Most of my intimate friends have always teased me that I’m not worthy of being a muslim. And the accusation is mostly with good reason that I often don’t bother defending myself for my religious stands my negligence to follow its rituals. Now here is a chance to share much I know about my religion and certain qualities which I admire about it and certain qualities( or rather the way people interpret certain qualities) which my overtly cynical self find slightly annoying.
Adaminte makan Abu is India’s offical entry for the oscars of 2011. And it is with all the right reasons that they have chosen this movie for it has excelled in both filmmaking skills as well storytelling. But the most interesting thing I find about the movie is its content and the way the movie goes about introducing it to the audience. Adaminte Makan Abu is not a religious film. It doesn’t mourn the current degrading value of religion in the world, it doesn’t spend time elaborating with verses with Holy Quran or mosques or even conversations within religious fraternities. But I can swear I have never seen a film which defines a religion like this movie. And the irony is how much clarity it achieves in sketching out Islam even when keeping out the active religious discussions and focusing merely on human drama.
The movie follows the life of a poor perfume seller Abu (played convincingly by salim kumar a popular comedian in malayalam cinema who breaks out of typecasting with this movie). Abu is at a stage of life where his only wish is the Hajj pilgrimage(which islam deems the fifth pillar of the religion,a religious duty that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so ) and his struggles to achieve it for him and his wife against overwhelming odds. Abandoned by his only son and barely managing to survive selling his traditonal perfumes and medicines in a world that has fast outgrown him, abu manages to scrape gather a small sum of money as savings through great hardships just so that he could afford the Hajj. He cuts off the single huge, beautiful Jack fruit tree in his property, he sells off his two cows which were a part of his lively hood, even sells his wife’s pair of earring which is the only ornament she has. Just so that he could afford the Hajj and for a while it almost sems like he has succeeded. Naturally in a movie like this there would be some opposition to efforts like this and especially considering this film coming from malayalam industry a few negative characters were expected. But none of the characters in this movie are evil , which is to an extent believable, as the movie is set in a small insignificant village in northern kerala far from most of the evils of a modern society. On the contrary his neighbors tries to help him through out his struggle but Abu will not allow it.
At this point it would be interesting to note couple of qualities of Islam as a religion. Most of the outsiders and even a significant portion of Muslims themselves see islam as a religion of Rituals. People are expected to follow a set of rules and rituals( most part of the society sticks to the rituals as that is more comfortable ) in a daily basis without fail unless ill health does not allow it. Extreme faith and strict following of rituals is demanded by the religion as well as the society that embraces it. However I believe in reality Islam, is a religion of Ideals. The makers of the religion(don’t call me imbecile for this) has made the rules and rituals so strict that the aim of the religion is to point the follower to an ideal life. A human may never achieve the ideal but no one, following the set of ideals with strong devotion will ever stray from the righteous or let alone be evil. That is the foundation of Islam as a religion, no matter how negligibly low number of individuals manages to successfully live their life in through the noble means envisioned by it and realizes how important is to live by these means. While most of the religions are advocates of morals, islam is a religion which is an advocate of ethics. I had been recently reminded, A moral choice is one where we have to choose between a right and a wrong. An ethical choice on the other hand is the situation where one has to choose between two rights. Nurturing an individual no longer concerned about the choice between the right and wrong, that is the ambition that the rules of islam tries to instill in its followers. That is the truly admirable thing about the religion and unfortunately the part which most people fail to notice.
Hajj is one of the most sacred parts of a human life according to Islam. The ones who manages to achieve it are promised to be released from their sins, and they are promised eternal bliss and the whole community looks upto them as a person who has succeeded in life, a person who has led their life as serious men with innocence. But here is the catch- the person embarking on Hajj must be devoid of all kinds of debt; debt in every meaning of the word. Not only should he be able to afford the pilgrimage by his own he should also be relieved from all kinds of guilt, he should be forgiven for any kind of trouble he has caused to his fellow men, he should be absolutely sure that the money he uses is made with righteous means alone. And yet millions of people manages to do it every year.
Abu scrapes out just enough money to leave for hajj, but at the last moment it turns out that the tree he sold( which funded the major portion of money for the pilgrimage) turned out to be hollow, just like his son who abandoned him and got rich by dishonorable means. The person who bought the tree is still willing to pay the same amount to him just to help him, but Abu cannot have it for it would mean he is in debt. His intimate friends tries to help him with a huge sum, with no need for a payback, but that again jeopardizes the point of the pilgrimage. In the end, quite possibly the most ideal person , the person most worthy of the pilgrimage is unable to afford it . The whole point that the movie makes is that the pilgrimage is infact an ideal which is set by religion to inspire men to move through their lives keeping their innocence as impaired as possible. People are asked not to set just the right but an ideal as their final goal, for only the ones striving for the ideal will be able to just stick with the righteous path and a noble life. The movie ends with Abu planting a new tree in the place of the old one he cut off and praying that he would be able to make the pilgrimage next year before his death.
“In Turin on 3rd January, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via Carlo Albert. Not far from him, the driver of a hansom cab is having trouble with a stubborn horse. Despite all his urging, the horse refuses to move, whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche comes up to the throng and puts an end to the brutal scene, throwing his arms around the horse’s neck, sobbing. His landlord takes him home, he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan until he mutters the obligatory last words, and lives for another ten years, silent and demented, cared for by his mother and sisters. We do not know what happened to the horse.”
These are the lines that opens acclaimed Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr’s swan song named Turin Horse. As the voice over promises we expect a movie about the Suffering horse and Bela tarr does deliver the same, only that the suffering of the horse seems so very painless compared to that of the family that depends on it. When I say suffering I don’t mean pain that stem from physical anguish but that stems out of hopeless, insignificant, pointless existence. Many a film has been made by auteur throughout the years using a microcosm to explain the the meaning of life. Bela Tarr through the Turin Horse stages a microcosm to observe life but what the movie point towards is not the meaning of life but rather the meaninglessness in it. The whole movie is set in a span of six days in an endless loop of the most mundane activities in the life of a father, a daughter and their faithful horse awaiting its death. Each Day we watch them live their lives repeating the most ordinary tasks in a house in ruins set in the midst of a desert with a menacing sandstorm blowing endlessly over their roofs. The raging storm in itself turns into a character within the movie, with the characters hiding within the dark rustic house in the verge of ruins, peeking out through a single narrow window, watching out for any tiny bit of humanity or hope or whatever that could possibly mean anything in their frozen existence.
We watch the characters move through the house, cook food, moves things around, feed the horse, get together an eat a single boiled potato with their fingers and so on each of the day. And Bela Tarr’s Constantly moving , spontaneous camerawork shows these same rituals again and again accompanied by a constant single melancholic piece of music .Even the storm raging over their heads doesn’t break out of this monotonic existence. And what is interesting about the whole thing is how the whole repetitive chores starts looking startlingly different to the viewer as the days progress.
The first day within the filmic universe we admire for its consistent attention to detail and extravagant realism. And then Bela Tarr announces that this is actually a chore that keeps repeating eternally within this filmic universe. What we see in each day of the film the same but as the movie progresses the same ordinary activities that the characters go through emphasizing a sense of realism in the earlier part of movie start looking sinister and even metaphysical to the viewer. The same scenes which looked ordinary and calm looks haunting and bleak by the end of the film. What we see as mundane yet full of life turns out be the acceptance of doom in disguise. This is indeed a feat rarely achieved by filmmakers; startling transformation of meaning in a sequence which is mostly a repetition. The activities are the same , the only thing that has changed the way the camera shows it to us.
Turin Horse is a daring attempt even in the niche reserved for art films and might be endlessly repetitive and monotonous even for serious film viewers. The movie is set in a single house made completely for the film explored using a constantly moving camera and as a result the films universe is authentic to a very high degree that we almost feel we are within watching the character’s lives alongside them. Every shot is well composed presented lateral to the action except for the shots with the horse when the camera shifts to a head on angle. Add to the rustic and atmospheric set the stark black and whole cinematography we get an experience which is not only haunting but also claustrophobic. The Turin house is definitely great cinema, but I fear it is something which will be enjoyed only by a minority of serious filmviewers. Regular filmgoers will be endlessly bored unless you have a keen eye and fondness for images ,aesthetics, realism and/or metaphor.
Watching the Japanese wife brings to mind a quote that I stumbled upon long time back -” A bird may love a fish, but where will they build a home together? ” Countless movies made on the same theme have bored me endlessly but The Japanese wife stands out amongst them. Most of these movies depend on the conflict of two individuals living a world apart, trying to fit in. But the Japanese wife interestingly does not try to use the conflict for drama but instead accepts the obvious and is comfortable with the separation of characters. Its almost like an innocent children’s movie- no evil characters, no twists in fate, excessive dependence on melodrama and it still charms the viewer for most part of the movie until the inevitably frustrating ending. It follows the life of a timid, middle class school teacher from Bengal who befriends a Japanese girl by the long forgotten art of correspondence.
The first half of the movie shows the growth of their relationship by words, drawn out by impressionistic
Imagery. The movie looks almost like a dream in this opening sequence, switching effortleslessly through memories with images of bengal and japan which one might conjure up just from postcards and photographs. This is actually one of the rare occasions in indian cinema where seasons are used so effectively to draw out the emotions of the protagonist through out the narrative . A slow, melancholic japanese score is used throughout this sequence underlining snehamoy’s facination with the japanese girl. At some stage the lovers decides to get married, they understand each other(or they think they do) and love each other, everything looks perfect; except for the fact that neither of them can cross their countries to live with the other. And despite the odds they get married, foolishly staying a world apart in hopes of meeting in future and slowly the movie starts changing its tone subtly from impressionism, giving more of a sense of realism , trading the bright, vibrant colours of spring to the umbers and greys of the autumn, filling in the anxieties of the protagonists. Snehamoys finds it difficult to share a complete connection with his wife as his life progresses. And along with it he develops a certain affection to a widow which is very subtly hinted in the movie.
It is said that music is used in movies to tell things that is not spoken in it. Aparna sense had the right idea in it even though the movie is not extensively scored . The music whenever it commences is almost like half of the of visuals and the subtle change in the score from japanese to bengali melody is used to show snehamoy’s relationship with the bengali wife even when he is obsessed trying to help his japanese wife.
The movie raises many important questions concerning relationships. How could a relationship work even if the two individuals involved share a deep connection , if they can never be together physically? Could a person love two persons at a time and still be true to both? The answers are obvious often prejudiced and pessimistic but the movie manages to reinforce a certain faith in its characters’ ideals even with the very obvious frustrating climax.
Seems like the idea of being a remake( or rather reimagination ) of a masterpiece have affected few movies like it affected steven soderberg’s Solaris. While Tarkovsky’s solyaris and soderberg’s solaris both shares Stanislaw Lem’s novel as source material , it feels like both directors were inspired by the book to create something truly cinematic rather than just end up illustrating the text.
Stanislaw Lem’s has admitted in his personal website, the true intention of the book was to to propound what an Encounter with something truly Alien might be like. But both Soderberg and tarkovsky seems to have drawn in to the human drama attached to the work and movies works largely as psychological drama rather than a science fiction( which is more than often what true science aims to achieve). Soderberg’s solaris is a self aware work of art, somewhat similar to works like begman’s persona(I am not comparing the stylistic aspects of the films here but the rather the overall effect). Inexplicable scenarios happens yet the audience and the movie accepts them without questions, because we are hooked more to the metaphors implied by the construct rather than the construct itself.
Solaris builds up a similar form like many of the great works of science fiction. It uses the liberties of a science fiction universe to conjure up a situation completely alien to humanity and then introduces normal human beings into this world, testing their humanity, constantly questioning aspects of our psyche that makes us human. The science fiction universe in solaris the movie is spent mostly in a spacecraft inspecting a planet named solaris. Solaris differs from a normal planet in one aspect-It observes the minds of the humans close to it, finds what is it they have lost or missed most and materializes the loss back to them, which is almost always another human close to us taken away by death. The person who we miss most, brought back to us in flesh and blood, perfect in everyway we imagined them to be. It seems almost like a dream come true as a possibility , but the moment a human is put in the situation it feels like the materialization of a nightmare. The entire movie is about the way different crew members within the ship responds to this, almost like the way characters in Bergman’s seventh seal confronts and responds to the materialization of death. Once we get past the initial fear of the materialization, what happens next is a desperate urge to protect it, to realize whatever it is that we regret by losing them an turning life back to the way it was supposed to be. And then just as we start finding joy in the illusion we grow conscious about the nature of the materialized; it can never be the person that has been lost to us. Because whatever has been created is just an image of the person, everything that we know about a person and this draws a parallel to the way human relationship works in the real world- we never actually understands a person in true sense. The film explores the limit of human empathy like no other at this point, how well could you know or empathize even the person whom you love most in this world. Could we ever really know what or how another person feels at any point of our lives? All we does is imagine us in their position and think how we may have felt if we were them and all that we know about a person is in real whatever we want to see in them. The question of the others the movie poses to us at this point is revelatory enough to drive us paranoid on knowledge of the self and therein lies the genius of the film. The film starts by questioning what we know about everything beyond our self and ends by confirming our hopelessness in the knowledge of the self.
Soderberg has always been a director who explores the more stylistic aspects of storytelling in cinema and I have always felt he would have been acknowledged a greater filmmaker had he belonged to another generation like the new wave where style was accepted as the content. But this one like many great masterpieces has confirms the notion that storytelling indiscernibly aiding the story is what makes a movie truly great. There are moments in with the present juxtaposed with the past again juxtaposed with fantasy, all so carefully wrapped up by clever editing where the whole sequence goes brings out meaning beyond the sum of the images. Soderberg’s choice of images, the detached quality of the visuals and the music all places the viewer in a meditative state but the movie at the same time is very legible, uncompromising and committed to the storytelling that one doesn’t need to be a very committed cinephile to be seduced by it. I think it’s a masterpiece without doubt;though imdb rating disagrees with me.
It was by no coincidence that Quentin Tarentino stole the name A Band Apart from the 1964 Godard film for his production company when he launched his career with his debut film Reservoir Dogs. For what Tarentino started with Reservoir dogs was something so similar in effect to what Godard was trying to do with this comic, quirky interpretation of the hollywood gangster genre.
“Isnt it strange that people never form a whole? They never come together, they remain separate. Each goes his own way, distrustful and tragic. Even when they’re together in those big buildings or in the street” -Godard throws a few words to us audience, as he usually puts it at the culmination of a heist movie gone wrong, not because of the opposition or the law but by the group of people who came together to pull of the heist. At the time when both hollywood and french films were busy churning out noir s, gangster films and heist films from the formula of men working together to achieve a goal, introduced by Seven samurai ,Bande A Part tells the story of an odd group of wanna be rebels who messes up. Godard seems to be operating in cue with the T.S Elliot quote in the movie “Anything that is new is threreby automatically traditional”. The attempt here is to create something completely new defining a new tradition. The movie is stylistically similar to his prior work breathless but is much more flamboyant and has more fun in introducing its childlike antiheroes to the audience. At the time of dark , depressing noirs and anti noirs Godard seems to have stricken a contrast pulling of movies of similar content with a more light headed approach.
With the charming ,doe eyed Anna karina looking the most naïve and innocent; filled with so many fun, fascinating , cinematic moments like the famous dance sequence( famously tributed by Tarentino in pulpfiction) and the moment of silence, Bande A part not only works as a high contrast with the popular film of the time but also acts a sort of preparation for his much of flamboyant work , A woman is a woman. A movie that shouldn’t be missed by anyone interested in the new wave for its definitely one of the prominent works of the movement. A fun, entertaining art house film in short, I guess as most of godard’s works could be described…
The Tree of life by Terrance Malick opens with one of the most notorious quotes in the Book of job, Bible -
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”
Some find this quote cynical, others respect it as the sign of the unquestionable authority god posseses over us. I just see it as one of the earliest moments where man acknowledges his helplessness at the cycle of life and death through words. Casually put forward to the viewer, like in countless other movies opening up with written words, this quote seems to be the only conventional thing about the tree of life. But the moment I saw it, it set the tone and fate of the movie for me. It was like an open declaration by the director that he does not owe us answers. He does give us a few, but as promised the movie leaves us more questions than answers or rather sets us off in a mood to contemplate the nature of our existence.
Before I could express any kind of view on the content ( which definitely has more to it than one could grasp at a single watch) I must say the movie is a must watch for its very unique visual style which abandons most of the rules of the cinematography and yet manages to look astonishingly beautiful . I am not talking about the famous sequence of genesis in the movie but the parts which depicts the story of the family . A major part of the movie is dealt on the childhood memoirs of the eldest son of a Texas family. The key word here is” memory” rather than story. The whole life of the protagonist is shown exactly as one might remember it and the visual structure of the movie which floats around inconsistently yet gracefully has a lot to achieve this effect. Malick seems to abandon the meticulous obsession with single frames and instead explores his world from somewhat like the viewpoint of butterfly fluttering around but instinctively creating a graceful order in the images that presents the memories. It is truly astonishing fiat, I haven’t ever seen something which I would call a “great movie” which flies free of the rules of imagery like this one.
Both the visual and narrative structure of the film is exceedingly organic. It is almost as if an imitation of the way life sprouts off from ground, grows instinctively to fulfill its purpose. It seems tough to imagine that the whole movie has been premeditated. The movie starts close to the end of the narrative with a family mourning the death of their young son. Following the mood set by the quote from the book of job, the earliest moments are that of grief at the loss which grows into a reminiscence of childhood memories of the eldest son. This is marked by a sudden change of narrative into a dramatization of the beginning of life in the earth( executed with stunning imagery) which develops into the beginning of the life of the son his first thoughts , his memories which is presented as a collage, just the way one might imagine their childhood.
The child is presented with two ways of life. One is the way of nature- the way of his father, the path which give creedence to concepts like respect and success beyond anything. Fighting against the world, earning respect gaining his pace in the world are of prime importance to the father. The second way is the way of grace, which is the one advocated by mother. The mother follows a way of life which depends on trust, love mutual help and selflessness. The son being naturally weak and insecure is terrified by his father way. A fear which gradually grows into something like Oedipus complex where he competes for his mothers affection and even prayers that his father might die.
The way Malick depicts this struggle between these two concepts is such that it relates to the entire nature of the world rather than just the nature of the life of an individual is almost like something charlie kaufman did with synecdoche newyork, only difference being that the concept chosen here is life rather than death. The entire life is shown as a struggle between the way of nature and way of grace. In his struggle to suppress and free himself from his fathers path and gain the affection of his mother the son almost succeeds, but that success comes at his own acceptance of the way of nature. Tree of life doesn’t tell us which path is the right path, it rather points that both paths are inevitable in our own quest for reconciliation with life. The movie ends with a dream like segment which almost feels like a comforting prayer presenting death as a peaceful destination. The beauty of the film is in how convincingly it has recreated the memories of its characters, their struggles presenting it as close as life it can be rather than a scripted or staged story. It is more of an experience than a movie.Dont miss it if you believe your eyes are the gates to your soul, odds are that you wouldn’t find a better chance to test your belief.
Book cover design: Thunder of the lone voice
So I finally managed to get my hands on a collection of movies by Satyajit Ray, whose only work i have watched till now was sadgati, an excellent critique on indian caste system, that too too far back in my childhood to remember with clarity. Since I am ignorant about his filmmaking style I picked charulatha bypassing his much acclaimed Apu trilogy as it felt better staged and better crafted in scrolling through. And it seems like I picked an excellent movie to start with Ray as I feel it reflects both his craftsmanship and his choice of content.
Charulatha is set in the late 19 th century Bengal, which I assume was a time of cultural renaissance for bengal. It focuses on the charu, a quiet, intelligent housewife of an upperclass intellectual, Bhupati who runs a political newspaper in the illusions of aiding political reformations and the freedom movement. The movie commences with a visit from Bhupati’s young cousin Amal, a naïve young man who declare his only motives in his life are Relaxation, Literary pursuit and…relaxation( I got an eery sensation of deja vu right there except for the literary part).
The movie focuses closely on these three characters, and provides more than just human dram with them. All three of them I suspect are the different faces of the bengali society of that era. Bhupati is the impatient uppermiddle class intellectual following the path set by visionaries like Rajaram Mohan Roi.Amal is another face of the upperclass which spends their life in pursuit of art and literature in a time where both were applauded and embraced as vices . But oddly enough the movie is not about the development of either of theese two but about the growth of the most passive and ignored of the lot- the educated upperclass housewife who lives a ’ conservative’ life in a ‘modern’ society . The whole movie is about charulatas growth from a conservative housewife to a ‘modern’ woman and that at the cost of a broken home.
Being a progessive and intellectual husband Bhupati realises his wife’s talent in literature and wishes to nurture it. But she never gains confidence from him and he never have the time tfor her , spending time on his newspaper whom he admits as a rival for his wife. And in this scenario he asks amal to help charu gain confidence in her talent and help he become a better writer. The rest of the movie is spent subtly subtly in drawing out a relationship growing between charu and amal, which both realizes but neither acknowledges owing to the guilt attached.
There is a very subtle romantic affinity between the both the which grows throughout the movie along with a sense of rivalry which inter vines with it. What we witness is the growth of a potential extramarital affair but it never seem wrong or obscene at any point of the movie. Charu gets more dependent on it as the story progesses while guilt forces amal to abandon the whole relationship. Inevitably the whole movie spirals to point of wrecking the whole the family which culminates in Bhupati realising charu’s feeling s for amal in a marvellously shot graphic 10 minute sequence which end s with the couples’ failure at reconciliation. Ray uses a montage of still shots to depict it. A heart broken Bhupati returns back home and let in by charu. A sequence of still images showing both of them followed by a closeup of the two extending hands to each other finished off by a long shot with servant entering the scene with a lit lamp disrupting the duo.Juxtaposed with the montage ray introduces a merciless text- “Nashtavihar” meaning Broken nest / Broken home which is the original title for the story written by Rabindranath Tagore.
Ultimately a movie which started out as a subtle study of human Drama turns out to be something more than that-a fascinating allegory of the different faces of a society at a particular era, their aspirations for mutual existence at the face all their differences and their failure to achieve it. Satyajit Ray has played a game so clever emulating a society with just a handful of characters that this single movie alone could place him in par with film makers like Krzysztof kieslowski in cinema of subtleties.
