shimmer in glazing and mirror- hazy dizzying madness. as norah jones journeys across the country to find herself after a break up- it merely gets more visually gorgeous and utterly pointless. all style going nowhere.
ratatouille made me hungry. a rat cooks up french cuisine in a fancy restaurant in paris. my favorite scene was the rat rising from the sewers of paris climbing the pipes of an apartment building watching murderers and lovers until he gets to the roof and looks across at the eiffel tower. it reminded me of my favorite of the paintings that ranz, sau and pottu had made- ‘the boy in the balcony’.
got back from the third year study trip yesterday. pen. just across the harbor from the city. not that far, just off the mumbai-goa highway and the scene of some of the most atrocious land grabs by india shining. between the highway and the coastline is a land of incredible fertility. flat rich soil that has been reclaimed form the sea by the ancestors of the agri community. this is a fact that is reiterated by almost everyone we met over the two days that i was there. they are very proud of this part of their history as they are about the agitation for land that they carried out in the 1930’s for land reform, by not tilling the land for 7 years straight. they won that war; and now they hope ot win this one. on the road to the coast that runs through paddy fields as far as the eye can sea we saw a board that advertises ‘arrow city/ manhattan’ which i assume is aprt of the sez being planned for that area by reliance – maha mumbai. the war is against this- and it seems well organized, articulate and firm about its position. there are books of poems written against the sez which are to be sung by to tunes of popular hindi and marathi songs, a booklet on the culture of the agri community, posters that tell the farmers of what future waits fro them if they do sell their farms to the sez. there are even ideas regarding what other possibilities can be there for development within the area. these include aquaculture and organic farming. every house has a pond to the rear where fish breed; one farmer has a prawn farm which makes him tons of money. why in the world would they want to sell out? it seems that the state has done everything within their power to stifle the farmers in the area. a pipeline that was to bring water to the area so that they could have a second crop has been stopped. abandoned pipes lie across the landscape. maharashtra is the only state, it seems, where industry gets preference over agriculture for water supply. every corner and at every house we were asked about our business there. the kids are studying families from different classes, their homes and the institutional networks that they access. the idea is to examine what role architecture can perform in this context- besides the most obvious one- colluding with the sez plans for it parks. it might be another matter that we lived in a fancy hotel on the highway with a swimming pool.
blue. 42nd street . three monkeys. fando and lis . the manchurian candidate . grave of the fireflies. gaslight
please, no one watch blue! i admit to making the mistake in spite of detesting akshay kumar films. it was only because amit insisted that i sat through the awful film where motorcycle chases go on endlessly with no one caring to know who is chasing whom or why; lara dutta wears a bikini and otherwise mouths three unnecessary sentences to showcase her acting skills, sanjay dutt mumbles incoherently about a childhood trauma that keeps him from the ‘lady in blue’ and akshay is just plain annoying as the cool dude. there is nothing to recommend the film- not even as bollywood fluff. it is boring.
the whole of 42nd street concerns the putting on of a musical. the mousy first timer ends up becoming the star and everyone ends up happy. the busby berkeley showstopper at the end has all the ingredients of an oscar interlude. grand staircases leading to the sky that light up with every step, showgirls kicking high heels high and top hats on most of the men.
so very avant garde was alexandro jodorowsky’s ‘fando and lis’. fando pulls along his lame lover lis along a barren landscape on a cart with a drum and a phonograph towards the mythical city of tar. along the way flashbacks and surreal madness include seductions in a graveyard to cars, bodies slithering in a muddy swamp and a spiraling canyon.
the apartment where most of the drama of ‘three monkeys’ occurs is shot as a labyrinth of doors, mirrors, glass and wood frames. spaces open and close as characters move in and around the labyrinth. through the window beyond the tracks and the highway is the mediterranean. the story concerns an affair between the wife of a chauffeur and his employer politician as he takes the fall for a hit and run accident that he was no part of. the son gets to know about the affair and hell breaks loose.
a perpetual downer but so beautifully made is ‘grave of the fireflies’. it starts off by the death of a young man in a trains station and flashes back to the last days of the war when his family was torn apart by the bombing of his hometown. losing his mother and father he tries to take care of his little sister as a vagabond living in a bomb shelter on the outskirts of the city. the sweet girl dies of malnutrition. terribly serious and extremely beautiful.
nothing special but entertaining enough was ‘the manchurian candidate’ a spy drama about the evil communists using the evil ambitions of american politicians to take over the united states of america. a killer is created out of a war hero by hypnosis. he can do absolutely anything after game of solitaire and a look at the queen of diamonds including murdering his fellow officers and even his wife. angela lansbury plays the scheming woman. in ‘gaslight’ she is the tough talking maid who keeps ingrid bergman prisoner in her own house. she inadvertently is party to the grand plan by bergman’s husband to convince her that she is mad. the gaslight in the rooms mysteriously goes up and down and dark shadows crawl up the walls in classic noir style.
so… i guess its time to update the blog after a long time. got to keep it running in these times of down time- in case i feel inspired again a few months away. likely? who knows?
i guess there are three highlights since the time i left this space- the first was the concert at mukul’s house where my mother sang in public for the first time since the accident last october when dharmu mama fell asleep at the wheel on the pune expressway. mom was thrown against the back seat and has been weak ever since. i missed most of the first half all because of the unbelievable popularity of the new branch of the ‘borivili biryani center’ at chikuwadi where i waited for food for more than an hour. this was the 2nd of october.
we left for leh the next day by the punjab mail. such a long journey. i spent all of my birthday traveling. i don’t mean to make it sound like a drag. the retreating monsoon made the journey actually very lovely, although waiting for the morning while sleeping on the uncomfortable seats at delhi airport was a bit much.
it was a second year study trip- and i was so hoping that the particular class that had given us so much trauma over the past semester would be transformed by the rarified air and the freezing cold temperature. we studied a part of the old town behind the main mosque where a street runs from an old stupa gate of the city to the palace. sonal seeing the photographs called the city an anthill- and it was. the houses straddle complex levels making underground labyrinths. it was a very difficult area to study. and the kids looked excited. the city is completely abandoned and is waiting to house tourism/ cultural facilities. manisha who has helped restore the old munshi house at the feet of the palace and andre from the ladakh old town initiative seem to be trying hard. there is so much potential for exciting work in the city.
we spent most of the time in the old town, although we took one day trip- to alchi where we touched the indus and to bazgo with its spectacular ruins of a palace and temple. another day it snowed, much to the delight of the class who were seeing it for the first time
i had to leave early to come back for the ‘cinema city’ preview on the 11th at ncpa where kausik had designed the exhibition. the event had to be classified as a mega success- much to our delight- as it turned out that double the number of people expected turned up. the post-event party was at neera’s.
the soul of a man . cat soup. offside . taking woodstock . day for night.
i have managed to arrange it such that i can now watch movies in my room with the huge sound system. the system was inaugurated by ‘the soul of a man’- wim wenders film for the martin scorsese series ‘the blues’ that follows early blues artists like blind willie johnson, skip james and j b lenoir. the music was divine. the film tried some clever tricks but most of them were not so pretentious that they took away from the heartbreaking voices of the singers- whether the original or the new versions by contemporary artists like bonnie raitt and beck.
in ‘cat soup’ death plays too much of a role to be a children’s film. the narrative includes a dead sister, a broken arm, a frightening magician. the connections made are random, surreal, beautiful.
still more films to record here- this time from after the leh trip. the first is ‘day for night’ which madhu had recommended for its ‘behind the scenes’ narrative. truffaut plays a version of himself as he tries to make a seedy family drama about a love affair between a father in law and his sons wife. the action behind the camera becomes as torrid as that in front. somewhere in between in truffaut’s adoration of the process of film making itself- the movement of the machines, the madness, the horrors, the insecurities.
jafar panahi’s ‘offside’ was a sweetheart of an almost real time look at a group of football crazy girls and their attempts at entering a football stadium to watch a match that i going to seal irans entry into the world cup. so gentle and sweet, but still not cloying.
which cannot be said about ‘taking woodstock’ ang lee’s recent family drama about breaking away from the loneliness and heartbreak to ‘find yourself’- this time helping organizing the love fest ‘woodstock’ provides the catalyst- the ‘peace man’s, the tie and die shirts and more than a little help from some acid. nothing much happens, not that it had to.
the cabinet of dr caligari . ghost in the shell, wanted . alphaville. deewar. arrival. the choir . howls moving castle . love meetings . poison
not really very frightening- thankfully- or i wouldn’t be able to watch at all, but the cabinet of dr caligari lived up to its reputation of being all expressionistic set design. the streets twist and turn, the walls seem like they are falling. the only space relatively stable is the courtyard of the mental hospital where the madmen meet each other and tell stories.
in ghost in the shell where machines become men and men machines, the ghost is some longed for spirit in the films surprisingly very serious soul searching for spiritual/philosophical depth. not that i was completely taken in by it, but was stunned by the long languorous shots of the future city- the canal that runs through the glittering street that are somewhere in south east asia; or the action scene in the narrow alley that suddenly ends revealing a high wall of housing facing emptiness. gorgeous- and in many ways what this city is going to be like. alphaville was quirky film noir craziness- again repeating the trope about the machine against love. but this time the evil machine was represented by the modernism of 1960s paris- rcc towers, curtain walls and corridors that went on forever. the ordinary was transformed into the strange.
i have been recommending 'wanted' for all who have forgotten how much fun hindi films can be after being battered by the relentless nri punjabi films of the past few years. a shameless action film with no pretensions, especially not those who claim to indulge in childish fantasy because they are so above it. instead this plays the genre with relish but takes it to another level with the attention it plays to the detail- whether that it the movements and action/reaction of the bodies in elaborate and super violent action sequences; or in the small talk and silliness of the love scene. the clichés are the film and there really is not point complaining about things like the representation of women or the gratuitous violence. fabulous.
on the other hand my reaction to another great macula film was different. at the risk of being blasphemous i could not watch 'deewar' without getting slightly bored. some scenes were wonderfully iconic like the 'mere peas mama chain' or the action sequence on the docks, or even the marine drive shot; but everything seemed a little dated. still enjoyed i - but i think i expected more.
as far as short films go mani kaul’s ‘arrival’ an fd film was fantastic. a quotation from marx (i think) somewhere frames images of migration, consumption, production and death. the slaughterhouse in deonar and people gorging themselves with food.
the french film ‘the choir’ followed the clichés of good teachers in bad schools genre- that range from the icky (now that i think about it) ‘dead poets society’ to ‘the class’. here the teacher in question teaches the class to sing and wins over their hardened hearts. the principal as usual does not approve of these new fangled feel-good techniques.
miyazaki’s anime fantasy ‘howls moving castle’ allows different spaces to morph into one another through the doorway of the crumbling wheezing flying castle of the wizard ‘howl’ every door opens into different fantastic landscapes- from a ostentatious european town to a pasture from a dreamscape.
i was incredibly unmoved by pasolini’s cinema verite documentary exploring masculinities and sexuality in italy. the characters trade in stock answers for too long a time. and most repeat the clichés that have been superimposed on them.
todd haynes ‘poison’ tells three stories, independent of each other- each stylistically very different. the first is a noir serial killer mystery about a potion that spreads a disfiguring disease through the city, the second a pseudo documentary about a boy who flies away through a window; and the third a very sensual prison love story that derives much from jean genet’s ‘un chant amour’. sex might be the poison that joins all three stories. the scene where the boys spit in slow motion into the open mouth of another to humiliate him is oddly disgusting and sensual at the same time.
this sunday 15 years after leaving college we meet again in a room overlooking the cricket lawns of the mumbai cricket association in bandra kurla complex. people i had not met for years- strangely familiar though i doubt i would have recognized them if i had seen them in a restaurant..
the edge of heaven. head on .district 9 .i cant think straight .fabulous .beau travail .kadachit .8x8 a chess sonata .blind dating. bolt. coraline
accidental deaths that mirror each other across turkey and germany make strangers into friends in fatih akin’s ‘the edge of heaven’. in an earlier film ‘head on’ a jealous rage leads to another killing- this time making a marriage of convenience into something like love. istanbul in both films is a city of labyrinth like streets where some escape from their disjointed existence in germany while others come to die. in ‘the edge of heaven’ a son escapes from the embarrassment of his father’s murder of a prostitute and tries to find salvation through saving his daughter, while she herself in running from the law to germany where she falls in love with a lovely generous white girl. in ‘head on’ a marriage is arranged between a girl trying to get out of her family and a man who cant care less whether he lives and dies.
district 9 blew my mind away. pretending to be pseudo-documentary on the sudden appearance of a wrecked spaceship above johannesburg the film follows a systematic process of cleansing of their colony – district 9- when suddenly he pure white blood is contaminated. more about race relations than a typical alien film it does however end with a great big mash up- shootouts, chase sequences, explosions and a hollywood salvation through self sacrifice- could have done without that- but the first half is just brilliant. the great shock is when we realize that we actually identify with the non-cute et but rather ugly frightening prawn like aliens. it screws with our presumptions.
the tv documentary ‘fabulous’ followed American queer cinema through some iconic films. informative enough, like a chronological check list- from something called fireworks through to brokeback mountain with ‘bound’, gus van sant’ and john waters along the way. the films are naturally the ones most explicitly ‘gay’ . i wonder whether ‘beau travail’ would have made the list. based on a Hermann melville story and a benjamin britten opera ‘billy budd’ the action takes place in french africa in a group of legionnaires. strong young men wrestle with each other in the desolate beauty of the desert as jealousy raises its ugly head. the passions are all very controlled and rarely find any sense of release except in the strenuous physical exercises on the beach and the frenzied dancing that breaks out at certain times.
the more conventional gay love story was ‘i cant think straight’- a coming out inter racial story set in Jordan and London between a Jordanian free spirit who is curiously closeted and a nice Hindu girl who is more at ease with herself. in an otherwise very passable and yet somehow enjoyable film Lisa ray is absolutely stunning. i couldn’t take my eyes off her. didn’t know she could act too.
more difficult love stories in romantic comedies- this one between a blind white boy and a Indian girl- ‘blind dating’. fluffy fun- but does confirm the fact that a nice white boy who grew up to be captain Kirk really needs to be blind to fall in love with a brown girl.
why are Marathi films so moral? and badly made? ‘kadachit’ the story was fine and so was the acting. ashwini bhave plays a gutsy doctor who loses it when she confronts the truth about the dad she put away for murder. she only manages to get her act together again when she is told another lie. to its credit the film did not try to resolve things with a happy ending where everyone lives happily ever after. the father walks away alone into the sunset, but it could have been made less like a tv soap, i think.
not as weird as the nightmare before christmas but coraline’s frighteningly sweet alternative world of a mother and father with buttons for eyes is pretty spooky. an alice in wonderland story with a cat that speaks, fancy french performing mice and couple of british actresses who are terrific at the trapeze. ‘bolt’ was sweeter. a dog lives a truman show existence until one day he is lost and discovers the real him on a road trip from new york to los angeles. his company is a wise cracking cat and a hamster in a globe. the in-jokes are thankfully not too many making it easily less offensive than lets say ‘a sharks tale’. really quite a lot of fun and towards the end i felt really bad about the cats out on the terrace that we have decided not to feed anymore.
i did not particularly care to ‘get’ but still enjoyed the images of hans richters experimental 8x8 a chess sonata’. 8 episode feature different guest artists and some surreal games in streets and in gardens. the sequence in alexander calders studio is beautiful and so is much of the other imagery.
yi yi . black cat white cat . my winnipeg . berlin: symphony of a great city . 9. the golem . up the yangste . dazed and confused . wendy and lucy
a long winded drama about the middle class in taipei, yi yi( a one and a two) spent too long developing stories that didn’t finally lead up to much- some weddings, some insecurities, old girlfriends.not that the dreariness of the everyday was the problem (if only); the film stayed precariously close to becoming a tv soap and finally descended into the pit when the cute kid reads a letter full of profundity to his dead grandmother at her funeral.
'black cat white cat' is set in some strange world completely out of control. a crime film and romantic comedy of double crossing gangsters trying to get their tiny sisters married and sweet faced lovers whose parents are more than willing to sell them off to the highest bidder. the speed by which things happen and complete randomness of it all reminded me somewhat of sankat city- which also i loved.
‘my winnipeg’ is a love poem for the city in which guy maddin spent his entire life. he wants to get out of there but finds it impossible as people keep falling asleep. in faux silent cinema black and white expressionism intercut with pseudo (?) documentary newsreel footage as he hires the house he grew up in and populates them with actors to play the parts of his mother and siblings,, the stories grow out of a free flowing inventive mix of fact and fiction- as when a fire in stable sends the horses racing into the freezing river and their heads frozen in gruesome screams of death become props for romantic walks for winnipeggers. when he decries the demolition of the older buildings of his history he does it without trying to put on an objective face. instead he hurls invective at all the atrocities committed on the city in the name of progress.
an early city film ‘berlin- a symphony of a great city’ made between the wars is in love with modernity. the working day, children going to school, the cultural pleasures of the city and above all the obsession with time. trains rush through the landscapes, clocks move in synchronization with the citizens. speed and germanic precision across the classes- man and machine are one. this love-hate relationship has been seen too many times by the time we get to ‘9’. in a future after the great man-machine war when the world is completely destroyed 9 “stitchpunks” take on the evil smoke spewing multi tentacled b.r.a.i.n. the visualizations are jaw-droppingly beautiful but after the first half when the narrative begins to show its formulaic one dimensionality you cant help but be disappointed. machines are evil and in the end we are saved by the “soul” of one man. this regressive nonsense is further aggravated in my imagination when the only space of safety in the shattered city are a gothic cathedral and a neo-classical villa. the end sequence with mystical rituals and souls rising to heaven in glowing green spirals managed to seal my opinion on this one.
‘the golem’ a silent film from 1915 plays with the same ideas- a frankenstein like character is created through a mixture of science and religion to save the ghetto from being demolished. the golem turns evil towards the end and is only destroyed by an innocent gesture by a young girl- but not before he has caused some serious mayhem and murder. over the top light and shadow expressionism makes gothic horror as lovers preen, wizards cast frightening spells, and the history of the jews is told as a film within the film to the heartless king.
now that i think about it, it is a strange coincidence that both the b.r.a.i.n. of ‘9’ and the golem are given life by plugging a strange mystical medallion into their chests- and their deaths are associated with its removal.
in ‘up the yangtse’ through a canadian chinese lens we experience the heartbreak of losing your history below the relentlessly rising water of the three gorges dam. the farewell cruise carries foreigners over the silver grey still surface of the river and stories are told to them of the cities that are going to be no more by young chinese men and women who don on american names and speak americanese for tips. the scale is astounding. jia zhang ke’s ‘still life’ took the same situation and turned it into a melancholy science fiction film. in this film we are introduced to two kids of differing backgrounds who are interning upon the farewell cruise.
a couple of american films to end this post. ‘dazed and confused’ is richard linklater’s classic 70’s slacker film that follows a group of young men and women through the medieval rituals of the last day of school. the film checklists the types, speaks very cleverly, plays a lot of 70s rock and still manages to make more out of the genre film that expected.
‘wendy and lucy’ takes all this suburban disenchantment and turns it into a sad sweet story about a girl and her dog living on the very edge of poverty. on her way to alaska the car breaks down and she is caught shoplifting. then the dog disappears. she wanders through the still decrepit small town in oregon looking for lucy and finding her lets her go.
the first year workshop is writing alternate fairy tales. the kids still dont know what hit them. i think.
the dutch-indian architect matchmaking session went off entertainingly. so we spoke of the low income housing work and wondered how the international connection can work to both our advantages. some talk of 'space' other talk of 'networks'.
and today, after a long time- kanheri. still as lovely.
tokyo godfathers. sankat city. wall-e . g i joe – imitation of life . the general . kaminey . vantage point .
the bums from tokyo godfathers with a heart of gold with all the homoerotic undercurrents was a new thing to see in an anime film. no high tech / fantasy concept here. just a lost/ stolen baby and the three homeless people trying to find its parents. though i did love both the mumbai/bambai crime caper films the devil-may-care madness of sankat city was terrific fun, while kaminey could not completely shake away the satya hangover. but the locations in both were fabulous- whether that is the steep road in dindoshi where the bags get exchanged or that gorai garbage dump which mirrors the real city in sankat city; or the abandoned railway compartment in ‘kaminey’ and the cul-de-sac within which the final shoot out occurs. in wall the garbage dump takes over the whole planet and human civilization is a capitalist consumer fantasy on a distant spaceship. the entire first half where wall-e dutifully organizes the garbage on the planet into towers made of little cubes is gorgeously imagined. when the love story begins the hollywood formula begins to show. but until then it is lovely. ‘imitation of life’ is shamelessly over the top camp. without any trace of embarrassment and (thankfully) without a sly wink to the camera it takes its world of high melodrama very seriously. the torrid lush tearjerker concerns the relationships between two women and their daughters, while race comes in between one black mother and her daughter who is ashamed of her heritage, the white woman’s daughter falls in love with her mothers suitor. naturally it all ends with a death and mahalia jackson’s soaring voice in a church. g i joe is worth watching only for one fantastic chase sequence on the streets of paris when the joes try to stop the bad people from releasing nanomites that are going to eat the eiffel tower. it is the only place where the hollywood action really kicks in. the rest is standard stuff about a white leading man, his black best friend, some international hotties and lots of blow ups because of evil corporate types. another hollywood action film was ‘vantage point on tv which tries a rashomon like kaleidoscopic shifting points of view of a presidential assassination attempt. the tape rewinds and plays and rewinds and plays again until you cant care really what happens as long as it gets over really fast. neither of these manage the action-comedy of ‘the general’ whose basic story involves nothing more than one long chase sequence; first towards the north and then towards the south. in the end as has now become default some explosions bring the proceedings to an end.
tokyo godfathers. sankat city. wall-e . g i joe – imitation of life . the general . kaminey . vantage point .
the bums from tokyo godfathers with a heart of gold with all the homoerotic undercurrents was a new thing to see in an anime film. no high tech / fantasy concept here. just a lost/ stolen baby and the three homeless people trying to find its parents. though i did love both the mumbai/bambai crime caper films the devil-may-care madness of sankat city was terrific fun, while kaminey could not completely shake away the satya hangover. but the locations in both were fabulous- whether that is the steep road in dindoshi where the bags get exchanged or that gorai garbage dump which mirrors the real city in sankat city; or the abandoned railway compartment in ‘kaminey’ and the cul-de-sac within which the final shoot out occurs. in wall the garbage dump takes over the whole planet and human civilization is a capitalist consumer fantasy on a distant spaceship. the entire first half where wall-e dutifully organizes the garbage on the planet into towers made of little cubes is gorgeously imagined. when the love story begins the hollywood formula begins to show. but until then it is lovely. ‘imitation of life’ is shamelessly over the top camp. without any trace of embarrassment and (thankfully) without a sly wink to the camera it takes its world of high melodrama very seriously. the torrid lush tearjerker concerns the relationships between two women and their daughters, while race comes in between one black mother and her daughter who is ashamed of her heritage, the white woman’s daughter falls in love with her mothers suitor. naturally it all ends with a death and mahalia jackson’s soaring voice in a church. g i joe is worth watching only for one fantastic chase sequence on the streets of paris when the joes try to stop the bad people from releasing nanomites that are going to eat the eiffel tower. it is the only place where the hollywood action really kicks in. the rest is standard stuff about a white leading man, his black best friend, some international hotties and lots of blow ups because of evil corporate types. another hollywood action film was ‘vantage point on tv which tries a rashomon like kaleidoscopic shifting points of view of a presidential assassination attempt. the tape rewinds and plays and rewinds and plays again until you cant care really what happens as long as it gets over really fast. neither of these manage the action-comedy of ‘the general’ whose basic story involves nothing more than one long chase sequence; first towards the north and then towards the south. in the end as has now become default some explosions bring the proceedings to an end.
last night i dreamt a comic book. or was it animation? a young shostakovich is suspected of being a dissident in an america where everything european is under surveillance. strangely he looks like me. in a car on a main street that looks like baltimore the twelve year old is huddled in the front seat of a black hooded car with many other older refugees. another replica of the car follows them inches behind at high speed. to escape shostakovich suggests a quick turn around. as the car swerves the following car also turns but it only manages a 180 degree turn which our hero is again heading in the current direction. as the following car begins to rain bullets the suspects jump out of the car and being to race through what looks like the back alleys of greenbelt, maryland. the rubber-stamp housing colony to the outskirts of the city is where the action continues which he enters thorugh a tiny back alley that is revealed in between the relentless facades of the townhouses. choosing the lush green backyards away from the main road our hero runs past lounging black men (all of whom appear bald) into the darkened stairway of one. a family asks for an address to one of the men lounging on the stairs. 4th floor ‘kasuba’ he says. ‘kasuba?’ says the elegant black lady asking the directions. ‘refugees’ says the black man. ‘uff’. another man stands overlooking a way out of the stairway prison. he turns out to be the man who has given out the location of the hiding refugees and received pardon from the state. other loungers dismiss him as a traitor. i sneak out of the back stair and he sees me- so does the elegant black woman. as i run out the woman points me out to my pursuant. now i race through fancier streets. it all looks like a manhattan dream. glittering shop windows (an in my head paul simon mis-sings ‘the boy in the bubble’ : “glittering of shop windows, the boy in the baby carriage was wired to the radio”. or as the chase continues i think – this is a good idea for a city film. a chase through the various classes and districts of the city. the last scene i remember before it dissolved into an animation montage of different styles floating on a black screen was: i suddenly see something in a shop window. cut to the glittering thing handing in soft focus in the foreground as i run towards it. shift focus to the entangled strands of silver as i grin in soft focus leeringly at the jewelry. another unreported dream was when me, my mother and my father are sitting in front of the television as britney spears dances gyrating while wearing prosthetic male genitalia as i try and convince myself (and my parents) that it is some form of protest towards artistic self expression and protection of her privacy. huh?
the wizard of oz. the rat trap. m. double indemnity. 'the yiddish policemans union, one way street. hearts and minds. across the universe.love aaj kal
in spite of all my reservations about the over-hyped ‘somewhere over the rainbow’ it is the one moment in ‘the wizard of oz’ where something magical really happens. the rest is a fantasy, distracting enough, about a girl trying to find her way back to the safety of home with three allegorical figures- a man of hay with no brain, a man of tin with no heart and frightened lion. someone should show them ‘the rat trap’.
there is no film like ‘the rat trap’ that makes the sweet domesticity of the rural home into such a claustrophobic space. the only way elder sister rajamma an escape its tightening grip is by falling ill and being rushed out while her brother has to be carried out by villagers and dunked into the family well.
then there are all the detective stories beginning with ‘m’. a child killer cant help himself from murdering little girls. the underworld and the police chase him through the streets of berlin as the city drives itself insane with paranoia and suspicion. no identifiable heroes or villains except for the man with the overcoat marked by the letter.
raymond chandler co-wrote billy wilder’s ‘double indemnity’ and even though the film begins with the confession of sorts the suspense is terrific; a murderous plot in noir black and white and a plot within a plot with a gorgeous blonde with evil in her heart. the poor shmuck insurance salesman who falls for her hard has really no chance.
taking the possibility that israel was never formed and the jews of europe were settled in sitka, alaska michael chabon makes ‘ the yiddish policeman’s union’ a strange desolate story of a dead junkie messiah, a detective at the end of his sanity and career (much like a chandler hero) and a jewish plot to take back jerusalem by blowing up muslim monuments.
unable to articulate what exactly i love about reading walter benjamin ‘one way street’ managed to get many scholars to tell me. how the fragments of experience can be collected to make meaning- partial but profound or the act of collecting moments and making each account for so much more. like a poetic or a psychoanalysis of the everyday.
'hearts and minds' was numbing beyond a point until the shocker of a moment when a man is shot on screen. it passes by so quickly you hardly notice it but it stays with you perpetually. unforgettable documentary about the vietnam war. strangely later in the day i saw ' across the universe ' the new film that takes beatles songs to tell a story about lovers torn apart in the 60s by war and protest. great songs.
and aargh! the ultra cool so annoyingly wannebe clever ‘love aaj kal’. this particular kind of bollywood makes no sense ot me where everyone is hep and colour coordinated in foreign locations. i felt like slapping all concerned. only deepika padukone looks better than the film. otherwise – yuck!
synecdoche new york . satah se uthata aadmi . the bicycle thief . agraharathil kazuthail . 26 bathrooms
like ‘the trial’, which a character is reading in the beginning of the film, ‘synecdoche new york’ is a vortex of reflections affecting each other in perpetually shifting scales. sometimes the city is found in another one or you see yourself in miniature. while blurring the line between dream and reality the identity of all the characters and all their relationships are themselves blown apart until almost nothing is real. in ‘satah se uthata aadmi’ a similar story within a story revolves around the act of writing as a voiceover reads passages about characters and they in turn read out other stories that turn into images until all intertwine into a fever dream somewhere in small town india. i liked ‘the bicycle thief’- not so much for the sweet downer of the story about losing a bicycle but more the rome of the working class neighborhoods with rationalist apartment blocks relentlessly plodding on the horizon or the other ancient city of market squares and labyrinthine roads where the hunt goes on. in ‘a donkey in a brahmin’s village’ at the end when the fire in the skull of the donkey sets fire to the village the film suddenly expresses the anger that is until then suppressed under never completely lighthearted comic episodes. the pollution that the donkey represents is used by the hypocrisy of the villagers for their own means until even its death becomes something that can be used to wield power by making mystic its aura. from a to z ‘26 bathrooms’ is peter greenaway’s checklist of ideas clustered around bathrooms including lost soaps, public washrooms, tiles and mirrors punctuated by a discourse on the history of british bathrooms held forth by an expert. another film for my architecture collection.
wizards . millennium actress . the children’s book . opera java . tren de sombras. in which annie gives it those ones. mindgame.
the collage like madness of the war sequences that splice nazi war footage with the exaggeratedly cute and evil brothers and their war between normal people and the mutants. the real villain is of course the movie projector that blinds the mutants under the supreme commander – the bad brother in the darkness hatching his evil plots to take over the world.
the pop singer in ‘perfect blue’ is now a reclusive actress hiding away from the media glare. a filmmaker fan follows her to her house and become embroiled in the telling of her story as characters in her history on and off screen. not really as maddening and beautiful as perfect blue but still gorgeously made.
the music in opera java was divine even though the pieces did seem to go on a little too long – as did the story of ravana and sita in indonesia. here too the performed and the lived lives of the characters intermingle and blur. typically the ravana character stole the show with his creepy dance in the abattoir and the tango on top of the bar table. ram as usual is the most boring and only becomes interesting somewhat in the threesome with ravana and sita and when he kills sita. the ugly subtext about the story being an allegory of american imperialization was awful and clumsy but i still loved the movement of arms and the watery layered sound of the music.
regardless of the conceits of ‘experimental film’- the concern with the act of film making and representation or the ‘truth’ o the image, or the texture of film itself- ‘tren de sombras’ was pretty much a colour by numbers kind of mystery story. the film is arranged in three or four sections. in the beginning is the ostensibly found footage of a photographer who disappeared in 1930. the trouble is that besides the artificial cracks and blurs of the footage much of it is not framed like it was shot in that ea. at least not to my untrained eye. the second half looks for clues to his disappearance in the house and the garden while the third rewinds the footage and discovers possible leads in what really happened.
also about a family splintering apart at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century is the gorgeous new novel by a s byatt ‘the children’s book’, as the community of artists live out their bohemian lives considering modernity through the arts and crafts movement into art nouveau flourishes of marionettes, fairy tales and beautifully decorated pots.
complete anomaly that i am i had never seen that cult architecture film ‘i which annie gives it those ones’. finally getting my hands on it i sat down to watch and was curiously disappointed or rather saddened by its perpetual cynicism about architecture itself. not that taking the systems apart is not necessary but all we get in return is a tired old 70s flower child rant about ‘poor people’ punctuated by (naturally) music stolen from the beatles. but then again my reaction might stem from pure self defense. it must be because i spend so much of my time on the side of the table that was being taken apart. what is strange is the odd inversion- the violent (often simplistic) ranting about ‘poor people’ nowadays happens from the faculty while the students speak the language of the market.
like ‘wizards’ the anime ‘mindgame’ is happily unhinged switching between all kinds of animations styles- sepia tinted rounded characters in a flattened landscape, to long angular lines, to photographs. the story follows nishi and two girls as they choose life while running from the law and a drug mafia who are inexplicably dressed up as football players. while running away the group gets swallowed up by a giant whale from which they escape into their many possible futures.
fragments of beauty drenched in the half light of the long dark corridor like shops. nothing is seen completely- only an arm, a curl, a twist, a pattern carved. on the other side of the tunnel are the workshops overflowing with new versions of antique desks we were making for mahim.
royal palms at goregaon with a slum of skyscrapers, gross baroque hotels and a golf course overlooking national park / drenched chawls in dadar while looking for door knobs near the station /the first drive across bandra worli sea link / walking down to haji ali dargah after coffee at indigo deli and some gateway and marine drive/ chatting about the future in the canteen / the krvia muddy football match.
it was during reading ‘the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay’, coincidentally that i bought ‘zot!’ by scott mccloud. the escapist helps in kavaliers reprisal against evil nazis making him one of the most popular superheroes in world war 2 new york. the loveliest scene for me for the love scene between the beautiful blonde actor and sam clay at democracity- the ideal new town of the future with flyovers and flashing lights at the worlds fair. pure magic. democracity is almost zot’s world – a parallel universe whose perfection is seductive to the teenagers who have walked through the portal to the other side. my rising interest in graphic novels led me to read ‘understanding comics’ a step by step proposition to read the comic book as serious art. me? i believe! especially after going on this massive downloading spree of graphic novels.
one of my favorite was the intertwining and completely silent ‘the system’. stories of the everyday lives of new yorkers play kho-kho with one another through dissolves and sudden juxtapositions in a narrative of steeped in the paranoia of a post terror world.
in alezandro jodorowsky’s future landscape of a planet/city mad of layers that rise from the bottom sewers where the mutants live to the middle where the red light area glitters to the very top where an elite with haloes rule. the other story was about the rise of the metabarons- a race of fantastic mercenaries.
the other crazy fictional landscape was the one in ‘aetheric mechanics’ whose early 20th century landscape is populated with semi-fictional heroes and detectives including an almost holmes/watson team. these science fiction landscapes of the future. some of the other stories were ‘death – the high cost of living’ where death is this hot girl in search for someone’s heart and ‘the sandman chronicles- the dream hunters’- where a fox falls in love with a monk and saves him from a merchant who has cast an evil spell over him.
i have also gone completely crazy watching animation films. 'my neighbor totoro' is miyazaki’s sweet story about two sisters and their strange friend totoro who lives in the tree in the backyard of the new house. a far cry from the charm of that film was ‘perfect blue’. a teenage pop star who is intent on changing her image to become a more serious adult actress is haunted and hunted by a vicious innocence until the difference between dream and reality blurs beyond recognition. ‘voices of a distant star’ was a love story where time stand still on one end of the universe while at the other end of an sms a waiting lover grows older and older.
complete non stop madness in 'duck soup'. the marx brothers save freedonia from defeat in complete mayhem. the one liners come fast and furious and the physical comedy is hilarious. 'chandni chowk to china' is terrible- in spite of deepika padukone. saw it on an airplane from delhi to bombay.
in the american documentary ‘home movie’ 5 strange ways of living are followed through a day. there was something annoying about the ease by which the domestic space was made into a narcissistic fantasy space. one becomes a tree house, the other a futuristic machine, another is taken over by cats while a fourth is a bunker under the ground. it seemed so easy. get inside your house and detach yourself from the world. one of the character who lives on a houseboat explicitly says this too.
the music in 'dhrupad' is sublime. so is the architecture that is shot so lovingly. from mandu to fatehpur sikri to the final shot when the camera meanders long on an aerial shot of the city blurring away and fading to white. my mother was delighted seeing her teacher sing and play the veena. one of the best films i have seen on music. the city in which 'los olvidados' takes place feels like a bombay. ruins in which the runaway child finds a place to live and the construction sit where the good boy is murdered. like an old raj kapoor film on the city but with no happy ending.
there are some incredible scenes in ‘shakti’. every one of them has dilip kumar in it. he eats up the competition- amitabh bachchan included. when smita patil comes t meet the estranged parents of vijay i sobbed away as i did when rakhee dies and amitabh comes to meet his father from the jail. some great city shots too- the fight sequence in the train and at versova fishing village should be on the cinema city map, as should the father son confrontation at bandra fort.
the last film of this post is ‘blowup’. as the egoistical photographer enlarges the photograph it reveals more as it enlarges into pixels- a pointed gun and the fallen hand of a body behind the bush. i had somehow expected more. or maybe i did not get it.
just off lamington road and in the crook of kennedy bridge is congress house. nice middle class paartment complex whihc was the headquarters of the indian national congress with building names like sarojini bhavan and tilak bhavan. directly across the road is the bombay sangeet kalakar mandal- probably a euphemism for the heart of the mujras and later the bar dancers of the city. i wonder where they are now. while we stood there in the drizzle girls in strappy saris got off taxi cabs and chatted nonchalantly with one another coming in and out of the doorway. our minds were racing.
on falkland road the windows are double panelled. when both levels are open you can see the whole body in the window but you can also open only the lower windows so that you can look out and be seen by those on the street while sitting on the floor.
how ridiculously beautiful it all looked form the sky. palm covered city which never seemed to end like blanket of green with little concrete rooftops poking out as far as the eye can seen. especially around the airport when the road goes through a narrow lane and climbs a bridge over a canal you wonder whether there is any city at all. later the same day after we reach the main venue for the screenings (none of which we sat for) and then bandhu shows us around to the other venues for the december film festival. we drive past sleepy, pretty houses and ostentatious government buildings to the 60s modernism of the new theater and the dramatic downward spiral of kala bhavan. we are invited to crash the dinner party for the jury and listen to stories about the chennai film industry from sadanand.
all of the next morning we drive past more theaters starting with the open air theater of the palace gardens. the mascot hotel where the jury lived in was a far cry from our own seedy keerthi with its covered courtyard and room handles that come out in your hand. from the mascot hotel the views across the city were gorgeous.
kovalam was a rickshaw ride to the south and as it was a thursday afternoon most of the tourists were white men and women lounging over long lunches in between their ayurvedic massages. the promenade was being strengthened against the tide and the sand was black. the lunch was divine- fish wrapped in banana leaves and prawns in coconut.
we were almost too late for the evening meeting when, on the way back, we stopped over at the padmanabhaswamy temple and decided to see the palace to its east. lowlying with verandahs wrapping around the building and the gardens where a tamil film was being shot. the lower floor was in heavy masonry punctured with tiny courts through which light filtered in wile the upper in intricate woodwork. two wooden rooms – one for dance and one for song were connected by a long verandah like corridor. the guide told us stories of trvancore which we only half heard- kausik being preoccupied with the paintings and me with the scale of the architecture.
the closing ceremony of the film festival had its share of embarrassments- for the jury as well as the entries when after the ceremony a man decided to felicitate a blushing amol palekar by singing ‘jaaneman jaaneman’ with his daughter on stage.
the party rocked hard on the 6th floor of the mascot. all the rooms were thrown open as rooms became smoking, eating and drinking zones. the corridor was the place for loud angry discussions on chauvinism and bengaliness of which there was a little too much in all the rooms. but the real fight i had was when i was told that i am too smug about myself because i have not read ‘maximum city’. paro- the queen- helped me fight; and the food she had sourced- exquisite syriam christian duck, pork and beef was divine.
it was lazy the next morning. we left directly for a fish lunch at saagara which might become quite a feature on our next trip. when we got to the temple complex we realized that god was asleep and would wake up only after we had left trivandrum. instead we walked through the grid of the old fort district where old palaces have been transformed to house government departments and banks.
on this trip i missed seeing the kovalam beach resort- that cross section we used to admire when it came to building on terraced land. i also could not manage a trip to the center for development studies- reportedly laurie bakers masterpiece; but instead managed to have a coffee in the funky india coffee house. the building is a strange medieval spiral tower that rises form the bus stand with small little nooks from where you can peer at fragments of the surrounding city. i pitied the waiters who have to constantly walk up and down the ramp carrying trays of fantastic coffee.
got back from delhi wednesday night. i had flown there on some rather silly but extremely important mission to get my degree from the university of maryland equated with a degree from any university in india. it seems that the u of m is not on the list of universities here. so there i was on monday standing obsequiously in front of an officer in one of the many government buildings file in hand full of attested copies of everything in my life. thought the first signs did not seem hopeful as we immediately got caught in a inter-ministerial mix up, hopefully things will sort themselves out over the next week. as this was the only real work i had in delhi the rest of the time mukul and me spent meeting up with people we had not met in years and otherwise going to places in delhi that we had not been to before. these included the paharganj market with its collision of extremely local and extremely backpacker joints. through the narrow lanes we walked in the street where mukul mother lived and meandering ended up at the ramakrishna mission near the metro station. dinner was with shekhar and anandita at this very fancy restaurant on connaught place. the next day after our disturbing trip to the association of indian universities we had the entire day ahead and spent it walking on ansari road in darya ganj with trying to find hindi novels for mukuls mother. we finally found the last on the list at a publishers office/shop at kashmiri gate. i was so awe struck by the dazzling metro station there. delhi has always been perfect. a diagram for a city or rather a diagram of the nation. in a sense it is ideological. it represents everything we want to become. the metro is part of the nations claim for world recognition. the city is like the constitution – an ideal text that attempts to make us citizens of an ideal nation. in the evening after a visit to guddu mama our rickshaw took an alternative route back and we found a completely different delhi- a city of indeterminate street edges and unsystematic growth- in other words the ad-hoc madness of other indian cities. tuesday- after a visit to the council of architecture to clarify what exactly the problem was with my paperwork again we had the rest of the day free. this time we drove across the yamuna to the vastness of the housing projects that lie on the other side- the hyphenated alphabetized and numbered housing colonies 1970’s rubber stamps. we met mukul’s mother childhood friend and his aunt right on the border where delhi becomes uttar pradesh. later we went to the national museum to browse through all of the cultural history of the country in pink and green painted rooms. the sarkari displays are awful but also vaguely comforting compared to the atrocious new age displays at the gandhi smriti building. but more on that later. evening we spent at yogita and nilesh’s meeting satyajit who looked adorable. on the last day an obligatory trip to the aiu and then we spent the morning at the red fort with its gardens and palaces. on the way out we walked across the bridge that connects the red fort to the salimgarh fort which has become a museum for the indian national army trials. after a lunch at the india coffee house with its over the top harem interior we did a dynasty tour beginning with nehru’s house, then indira gandhi’s and finally gandhi smriti. the nehru house in its palatial splendor had a door that opened out to the dome of the rashtrapati bhavan and rooms of old photographs and domestic items arranged in ‘as-it-was’ organizations. there was also awfully oversized digital prints of some ‘designed’ posters of his life. at indira gandhi’s house the relics of the past took on a gruesome tone with her sari on the day that she was shot displayed neatly ironed in a glass case while in another room rajiv gandhis clothes on the day he was blown up make high abstract art. the path she took on the way her death is marked by a class walkway and the spot where she dies has clear glass.
at gandhi smriti someone thought museums need to be fun. it a pull out the stops digital multimedia experience of such shallow and childish content that it made me laugh. there are pads that you stand on and reach across for another persons hand- when the blue light comes on we know ‘unity’. or the raghupati raghav xylophone which when played reveals a drawing of cartoon men in different costumes holding hands – again ‘unity’! and there is more such over produced silliness. give me the older miniature dioramas on the ground floor any day. the timeline the prison with lighted bars depicting unity the house that tells stories marking the spot b
i am haunted by the eeriness of the three gorges dam of ‘still life’. as the water is set to rise to 156.3 meters and entire cities and villages are set to be submerged two people from across the country try to recover their families in the displacements that the pride f the nation has caused. these losses of homes and histories are ‘sacrifices’ that proud citizens have made for the country according to a blaring television on a ferry that crosses the river. the film lingers long and awestruck ruefully and often ironically at the spectacular scale of the demolitions of buildings, at the gigantic new infrastructures and at the resulting stories of large scale migration, alienation and displacement.
fassbinders ‘fox and his friends’ was terrific and incisive but pretty much a downer of a comedy. a naïve and trusting working class man who wins a lottery is cheated out of all he owns, including his faith by his bourgeois lover. fox believes he is stupid, wants all the things he is supposed to want by his french speaking, caviar eating lover who easily exploits this need. the exploitations within the relationship are relentless and brutal until the tragic end.
its been over a week and the internet at home is still not working. in the interval the holidays are over and all of last week was spent tweaking the time table in multiple meetings with the different kinds of faculty in the school. meanwhile i have been conscientiously been keeping up with my movie-a-day pledge and need to record them here in case they slip through the sieve that my memory is.
last sunday our weekly film session at mukul’s without mukul there was bela tarr’s ‘werckmeister harmonies’ set in a hungarian town where cycles of peace and violence of history are evoked through the perpetual rotations and revolutions of celestial bodies (and the camera) when a beatific giant whale and a vicious violent prince arrive in the town square as part of a strange circus.
‘akira’ was set in neo-tokyo after tokyo had been completely destroyed by an uncontrollable energy called akira. our hero is part of a biker gang whose task is to save the word from this energy from destroying the city yet again along with his best friend. its gorgeously drawn and exults in its fabulous anti-technology imagery by loving the gadgets and spectacles that technology creates.
‘the class’ was just spookily ‘real’. set in a french high school it was a high school drama without the usual ending where great transformations happen in students due to the ministrations of a benevolent teacher. instead, the frustrations and delicate power politics of a classroom were much too accurate for us to take as we saw ti immediately after a technology faculty meeting in lalitha’s air conditioned room.
dad and me have also been periodically watching episodes of two documentary series by adam curtis. the first is ‘the century of the self’ which is the story of psychoanalysis and the way it has been used to brainwash entire populations to become passive consumers over the decades- perfect for theory of design class- i think. the second was a series called ‘pandora’s box’ whose basic premise is the delusion of the belief in an all explaining science. it follows this premise relentlessly through different episodes on russia and the planning process, america and the cold war, the british planned economy, the ddt vs environment debate, a dam building debacle in africa and the building of atomic energy plants around the world.
‘the diving bell and butterfly’ is shot like a fever dream. we enter the head of the ex-editor of elle magazine and watch the world through his woozy vision as slowly learns to deal with ‘locked in’ syndrome. as he begins to speak through a painfully slow process he starts to tell his life story. essentially the butterfly allows his imagination to fly free even though his body is caught in the diving bell. it is a romantic vision of an artist ‘against all odds’ shot in this over stylized manner- that is effective most of the time- and when it isn’t it is still lovely to watch with its collage of ideas, references and images.
it hasn’t been all high art last week. i loved the new 'star trek' film with a younger less pompous captain kirk and a spock with a love interest. to reboot the aging series by making into a teenage coming of age action drama was a good idea. and it had the coolest line of lovetalk i had heard in a long time ‘ i will be monitoring your frequency’- a gorgeous uhura whispers in spocks year as he teleports to the surface of vulcan to save his family before the planet is sucked into a black hole.
‘the mask of the ninja’ was crap about some ninja feud across japan and san francisco with lots of swordfights and karate chops. ‘blood and chocolate’ makes budapest into werewolf land. a hollywood horror of the old country- a europe that is constructed as a land of olde fantasy and legend. the heroine is saved from the intrigues of traditional systems only by the fact that she has returned from america. these themes also appear in ‘the third man’. in post war vienna where the whole city is a confused mass of territories and complicated internal politics and underworld trafficking. in this arrives the plain speaking, bull-in-a-china-shop american who wanting to get to the truth discovers that his best friend (played deviously well by orson welles) is a villain. fantastic chase scenes in a bombed out vienna with a frightening conversation on a giant wheel and another in a labyrinth of sewers that lie below the city.
in ‘dear diary’ this terrible europe does not exist. instead morretti takes us on a tour across rome on his vespa showing us neighborhoods and his associations with them, their architecture being the story, until he takes a drive to the place where pasolini was shot. in other episodes he speaks directly to the camera in a woody allen like way about trying to find an island where he and his friend can write in peace away from ‘santa barbara’ and ‘the bold and beautiful’ or his desperate search through doctors and hospitals for a cure to the incessant itching of his hands and feet. what a lovely film.
speaking of pasolini, ‘salo’ was excruciating- as it was supposed to be. based on the marquis de sade novel ‘120 days of sodom’ the action is displaced from eighteenth century france to nazi-fascist italy where four men helped by a team of soldiers and women story tellers capture a group of young men and women and make them perform the most gory sexual acts possible. these include rape, torture, murder and even a formal meal of the shit from last night. as unwatchable as it was riveting.
terrifically entertaining was ‘oldboy’ a graphic novel film. a man is mysteriously imprisoned for 15 years and then is even more mysteriously set free. as stylized and violent as a great graphic novel, this was great fun. based on the che guevaras account of the cuban revolution ‘che’ was no romantic ‘motorcycle diaries’ as it cut between the journey of the revolutionaries across the jungles in cuba into the city and che speaking on american television about american imperialism. it still portrayed an intellectual revolutionary hero.
persepolis . grand illusion . rush hour 3 . rogue assassin . the perverts guide to cinema . 5x2
gorgeously drawn in beautiful black and white, but underwhelming when compared to the original novel. the novel seem dot be much more complicated and nuanced when it came to portraying the ambivalent relationship of a woman whose relationship with her identity as an iranian and as a woman is fraught with difficulty as it switches between embarrassment to fervent patriotism and back again.
made in between the two world wars, the germans in ‘grand illusion’ still maintain their humanity as the jailers in this prison break drama. even as they watch over the collection of prisoners from all classes they allow them wine, dress-up clothes for parties and harmonicas for music. they had not yet been made into the leering blonde cold hearted murderers of the nazi era. in the film, in fact, everyone is honorable and gentlemanly even at the time of death. it is all very idealistic and implausible. the tragic horrors of war are made so remote that people from all classes and nations intermingle in an atmosphere of unrelenting civility where one sacrifices ones life for the freedom of another.
for some reason chinese people need an american counterpart to be able to fight the triads- and the other way around. the only thing it provides the hollywood action film is some swordfights, some antiquated rituals that can be made important plot developments and some slim chinese women who can kick butt. also some neat chinese jokes- as in ‘rush hour 3’- where chris rock and jackie chan try to make funny and fail miserably. the timing is off and the joke is too old by now.‘rogue assassin’ aims for seriousness with jet li playing the title role and jason Statham the american partner. some silly double crossing plot about gold horses being fought over by the yakuza and the triads where li plays both against one another.
i guess i took the perverts guide too seriously and got more than a little put off by the over serious analysis of cinema by slavov zizek. i seemed as if everything was over-read as something else – like the silent scream in ‘the birds’ as being about the anxiety of the voice, or the toilet flushing blood in ‘the conversation’ as a return of repressed traumas. i guess if you look at it as a playful re-reading of films – it is entertaining and also at times enlightening. the film does that too placing zizek as narrator within the spaces of the films he is referring to. the parts that interested me were those where he talks about ‘form’, but those were too few and far between.
if 5x2 was not told in reverse it would be just another story of a holiday romance that became a marriage and finally ran sour. but because it is told upside down each of the five scenes is supposed to take on profound meanings, but each episode is so predictably plotted and shot that the whole premise seemed banal.
bisecting the bay, approached only in low tide is a shrine made of a pile of rocks where the sea water turned fresh in 2006. in the morning worshippers walk carefully on the bridge of rocks, buy roses from the vendor on the beach and lay them at the feet of the shrine. in the distance rises the bandra worli sea link.
on the beach littered with garbage brought in with the tide and shit were boats that looked like they haven’t been out ot sea for years. they have grown within and outwards becoming multistoried houses with a sea view.
mahim fort lies at the northern tip of the beach. a sewage line pumps out grey water where a few men were washing. the walls of the fort have completely disintegrated towards the sea but you can enter through a gateway further down. it is completely dark when you first enter. you feel your way against the stone walls still left exposed and can see that the whole inside of the fort has been completely occupied with slums. a narrow lane meanders through the inside with multistoried houses on both side.
suddenly you are out on the other side on the main lane that runs parallel along cadel road towards the beach where the old houses are. this road leads to the dargah and since it was friday policemen sat lounging outside while worshippers were beginning to gather.
rahul gandhi, it would seem, according to cnn-ibn is the new gay icon. and the story goes that section 377 has more of a chance of being defeated now that his aura is gaining ground. just how is that assumption made is not clear in the news story as he has not been heard making any statements in support, or for that matter, against the gay community. what is, though, is the reason why he is popular among the lgbt community according to the channel. it dutifully begins the story with a stereotyped (read effeminate, whiny voiced) gay man lusting after rahul’s sexiness and cuteness and how his dimples are adorable. naturally this is the reason why the case against 377 has new hope. and then you wonder why people don’t take the issue seriously.
