sicko . charlie wilson's war . the son's room . princess mononoke . the fall

the joke wears thin very fast- especially towards the end when michael moore carries fire fighter heroes from 9/11 to guantanamo bay to receive the health care that prisoners of the war against terror get. implying ….? that the prisoners deserve less than perfect care? otherwise to watch his sledgehammer beating down upon the horrors of the american health care system was entertaining- and sometimes enlightening.

i wonder about ‘charlie wilsons war’. it follows the senator as he generates the funds for the taliban to fight the russians invading afghanistan. the case is made as though the supply of arms has no ulterior motive behind it- but is made after wilson witnesses ‘with his own eyes’ the dismal state of the refugee camps. america’s funding of the war is then made into a war of a righteous power fighting evil invading forces. it is an apology of sorts but with a rider on it saying – ‘we did not know it then- we were too naïve’. really!? is this what liberal america tells itself for the fact that they armed and trained whom they now call the ‘terrorists’?

‘the sons room’ is a weepy and not a very good one- at least from my point of view. a middle class family in italy is trying to come to terms with the loss of a son. the family is some sort of perfect incarnation before the tragedy and after the squabbles are slight – nothing threatening- not that they should have been. the film deals with the grief neatly and systematically. at the end the family is left wandering on a beach in a perfect dawn. a neat ending for a gentle film.

and then the two fantasies- dark and beautiful. princess mononoke is anime while ‘the fall’ is mad live action and special effects. mononoke is the wolf girl princess of the forest whom the wandering prince falls in love with. she is fighting the cause of the deer god and the spirits of the forest against the greedy capitalist owner of the mill who uses guns and firearms to subdue the forest. only towards the end does the millowner realize the error fo her ways and pledge to create a village in ‘harmony’ with nature. the sustainability argument is made through the most gorgeous visuals – luscious forests and fields, fantastic battle sequences with severed limbs and heads and strange clicking creatures in the trees.

darker was ‘the fall’. tarsem singh makes depressive beauty out of a story in which a young girl is told a tale of bandits by an ailing stuntman in a hospital in los angeles. as his story that follows five bandits and their quest for revenge against the evil general odius the visuals travel from ladakh to the taj mahal to the forts of rajasthan to the pyramids- it is visually breathtaking. incredible india needs a campaign like this- though the diwan e aam in fathepur sikri is blown up by a bomb