tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88334110832136639052024-03-21T06:47:28.560-07:00Eternal Sunshine of the Thoughtless MindHow happy is the blameless Vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.comBlogger102125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-59961670437040694092015-01-06T10:02:00.001-08:002015-01-06T10:02:05.946-08:00Bullet points: Ici et Ailleurs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">H E R
E<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">A N D<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">E L S
E W H E R E<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;">It was
in the middle of July 2014 – in the tumult of Operation Protective Edge – that
I came across an article on an Indian news site. Mor Ostrovski, a 20-year old
soldier in an IDF sniper unit, had uploaded to his instagram account an image
of a target – the looming head of a very young Palestinian boy – dead centre in
the crosshairs of his rifle. I saw this as an addendum to something I’d read a
few days earlier – <a href="http://news.artnet.com/art-world/ways-of-seeing-instagram-37635">Instagram and Art Theory</a>, which posited that the proliferation
of photos on social media is not an aberration in the history of images but a
continuum – through viral propagation – of existing modes of representation
(selfies a bastardized form of self-portraits, food pictures a variation on
still life and so on). Furthermore, the origins of these ‘original’,
‘classical’ modes were in themselves not really as respectable as we imagine
them to be – for example, portraits developed partly because artists had to
draw their royal patrons for subsistence. No image is therefore as innocent as
it seems to be, no image too ignoble to be discarded without due thought. Social
media had understandably exploded on poor Ostrovski but there was more to be spent
on his image than mere outrage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Now,
on being asked to write something pertaining to Palestinian cinema, I was in a
quandary: the only film on the conflict made by an insider (or a stakeholder)
I’d seen was some four years back in a festival screening, little of which I
remembered. My history lessons on the conflict were murky at best, so what was
I to do with this assignment?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">With
the student protests of France in May ’68 a major filmmaker died, signing his
penultimate film with a triumphant declaration: FIN DU CINEMA. The filmmaker
reborn in the wake of this was no longer interested in placing himself in the
history of the moving image, but in holding a photograph of Jane Fonda in
Vietnam to task and questioning its implications. In 1970, this filmmaker, J-L
Godard, and his young friend, J-P Gorin, went to Palestine to make a film on
the resistance – <b>Jusqu'à la victoire</b> (Until Victory) – which never got released
in its intended form.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">“In 1970, this film was called
<b>Until Victory</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">In
1974, this film is called <b>Here and Elsewhere</b>. Here. and Elsewhere.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">It is
in this later film that I found something to chew on – an outsider’s
perspective on strife; of what it means to be sitting thousands of miles away
from Gaza and scrolling through the fine print of photos of its bombed remains on
Facebook. Here. And elsewhere. Of being part of an image-saturated world and
watching the subjects of the ‘sympathetic’ image, subjects without an equivalent
access into our own ‘reality’. Elsewhere. And here.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">It is
in the image of a Palestinian fighter with his machine gun that we find a matching
countershot to Ostrovski - a zoom-in that dynamizes the frame, ‘bringing us
closer to the conflict’. The conflict here between these militarized images:
Ostrovski’s instagram belonging to a lineage of ‘cool’ war and espionage
iconography (action movies, video games), Godard’s/Gorin’s shot an
appropriation of agit-prop third cinema documentaries. Seemingly different
image-histories that share the same ideology – the construction of the image is
in itself the argument for the respective 'political cause’. If one was to
strip away the specific aesthetic of these images, the 'raw data' might be re-purposed
for very different ends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">With
the dissolution of the Dziga Vertov group and his subsequent encounter with
Anne-Marie Mieville, Godard began to see the faultlines in his erstwhile project. Therefore he turned the raw images from his uncompleted
Palestine film against themselves, with some new material filmed in France – in
effect shifting the focus from the Palestinian struggle itself to the violent
appropriation that ‘sympathetic’ outsiders unleash on it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Image:</span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">a
hand adding four digit numbers on a calculator, 1917 + 1936 (and somewhere
1789), to try to arrive at 1970. Revolutionary maths that don’t add up because
the references are all wrong.</span></li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid81dgZJE-UtWfwQv0xqCtwvWfRJBORCh1H-7TBIzXhTy_hVe7LlLTC3d_Y1zm83RSgzJ-nYK19-oDDg6d66NPnOUBOOo3yreDcJSaIaj-LVnj-Mhw4T4zbuQwitAOvkolA8haj4J5lJ4/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-09-27-12h07m37s53.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid81dgZJE-UtWfwQv0xqCtwvWfRJBORCh1H-7TBIzXhTy_hVe7LlLTC3d_Y1zm83RSgzJ-nYK19-oDDg6d66NPnOUBOOo3yreDcJSaIaj-LVnj-Mhw4T4zbuQwitAOvkolA8haj4J5lJ4/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-09-27-12h07m37s53.png" height="302" width="400" /></a></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">a
young Palestinian girl declaiming Israel in front of war ruins. Heroic gestures
that date back to the public spectacles of the French Revolution.</span></li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVklonqxNYbTjv8SEI1n_1_rTLOfUKD42497zqKK50SSTBXVAxM-ARCJx94HIYxHBtoKZmjM6UkM_1Y8VJZTiLx-OzEYRMNX4cufdDWd1QEB3hLZ6rzUq0217TBMHlsD_pBOVnQx0fQqA/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-09-27-11h39m36s145.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVklonqxNYbTjv8SEI1n_1_rTLOfUKD42497zqKK50SSTBXVAxM-ARCJx94HIYxHBtoKZmjM6UkM_1Y8VJZTiLx-OzEYRMNX4cufdDWd1QEB3hLZ6rzUq0217TBMHlsD_pBOVnQx0fQqA/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-09-27-11h39m36s145.png" height="302" width="400" /></a></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">five
people holding photographs of the Palestinian resistance walk in a queue
towards a camera, holding their photos up and leaving. Then they move sideways
in a queue, simulating a montage.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;">And
sound:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">“A
point in time when one sound takes power over the others. A point in time when
this sound seeks, almost desperately, to keep this power.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">How
did that sound take power? It took power because, at one given time, it made
itself represented by an image.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">How,
then, does one think through these data-bytes of war? By juxtaposing relentlessly
and constantly, one with the ‘other’, one with the ‘self’. If there is anything
to be learnt at all from the work of Godard, it is that meaning can only be
found in the abstract maelstrom of images and sounds that don’t add up. It is
in <i>not</i> understanding fully – in struggling
with meaning – that one grasps dialectics.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">To
return to Ostrovski, the real terror in his photo is the violent hierarchy in
it: the blatant position of power than he wields over the boy, who’s unaware
that he’s in imminent danger. To see, as a voyeur, is to exploit. The
terrifying fact is that Ostrovski can jokingly think of shooting the kid and
then magnanimously let him go, taking just a ‘cool’ photo as a record of his
benevolence. To land as a Frenchman in Palestine and hold a movie camera is a
luxury, as is flicking through photos of bombed-out Gaza on Facebook. We can
just as well choose not to.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><b>P.S.:</b>
I learnt while researching for this piece that the Ostrovski scandal actually
happened in February 2013, a full year and a half before some enterprising
Indian newspaper decided to recycle it as shocking news from the present
warfront. Here. And elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><i>(written in September, 2014. Commissioned by, t</i><i>ranslated and published in bangla <a href="http://www.drobidro.in/drobidro/Article/43/%E0%A6%B8%E0%A7%81%E0%A6%A6%E0%A7%80%E0%A6%AA%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%A4%20%E0%A6%AC%E0%A6%B8%E0%A7%81%20...%E0%A6%85%E0%A6%A8%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AF%E0%A6%95%E0%A7%8B%E0%A6%A8%E0%A6%93%E0%A6%96%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%A8%E0%A7%87.html?fb_action_ids=777901798968118&fb_action_types=og.comments">here</a>.)</i></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04872491455018901989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-79293978819587166842014-07-20T13:05:00.002-07:002014-07-20T13:13:28.434-07:00We can be heroes: the star and his fan in My Name is Nobody<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">My
Name is Nobody</span></i></b><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"> (Tonino Valerii/Sergio Leone, 1973) sits at all sorts of strange intersections: between comic and serious spaghetti
westerns (the former typified by the Trinity series starring Terrence Hill, ‘Nobody’
in this film); between the old West of Henry Fonda’s idealism and the post-modern
West of endless cultural references and tropes; but most crucially the
intersection in a dark movie theater of a star and his awestruck fan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From which came the Wild Bunch.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; text-align: left;">Fonda
plays Jack Beauregard – aging, conscientious gunslinger who draws so fast that
he can fire three shots in the space of one. A hero of the Old West, a ‘national
monument’, he’s the star of Nobody’s eyes. Nobody is a comically fast draw (who, in deference to his idol, never exhibits his tact before Beauregard),
Trinity wandered into the wrong set. He knows Beauregard’s exploits by heart (“82
was one of your best years”) and wants to see him go out with a bang against
the infamous Wild Bunch (“150 who shoot and ride like there's thousands”). So
he dogs Beauregard’s tracks and practically coerces him into a showdown.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">The movement
here practically plays as a riff on fan-culture myth: the movie star a graceful,
kind fellow with super-powers; the star’s heroic exploits in movies (where the star and the character can never be separated) and the fan's own dream scenario starring the hero pitted against villains.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Hero-worship,
however, is no one-way street. The dreamer fashions himself after the star:
practicing his swagger in front of a mirror and, at least in his subjective estimation, outdoing him. The fan is a self-appointed successor to the hero,
the one who inherits his legacy and displaces him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3L7vm_SKGVNl9dCOGvRGBZfek1pzUwyG9obFXTFgNrjpE-YOAVyu0SOFPuMY-WaZmgi30J6shrXMQmBxXyFX4EsD_r6EUAXtHrW6jLaLIHm_MuLTYkh5zEAcYvDy5B_pCOqhp3acclgs/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-21-00h36m38s7.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3L7vm_SKGVNl9dCOGvRGBZfek1pzUwyG9obFXTFgNrjpE-YOAVyu0SOFPuMY-WaZmgi30J6shrXMQmBxXyFX4EsD_r6EUAXtHrW6jLaLIHm_MuLTYkh5zEAcYvDy5B_pCOqhp3acclgs/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-21-00h36m38s7.png" height="170" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wearing the hero's hat.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">It is then entirely fitting that the star has to enter the dream under the aegis of the devotee. The screen – the barrier between performer and spectator – dissolves. The kid in the theater
saves his idol from a rut and gives him the perfect alibi for a peaceful
after-life. A final gambit. Death in the space of the movie.
To be staged in front of an audience, with a camera recording the proceedings for
eternity (the players being asked to re-position to fit into the camera's frame).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNKMCr3ErVIendXGSrjFFYkn5XdFK0lFJQIvO5aPOZtwtoxhuvgT8iq-Z0WqnXM11D4OqvbR9HUtAAC88KyKC01xXAmX0OfRvCKYoNyDuytWwwz6WBwseXiCVW_-UfUEvlK3Mp2CbN7AE/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-21-01h06m38s85.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNKMCr3ErVIendXGSrjFFYkn5XdFK0lFJQIvO5aPOZtwtoxhuvgT8iq-Z0WqnXM11D4OqvbR9HUtAAC88KyKC01xXAmX0OfRvCKYoNyDuytWwwz6WBwseXiCVW_-UfUEvlK3Mp2CbN7AE/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-21-01h06m38s85.png" height="170" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">In the
after-life, three days after his ‘death’, the superstar writes a letter to his
fan – thanking him for the trouble taken, for the favour done, noting how
Nobody’s finally a Somebody, a standout from the crowd in the theater. The
dream has been played out, the payback delivered. The star will ride
out in a ship called 'The Sundowner' and the kid will take his position.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;">Post-scripts</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;">The aspect ratio of frames, wherein the meta-myth is constructed.<span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_49kF-7PuiMlaUrN8x8f4vwaISAWYWuajEsq2blitZIP3YKksPWXijIb1BxaeEcgdnijNm3FkV5nMH4GuegRQNIIjhEE_BfxeU4UH0C5T4T5DxdtpRoSlZTlv0Z8NfOJA2VeJSPjxZRQ/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-21-00h35m52s56.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_49kF-7PuiMlaUrN8x8f4vwaISAWYWuajEsq2blitZIP3YKksPWXijIb1BxaeEcgdnijNm3FkV5nMH4GuegRQNIIjhEE_BfxeU4UH0C5T4T5DxdtpRoSlZTlv0Z8NfOJA2VeJSPjxZRQ/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-21-00h35m52s56.png" height="170" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The old hero looking at himself in a 4:3 mirror: the frame of classic westerns.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2vr21Jes4JjlI8qbG7p57KzPRrBL-YpRINogCmPz3UndxrTrvN7XiNvm94-NDKGJZc6MwxPDNyOwu7g4IZtGAS8Te5DYkSe6FQHF_5bElckMFVcHY3sVNCaUu-XMhy4WUG-mtgDeJdn4/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-21-00h44m00s78.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2vr21Jes4JjlI8qbG7p57KzPRrBL-YpRINogCmPz3UndxrTrvN7XiNvm94-NDKGJZc6MwxPDNyOwu7g4IZtGAS8Te5DYkSe6FQHF_5bElckMFVcHY3sVNCaUu-XMhy4WUG-mtgDeJdn4/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-21-00h44m00s78.png" height="170" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The new hero in his Cinemascope frame.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGFhV75VU0nkl-MzN0SJMAeruPBjEgYuZngF9QqD0aIfUnFlQ_mOY6ep_WtqFhg3b-7th854PubHfQEPVrkD9DYlxNv2XSZbqTK3FpM66PWyaPeBzT8i4uFuc69nFEyoDJMQqBeZ6GIQI/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-21-00h57m10s41.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGFhV75VU0nkl-MzN0SJMAeruPBjEgYuZngF9QqD0aIfUnFlQ_mOY6ep_WtqFhg3b-7th854PubHfQEPVrkD9DYlxNv2XSZbqTK3FpM66PWyaPeBzT8i4uFuc69nFEyoDJMQqBeZ6GIQI/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-21-00h57m10s41.png" height="170" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The new hero displacing the old in the same space: the barbershop<br />
(refer first still in this triptych) and its old-time 4:3 mirror.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04872491455018901989noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-43760587518769678582014-07-16T11:52:00.002-07:002014-07-16T11:52:38.937-07:00Object-ifying trauma<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The engine of the revenge movie plot is a tragedy. The (anti-)hero's very existence is defined by the all-consuming tragic incident which bereaved him, often to the extent where he's unable to feel love or happiness. The world - as he perceives it - has been thrown out of order. Only revenge will restore symmetry.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The problem is: trauma is a shapeless, blinding emotion that often erases the actual experience. So how does he deal with it? How does he preserve the memory of the loss?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">[Spoiler alert for the rest of the post]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><u>Notes from a spaghetti western</u></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i>Death Rides a Horse</i></b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, little Bill (John Phillip Law) witnesses the annihilation of his family by a posse of bandits from a dark corner of the room. One of the kinder bandits saves and hides him in time before they burn the house down. The kid grows up to be one of the deadliest gunslingers in the territory, swearing revenge on his family's murderers. Except he didn't see their faces. He remembers each bandit by a specific </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">object</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> or mark - they have been stripped of their humanity, reduced to something on their person. These are the only permanent landmarks in the hero's subjective experience.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin5KbZ1OKy2tctIorPN3d3nNbnyTVe8XyX1KYB5hOOqI49K8p84m7YrqQkTpPGuXNINiXgLxQT2udHYt0XL4AHe-Ti_N_DBK0zpH6i7TcU1nPZGcE1qiOOOuN0_IHNuAUmfsSaqR8LXOE/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-16-21h05m49s239.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin5KbZ1OKy2tctIorPN3d3nNbnyTVe8XyX1KYB5hOOqI49K8p84m7YrqQkTpPGuXNINiXgLxQT2udHYt0XL4AHe-Ti_N_DBK0zpH6i7TcU1nPZGcE1qiOOOuN0_IHNuAUmfsSaqR8LXOE/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-16-21h05m49s239.png" height="170" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Shapelessness</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpk0dJfQjropROBuQeb8JfyD3c0UOhN0-99_jZ1piFXUg0FHJTFNqzgLWg7bX8yjqbQ3WPGBZ8AVW3FDwnfWaBIHwmQSIvBg4aOH64BLtyOZ3Y9B9uL1aOAPHFCJ9yKsXPEJ2mxPVaKeU/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-16-21h07m16s86.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpk0dJfQjropROBuQeb8JfyD3c0UOhN0-99_jZ1piFXUg0FHJTFNqzgLWg7bX8yjqbQ3WPGBZ8AVW3FDwnfWaBIHwmQSIvBg4aOH64BLtyOZ3Y9B9uL1aOAPHFCJ9yKsXPEJ2mxPVaKeU/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-16-21h07m16s86.png" height="170" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">The witness</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrp3RH_-jwBF0j2_bZbytnh_Mj0GXUsrgThlNK8YZv3FXYFxm108TX2zxadwbYgMTi7yFjHR0CGnft00CGAYZkfFUePJAHiR0JTLnBWUsFjGt-hiJjz0r09n4jdnjjftDIZZzeudh290E/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-16-21h07m09s14.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrp3RH_-jwBF0j2_bZbytnh_Mj0GXUsrgThlNK8YZv3FXYFxm108TX2zxadwbYgMTi7yFjHR0CGnft00CGAYZkfFUePJAHiR0JTLnBWUsFjGt-hiJjz0r09n4jdnjjftDIZZzeudh290E/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-16-21h07m09s14.png" height="170" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">The other witness: time</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">The erasure of subjective experience</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">When he later encounters these bandits many years after, these objects/marks re-kindle what has been repressed. As the hero meets his aggressors in an almost episodic narrative, Petroni 's camera picks out the objects - the signifiers - with a zoom-in. Then we cut to a flashback of the tragedy - the screen tinted red, the kid's eyes in a huge close-up, witnessing, superimposed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If revenge-cinema is perceived as a masculine genre it's because a large part of it is dictated by the obsession of a (futile) chase; the (anti-)hero does not let memory bury the 'ghosts of the past'. He fetishizes the tragedy - objectifies it - so that he'll remember. But Petroni is kind enough to give his protagonist wisdom before it's too late: the 'last bandit' in the posse is forgiven. The cycle of violence stops when Bill's obsession ends. He is free at last.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><u>Trauma in '70s Bombay Cinema</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I've been revisiting the classics of my childhood moviewatching days - the late '60s and '70s crime melodramas that defined </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">my</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> obsession. I'm struck by Prakash Mehra's </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Zanjeer</b></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> because of the sheer ingenuity in the way it borrows from the premise of </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Death Rides a Horse</b></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. Here too, the protagonist witnesses the killing of his family (from a cupboard) - and here too is the signifying object associated with Evil, imprinted on his mind. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But Mehra and writers Salim-Javed do not play their 'theft' down: they literalize it with a Death-like figure on a horse repeatedly riding into the hero's nightmares. (In fact, one of the film's strongest points is that it literalizes the central metaphor of the title - Zanjeer is both the fetishized object and the hero's existential condition, and in making the symbol physical, the filmmakers explode meaning.)</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The all-important tragedy is given a full-blown mythical irony: it happens during Diwali, the sound of gunfire lost in the noise of crackers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mehra-Salim-Javed further extend the object-ification of trauma to D'Silva (Om Prakash), an old man who gives the police anonymous tips about hooch smuggling. When he's first shown in the film, he's made up to be a drunkard - carrying an empty bottle, slightly lisping. It is only later when he reveals his story to Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) that we come to know of the bottle's significance: poisoned chalice, the last physical memory of three dead sons.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><u>Footnotes, post-script, etc.:</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1.) I also recommend <i>Zanjeer</i> for Mehra's direction. He shows an innate understanding of classical framing and staging in many scenes.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">The meeting with D'Silva.</span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHgvtKtiF0PVDr3q0K6GoFk1oNyvw3LMoW_ylGJdJwLSDbAUxgBFrXW9U_SDY7pSWw7fJNWSXiPvxMmIGkpQmwd1CkPpCG0nYlRuScsxecn6zEsWZNQoZz1Mk98kuSK0TCL5VLBNZ30WU/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-06-15h22m18s224.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHgvtKtiF0PVDr3q0K6GoFk1oNyvw3LMoW_ylGJdJwLSDbAUxgBFrXW9U_SDY7pSWw7fJNWSXiPvxMmIGkpQmwd1CkPpCG0nYlRuScsxecn6zEsWZNQoZz1Mk98kuSK0TCL5VLBNZ30WU/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-06-15h22m18s224.png" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI5NOESMizR81FzFm4S76BA4BDmY-HuOqMJR-MuX7zlbJtw1Kuh6pnX7kYAeax3o04gsJ5QttOWnIKSLdY16oS2Y1h3beqJmeW8JMfrqdIzW0HE5i6X0FPZZc3-4S8BP3WL60hA5syyf4/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-06-15h33m27s9.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI5NOESMizR81FzFm4S76BA4BDmY-HuOqMJR-MuX7zlbJtw1Kuh6pnX7kYAeax3o04gsJ5QttOWnIKSLdY16oS2Y1h3beqJmeW8JMfrqdIzW0HE5i6X0FPZZc3-4S8BP3WL60hA5syyf4/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-06-15h33m27s9.png" height="225" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Premonition of danger: small figure, huge space</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">I love the rows and rows of posts: very Alan Pakula</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Post-shootout schema on a 'Tetris board'</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2. Object-ification of trauma is actually a pretty common trope in retrospect. In spaghetti westerns, the most widely famous would be Harmonica from <i><b>Once Upon A Time in the West</b></i>: a man known by the name of the object which obsesses him. Unlike the tragedies which happen in 'real' spaces in the above cited examples, Sergio Leone stages the central tragedy of his film in a completely dream-like zone.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigaQhVm-jFOIn8O2706CAAGvE-s3sb-QFWT4CAmlljWI4PTD5cM7WPnerL9rurqScAnoXKb5c4QVA3CZ24l9Jo5ByItZJ_WmfynJNcox7CrxarMROWXCDtX8gcL37IWKfezXbi45ozEis/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-16-23h51m54s200.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigaQhVm-jFOIn8O2706CAAGvE-s3sb-QFWT4CAmlljWI4PTD5cM7WPnerL9rurqScAnoXKb5c4QVA3CZ24l9Jo5ByItZJ_WmfynJNcox7CrxarMROWXCDtX8gcL37IWKfezXbi45ozEis/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-16-23h51m54s200.png" height="170" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Revenge: perfect symmetry!</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In '70s AYM melodrama, the other notable objectification of trauma is in <i><b>Deewar</b></i> (unsurprisingly written by Salim-Javed): मेरा बाप चोर है tattooed on young Vijay</span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">.</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">3. On literalization of symbols/metaphors, my all-time favourite is the climactic funhouse shootout in Orson Welles' <i><b>The Lady from Shanghai</b></i>: breaking down the very illusion of the make-belief universe <i>literally</i>, so that what remains is pure meaning without any disturbing static from the subtlety contingent.</span></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04872491455018901989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-9287160246273474952014-06-17T09:47:00.000-07:002014-06-17T09:47:05.592-07:00Ab ki baar, #epicfail yaar<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Short post on something which has been bugging me a little. When the Modi Sarkaar (or Mudi Circar if you follow the viral <a href="https://www.facebook.com/norinderpls?ref=br_tf">Norinder Mudi</a> page) meme circulated, a lot of us felt that it had great potential as satire: by flattening and reducing the rhetoric of the Modi PR team to hollow sillyness. (I spun a couple of these too.) It turned out to be quite the opposite, the crowning achievement of Modi's social media campaign for office. How?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Let's turn to chacha Žižek for an answer (who has useful things to say inspite of the controversies he deservedly faces).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/QeE4ZnRwVr8?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Because it's silly and catchy, the meme circulated widely, pretending to be implicit critique while never really making good on that agenda. In fact, because it had the pretense of criticism - or at least 'neutral, apolitical' humour - it reinforced the campaign (a funny slogan, howsoever meaningless, is ultimately more effective than a sombre one). Which means: media studies should probably look at how memes function in peddling ideology. Q.E.D.</span></div>
Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-77274401097337862812014-05-24T12:33:00.001-07:002014-05-24T20:16:06.545-07:00Two Existential Men: Une élégie à Jef Costello et Bauji<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;">Jef
Costello is an embodiment of purpose (another ‘f’ doesn’t serve any). His
working-class living quarters are exemplary in the precise functionality of
everything – all the water bottles lined up neatly on a shelf, a medical kit
just in place. Even the canary in its cage has a function in Jef’s universe, as
we learn in the course of time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2GU-NnGunB9daQTNUkm7GrXymE6EyG83skC-2V1NK2cU-Mofl_plWC8RqSXZNK06B4sQiaPOfDQC3pxtKdjTv1xcD98Uv7k4vnIppat-6ajuyZlgsni9_W5U4pka86CurDTlIZTrR0EU/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-05-07-21h12m26s44.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2GU-NnGunB9daQTNUkm7GrXymE6EyG83skC-2V1NK2cU-Mofl_plWC8RqSXZNK06B4sQiaPOfDQC3pxtKdjTv1xcD98Uv7k4vnIppat-6ajuyZlgsni9_W5U4pka86CurDTlIZTrR0EU/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-05-07-21h12m26s44.png" height="218" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jef's worldview in a key image.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Some
of this dedication to the obsessive ordering of the physical world till it fits
a worldview comes, one may surmise, from J-P Melville’s private search for
symmetry. Therefore the consistent sameness of the colour palette in his late
colour films (light blue/gray/light ochre) – especially here in <i>Le Samourai</i> or in his last film <i>Un Flic</i> – an ironic minimalism that
establishes Melville’s moral universe even before the films have really begun. What
doesn’t have purpose in the scheme is meaningless – therefore the near-comical effect
of having Jef visit his ‘girlfriend’ only when he needs to establish an alibi.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Melville’s
vision of a world that runs on its own rhythms of planned action is exact in
ways Tati would have found comic. a.) Jef goes to a run-down garage to have the
number plates of a Citroen changed, doesn’t exchange a word with the man there,
hands him money and gets a gun in a total of about five movements. b.) One of
Jef’s rock solid alibis is with a group of professional gamblers. He goes there
after the job, cops come to pick him up ostensibly for a “routine checkup”.
When Jef heads out, Melville stays back in the room with his camera for the coup de grâce. One of the gamblers who was pretending to take a nap while Jef killed
time in his place comes back to the table, picks up his cards and the gentlemen
resume the game at once with clockwork precision. The ‘arrangement’ is
well-oiled. Everything in Jef Costello’s universe is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;">On a
metaphysical level, the very plot of <i>Le Samourai</i> is concerned with restoring
symmetry in a world where something has gone off-register. The pianist – the
only witness who saw Jef at the crime scene – doesn’t identify him at the
police station. Jef doesn’t receive his dues from the people who hired him and
gets shot at because he’s become a perceived danger. Until he figures out these
aberrations he can’t let go.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Hence
the entirely appropriate conclusion – Jef revisits the location of the first </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">violation, this time exactly prepared for what is coming. A samurai without his
master must dictate the terms of his existence. When he has been cornered he
should know what to do. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">CUT TO:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Bauji,
in his puraani Dilli mohalla, surrounded by the bustle of community. When he realizes
that rumours about his daughter’s boyfriend are unfounded, he takes the simple-minded
but radical decision not to believe anything he has not experienced first-hand. He gives
up his job at a travel agency; how can he convincingly sell the charms
of foreign lands when he hasn’t been to these places? Pretty soon a small cult gathers
around Bauji, intently following every utterance and gesture he makes in a
futile search for the ‘truth’. For a long time Bauji takes a vow of silence,
finally making up his mind to let his daughter marry the boy. But all through
the marriage ceremony he’s caught in a strange kind of sorrow, the reason for
which doesn’t become clear until the very end. The end which takes his
metaphysical drive to its necessary logical conclusion. How can Bauji know the
true joy of flying until he has tried it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">This
whimsical world with its inherent chaos is not for men of single-minded vision.
The existential man achieves meaning - finds home - when he ceases to exist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-77937863990876281562014-05-13T13:02:00.000-07:002014-05-13T13:02:13.365-07:00Apur Panchali: validation required<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">This
must be the worst way to do it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Kaushik
Ganguly’s <i>Apur Panchali</i> is
purportedly a fictionalized biopic/tribute to Subir Banerjee, the child actor
in <i>Pather Panchali</i>. Banerjee played
that one iconic role before settling down to the life of an everyman due to
financial/social circumstances.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Ganguly’s
film dramatizes Banerjee’s life – in flashback – by drawing parallels to Apu.
And that is precisely my point of objection; it takes an enormous amount of
disrespect for the ordinariness of the everyman to define his existence solely
in relation to a cultural touchstone. This is the highest form of veiled
elitism; if Subir hadn’t played Apu you could be pretty sure there wouldn’t be
a film of his life. Irony being – and I don’t expect the filmmakers to
understand this – the story of Apu is moving precisely because it could be, and
was, story of anyone from a certain background.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Ganguly
takes a lot of pain to establish how Subir Banerjee shies away from any mention
of Apu – as I imagine he actually must – but the supposed empathy with this
reticence is betrayed by the whole parallels business – some of them so overtly
forced you’d have to strain your imagination – a dubious bit of the pilfering
of Ray’s legacy that has been continually perpetuated through the years by
Bengali filmmakers. Oh, the subtlety!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">The
silliest bit of the fictionalizing – mandatory “based on a true story” warning;
and <i>that</i> always is a warning! – is when
Nemai Ghosh, the stills photographer of Ray is being interviewed about Subir.
Ghosh says something cursory before saying he has a photo of young Subir. Picks
up one from a stack full of actual prints from the sets; a photo of Parambrato!
(Who promptly plays his part with all the gravity that comes from someone knowing
how he’s a cultural icon and everything – as the actor Parambrato, and the
character Subir/Apu. The older actor, Ardhendu Banerjee, is far more sensitive,
getting a lot of everyman nuances just perfect.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">As if
to rub the point in, about how beautifully Ray-like Subir – and by extension
this whole film – is you have the background score (an almost
note-by-note <s>copy of</s> tribute to Ravi Shankar’s <i>Pather Panchali</i> theme) playing endlessly, trying to squeeze out
that last teardrop stuck in the corner of your eye. Emotions on rent from The
Greatest Indian Film. Go on, weep some more. For Bengali cinema is dead.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8wOgbQ0xa04fRvR_NEXbXqBeOMLHxRQFTjVrSZZGn3yO_jGhQGnXgcjZ4l6Cek9MSj_g4trQoW81dY412fHyPIHne61jLj6N8T72D9TISLnVLDvs9qGuWmtqwidRrfYchQCsHjSBu9hY/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-05-14-01h22m18s217.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8wOgbQ0xa04fRvR_NEXbXqBeOMLHxRQFTjVrSZZGn3yO_jGhQGnXgcjZ4l6Cek9MSj_g4trQoW81dY412fHyPIHne61jLj6N8T72D9TISLnVLDvs9qGuWmtqwidRrfYchQCsHjSBu9hY/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-05-14-01h22m18s217.png" height="293" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Question.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
</div>
Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-71281588969306029812014-04-01T12:01:00.001-07:002014-04-01T12:18:30.379-07:00Transferences in The Leopard Man<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWDiwAXXTmXifjnW5Q5v4jvw5LHm3wG928lzHu_sLxXpzhmS2FXC5mD4yl_4pg7xtOTLVJCf6tHANOa1lbvDJUjZMFg637qbdoxpRiosTuuSd7Tk0CnPxZ914ujFiGdCV8e0roPnJeYxE/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-03-30-23h41m23s114.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWDiwAXXTmXifjnW5Q5v4jvw5LHm3wG928lzHu_sLxXpzhmS2FXC5mD4yl_4pg7xtOTLVJCf6tHANOa1lbvDJUjZMFg637qbdoxpRiosTuuSd7Tk0CnPxZ914ujFiGdCV8e0roPnJeYxE/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-03-30-23h41m23s114.png" height="302" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A woman walks, 'tween shadow and light.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;">The
gaze in horror films is a terrifying thing – a sign of imminent danger. Imagine
a scene in a crowded restaurant. When the camera is neutral, a mere recording
instrument taking in a whole group of people, it is no threatening presence. Now
a girl leaves the party inside and walks out into the shadowy street. The
camera follows her, tracking her long enough to shed off the veneer of
neutrality. It is now very interested in her – morbidly interested – so the logic
of cinema demands that something ‘happen’. She’s firmly in the gaze, trapped in
the unwritten rules of the game, her fate sealed. They say that film is a very
male-centric medium; naturally women have to bear the brunt of our objectifying
desire.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Something
very interesting happens in <i>The Leopard
Man</i> (1943, one of the horror films Jacques Tourneur made at RKO for
producer/writer Val Lewton). Clo-Clo, the exotic Spanish dancer at a nightclub,
walks home after an eventful day. A leopard is on the loose and the police are
looking for it. It’s a graceful example of the archetypal Val Lewton proposition:
a woman walks alone between shadow and light (the most famous example is in <i>Cat
People</i>). The camera matches pace with Clo-Clo as she walks, playing the
castanets. She’s stopped by the tarot-reader who asks her to pick a card.
Clo-Clo reluctantly agrees. She picks the Ace of Spades – the death card. The
setting dictates that something happen to her in this very scene – the rules of
the horror genre and Tourneur’s belief in the supernatural coincide to mark Clo-Clo
for tragedy – but something strange happens. The camera stops tracking her once
it chances upon another girl, Teresa, looking out a window. Clo-Clo greets her
and leaves the frame; the camera’s gaze is now fixed upon Teresa. The very next
shot is a cut to the interior of Teresa’s home as she closes the window.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Teresa
is frightened by the news of the leopard. Her mother wants her to run an errand
to the grocer’s shop but she’s afraid to step out. Mother can’t be dissuaded so
Teresa has to go across the arroyo to fetch cornflour. This time however, the
camera’s insistent gaze on her doesn’t mislead. Teresa is killed by the leopard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">So why
does Clo-Clo escape what’s coming to her in the first instance? Is it because
she’s happy; unperturbed by the knowledge of the leopard at large? The male
gaze in cinema requires that the girl react to it. It is only because Clo-Clo
is confident – self-contained, without the need for a protective man (the running
joke is that she only wants a rich man for his money) – that the gaze has to be
transferred onto Teresa (who’s reacting out of fear).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><i>The
Leopard Man</i> is then a precursor in many ways to classic Hitchcock themes. Think
of <i>Vertigo</i>: James Stewart tries to
model Kim Novak after a lookalike he was in love with, who he believes is now dead,
only so that he can consummate their relationship posthumously. The objectifying
gaze is what excites him – even inspiring the camera into the most fantastic
360 degree shot of their fatal embrace. Conversely Kim Novak’s ‘actual’ death
is sealed only when she participates in her objectification.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Or think
of <i>Psycho</i>: another film where we
follow a lone woman. The very constant gaze on Janet Leigh during those first
37 minutes – especially when it becomes openly voyeuristic (peeping through a secret
hole in the wall) – marks her out for premature death. The audience is an
implicit instigator in the world of horror: the death of the woman is our
sought-after release.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Which
brings us to ‘a very British <i>Psycho</i>’.
In <i>Peeping Tom</i>, the underlying tension
between death and sexuality is literalized. Carl Boehm’s pet project is to film
the dying expressions of his female victims. The terror in their eyes fascinate
him, leading him to commit the murders – a detail reflected in all the deaths
in <i>Leopard Man</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">One
can even go so far as to say that Tourneur’s film predicts De Palma’s reworking
of <i>Psycho</i> in <i>Dressed to Kill</i> – the aggressor and the psychiatrist are no longer
separate personalities, they are alter-egos. Only the first of <i>Leopard Man</i>’s three murders is committed
by the animal – Dr. Galbraith, the town’s museum curator and animal
psychiatrist, does the other two. Transference isn’t limited to the shifting of
gaze, it is evident here in the interchangeability of personas. At various
points, Tourneur establishes the equivalence between the key characters. Kiki
Walker has her double in the cigarette girl, Clo-Clo and the leopard; Teresa/Consuela/Clo-Clo
are the victims and Galbraith assumes the leopard’s role. The doctor’s attempts
at understanding animals has leapt off the deep end: if <i>Cat People</i> can be
simply summed up in cat/people (alternate states of being), this film proposes
leopard/man.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-74017893873922267102014-03-18T12:21:00.001-07:002014-03-18T12:24:09.667-07:00Blow Out as meta-film<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRRGhUMTeo_c6-gyvCCLoffKaEXQZckE5b8cFf-nZ-vdi5KlTTTQhKGOzhunEfGym4T1lpEqg5fKg3b5E5r_koG8TB7Jlh47YiYfmkSQFH_FPzYozxD5DlOZJo0R-Klmsp5KjXJ2uI3Eg/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-03-19-00h50m27s184.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRRGhUMTeo_c6-gyvCCLoffKaEXQZckE5b8cFf-nZ-vdi5KlTTTQhKGOzhunEfGym4T1lpEqg5fKg3b5E5r_koG8TB7Jlh47YiYfmkSQFH_FPzYozxD5DlOZJo0R-Klmsp5KjXJ2uI3Eg/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-03-19-00h50m27s184.png" height="166" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;">An
invisible prowler peeks in through the windows of a girls’ dorm. A girl having
sex sees him, but her partner can’t. The prowler enters the corridor of the
dorm, passing by several girls, none of whom notice him. He briefly enters the
room of a girl pleasuring herself, then goes to the shower. The room is steamy.
We briefly see this spectral presence reflected in the mirror, knife in hand.
He parts the curtain behind which a girl is showering. The girl sees him and
screams. Terribly. We’re now in a projection room. A B-movie director is going
through the rushes of his latest sexploitation venture with soundman Jack Terry
(John Travolta). The wind needs to be redone, the director says. The stock sound
is so overused it’s insipid. And the scream has to be corrected, of course.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">He
goes to a bridge on the river at night, to get new wind. As he moves the mike around,
recording, ambient noises rise and fall. The camera seemingly looks around, trying
to find the source of the dominant sound before finally focusing on it. The
serene uniformity of the soundscape – nothing particularly loud – is suddenly
broken when we hear an explosion and then see a car hurtling down into the
river. Every sound in this sequence is seeking its accompanying image – craving
diegesis – before finding it and giving way to the next sound. Only the fully
focused image of the source resolves the mini-pocket of suspense (“where does
it come from?”) built around a ‘floating’ sound.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Terry jumps
into the river and manages to rescue the girl in the passenger seat. The driver
dies. It is only later that he learns who the dead driver is – Presidential favourite
Governer McRyan, out for a fun night with a call girl. Convinced that the
accident is a cover-up for an assassination Jack takes it upon himself to find
and establish “the truth” – for which, he makes a sort of found-footage film
from his audio recording and stills of the incident published in a magazine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">De
Palma’s inspirations behind the film are well-known – Antonioni’s <i>Blow-Up</i> and Coppola’s <i>The Conversation</i>, as also the Zapruder
film – but his thrust is in a whole different direction. The question here isn’t
about the tendency of the medium to distort or hide the ‘essential information’
– like the noisy film stock/recording in <i>Blow-up/Conversation</i>¸
both of which become so open-ended when stripped down and amplified that one wonders
if the mind is imagining things. De Palma makes it clear that McRyan has indeed
been killed, so the drama for a good portion concerns the minutiae of Terry’s
amateur filmmaking. In a reversal of roles with the Zapruder film what exists
as primary document here is the sound of the incident. The image has to be
constructed for Terry’s claims to be substantiated. He succeeds, sure, but at
what cost?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">What
Terry believes in, of course, is a variation of the old wisdom about film
editing – that it is only in the re-assemblage of shot footage that one finds
meaning (or “truth”). In a world of uncommitted dime-a-day shlock he’s the last
idealist, believing the medium must be put at the service of truth. What the guy
doesn’t know is the other old adage – you can’t be in the business without giving
up part of yourself. It is only through the loss of his naiveté – and the girl
for whom he staked so much – that he completes the only missing bit in the sexploitation
film: the scream. The relation has finally been reversed – if much of the film
was a search for the perfect image by sound, the denouement has an image find the perfect
sound it was looking for all along.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-74598767207566887792014-02-16T00:19:00.001-08:002014-02-16T02:29:37.729-08:00The Rules of the Game: notes on Johnny Gaddaar<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF8kTaaJ-Lq19vgupALHX1hQARlsSFAEJ3qBfqNbvJqf1W-ImbjSXtE8jlYLT3Ojm4AfaSwQYIF-adQXECuljcBaTiyJ1m4OX-DOc7QEsHkueNLMNI-3KtuA6A-aq2wWDsGpkn5bPXY_M/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-02-09-11h27m58s226.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF8kTaaJ-Lq19vgupALHX1hQARlsSFAEJ3qBfqNbvJqf1W-ImbjSXtE8jlYLT3Ojm4AfaSwQYIF-adQXECuljcBaTiyJ1m4OX-DOc7QEsHkueNLMNI-3KtuA6A-aq2wWDsGpkn5bPXY_M/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-02-09-11h27m58s226.png" height="180" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;">One
persistent criticism of pastiche as a genre is how it really is about other works
of art and therefore unrelated to reality; as Andrei T said, “Cinema uses your
life, not vice versa.” Yet for something that is pure pastiche – nothing more
than a series of quotations from the Sriram Raghavan canon – I find <b>Johnny
Gaddaar</b> to be emotionally resonant in a strange way. And it isn’t a one-off
impression. Having watched it about ten times by now, I’m still moved when Sheshadri
(Dharmendra) crawls over to the tape-recorder to hear his dead wife sing after
being gutshot. It is, like the rest of JG, yet another homage – a song from the
early Dharmendra film <b>Bandini</b> – but one stamped with a precious sense of emotional
experience.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">That
gets me thinking – how does Raghavan earn my emotional investment? The surfaces
suggest otherwise. For one, the acting here is consistently hammy in keeping
with the Vijay Anand tone. In the scenario leading up to Sheshadri’s murder, the
line “shut up, you son of a bitch” is delivered so hilariously (cf.
Dharmendra’s chinnery-sewing dog-blood-drinking days in the ‘80s) that it
undermines the seriousness of the situation. And yet the murder ‘feels
right’ because Raghavan knows how to switch moods – a pedestal fan provides the
only ambient sound in tense dead-time (newspapers flutter) and then the ‘rupture’
occurs. But Raghavan doesn’t stop at that. The first thing Sheshadri hits when
he tries to get to the tape-recorder is the fan, which falls with a loud
clatter on the floor. This is the precise sort of consciousness about the
medium’s plastic nature – and how to engage with it – that I wish more
commercial filmmakers understood, given that they are in the best position to
deal with plastic elements in the guise of ‘entertainment’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">How
does Vikram (Neil Nitin Mukesh) get the idea of double-crossing? His girlfriend
Mini (Rimi Sen) writes out the cash he’s going to make from a deal with
lipstick on the bathroom mirror (they’re banking on it to ‘start a new life’),
but she mistakenly writes the whole gang’s take instead of only his. Vikram
corrects her. But later in the night he comes back to the bathroom to wash, having
just had dinner while watching <b>Parwana</b> on TV. He looks into the mirror, the
crazy <b>Parwana</b> plot fits in and he’s ‘sold’. Without quite understanding it the
girl has set off her man into a bloody Macbeth-like quest for more than he
wanted. (As if to validate my wild guesses, I found a basin filled with bloody
water as a poster in Shardul’s office!)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">But
Vikram is not the only one falling back on <b>Parwana</b>. Prakash (Vinay Pathak) and
his wife are watching it too in their home and she comments how no one could
have foreseen in 1970 that the lanky awkward Bachchan – instead of sweet-faced
Navin Nischol – would be the superstar. Prakash turns it into a wily excuse for
‘making the right decision at the right time’ and coaxes her into mortgaging
her beauty parlour to raise extra cash for the deal. Same ‘reference’ but
different people using it to different ends (both manipulative).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Making
the right decision at the right time. Standing at the crossroads – the
bifurcation between Pune and Goa, between a dirty scam and a clean life –
Vikram wants to reconsider. Finding that he can’t take a definite call, he defers
decision-making to a coin (who can you trust your conscience with but money?).
Tails for a clean life, heads for the plot. First spin, tails. “Best of 3.”
Second spin, tails. “Best of 5.” Third spin, the coin turns around. Fourth and
fifth too, heads. Which is precisely when heads start to roll.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style, serif;">There’s
a reference to <b>Citizen Kane</b> where a neglected wife plays jigsaw puzzle, but the
more important debt might be to Welles’ method of cutting to the sound of the
next scene while the image hasn</span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;">’</span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style, serif;">t changed. This creates a sort of suspense
through which the ‘drama’ of one scene segues into the other. Vikram is the
only character for whom expressionistic sound design is reserved – as he stares
into the lipstick writing on his mirror, a train passes by; then, sitting in
Sheshadri’s house waiting for the other gang members to come – his plot exposed
– the calling bell rings. In both these instances the sound is of horrors to
come: a man hears more than what is real and in the present.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">I can
go on writing about how clever and ironic <b>Johnny Gaddaar</b> is, how every major
plot point is coded in the colour red, how a crime caper like this is also a
chronicle of three marital relationships – each of them telling – but that’s better
left for you to find out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-77978968392864674112014-01-19T07:40:00.001-08:002014-01-19T07:47:03.259-08:00No Dumb Rocks: a little singsong on Routine Pleasures<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Midway
through <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Routine Pleasures</i></b>, this exchange takes place… </span></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">[Gorin]
The thing that amazed me is that you guys are running schedules for very, very
long periods of time. I mean, once Corky has defined the great call board...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">[Man]
Mm-hmm.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">[Gorin
continues] it runs for one or two seasons, which is basically...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">[Man]
Pretty much the -</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">[Gorin]
twelve months, no? I mean -</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">[Man]
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe even longer. But you've got to remember it's - it's evolving
all the time, for one thing. It's never quite the same.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">And
besides, the schedule isn't the whole story. I mean, the schedule says you run
10, 12 trains of an evening... you know, one direction or another at particular
times. Well, there's a lot more activity than that... and, uh, that's really
the fun of it all.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">These
trains go through at the same time all the time. You know when they're coming.
So the other things that you do, you have to kind of fit it in between. That's
part of the fun of it. For example, making switching moves and what not. Those you
do differently each time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">[Gorin]
So it's - that's what is difference... difference in repetition? I mean -</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">[Man]
Yeah, yeah. The... so to speak, the schedule provides a matrix in which you do
the fun part. Does that make sense?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">[Gorin
Laughs] Yeah. So the trains like, let's say, the Lark or the Delight are the
permanent fixtures. They function like what, the landscape?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">[Man]
Almost, yeah. Call it temporal landscape. These things are going to happen at
particular points in time. You know that. You have to work around it. </span></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">…and I
start thinking this sounds familiar. But what <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">really</span> catches my attention are those two words sticking out from
the rest: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">temporal landscape</i>. My my,
I think, the fellow doesn’t only know what drives him but also has the exact
words to articulate his impulses. I’m beginning to grow jealous. I love this
film, I tell myself, only I can’t place my finger on the why. It’s like that
bit where the fellow explains the paint job on a train to Gorin and “at the end
of it all, there’s only one thing left to say, "Good-looking train."”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Damn it,
model railroad man! Damn it, Manny Farber! If only I could find my equivalent
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">temporal landscape</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sinewy, life-marred exactness</i> (“Manny,
who in three words could pin down the way Cagney sliced through the space of a
ballroom in Wellman's <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Other Men's Women</i></b>…”)...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">But
maybe I better persist. If I sit down long enough and go through the motions… like writing down 10 sentences trying to say a thing without quite getting
it… I might get it. (“For both Manny and the guys there was so much
routine at the core of any flight of the imagination.”)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Sorry,
I may be getting too ahead of the story. So like a dutiful Old Hollywood junkie,
like in one of those movies by Wellman and Hawks that Gorin evokes incessantly,
let me start at the beginning. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
***<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjctddeDk5lOjJFyOmmZuQe4odhwMMMmmhyphenhyphenVc07N6gURcYdCNncWFlFG4DiqhDwB9AgM-bq-Du-VQp_1MUHA5wiCYUc6eFCjt9c-Ncxe6-YEXsdBxfZJeZOivwmJGabWjvq-KNr9igXCaQ/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-19-20h40m12s149.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjctddeDk5lOjJFyOmmZuQe4odhwMMMmmhyphenhyphenVc07N6gURcYdCNncWFlFG4DiqhDwB9AgM-bq-Du-VQp_1MUHA5wiCYUc6eFCjt9c-Ncxe6-YEXsdBxfZJeZOivwmJGabWjvq-KNr9igXCaQ/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-19-20h40m12s149.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Farber (extreme left) and Godard: "old buddies" to Gorin</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Jean-Pierre
Gorin, one-time collaborator of Godard, came to the US in the mid-‘70s at the
invitation of <a href="http://girishshambu.blogspot.in/2008/08/manny-farber-in-memoriam.html">Manny Farber</a> (a former film critic whose work from the ‘40s to
the ‘60s remains vital and fresh today while Bosley Crowther has become a comic
footnote on wikipedia). Farber was building up a visual arts department
at the University of California, San Diego at the time. “The reading of his film
criticism gave me a very different key to American cinema than the one I used
in France, a way to ground it in the culture and its language, to pry it away
from its own mythology.” Naturally Gorin was happy to shift base (Dziga Vertov
Group had dissolved); excited and anxious in mapping the mythical land with his
own images of it weaned through the movies and media. Part of his mission is to
find out roots, the specific trills and cadences of a culture and understand
identity – how much of an American had he become in the five years he’d spent
in the country (“I wasn't French anymore, but I wasn't quite American either.”)?
What does an “ex-Marxist” do with characters whose very existence is defined by
their fascination with machinery and tools and the railroad – that trope of
change from the westerns? These characters are the members of the Pacific Beach
& West (PB&W) model railroad club – a group of middle-class homely
types who gather every Tuesday on the Del Mar fairgrounds to be masters of, and
slaves to, their miniature universe.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Routine Pleasures</span></i></b><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"> belongs at a glance to the genre
of documentaries that is best exemplified by Errol Morris’ <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gates of Heaven</i></b>, or
perhaps the Maysles’ <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Salesman</i></b> – intimate portraits of the
“simple folk” of small-town America that double up as sociological studies –
but it combines the surface simplicity of those films with a formal approach
that Gorin wears lightheartedly. There’s always the rhythm section of sly humour cutting through – the model
landscape shot in extreme close-ups as if it were the real thing, played to a
realistic soundtrack of trains and atmospheric minutiae, cutting from a woman
sitting on a porch basking in the sun (as in Ed Hopper) to another woman frozen
in the middle of a run to catch a departing car, her suitcase swaying back. And
then Gorin does ‘long shots’ of the same landscape, from between which the “train
people” (Cat People?) pop up Godzilla-like to dust up the tracks and do odd
painting jobs.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwdjiQQQhrQ7h3D7h0WyEAsJJ94sc75vj5DMJyYYQCOXgp3sz0qeZBz5y2lvMG9W5vO3hQqim_pqLoImtrIZKVJsCIakgih-G8fXMtv7RnrRRhl4xmkTJ467lStxFC1-ApZTtHt3JUTuo/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h34m10s164.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwdjiQQQhrQ7h3D7h0WyEAsJJ94sc75vj5DMJyYYQCOXgp3sz0qeZBz5y2lvMG9W5vO3hQqim_pqLoImtrIZKVJsCIakgih-G8fXMtv7RnrRRhl4xmkTJ467lStxFC1-ApZTtHt3JUTuo/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h34m10s164.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">And
later I learned that they'd been hard at it since 1958... the time of De
Gaulle's return to power and of my first stumble into politics.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Half
the world away the train people had just been given a home on the Del Mar
Fairgrounds... on the condition that they would have a show ready for the first
fair.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">And since then, every Tuesday
night they had gathered to run trains... in this hangar on Jimmy Durante
Boulevard across from the Bing Crosby Hall.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">And it dawned on me that their
layout was the only thing that had remained unchanged... in a landscape where
corporate headquarters, malls and cities of 40,000-plus were popping up now by
the month. If anything, they had a tale of permanence to tell.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Every
now and then, the nostalgia bug bites. The men are united in their utter
absorption in the world of trains, a shared camaraderie that is silent, bonds borne
of working together to the same rhythm. Gorin wants to connect them to the
train gangs from the ‘30s American films – maybe Bill Wellman’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Other
Men’s Women</i></b> – but he’s put on guard by Farber who
admonishes him against nostalgia even as he is digging into his own childhood
memories to paint expansive canvasses. "You are all Remembrance of Things Past. But
they aren't your things and this isn't your past."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Ml1_rhVkfupPFi0aBw3h2Fc2Ov546ITdfA98XrOa1Yk0Ew99T8Kf2p_woi6SHMoIkJ6rE0L0W_Of-KLVDh0OY3NNRBRztI0kmcmpj9O1-QLgtoB3_oZWY2rYxBDvbEkhxR8DJcL6pv8/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h30m07s39.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Ml1_rhVkfupPFi0aBw3h2Fc2Ov546ITdfA98XrOa1Yk0Ew99T8Kf2p_woi6SHMoIkJ6rE0L0W_Of-KLVDh0OY3NNRBRztI0kmcmpj9O1-QLgtoB3_oZWY2rYxBDvbEkhxR8DJcL6pv8/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h30m07s39.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Movie house in shoe-box America/Remembrance of Things Past.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Gorin
persists nonetheless. The club’s general manager’s calling card reads “Corky
Thompson, train specialist”: the sort of name which “took me for a loop as if
it had jumped out of a Howard Hawks movie... a name like Matthew Garth or Bud
Kenley... a name that ties a knot under a personality... and that I saw somehow
as the guarantee that I could pull a Howard Hawks of my own.” After all, how
could he swim against the whole collective memory-churning of this bunch – guys
who shot home movies of trains (in memory, Lumiere!) and remembered the “spot
where 4449 was going upgrade with the diesel and dynamic braking…. and was
workin' and slippin'”? It has to be a nostalgia film alright. The club had agreed
to let Gorin film them if he promised to hand over unused footage so that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">they</i> could make a film out of it. Money
was never discussed. What good was it compared to the glorious sight of a train
“pounding up the grade”?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYZeSqvryr_FNYHHK84y66bYL27QEmOcsvXw9h2DiAScwtEWZvybE8n7w0DA-lwaz3V2QwTmWUA41m9990OtB5M4Aj9m_qbO2E42j2XLn0w0uhnShHnDB2hSPBXNzIGqjqandNqJbD_Lw/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h32m18s69.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYZeSqvryr_FNYHHK84y66bYL27QEmOcsvXw9h2DiAScwtEWZvybE8n7w0DA-lwaz3V2QwTmWUA41m9990OtB5M4Aj9m_qbO2E42j2XLn0w0uhnShHnDB2hSPBXNzIGqjqandNqJbD_Lw/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h32m18s69.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Corky Thompson's home movies</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYmBuPJzq_1J0XIn2ZHwBOcunq6fSGNrfMFVMbJX4E41BAPOU74ZOWKHaci2V1kY9kJpwxq6542-xwhtzbKXabJITGPlE00YK3ITRB9_6PK2XUiW0Lm7Bx6i092hw56vdqYkM4clI0yQE/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h32m37s9.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYmBuPJzq_1J0XIn2ZHwBOcunq6fSGNrfMFVMbJX4E41BAPOU74ZOWKHaci2V1kY9kJpwxq6542-xwhtzbKXabJITGPlE00YK3ITRB9_6PK2XUiW0Lm7Bx6i092hw56vdqYkM4clI0yQE/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h32m37s9.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coincidence?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Gradually
one sees the fine notes in their activity. Like so much of the best of Old
Hollywood, it is both restricted and set free by the rules of the game. You
repeat certain lines so that you can take off from there and explore the other
things before coming back and hitting base. It’s a decidedly Manny Farber-ish style
of doing things – the termite’s way of “gnawing at the borders” without
realizing if it’s “chewing on the Sistine Chapel or an old hangar on the Del
Mar Fairgrounds”. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Midway
through this memory trip, Gorin switches from black-and-white (a conscious
homage to the ‘30s films) to his version of Life in Technicolor when shooting
the club in action – the cragged, rocky Western landscape through which the
trains run bring to mind the spaces from John Ford Westerns and Minnelli’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Some
Came Running</i></b> even as its scale undermines the mythological
underpinnings. “Somehow I'd managed to convince myself that they were offering
me a small-scale epic. America under budget and in a shoe box.” The guys put
Gorin in a toy Citroen – the car he actually owns – and move it around the
landscape every Tuesday, leaving him “to dream on the inside”, showing him the
sights. In a lovely show of solidarity with the unwavering realism of these
guys’ imagination Gorin narrates – “One day I took Farber to the airport. He
was carting away to New York a load of paintings for a show. On the way, we got
stopped at a crossing and watched an endless freight pass by.” – to this.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCHhlzp69Q_7U66gkxxYyTQcWmYftza-__Fnkd1oKmMfuTq-anHmpnlftkIVIgAxfVl58Ue2lVmURKRDCKnNQlHNIsfPw8KWBY1WqwVB5rRna_9A38g7lduFiWVb-n1TDcqGosQBE1Fc4/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h18m37s52.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCHhlzp69Q_7U66gkxxYyTQcWmYftza-__Fnkd1oKmMfuTq-anHmpnlftkIVIgAxfVl58Ue2lVmURKRDCKnNQlHNIsfPw8KWBY1WqwVB5rRna_9A38g7lduFiWVb-n1TDcqGosQBE1Fc4/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h18m37s52.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbNRZAevwWA69l3EseY5yKoq1RmftB-gVgn8GRDPGOP302UIVKqQi0YOLjvVCLcn5H8FoDzs8WEUVBmG4jRPxXz2EQnWTi4w0CYjkHzuv7FidjIkgi1QXEtOexQRNB5s5PO2zvTm5FOXg/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h18m51s199.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbNRZAevwWA69l3EseY5yKoq1RmftB-gVgn8GRDPGOP302UIVKqQi0YOLjvVCLcn5H8FoDzs8WEUVBmG4jRPxXz2EQnWTi4w0CYjkHzuv7FidjIkgi1QXEtOexQRNB5s5PO2zvTm5FOXg/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h18m51s199.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsXi_wbRCl4iWnzNHSX8DYEzb6Psc81f_ndxqI7bxTLB1bV0Y5c0cP_JO8FStgiSqqfAMxsf-H1MIK0OUXtbKoFcFHqbiZjGYSh8Sw5FBVWslvxDtKIctOUDC41fKqG2-hgsbHRqb3u1A/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h18m55s232.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsXi_wbRCl4iWnzNHSX8DYEzb6Psc81f_ndxqI7bxTLB1bV0Y5c0cP_JO8FStgiSqqfAMxsf-H1MIK0OUXtbKoFcFHqbiZjGYSh8Sw5FBVWslvxDtKIctOUDC41fKqG2-hgsbHRqb3u1A/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h18m55s232.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPAbCzdYwEINkl8T1dosaxIYoUxYJD2pUcZDzkP35T-jbPrbnm_nzwEEgBxlsrBZPj5r5r2YJ0Q2AOF21uJ3JyOGGSADntPFUCWhEQtwqnWyWbIds93igQTrwJ4ctL3RuVoakuOYwawoY/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h26m08s209.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPAbCzdYwEINkl8T1dosaxIYoUxYJD2pUcZDzkP35T-jbPrbnm_nzwEEgBxlsrBZPj5r5r2YJ0Q2AOF21uJ3JyOGGSADntPFUCWhEQtwqnWyWbIds93igQTrwJ4ctL3RuVoakuOYwawoY/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h26m08s209.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gorin and Farber in the Citroen, waiting.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">But
once the clocks are out for a break, Gorin reverts back to monochrome. Time
shifts gears and all you’ve got left is the past.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">*** </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">But how
had Gorin come to be here at all?</span></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">One
day I was looking over some Barney Googles. It was one of the tracks Farber had
sent me to. And it hit me that if there was one trick that I'd learned from him
it was an age-old one. When you want to say where you stand in a landscape, you
draw an "X." Two lines crossing at a single point.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc65_o5u3SqgwZXwYDckc3U51p2qAIX6vkwWifc-eIf9vzGxnInWM0sqAJwUJ7VorVmkY_2D6xuFZ54rMnFqHEmGnLKmjHrLX-fkfxuxfZmwRwQYgCHYpKMrBBYBMh-rZGmBzyYkP4g_U/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h25m00s49.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc65_o5u3SqgwZXwYDckc3U51p2qAIX6vkwWifc-eIf9vzGxnInWM0sqAJwUJ7VorVmkY_2D6xuFZ54rMnFqHEmGnLKmjHrLX-fkfxuxfZmwRwQYgCHYpKMrBBYBMh-rZGmBzyYkP4g_U/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h25m00s49.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">This
other line – the one that may in fact have sent him to the train people – is
Farber and his paintings, “Birthplace: Douglas, Ariz.” (Oil on board, 1979 / 44.5 in.
x 53 in.) and “Have a Chew on Me” (Oil on board, 1982 / 58 in. x 134.5 in.).
Canvasses painted flat on a table top, they have the forced perspective of a
bird’s eye view with objects incongruously laid out flat or at an angle –
especially in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Birthplace</i>, a sort of
map of Farber’s hometown with its history littered all around in almost
inconsequential details.</span></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">There
were memories</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">that
came back from the familial past...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">and
took the form</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">of
an oversized fire sale sign...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">next
to a toy house...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">a
reminder of the time his mother</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">had
torched their store...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">and
sold off the damaged goods</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">to
follow his oldest brother...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">to
his campus life in Berkeley.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">There
were echoes of headlines...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">in
a group of lead toy gangsters</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">in
the right-hand corner.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Some
shoot-out memory, maybe,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">between
company toughs and miners...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">during
the copper wars.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkZQHb6kQEoG71HcEAm3uWVfiyAzkuSxVcfFr5FAnjollAT5GbLRzrNZj1ygiBngP0eOqIsr0vWPIOw_OKdX6qYMRGAr1EsFwJsEKYywZBJHSFiheoNE057a8kQb9dt3BtJdPYCbgzaXA/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h22m33s112.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkZQHb6kQEoG71HcEAm3uWVfiyAzkuSxVcfFr5FAnjollAT5GbLRzrNZj1ygiBngP0eOqIsr0vWPIOw_OKdX6qYMRGAr1EsFwJsEKYywZBJHSFiheoNE057a8kQb9dt3BtJdPYCbgzaXA/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h22m33s112.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Blowup from 'Birthplace: Douglas, Ariz.'</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjos3XtBUB5xbv_Dg6bSK3xVbOVYTThHZ8RjlrpPPxkeAPNU842dtOo4sOlUVC_xhWvn1uLfHO43y4BsKmYnpOi5mjGeuSiikRuJlp-I3VaUkUYQy6FbqHNfUaKguOqPbowtmNpx16Rk2A/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h22m55s79.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjos3XtBUB5xbv_Dg6bSK3xVbOVYTThHZ8RjlrpPPxkeAPNU842dtOo4sOlUVC_xhWvn1uLfHO43y4BsKmYnpOi5mjGeuSiikRuJlp-I3VaUkUYQy6FbqHNfUaKguOqPbowtmNpx16Rk2A/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h22m55s79.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Blowup from 'Birthplace: Douglas, Ariz.'</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSOTUJpUbMrduwFKOeueGSUHCFmB7zsC1ZkQkwMZzBLDGvx_tbuDxGmaJk4OY58hq5nmi0-WkYZhp6DadkJmBYV0y5_YEphXe4laVnWgK2kqiDDoHimBFDacwwsVQMDck_uJEz28cYv28/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h23m42s30.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSOTUJpUbMrduwFKOeueGSUHCFmB7zsC1ZkQkwMZzBLDGvx_tbuDxGmaJk4OY58hq5nmi0-WkYZhp6DadkJmBYV0y5_YEphXe4laVnWgK2kqiDDoHimBFDacwwsVQMDck_uJEz28cYv28/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h23m42s30.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">Blowup from 'Birthplace: Douglas, Ariz.'</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">And
so often, just as Gorin is about to round off a painting, something in the
margins makes him re-evaluate everything.</span></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">With
Farber, you were always</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8833411083213663905" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">in
the thick of things.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">It
was the same thing</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">that
he was saying over and over -</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">-
That it - life - wasn't too big a deal...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">and
that it shouldn't be painted like one...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">that
we're all like bit players</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">in
a Preston Sturges movie...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">ready
to testify in front of a small-town jury...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">in
terms whose relevance</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">would
escape everyone but ourselves.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">I
guess – with a final swell of music – that is how
this film is to me.</span><br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8qPYSP791V9sWCCXrzCdt5OSZxThqmn2yLmI5ypMoVeE-TXmAkbXtvHZprJBjkVvmxxhjAPi_2p7Z6kyIuflYPzBkW8w3Wa01nkuqWC3rBflwSNKVL4k6LDDoku7pXkCt7WOP06adKeI/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h31m15s214.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8qPYSP791V9sWCCXrzCdt5OSZxThqmn2yLmI5ypMoVeE-TXmAkbXtvHZprJBjkVvmxxhjAPi_2p7Z6kyIuflYPzBkW8w3Wa01nkuqWC3rBflwSNKVL4k6LDDoku7pXkCt7WOP06adKeI/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-09h31m15s214.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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</div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMojqgHtQ2p6SOIPdCObqfASZj5GCx5dDqtRbmUSY0LdvVNvltFOFG017FfYNEl_N-ljGcZdb1vuMYsvRFzxpkzaoIAhfiEB2QTw7q3jr_qFL9ZWOMQ3H42VnDJvPtsZ_h4gcTi9VP9YI/s1600/Huma.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMojqgHtQ2p6SOIPdCObqfASZj5GCx5dDqtRbmUSY0LdvVNvltFOFG017FfYNEl_N-ljGcZdb1vuMYsvRFzxpkzaoIAhfiEB2QTw7q3jr_qFL9ZWOMQ3H42VnDJvPtsZ_h4gcTi9VP9YI/s320/Huma.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
First of all, the confession: I enjoyed seeing both parts on <i>Gangs of Wasseypur</i>, the second half more than the first. I admire the craft that went into the film - the flawless lighting and cinematography, the uniformly good acting from the cast, how it plays around with music and countless other details. Yet I find it problematic to accept. Or perhaps, because of it.</div>
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Kashyap has always been some sort of a prankster: whenever he can, he'll hold up the narrative for a while to deliver a joke, an ironic detail or something to break up dramatic tension (e.g. the haldi gag in <i>Dev D</i>). This works brilliantly for me when it is balanced with a genuine emotional core - as in <i>Dev D</i> - or when the world within the film is sufficiently outre to suspend expectations of reality, as in <i>No Smoking</i>. But with <i>Gangs</i>, he's made the only film in his career where the explicit intention is to blow up narrative continuity with a series of jokes.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
I don't find this anarchic tendency problematic in itself. Bunuel did the same thing in his later films with Jean Claude-Carriere (for example in <a href="http://sudiptopondering.blogspot.in/2011/06/discreet-charm-of-narrative.html"><i>The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie</i></a>) and I love him precisely for this subtle demolition of audience expectations. The trouble with Kashyap is that he's using humour in the same amoral way as Tarantino, only without the edge.</div>
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<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
To elucidate with an example: the murder of Sultan, which recalls something of the Bunuel spirit. Kashyap sets up the scene as a joke - the coordinator of the hit job is having trouble tying his pyjamas while he's on the phone line with three different people - and for a moment we assume that Sultan is going to slip by in all this chaos. But the plan falls into place just in time and Sultan is murdered viciously - a sudden change in tone which ends up implicating the audience for forgetting that we're ultimately laughing about murder. This unease is why Tarantino works in films like <i>Inglourious Basterds</i>, the self-awareness that violence is fantasy.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
By contrast, most of the other killings in the film are played out rather routinely without any emotional investment of the audience in what's going on (and Yashpal Sharma is always at hand to suitably play the ironic brass band troubadour). We enjoy the spectacle but don't feel anything at all - something which reaches its apotheosis in Ramadhir Singh's climactic death. The whole thing is pulled off so bloody impressively that you want it a second time. The difference in this and the Sultan scene is that there is nothing in Kashyap's attitude which indicates that he doesn't share the let's-have-fun-shooting-some-more feeling. It's this invitation to witness full-blooded revenge in glorious slow-motion with accompanying hip techno music that repels me (coincidentally Jim Emerson <a href="http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2012/08/lust_for_revenge.html">recently wrote</a> on why he doesn't consider revenge a good plot device). A sort of shirking away from taking a moral and emotional ground, as if that's too hip and uncool. Lest anyone forget, this is the director of <i>Gulaal</i> we're talking about - a political film considerably drowned in pathos.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Which brings me to my theory. The only way <i>GoW</i> makes sense to me is as Kashyap's own vengeance saga. It's like he wants to take us on for completely ignoring <i>That Girl in Yellow Boots</i> (his most emotionally honest film) and show that he can make a blockbuster hit - <a href="http://baradwajrangan.wordpress.com/2012/08/12/gangs-of-wasseypur-ii-son-of-sardar/">by twisting and playing around with Bollywood's prized conventions</a> - delivering the ultimate abstruse masala film.</div>
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<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
So far so good. Now that he's had his field day, will he get back to the <i>Yellow Boots</i> zone again? Or at least the <i>Dev D</i> one?</div>
</div>
Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-32413292813822293102012-08-10T11:45:00.002-07:002012-08-10T11:45:42.554-07:00Circling around the past - Vertigo<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
In the light of the recently conducted S<a href="http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all-time">ight & Sound 2012 poll results</a>, I decided to see <i>Vertigo</i> again. While my original idea was to write something comprehensive on it - the film has been swimming around in my mind for some personal reasons - I've decided against it because I find Chris Marker (a master who recently died) has already said nearly everything I wanted to. In <a href="http://www.chrismarker.org/a-free-replay-notes-on-vertigo/">this essay</a>.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Conventionally, the film has always been read from Scottie's perspective. I feel it is as valid from Judy's. Both of them independently think that they can bury the past. Both are consumed in it. The film's just so goddamned fatalistic and cruel. As is life.</div>
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***</div>
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<br /></div>
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Be kind, rewind!</div>
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<br /></div>
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Adam Gopnik also has a <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2005/aug/28/featuresreview.review">wonderful essay</a> that deals indirectly with <i>Vertigo</i>'s themes. Many thanks to <a href="http://jaiarjun.blogspot.in/">Jai</a>, from whom I came to know of it.</div>
</div>Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-44477279768584336362012-08-06T09:00:00.001-07:002012-08-06T09:00:18.376-07:00Escapism in cinema, baa Kaushik keno Q<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In the popular consciousness, "serious films" (or "festival films") are always cracked up to be rooted in reality. One tends to divide cinema into two mutually exclusive boxes - that which is meant to provoke thought and that which helps once escape from sordid reality into projected fantasies.</div>
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But then <i>Gandu</i> comes trotting along happily and messes things up. All attentions focussed strongly on its taboo-breaking full-frontal scene, few people - next to no one - seems to notice <i>this</i> "paradigm shift". A complete break with our "parallel" film culture: which has always been strongly grounded in faithful depiction of some sort of reality, even in the formalist works of Kaul and Shahani. (Kamal Swaroop's surrealist <i>Om-Dar-Ba-Dar</i> is the only exception.) The most persistent criticism of the film is its haywire narrative structure - most people I know who have seen the film couldn't figure what it was about and proceeded to dismantle it from that point on. </div>
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This inspite of the explicit hallucinogen use in the film - sign enough to resign oneself to the fact the film is supposed to be very much like an drug-trip. In a talk by Q I attended, he revealed that the <a href="http://youtu.be/2I9XDBd1060?t=52m30s">dhatura scene</a> was shot in a time of deep self-doubt regarding his place as a film-maker. Relying mostly on instinct while shooting (without a script, like most of the film), he shaped the scene largely while editing it - retaining the free-associative sensory overload one experiences in a trip. It might be argued that the sex with the kitten never really happened except in Gandu's drug-addled mind. The use of lurid, vivid colour certainly hints at that - especially when compared to Q's use of black-and-white for the rest of the film (which he calls the film's surviving link to Bengali political films of the past).</div>
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Q is open about his post-modern influences and posits that <i>Gandu</i> is in part about the effect of digital technology on our lives. The significance of virtual avatars, proliferation of shit and the increasing difficulty to hold on to traditional notions of good and bad in the context of internet - all of these find a way into his film. One reason why I find it difficult to judge it myself - though I understand something of what it is trying to say - is because the critical apparatus I usually employ is useless here; the film has absorbed its criticism into itself.</div>
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The elitist notion brewed in intellectual circles is one of a commercial cinema for the proletariat: meant for <i>them</i> to escape the drudgery of <i>their</i> existence. Bollywood practically thrives on this streamlined notion of what is escapism, an idea it has succeeded in embedding into the popular consciousness. What these intellectuals don't mention - even though they experience it themselves - is how a lot of "committed cinema" functions the same way for them. In a world that forces a certain sort of lifestyle upon urbane educated people, it is hard even for the genuinely caring to get out of their comfort zones and <i>do</i> something. By living a proxy life amongst people who are real, and emotionally connecting with their plight, they (bourgeois intellectuals) seek catharsis. An escape from the routine-ness from their lives. Their stuff of fantasies might not be gauche designer-clad cavorting in exotic locations - perhaps a more sophisticated liberal outrage against the hardships of Iranian women, for example - but it's a fantasy nonetheless. In case I seem to be pointing fingers, I'll admit it applies to me too (hence this post).</div>
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I love Calvin and Hobbes for several reasons, but the biggest might be Watterson's realization that the most interesting parts of our lives are lived inside our heads. Hobbes talking, joking and fighting with Calvin isn't a conceit, it's an essential need in Calvin's life (who is essentially lonely and friendless, if you've noticed). One needs an alternative identity to get by.</div>
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Like Q does. Imagine a guy named Kaushik Mukherjee gleefully rapping "nada nada Horihor, khada tor bada!" ("shake it, shake it, Horihor!"). Doesn't work. Too much cultural baggage to allow one to be an iconoclast. Q. Non-descript. Enigmatic. Now you can do what you want!</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Q performing with Gandu Circus in The Basement, Kolkata. Photo by Shovon Ray.</td></tr>
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</div>Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-35332821453237956872012-07-28T00:03:00.000-07:002012-07-28T00:04:45.848-07:00Harud<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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What is true evil? The trouble I had with the post-<i>Dark Knight</i> tom-toming of the Joker as a representation of True Evil is this vision of villainy as something larger-than-life, the work of a single man terrorising a whole city. <i>Schindler's List</i> ends with with Oskar Schindler delivering an impassioned speech to Nazi soldiers to go back home to their families. As with everything Spielberg, it promotes a sugarcoated vision of benevolent humanity - slightly led astray by the provocations of that epitome of True Evil, Herr Hitler. And yet, evil as I and most of us know it is banal and mundane - mostly a result of being trapped in the status quo - the evil of conformity and unquestioning acceptance.</div>
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There are several reasons why I think that <i>Harud</i> (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nVJLQIAQYk">trailer</a>) might be the best political film to come out of India in quite some time. But the one reason on the top of my mind is this - it gets the nature of villainy right. In its repeated shots of rifle butts ominously hovering over Kashmir's everyday life it captures the humiliation that every Kashmiri must face without relief.</div>
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There are other things <i>Harud</i> gets right - its deliberate eschewing of historical explanations, and equally its safe distance from Bollywood's hyper-real aesthetic. The strength of <i>Harud</i> is in its lack of melodrama, its aesthetic restraint that mirrors the interiority of the characters - so that when the father breaks down mid-prayer or the mother grieves her dead son, it strikes home with an intensity that those long bouts of suppressed emotion withheld. It equally draws power from a carefully constructed sound design - the crackle of police radios, the wail of a siren, the clanging of a bicycle, and that final cathartic burst of music (which left me silent).</div>
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The film is in theatres for at least a week - if you're lucky enough to be in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore or Ahmedabad - so catch it while there's still time.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgis0cRX0LqRrvVEVltwNNC8U0FAG5yoeqDiw8Nwq0sHMmixrfI9XkDsl2ACEwGWBWx7Q8DvvAeuWOv7_4TotiKXJZUguypyiQpT-KwItrMtvwgPVViz1rEzu9VcM8SwIYpyQeKwRKJAIs/s1600/Harud.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgis0cRX0LqRrvVEVltwNNC8U0FAG5yoeqDiw8Nwq0sHMmixrfI9XkDsl2ACEwGWBWx7Q8DvvAeuWOv7_4TotiKXJZUguypyiQpT-KwItrMtvwgPVViz1rEzu9VcM8SwIYpyQeKwRKJAIs/s400/Harud.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>Harud</i> (2010)</div>
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Dir.: Aamir Bashir</div>
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Prod.: Aamir Bashir, Shanker Raman </div>
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Screenplay: Aamir Bashir, Shanker Raman, Mahmood Farooqui</div>
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Shot by: Shanker Raman</div>
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Edit: Shan Mohammed</div>
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Sound: Nakul Kamte</div>
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Cast: Shahnawaz Bhat, Reza Naji, Shamim Basharat, Salma Ashai, Umar Bhat, Showkat Magray </div>
</div>Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-73139878658568678242012-05-06T07:45:00.000-07:002012-05-06T08:01:29.336-07:00Demystifying Aantlami: or, How I Learnt To Get Over Limiting Reservations and Love Cinema<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For those not familiar with the second word in the title, a brief explanation. <i>Aantlami</i> is derived from <i>aantel</i>: a Jadavpur University catchword that is popular throughout Bengal (and wherever else Bengalis live). Its etymological root is a corruption of the French way of pronouncing "intellectual". Usage varies from knee-jerk putdown to friendly jab, but in all shades of meaning it spells pseudo-intellectual(-ism).</div>
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The present post is to debunk some myths about "art cinema" - which is supposedly the only sort of films I watch, or so my friends believe. The boundaries of "art film" are very broad and accommodating. Anything outside recent mainstream American, British and Indian cinemas falls in that huge set.</div>
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The problem with this classification is that a significant part of the films considered so were made in Hollywood or British studios with big budgets and bankable stars, and made sufficient profits back in the day (except perhaps a few Poverty Row classics like <i>Detour</i>). Yet the fact that they're sometimes in black-and-white (colour films were already in vogue by the 1950s) and not contemporary to us drives people away. So here's mental roadblock #1: black-and-white. We'll come to the demystification part later. For now, let us enumerate the problems.</div>
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The second big chunk in that very accommodating box called "art cinema" is foreign language films. The funny thing about this tag is that it represents the POV of an Anglophone audience. To them, even a mainstream Bollywood film would be foreign language (assuming it is not in English). And yet we have inherited both their broad definition as well as their prejudices. So here is mental roadblock #2.</div>
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The third chunk is possibly the most ignored form even amongst reasonably serious film-viewers - documentary film. The funny thing about viewing attitudes regarding documentaries is that most of us have grown up watching TV documentaries on Discovery, Nat Geo and suchlike. And while their usefulness as learning tools for children cannot be denied, the formal and thematic stagnation and sensationalistic tone (specifically when dealing with history) virtually render them no more than passable infotainment. Mental roadblock #3.</div>
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If you consider the vast amount of cinema made throughout the world, the viewing window that remains open because of these reservations and roadblocks is so narrow it merits thinking. The average guy who says he loves watching movies has therefore kept his mind open to only about 5-10% (and that's an optimistic estimate) of the choices he has. And yet he would bravely venture to say that <i>The Godfather</i> or <i>The Shawshank Redemption</i> or <i>The Dark Knight</i> is the greatest film in the world. Isn't that funny?</div>
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The principal problem with these reservations is the refusal to consider cinema as a separate language. For most film-goers, even some of the serious ones, a film is meaningless if it does not tell a story. More pointedly, if it does not tell a story in the way they are used to hearing. This explains the inability to look beyond plots, simple join-the-dots sort-of explanations, answers and "messages". This also explains the outrage when some critic gives away spoilers to make comprehensive analyses.</div>
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So here is a broadly counter-balancing rule #1: cinema is <i>not</i> all about stories, least of all easily understandable ones, though there are several good films that tell them the straight way. If you can't have cinema any other way, Classical Hollywood and its bastard offspring, the New American Cinema (of which <i>The Godfather</i> is only the most famous example), should meet your expectations. Along with Italian neo-realism and its spiritual successor, New Iranian Cinema - if you're not averse to watching subtitled films. But try to look beyond just that.</div>
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One of the greatest losses in moviemaking craft is that new studio directors have largely forgotten or given up long and medium-long shots. Even the most workmanlike director of old Hollywood knew how to block a scene (i.e. direct actors on how to move with respect to the camera) in an interior space. New directors simply have the actors followed around with a Steadicam. The difference between the old and new ways is the amount of trust the filmmaker puts in the audience. Whereas a Hollywood director trusted the audience to look for the relevant detail in an intricately composed frame till about the '70s, one just assumes that today's moviegoers have such short attention-spans that they have to be fed everything the fast food way (for all my lukewarm love for Darren Aronofsky, one of the better studio directors in Hollywood today, his strategy is all close-ups). This assumption about a deteriorating audience might be true to an extent, but the larger part of the blame falls on the studios and filmmakers themselves - as Jonathan Rosenbaum has convincingly argued in <i>Movie Wars</i>. To put it in another way, <u><b>YOU WOULD NOT WANT TO READ A BOOK WHERE EVERY LINE IS IN UPPER CAPS, BOLD AND UNDERLINED BUT YOU WATCH FILMS MADE WITH THE SAME AMOUNT OF TRUST IN THE AUDIENCE'S ABILITIES</b></u> (on second thoughts, even one where this strategy is employed intermittently).</div>
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The same with editing - preliminary calculations show how average shot length has reduced to something around 2 to 5 seconds now. What possibly started as an amalgamation of Soviet montage and New Wave jump cuts into traditional continuity cutting has degenerated badly into spoon-feeding. To take an example, the old way of highlighting, say, 5 things within the same physical space would be to set up a camera and within the frame (which may be altered by panning, zooming, tracking etc.) achieve an interplay between the elements: say, one of the things to be highlighted moves suddenly in an otherwise still background. The new way to do it is just taking a close-up and cutting to the next thing to be shot. Less confidence in the viewer, in other words.</div>
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On to some of the mental reservations. #1: Black-and-white. This one I find hard to understand, given the reasonable popularity of hi-definition monochrome still photography. Several of my friends dabbling in amateur photography love black-and-white stills; yet it seldom translates into love for black-and-white films. To be completely frank, I have counter-reservations about the use of colour in mainstream films. Many directors and cinematographers have no idea how to use colour judiciously so you have <a href="http://www.cracked.com/article_18664_5-annoying-trends-that-make-every-movie-look-same.html">movies colour-coded by genre</a>. Laziness in thought, laziness in action. At the very least, monochrome saves us from this monotony of colour. A decently lit b&w frame does not hurt the eyes and something from John Alton makes your jaw drop.</div>
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#2: Foreign languages and subtitles. Hostility towards foreign language films is also quite baffling to me. I can think of a few reasons why one might not want to see them:</div>
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<li>The sound of a foreign language is distracting/funny. This is not so uncommon though I would assume most educated people to not burst into fits of laughter hearing strings of unintelligible syllables. The only psychological reason I can assume is insularity regarding one's own origins and language. Anything outre is funny for no good reason.</li>
<li>The problem with subtitles. This is a somewhat serious problem since many have earnestly complained that they find it difficult to follow the visuals while their eyeballs keep darting to the bottom of the screen to read the dialogue. Takes some practice. Once you achieve the ability to move your focus quickly all around the screen in fractions of a second, it does not impede the enjoyment of seeing the film too much. Again, longer camera takes help - so look out for directors who make films that way. I'd hate to see a frenetically-paced rapidly-cut thriller while trying to understand which direction the narrative is heading to.</li>
<li>Are their concerns really valid to us? Yes they are. Maybe not in the immediate sense. Settings may be regional and local, but human issues (social, cultural, political) are always universal. In fact, as some have noted, the more rooted in local details a film is, the more universal its reach.</li>
<li>Will we get their cultural references? This is, by far, the most serious of the reservations. Even the most serious of film-viewers have at some time or the other been confused about their opinions of a "difficult" foreign film. So I will admit at once that some of the imagery in Bunuel is lost on me since I am not familiar with Catholic theology. Or that the Persian poets Kiarostami often quotes are to me somewhat impenetrable. Yet no one but the impatient can escape the wicked sense of humour that permeates everything Bunuel did - if you have protested against authority, conformity and organised religion at some point of your life, your greatest spokesman in cinema is probably this guy. And if you have a palate for the gentle humour and deep profundity that underlies our everyday existence, you cannot ignore Kiarostami.</li>
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Which brings me to the major stereotype - preconception, rather - which stops people from exploring cinema more freely. The complaint that "art films" are slow, ponderous, hard to watch. As the preceding points explain, not every "art film" qualifies. Classical Hollywood and New American Cinema are largely well-paced and narrative-driven. A recent conversation with a friend who has seen a few Hitchcock thrillers throws light on what I mean by well-paced. I'm recalling a part of it:</div>
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Friend: I liked <i>Rear Window</i>, though it started slowly for me. <br />
Me: No way, I can agree if you say, for example, that <i>Vertigo</i> starts a bit slowly. But <i>Rear Window</i> is captivating from scene one.</blockquote>
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The only reason why his notions of instantly arresting material differs from mine is that he possibly has Hitchcock's popular conception as a master of thrills in mind and is therefore expecting something major to happen in the first few minutes itself. (<i>North By Northwest</i> would probably satisfy him.) In <i>Rear Window</i>, the murder (SPOILER!) happens late into the film and is moreover implicit. But does nothing of interest happen at all? Only if we're looking for an instant thrill and not enjoying the little pleasures. Hitchcock is gently inviting us to be voyeurs - looking into the lives of Jimmy Stewart's neighbours even before Jimmy himself starts doing so. We get an idea of what his neigbourhood is like and develop an interest in what might happen to each of these neighbours as the film progresses. We're also wondering which of these individual stories will later get involved with the story of our protagonist - wheelchair and plaster-cast bound Jimmy. It is the classic ploy of raising questions (in the viewer's mind) and gradually resolving them. But if our only investment is in murder and intrigue, we'll miss it. And <i>Rear Window</i> will seem "slow".</div>
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Of course, there are films where the pace <i>is</i> slow - i.e. something eventful rarely happens. Antonioni is a typical example, though in his case, he has full justification for doing so - most of his characters are upper-class high-society types with unfulfilled emotional and/or intellectual lives. I will easily admit that I take time to warm up to Antonioni, reasonably seasoned cinephile that I am. Nonetheless, in some cases, I realise (on repeat viewings) that even difficult directors of this sort have a sense of humour - <i>Blowup</i> is pretty much a laugh on the face of the disinterested viewer who finds the film boring. It has also to be understood that a lot of modern arthouse directors (the <i>genuinely</i> "art film" directors, in my definition) employ extraordinarily long takes, sparse soundtracks and visual designs (Tsai Ming-Liang, Bela Tarr, etc.) as a reaction to the oversaturation - all hyper-intensive close-ups and rapid cuts - that the mainstream cinema forces on us. Their films may be something of an acquired taste but the others are quite easily accessible. Nonetheless, I believe in Bresson's dictum that it is more preferable that a viewer feels a film first and understands it later, if at all. It is only the most facile director who assumes that the world is no enigma, that every question has easily digestible answers. Patience helps.</div>
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***</div>
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Lastly, why cinema? Tough question, one I can't objectively answer. I'm guessing, if you have actually read uptil this point, you already have your <i>own</i> answer, right?<br />
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***<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">A
junior had asked me to write something long time back. I'd written a
draft of this down some three months before. Never had the nerve to
publish then because it is preachy and explicatory to a degree. Re-read
it today and found that there were useful things in there. So putting it
out. Whatever you have to say is welcome.<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}">P.S.: The target readership is someone who's interested in knowing cinema, but unsure about the hows and whys.</span></span></div>
</div>Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-22109530293377856782012-04-16T06:23:00.002-07:002012-04-16T06:27:49.424-07:00Thoughts on film comedy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> Eventually all of my thoughts on comedy come back to Old Charlie and his spiritual successor Jacques Tati. Charlie's birthday gives me the perfect opportunity to write about comedy, via his ideas.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><u><b>Anecdotes:</b></u></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Chaplin had a gift for expressing his vision of comedy with superb economy. I found two anecdotes in his autobiography that seem relevant.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg15U9WBgWK0lN4rUYYcwEyyH21TfbROwM-Kz_iAqFQn9KKjUB6JRM-DdsXOxPMHiemBiOQA7XFWJKG4uNU4a8FvVgQMD_A1x2dc3MHk-_wDaYATwFa0vOKwNWCEuMInc2ozeUf09zI5KQ/s1600/Charles+Chaplin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg15U9WBgWK0lN4rUYYcwEyyH21TfbROwM-Kz_iAqFQn9KKjUB6JRM-DdsXOxPMHiemBiOQA7XFWJKG4uNU4a8FvVgQMD_A1x2dc3MHk-_wDaYATwFa0vOKwNWCEuMInc2ozeUf09zI5KQ/s320/Charles+Chaplin.jpg" width="231" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charlie in his non-Tramp persona.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The first is a hypothetical scenario: a man goes to a funeral. Everyone is standing. The man keeps his hat on a chair beside him. When everyone sits down, the fellow next to our man sits on his hat without noticing it. No one else has paid any attention to this little incident, but between the two of them the sombreness has been lost. I have no idea if Tati ever read Chaplin's autobiography but there's a reenactment of this in <i>M. Hulot's Holiday</i>. The ever-bumbling M. Hulot happens upon a funeral when his car breaks down. Dry leaves stick to one of the spare tyre-tubes in his jalopy. One of the attendants at the funeral takes it for a wreath and places it by the corpse's side. As upper-class mock-sombre people pass by the deceased in a file, air leaks from the tube and the "wreath" droops. The spell of seriousness has been broken.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The second is one of Chaplin's childhood memories: a flock of sheep are crossing by his house. This delights the kid to no end, until he realises that they are being led to the neighbourhood slaughterhouse. Comedy and tragedy often live with each other in an uneasy space.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><u><b>Statement:</b></u></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFggLo5AGpqYjxcnntazBPvDqYgv9DBmLGIi729em6yXMEE6-6rYnXA0gAsX6Fq8f65ulOZ-FGM18EBLdKHZoo-aNNW5Nq7iLenxQvPUMjwM9w10oIAxZciu5ECbDJ0m1AtcU-_UrUSh0/s1600/Jacques+Tati+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFggLo5AGpqYjxcnntazBPvDqYgv9DBmLGIi729em6yXMEE6-6rYnXA0gAsX6Fq8f65ulOZ-FGM18EBLdKHZoo-aNNW5Nq7iLenxQvPUMjwM9w10oIAxZciu5ECbDJ0m1AtcU-_UrUSh0/s320/Jacques+Tati+2.jpg" width="211" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tati!</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Which bring us to Chaplin's most memorable quote: "Life is a tragedy in close-up, a comedy in long shot." Virtually all comedy - and not just the distinctively visual comedy practised by the likes of Charlie and Tati - has its essence in that one line. In a strictly visual interpretation it is probably best summarised in Tati's <i>Playtime</i> - a film of magnificent ambition where every frame has multiple gags being played out in various planes in the foreground and background, often contrasting each other, sometimes creating a sort of magical symphony. Needless to say everything is in long-shot - most of the film's situational humour is derived from the fact that the players are lost in their own internal worlds, unaware of the other players in the frame, whereas we can see all of them at once. A classic example is the scene where Tati's M. Hulot goes to an old army friend's house - an glass-walled apartment building where every movement can be seen from the streets. While the army buddy undresses, we can also see his female neighbour watching TV. The resulting visual gag suggests that the lady is seeing the man strip!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/pdMsEg-2XkU?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Visual interpretations aside, all black humour also relies on the same principle of the larger picture undercutting the smaller one. Consider <i>Dr. Strangelove</i>. In the scene where Bat Guano is sent to Burpelson Air Base to get to Jack D. Ripper, he's confronted with Mandrake. Mandrake assures Guano that he knows that Ripper's commands mean nuclear annihilation, and only he can stop it if he can put a call through to the US President. The phone booth requires loose change - and since no one has the required amount to place a call to the President - Mandrake suggests Guano blast the Coca Cola machine and get some. Which prompts Guano's much-quoted rebuttal, "That's private property. You'll have to answer to the Coca Cola company!" As in Tati, our previous knowledge of imminent nuclear disaster provides this banter-driven scene the darkly comic tone it is remembered for. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/DUAK7t3Lf8s?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div></div>Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-91977812545461206492012-04-07T11:14:00.001-07:002012-04-07T11:15:44.254-07:00Dashboard confessional<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Part-confession, part-rationalization. How are your cultural preferences formed?</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">My gateway to 'artsy' Indian cinema was Satyajit Ray (like most people) - and now having travelled across the cinematic landscape of the country to some extent, and having seen some of the other world-class Indian directors - I'm still fixated with the man. If I were to name one Indian film that is the closest to me, it's Ray's <i>Pratidwandi</i> (The Adversary, 1971). But why - are there not more quintessentially "Indian" directors? (Mani Kaul?) Or even "Bengali" ones - like Ritwik Ghatak? Kaul's films draw upon all sorts of Indian arts in a way Ray's straight-faced realism does not. Ghatak's preferred style of acting is closer to <i>jatra</i> - or popular Bengali theatre - than the naturalism favoured by Ray. As is his use of grand melodrama - territory which Ray avoids as much as he can, his preferred tone being one of subdued emotion.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The answer which I've arrived at with much exploration and rationalization is this: the preference is simply a projection of my own personality (intuitive in retrospect, but... you know!). Avidly listening to Western Classical Music from a very young age, rejecting traditional religion, having an initial distaste for the sentimental aspects of the quintessential Bengali character - Ray made an outward journey from his home. He soaked in Western culture without feeling threatened by it, no doubt a result of an urban cosmopolitan upbringing. And then he sort of made the journey back home once he started with his painting course at Shantiniketan: discovering the rhythm of rural life, seeing traditional Indian art with new eyes.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Compare this with Ghatak's journey: born into pre-Partition Bangladesh with agriculture still not in decline, spending his childhood in a land of plenty, only to be ripped apart by a harsh reality and thrown into an urban maelstrom called Kolkata. A journey away from home, here too, but one undertaken without will. All of Ghatak's films - with the possible exception of <i>Ajantrik</i> - is therefore a pining for the home he'd never get back.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">These trajectories matter because everyone - except those who are superhuman - looks for personal resonance in whatever they see, read, listen to, argue about et al. My own journey goes something like: ordinary pop culture devouring for about the first 17 years of my life, then a slowly growing appreciation of foreign cinema and rock music (Western!) and finally a search for roots - discovering and appreciating homegrown culture, primarily through artists like Ray (in cinema), Indian Ocean and Prasanna (in music) who have a foot each in both the home and the world (<i>ghare-baaire</i>).</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Why do I feel the closest to <i>Pratidwandi</i>? In Siddhartha lies the closest portrayal of my own self in cinema - idealist, dreamer, pragmatist and someone doomed by character to see both sides of any question.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So the next time you're wondering aloud why I prefer the insider-outsider instead of the more authentic "Indian", you know it's a result of my own limitations. Only someone who has ventured outside and returned home with some ambiguity about rootlessness resonates with another in the same spot.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">P.S.: Objectively speaking, if that can mean anything at all, there are directors, musicians, authors etc. whom I admire more from a somewhat neutral, detached vantage-point. But if you're talking about personal resonance, it is what it is.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">P.P.S.: The Blogger GUI is called a dashboard, hence the title. No allusions to the band.</div></div>Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-55105416220918448632011-12-23T10:02:00.000-08:002011-12-23T10:15:44.047-08:00Flights (of fancy) in chroma key<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://dcist.com/attachments/dcist_chrisklimek/2009-06-16-Supermen-of-Malegaon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://dcist.com/attachments/dcist_chrisklimek/2009-06-16-Supermen-of-Malegaon.jpg" width="227" /></a></td></tr>
<tr style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Malegaon Ka Superman with his heroine, dancing.</td></tr>
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A novice in the world of filmmaking wonders how an essentially collaborative art succeeds in projecting a single vision - the director's. Not a cine-hippie with some reading of the auteur theory. A cloth-store owner, living in a remote town of Maharashtra, whose dreams are the stuff of cinema. Nasir Shaikh. Director of <i>Malegaon Ka Sholay</i> - the comedy remake of India's biggest blockbuster which became a runaway hit in its own targeted market. Having conquered the peak of India's commercial film industry in his own way the next step in his evolution is, of course, making a Hollywood-derived film. <i>Malegaon Ka Superman</i>.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Boasting the biggest budget ever Shaikh has worked with (about a hundred thousand rupees), he has decided to upgrade the "technique" in this film. Superman will fly - a feat which will be achieved by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_key">chroma keying</a>. Played by an undernourished hand in a power loom (weaving is Malegaon's primary industry) called Shafique, Malegaonwale Superman seems earnestly determined to move onto bigger roles. His daredevil feats involve painfully balancing his body on bits of wood and bullock carts, jumping into cold water inspite of not knowing swimming (the kids he's meant to save somehow haul him up on land) and performing stunts that usually end up hurting him a lot more than the villains he's beating up (all of them have better physique). Production problems dog the filmmakers at every step - actresses are rare because Malegaon's conservative society does not permit girls to step out of their houses, the camera falls into water and nearly goes dead and Superman-ji is married off in between the shooting. Falling behind schedule means cost overruns - now here's something that connects the most frugal of film industries with the bulkiest and most moneyed. And yet Nasir is egged on by his love of cinema and the sheer joy of filmmaking to overcome these and stay cool.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Superman and I'm-in-trouble-man fly together. And yes, Superman wears uber-cool Hawaii chappals.</td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The insights are many. One of the screenwriters, Akram Khan, confesses how he started out thinking he'd write with his heart and yet how the final product is mathematical (to use his own word): coldly calculated bits of comedy, anti-climax, climax, action, songs, the works. In other words, the story of almost every commercial filmmaker who had set out with personal visions and slowly gave them up for success (there are echoes of this sentiment in a Dibakar Banerjee interview where he says how he too has been corrupted by the money-making machinery). And then the equally candid confession that only 20% of the original script and vision remains in the final product - in this Akrambhai only differs with <a href="http://mubi.com/cast_members/10669">Nicholas Ray</a>, a far more rebellious and adamant fellow, in the numbers (Ray said 50%).</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There are revelations which quietly seep through the cracks - the heroine of Shaikh's film talks about the strict restrictions on the womenfolk of Malegaon, how girls from outside town (like her) have to be hired at high rates ( she takes 1000 a day whereas the hero takes about a 100) to do the dances, love scenes and climaxes. In the midst of her interview, her phone rings - we deduce it's her boyfriend from the hushed tone, a confirmation comes when we hear several covert <i>mwah</i>s. A village elder comes to the shooting location, sees hero and heroine hoisted on wooden planks (they're shooting the couple-flying-together scene) and turns his eyes away from the blasphemous sight.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Then there's the near-ubiquitous talk of moving on to the bigger game - Bollywood. Everyone in Mollywood (for that is the name of Malegaon's direct-to-video film industry) has upwardly mobile dreams. Except Nasir Shaikh, whose dedication to family matters is absolute - the reason why he dissuades his younger (and equally cinema-crazy) brother from venturing into filmmaking. Someone needs to earn for the family. If one brother is indulging in his passions and losing money, the other must make up. The business is exhausting and unrewarding. An echo of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfTZvjv7JrY">Billy Wilder telling his audience</a> that he'd prefer his son not to be a filmmaker - "it's too goddamn painful."</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The film is completed and Shaikh re-opens his long-dead video parlour (where he learnt by watching the greats, as he says - Chaplin, whose <i>Modern Times</i> and <i>City Light</i> [sic] are in his collection; Arnold Schwarznegger, Jackie Chan, et al.) for a screening. Initial reactions are encouraging. Luck favouring the brave, Nasirbhai will probably move on to bigger projects. In Malegaon. Even if his crew moves to Mumbai.<br />
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<b><i>Supermen of Malegaon (documentary), dir. Faiza Ahmad Khan, 2008</i></b>.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><u><b>P.S.:</b></u> The film will have a second screening at Rabindra Sadan, 6 PM, 27th December '11 as part of the Kolkata International Children's Film Festival. Catch it if you can. More than a few guffaws guaranteed!</div></div>Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-11005029313240723682011-11-15T04:05:00.000-08:002011-11-15T05:17:11.514-08:00In praise of a loser<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I've been meaning to write a big, fat Indian Democracy post after recently finishing Ramachandra Guha's <i>India After Gandhi</i>, four years too late. Thankfully, that initial enthusiasm has subsided - thereby saving every one of my readers (?) from that familiar know-it-all (or at least, know-it-enough) feeling.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The present post relates in, some sense at least, to democracy. It concerns a subversive musical-comedy that grabbed attention some months back with a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE3IF94xfFM">couple</a> of provocative <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNMqBEPxoU8">trailers</a> (NSFW).</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7jzK9QzGXl5_fxgFl6oXHXmSSqPstizD0m4Zsm4cg9Mc2rclKyj1-SdKmbNNKcqgK7PJTsrrlx3pEQXIar7e-wrFFLbFzJF4hSarArHJ1bUtdM2dFbcl0S93rFbY0mFru_CH5B5xJJ04/s1600/Gandu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7jzK9QzGXl5_fxgFl6oXHXmSSqPstizD0m4Zsm4cg9Mc2rclKyj1-SdKmbNNKcqgK7PJTsrrlx3pEQXIar7e-wrFFLbFzJF4hSarArHJ1bUtdM2dFbcl0S93rFbY0mFru_CH5B5xJJ04/s320/Gandu.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The director of <i>Gandu</i> - Q - made an interesting documentary called <a href="http://dearcinema.com/review/documentary-reviewlove-in-india-by-q-kaushik-mukherjee/2415"><i>Love in India</i></a> (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cMdmsWlpKE">trailer</a>) a couple of years back, which dealt with India's attitude towards love and sexuality. <i>Love in India</i> showed how Hinduism's mythical past is rife with innuendo, at ease accepting sexuality, even worshipping it - a practise which seems to have been shunned or sanitised by mainstream religion (though it survives in several folk, pagan and tribal customs). In the course of making his film, Q interviews an interesting cross-section of people - Nabanita Dev Sen (who tells us that our simultaneous acceptance of Radha-Krishna's illicit affair <i>and</i> the sanctity of marriage reveals a dichotomy - most hilariously manifest in what many of my college friends do: watch porn while maintaining a conservative stand on women having multiple relationships), several of Q's friends and relatives, married couples, folk singers, artistes and a distributor of B-grade films. The last gives one of the film's joyous, most cheerful testimonials. He describes how he sees many middle-aged women in seedy theatres, finding the cheap sleaze revolting, doing "chhee-chhee" and facepalms; but still stealing glances. That, he says, is definite proof of the elemental appeal of sex - even as we are ashamed of it, we just love it.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3lNfccm-57fZ0pctE2tByBbN2v5jv9fpUTCCivUYQIiZQ3KOuuwmDm-yiFZRXUYhRVtycESBTXhJUXVwCcaPRFKQTXDaDgJNkX_e60PkVRajKM_eI2oE-VyM2uI14meuqKdqN2SYCPN4/s1600/Love+in+India.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3lNfccm-57fZ0pctE2tByBbN2v5jv9fpUTCCivUYQIiZQ3KOuuwmDm-yiFZRXUYhRVtycESBTXhJUXVwCcaPRFKQTXDaDgJNkX_e60PkVRajKM_eI2oE-VyM2uI14meuqKdqN2SYCPN4/s640/Love+in+India.jpg" width="424" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This provides us with a starting point in understanding Q's follow-up to <i>Love in India</i>. Kanti Shah - India's Ed Wood, our greatest peddler of lo-fi sleaze - makes films whose thematic concerns are trivial, but absolutely essential if we want to understand India's attitude towards sexuality. The Kanti Shah Woman is a prototype - who dresses vulgarly, usually beds all of the male characters in the film and ultimately pays for her sins with death (usually at the hands of some virtuous male character who was swayed and seduced by the vamp's charms). Film after film, this prototype is repeated, as is the plot. However, there is no explicit sex - the most daring bed scenes involve obese males unnaturally fondling young women accompanied by lots of panting. Most notably these films are never denied a CBFC (Censor Board) certificate.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But <i>Gandu</i> has been denied one. Q has been adamant about not bypassing the censor board and releasing the film directly onto the net because he wants to take the system head-on (there are repeated requests for downloads on <i>Gandu</i>'s Facebook fanpage which have been denied by Q). I think he's still hoping and fighting for a mainstream release. When the Naya Cinema festival of Mumbai wanted to screen <i>Gandu</i>, they expected trouble from conservative political factions and applied for police protection. They were denied.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This selective pattern of denial recalls the sanitisation of our myths pointed out in <i>Love in India</i>. Sex is okay for public consumption when it is couched in vulgarity (lesson: "promiscuous girls are vulgar as well") and chastised by a twisted morality (the vamp dies, the moral universe remains untouched); but not when it is direct, naked, celebratory.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Meanwhile <i>Gandu</i> has been released on torrent in a Preview Copy stage (basically, without the sharpness and colour density of the original). My guess is that the makers released it themselves, just to keep the over-eager audience placated. The reaction from my peers, generally speaking, has not been good. Those whose interests were piqued by the trailers were disappointed by the film's lack of a clear narrative arc (usually expressed as "where is the story?") and its irredeemable protagonist.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It is worth recapitulating our mainstream A-grade cinema's attitude towards sexuality and transgression for a change. Bengali cinema has had its fair share of "grittiness" recently, but in 9 out 10 cases where degenerate behaviour has been shown - the character has been given some sort of a victim motive. Sexuality has been touched, but mostly safely - the recent <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baishe_Srabon"><i>Baishey Srabon</i></a> showed a couple living in, but their love was all about rolling around aesthetically wrapped in bedsheets and (then a direct cut to) a post-coital smoke.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The real departure <i>Gandu</i> makes from its precedents is not so much in what taboos it has broken, but in the way it has. Contrary to allegations, the film does have a story - young boy doesn't like his fucked-up existence, finds a friend in a rickshaw-wallah, and escapes in drug-trips - but its protagonists are far removed from any of the cushioning comforts usually offered by mainstream cinema. True, Gandu - the protagonist - suffers from a victim complex, but his actions far exceed any justified reaction to his environment. The extended full frontal sex scene is not a wimp trying to forget his sorrows in lovemaking, just a sexually liberated guy trying to top his trip. The film's numerous rap numbers are wickedly humourous - personally speaking, they were more than enough compensation for the occasional indie film hipness - and work excellently as subversive critiques of our socio-cultural values. The very lack of dramatic narrative works as subversion of our demand of a "story".</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The Indian Constitution gives us the right to freedom of speech, but qualifies it with the clause that one cannot cause offence to anybody. This, in effect, nullifies the right. (I am offended that people take their right to be offended as the right to ban the offensive.) <i>Gandu</i> is just the sort of litmus test India must pass if it is to remain a democracy.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">P.S.: <a href="http://dearcinema.com/interview/it-is-important-to-use-devices-that-can-shake-the-audience-up-gandu-director-q/1321">An interview with Q</a> which throws good light on the sort of films he believes in. Also, I hope some people will go ahead and check out <i>Love In India</i>. Punk art is awesome, alright, but it's better to see things in a calmer state of mind.</div></div>Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-52487429835004945982011-10-28T22:36:00.000-07:002011-10-29T02:20:38.357-07:00A shout out for internet pirates!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://gigaom.com/2011/10/27/looks-like-congress-has-declared-war-on-the-internet/">A new bill called the E-PARASITE act is being debated in the US House</a> which will give governments, courts and corporate biggies the power to shut down any website which is infringing on their copyrights (of course, according to their own decisions). This is even worse than the existing legislation that allowed websites to take down content deemed copyright-infringing and save itself from legal action. In effect, anything the overlords want us to pay for, we have to - if we <i>really</i> want to use it.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'm going to argue against this mainly from my vantage point: i.e. as someone in a modest Indian town with a deep interest in matters of the world, and especially, cinema. It is no big secret that Indians don't have even middling-decent DVD rentals or arthouses where one can pay agreeable money to watch a decent variety of cinema. The local DVD rentals in my place keep only safe bets: blockbusters from Tolly, Bolly and Hollywood, a huge stock of b-grade Hindi and Bengali cinema (which, surprisingly, has a steady market), a nominal amount of "art cinema" (the big names in Bengali would be something like: S Ray, Aparna Sen, Goutam Ghose etc.) and large stocks of porn. Kolkata is somewhat better off than Durgapur, of course, but one only gets the theatre experience when the odd film festival comes to Nandan (not counting private screenings). The stores in Kolkata are also somewhat better off - I frequent the Music World on Park Street just to check out what titles they have on the shelves - though they usually keep the Certified Classics only. Thankfully, they're getting somewhat brave and bringing some rarer stuff - besides the usual Kurosawa, Bergman, Truffaut, Fellini et al - I've spotted the odd Olmis and the Dardennes. The gist is this: for a young, impressionable student in Durgapur/Kolkata interested in cinema, the options of getting a steady and healthy supply are still underdeveloped.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Now, let's do some preliminary mathematics to show why the internet saves me from film-ic ignorance. Due to the recent boom in telecommunications, even a <i>mofussil</i> like Durgapur has excellent broadband connectivity. And for around 800 to 1000 rupees, one can get a connection with no limits on data transfer. Basically, a 'free' ticket to share whatever files you want to. Thanks to a very well-developed file sharing web on the internet, I have access to whatever cinema I want. Everything from 1920s German horror to the latest film playing on the festival circuit is within reach if you have found your way around the net. So whereas I can only get three or four DVDs at most with a 1000 per month, I can (and do) download somewhere around 20 to 25 films with the same outlay.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Does this mean I won't buy DVDs at all? I will, but only a few I have already seen and loved - and when I have the money to spare. The way I see it, I'm not cutting down on the business of the corporations at all: it's a choice between not being able to buy and not buying it. My question is - why should an artiste mind if he's reaching out to a wider audience? As far as I know, corporations take the major chunk of sales profits anyway. For the artiste it's a choice between a little more money from royalties and sales profits (and that too is debatable: most filesharing proponents won't buy stuff as heavily as they share) and a huge, well-distributed audience. It's not without reason many bands are releasing their albums for free on their websites - they have already realised that their earning from sales amount to only about 10% (the rest coming from shows).</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The internet is also more egalitarian, free from censorship. In one notable example, Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi released his 2009 film on censorship within his country - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_One_Knows_About_Persian_Cats">No One Knows About Persian Cats</a> - on the internet as it could not shown in theatres. (Many similar underground artistes thrive because of the internet.) Now if a site like Pirate Bay - which hosted a copy of Ghobadi's film - were to be shut down because some bigwig corp in USA decided that it had also hosted one of its copyrighted films, then Ghobadi would be shut out of circulation. This is one reason why this new act, if it were to be passed, would be disastrous for democracy. To put it succinctly: for the First World with its various alternatives to showcase art, the internet may be a nefarious parasite eating up business (a claim which is debatable as I've pointed out). For us Third World citizens with no decent DVD rentals and arthouses, it means the death of culture altogether.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">YouTube has already been taking down videos that attracted notices from corporations for copyright violation. As someone pointed out, their filtering mechanism is very random. Mashups, parodies or video essays featuring snippets of copyrighted material are often taken down, whereas whole scenes from those very films/music videos survive the treatment sometimes. This has already resulted in people shifting from YouTube to Vimeo (which has a somewhat more sensible stand towards copyright violation), but the implications are bad. As it stands now, you have to pay corporations big money even if you want a snippet (which should ideally be allowable for free as per Fair Use policy) in your work. This is just strangling of creativity; financial arm-twisting. I hope sense prevails and the internet - the only place where we can speak of global culture and cross-breeding with some amount of truth - remains truly free.</div></div>Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-48623399179763051382011-07-01T13:54:00.000-07:002012-05-29T23:49:29.157-07:00Blowup: how close can you get to a subject?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: small;">Antonioni's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowup"><i>Blowup</i></a> takes a murder mystery premise and cleverly subverts it. It concerns us with a fashion photographer in the London of the Swinging Sixties, Thomas (David Hemmings), who happens to think he has witnessed - accidentally captured on camera - a murder. And then it abandons the narrative necessity to "solve" the case: instead telling us that we can't be too sure that we saw something (recalling <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenberg%27s_uncertainty_principle">Heisenberg's principle</a> more than anything else).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The film is permeated by a sense of sly humour. An early scene captures Thomas doing a photo shoot with real-life fashion model Veruschka, and Antonioni plays out the scene with a strong subtext of sexuality. It is as if the photographer and model are engaging in virtual intercourse; complete with lines like "now give it to me, really give it to me, my love" and a mock-up of post-coital exhaustion. Much of Veruschka's sensuality is coldly calculated. Glossy surfaces housing empty beings - Antonioni's major theme, the connecting-thread in his whole body of work.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Thomas wanders into a park, sees an unlikely couple - a middle-aged woman with an elderly man - and out of both boredom and voyeuristic curiosity starts shooting them. The woman (Vanessa Redgrave) notices, comes to Thomas and demands that he hand over the roll of film to her.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcb5hnW5S3npG7bdgrEarCiORtStFQZfmCcE_sAykssBsnqtITJCbfgoMGirmJ1AzfsJLz15pbKgaipIzRqskwVfC63we4L6KJJcVJoA-cCtu7ViOyrw5anaR5tyUg_pA1hmUQsAK_mtw/s1600/vlcsnap-2011-07-02-00h45m18s133.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcb5hnW5S3npG7bdgrEarCiORtStFQZfmCcE_sAykssBsnqtITJCbfgoMGirmJ1AzfsJLz15pbKgaipIzRqskwVfC63we4L6KJJcVJoA-cCtu7ViOyrw5anaR5tyUg_pA1hmUQsAK_mtw/s320/vlcsnap-2011-07-02-00h45m18s133.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">He refuses, promises to send her the photos later. He is followed back to his studio by the woman. She repeats her request, even makes a sexual advance as 'payment', but is interrupted. Interruptions are the film's building blocks. Antonioni's characters don't really have deep-seated motives, a philosophy to live life by. They're empty pages coloured with fancies as they come.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Thomas goes to nightclub where <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yardbirds">The Yardbirds</a> are playing. Jeff Beck's guitar processor starts malfunctioning; in a fit of rage he breaks his guitar (mimicking the antics of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Townshend">Pete Townshend</a>) and throws the broken fretboard to a rapturous, drugged crowd. There is much pushing and shoving as fans try to get this souvenir. Thomas grabs it, runs outside and throws the fretboard on the pavement. A fellow standing nearby picks it up, examines it (of course, not knowing that it is Jeff Beck's) and throws it down again. Two points to note: 1) Thomas really had no reason to grab and run away and just did it to disappoint the others, and 2) that a thing, once stripped from its context, does not convey any meaning. The first gives us a guide to understand the psyche of Antonioni's characters (Jack Nicholson in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passenger_%281975_film%29"><i>The Passenger</i></a> decides to exchange his identity with a dead, similar looking man without any apparent motivation). The second gives us the thumb-rule to understand his films. There is hardly any sequence in an Antonioni film that would stand on its own merit - you cannot talk of scenes unless you connect it with the others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The woman (Vanessa Redgrave) who wanted the roll of film back visits Thomas. He hands her a fake and develops the photographs he took in the morning. As he pins the photos side by side and examines them he thinks he has unwittingly caught a man being shot down. To get a clearer look he blows up a part of the image. There's a lot of noise - graininess - so we can't be exactly sure. He seems quite certain though.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqeI2-o8TTMH9alri3oZwqKETgEkQ2ppqKPhv5gf-pAQtY4vQ4J_-XlRBnti5GZ-5EEDj_qebuIlDPqFVa7V1wmCjsgRdD2QTFP8aHtltHn4EhGkmBE7C52oGVFql-X9_n7waOkXz0tNI/s1600/vlcsnap-2011-07-02-00h44m00s106.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqeI2-o8TTMH9alri3oZwqKETgEkQ2ppqKPhv5gf-pAQtY4vQ4J_-XlRBnti5GZ-5EEDj_qebuIlDPqFVa7V1wmCjsgRdD2QTFP8aHtltHn4EhGkmBE7C52oGVFql-X9_n7waOkXz0tNI/s320/vlcsnap-2011-07-02-00h44m00s106.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The mise-en-scene here deserves special mention. A photo of the woman looking away while she embraces her lover becomes a sort of reaction shot.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia6Fcn4IA83kXPd-VwjfSaFgcpCQ4jjtLLbYIEVucXGqgXauipDHS0bYOE1ONpNIccf-6TKXEo1BpZQ-FWT2zlaPerV7me-STBxMMuDApJxK4yGpcXI8UCkvUYUHuPeEMBrZB_YCEvLDk/s1600/vlcsnap-2011-07-02-00h41m00s122.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia6Fcn4IA83kXPd-VwjfSaFgcpCQ4jjtLLbYIEVucXGqgXauipDHS0bYOE1ONpNIccf-6TKXEo1BpZQ-FWT2zlaPerV7me-STBxMMuDApJxK4yGpcXI8UCkvUYUHuPeEMBrZB_YCEvLDk/s320/vlcsnap-2011-07-02-00h41m00s122.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">But whereas the reaction shot is traditionally used to reinforce the illusion of reality*, Antonioni subverts by not clearly showing the object that draws her attention. The camera pans from the still (shown above) to the wall where a blowup of the fence she seems to be looking at is pinned. (Illustrated in the following screenshots)</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQhBWx6g2u_w2l9tIyPAMHMSAz6l97M7UEPljH54VINy5rzy1sY55qJFrgok75AhulqflC66JeLzJ71rHry9ZDhYKFAIZ8paei2lirkCDnlDjITgdnNjgZoUbNh8IhowRgnygrWHZ5JV4/s1600/vlcsnap-2011-07-01-23h06m21s119.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQhBWx6g2u_w2l9tIyPAMHMSAz6l97M7UEPljH54VINy5rzy1sY55qJFrgok75AhulqflC66JeLzJ71rHry9ZDhYKFAIZ8paei2lirkCDnlDjITgdnNjgZoUbNh8IhowRgnygrWHZ5JV4/s320/vlcsnap-2011-07-01-23h06m21s119.png" width="320" /> </a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOidHNDpA2OGJN120f-33GHIliUrErcxm5e827FlHWuIR9Z5mONf0L4nmOzLElPQCLExWkjSQSZ5WAhyphenhyphenej9DzJ_G3SbDHZgizKN9V5UMbbTiYWvhh_717FCMYLNPxtdUTYsBzju1IWqPM/s1600/vlcsnap-2011-07-02-00h42m40s68.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOidHNDpA2OGJN120f-33GHIliUrErcxm5e827FlHWuIR9Z5mONf0L4nmOzLElPQCLExWkjSQSZ5WAhyphenhyphenej9DzJ_G3SbDHZgizKN9V5UMbbTiYWvhh_717FCMYLNPxtdUTYsBzju1IWqPM/s320/vlcsnap-2011-07-02-00h42m40s68.png" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_71sEYb8D_yo0tVLbgb0JtTVh_EXas0edq5n1TonGzTUpPpNiz80zUDirR2ONLkgcI9nrl0uDRhofN1-ziKpIaS1UEr5_1UFO8RQ1lz5wpFyp5VAj9zhRPZk9JHK3goT0XQAoVrHzM6k/s1600/vlcsnap-2011-07-02-00h42m49s201.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_71sEYb8D_yo0tVLbgb0JtTVh_EXas0edq5n1TonGzTUpPpNiz80zUDirR2ONLkgcI9nrl0uDRhofN1-ziKpIaS1UEr5_1UFO8RQ1lz5wpFyp5VAj9zhRPZk9JHK3goT0XQAoVrHzM6k/s320/vlcsnap-2011-07-02-00h42m49s201.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">The resulting visual joke is that the woman is looking from the confines of her photo to the bush and fence shown in the adjacent photo. But we still can't see what she's been looking at**.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> The other - larger - subversion here is of a close-up. Originally the close-up was invented because objects could not be fitted completely into the aspect ratio of the frame. Hence a part of the object or person was shown, and the camera was sometimes moved to capture the whole part by part. This largely worked as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche">synecdoche</a> (i.e. the part representing the whole)</span>. <span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But whereas the classical close-up clarified or </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">emphasized</span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> intent, Antonioni's close-up says that the deeper we try to go the more the object of our concern disintegrates ("blowing up" in a deliciously ironic sense). It also serves as self-criticism: Antonioni's films being basically probing character studies done in a minimalist manner.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">For some inexplicable reason, Antonioni actually shows a gun sticking out of one of the bushes, and later, a corpse lying beside a hedge when Thomas revisists the park in the night. Which seems strange given that Antonioni has been trying to bury the deterministic trait in classical literature and cinema uptil this point. (An alternate reading might be that Thomas really did spot the truth but has no concrete irrefutable evidence to back his discovery.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Perhaps this is overcome, and explained, by the celebrated finale. A group of anarchic teenagers, dressed as harlequins, show up the film at several points. This group now arrives at a tennis court just outside the park which was the "crime-scene". They mimic a game of tennis. But between themselves the excitement and enthusiasm in this make-believe game is real, as is their match. Thomas looks on, amused. Then the invisible ball gets out of court and the players insist that Thomas throw them the ball. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Now that he has participated in their make-believe, he can hear the sounds of the tennis ball hitting the ground and the rackets (before this, the match is played out in silence). This is unusual given that the film never uses non-diegetic*** sound except in this scene. All of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbie_Hancock">Herbie Hancock</a>'s wonderful jazz score can be heard only when the radio or the record player is on. Antonioni's daring use of sound makes us conscious of the illusory nature of cinema: which resembles and comes to life (the non-diegetic becoming diegetic) only when there is communal participation and suspension of disbelief (in the cinema theatre).</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/7tcaev66ed0?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The final sequence of the film shows, in a long shot, Thomas standing in the field. His image slowly fades away. Thomas is unreal - a character in a make-believe medium. The camera lies. Did Thomas' camera lie too? And does Antonioni's camera lie when it shows us the corpse?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><u><b>Footnotes:</b></u></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*A typical Hollywood trope is to cut next to a POV - if one shot shows A (in the frame) looking at B (out of the frame), the next shot shows B (now in frame) from A's perspective.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: x-small;">**The viewer who wants to see for himself if there was a murder or not must understand that the photographs are taken from a single point in the park - where Thomas was hiding behind a tree - and that is our reference to determine directions.</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">***In simple words, diegetic music/sound is one which is being played in the space being exhibited, i.e. the music/sound belongs to the "world" of </span>the film/play. Non-diegetic is when the sound does not belong to the space in focus.</span></span></div>Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-88685047888128238622011-06-20T10:09:00.000-07:002011-06-20T10:09:19.511-07:00The Discreet Charm of The Narrative<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://images.moviepostershop.com/the-discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie-movie-poster-1972-1020374721.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://images.moviepostershop.com/the-discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie-movie-poster-1972-1020374721.jpg" width="260" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Luis Bunuel's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discreet_charm_of_the_bourgeoisie"><i>The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie</i></a> holds the promise of a "proper" (classical) narrative throughout its length but doggedly fails in keeping it. Here is a film that pretends to head for the centre, all the while running off into tangents. It is almost as if Bunuel is trying his best to control his surreal urges and make a conventional, conformist narrative feature; but yields repeatedly to his playful, naughty side.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
Gone is the sort of openly rebellious, distinctly surreal imagery that populated his early work (<i>Un Chien Andalou</i> or <i>L'Age D'Or</i>). There is an air of naturalism and realism in the proceedings: hints that this film may follow the cause-and-effect logic of classical narrative. We see one of the characters - a high-ranking diplomat - smuggle cocaine in his luggage. A lady promises a priest that she'll narrate the story of her faith to him. Bunuel throws around these nuggets with exquisite care. He has the diplomat explain in detail how he managed to smuggle the stuff in. But there's no follow-up. It appears the director has lost interest in the sort of conventional film his handiwork is headed towards, so he turns his attention to another little incident, follows the narrative thread for a while, and diverts his attention yet again.<br />
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The running gag of the film is that a group of high-class socialites sit down to dinner several times but never actually finish it. Bunuel's own little joke is luring his viewers into believing that <i>Discreet Charm</i> is a conventional narrative. Like his protagonists, we never get finished with the "story" - our dinner. It eludes us before a normative conclusion can be reached.<br />
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<i>Discreet Charm</i> is as much a critique of complacent, disengaged entertainment (the sort that Hollywood has always readily served up) as it is a hilarious parody of bourgeois manners (with some typical Bunuel targets thrown in for good measure - bureaucratic, military and religious). At a restaurant, the three ladies of this film ask for all sorts of beverages - tea, coffee, water - but the waiter informs them that none is available. Nothing in Bunuel's film is readymade for easy consumption.<br />
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One sequence in the film is shown thrice, being the last as well. It has the motley group of socialites walking endlessly through an empty field. Bunuel's parting statement is cheerfully nihilistic - coming from nowhere, going nowhere. It is a wonder a film so mischievous and rebellious in its opposition to Hollywood's values of filmmaking won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.</span></div><br />
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</div>Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-28430749064297568562011-06-04T13:31:00.000-07:002011-06-04T13:41:13.739-07:00Reflections of life in cinema #2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><u><b>Blasphemy and the holy cows of religion:</b></u> <br />
While browsing through a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_versus_blasphemy">wikipedia entry on well-known cases of blasphemy</a>, I came across <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudanese_teddy_bear_blasphemy_case">this particularly interesting scenario</a> where Gillian Gibbons, a British lady teaching in Sudan, was tried on charges of naming a teddy bear "Muhammad" in class. Yes, you read that right.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It turned out there was a boy named Muhammad in class; and she had named the teddy after him, not the Messiah. Which should have effectively buried the case. It didn't. The charges brought against her were "insulting religion, inciting hatred, sexual harassment, racism, prostitution and showing contempt for religious beliefs". Pretty much logical thinking, isn't it?</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's of course further debatable what exactly is wrong with naming things after the Prophet. Where exactly is that a slur? People name their children after personal idols or icons, and that is always a mark of showing respect. Mind you, this is still argued from the POV of a rational believer. For an atheist, the whole idea of arguing and bickering over, and creating rules about an artificial human construct - God - seems like absurdity squared. One, the whole thing is obviously a hoax - meant to give you a false sense of security and order when there is none. Two, you have self-appointed guardians who set rigid rules and guidelines to ascertain the existence and propagation of this deceptive idea.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Contemptuous sermons at several mosques drove around 10,000 people in Khartoum, armed with swords and machetes, to form processions and ask for immediate execution of Gibbons. All for naming a silly teddy bear "Muhammad". Makes me wonder what a truly harsh critic of organised religion must be facing in these overbearingly conservative societies.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><u><b>Monty Python and their attitude towards religion:</b></u></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><a href="http://celluloidandroid.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/montypython-holy-l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://celluloidandroid.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/montypython-holy-l.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">One feels, as Kubrick did while adapting the straight thriller <i>Fail Safe</i> to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_strangelove"><i>Dr. Strangelove</i></a>, that certain aspects of human existence are so bleak and despairing that the only possible way of staying calm and opining in a rational manner is to make fun of it. Kubrick's vision of a nuclear apocalypse thrives on a complementary relationship between the degrees of humour and bleakness. The teddy bear incident infuriates me so much that I find citing the frivolous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_python">Monty Python</a> sketches the best way to deflect the irrational strains of anger (since blind religion itself feeds on the gaps in rationale).</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The Pythons were, of course, no strangers to making fun of religion. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_brian"><i>Life of Brian</i></a> satirised the irrational religious fervour, containing among other things a scene where a mob kills a man because he believes the common man Brian not be a messiah. Brian himself doesn't!</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">What however seems most relevant is the witch-burning sequence in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python_and_the_Holy_Grail"><i>Holy Grail</i></a>. A group of villagers take a suspected "witch" to a village headman seeking his approval to burn her. In a characteristically Python-esque way, Bedevere (the village headman) establishes "logically" how the woman really is a witch. In a world where a woman can be tried for naming teddy bears (charged with "inciting... sexual harassment, racism and prostitution" among other things), one can easily be proved to be a witch because she weighs equal to a duck on a faulty balance. Reality, as ever, trumps fiction in its capacity to bewilder.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
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</div></div>Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-21869759149449802802011-04-15T11:14:00.000-07:002011-04-15T11:14:18.340-07:00Brake ke baad: Pharmacists furious with doctors for bad handwriting<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYzhFF4GQhrS3fasJ_6ogT6pB0AxCbwbq-6kYcpRFb1x6wACnocOxjLIVPc8GLwAmvqiBL4cWrW2I0dpvymyYVDHFWLiy45y8r-fDoX4cFLqiDuCwT42QQMvmF-rGWl_Wue05OZVU2WOk/s1600/ibm_hc_1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYzhFF4GQhrS3fasJ_6ogT6pB0AxCbwbq-6kYcpRFb1x6wACnocOxjLIVPc8GLwAmvqiBL4cWrW2I0dpvymyYVDHFWLiy45y8r-fDoX4cFLqiDuCwT42QQMvmF-rGWl_Wue05OZVU2WOk/s400/ibm_hc_1.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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</a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">New Delhi, April 15: The Indian Medical Association received a notice from the Indian Pharmaceutical Association a couple of days ago. IPA has issued a demand that a compulsory course on handwriting be introduced in all medical courses throughout the country.<br />
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When contacted, an IPA spokesperson said, "We have received thousands of complaint letters from chemists around India regarding the illegibility of doctors' handwriting. Just recently a chemist from Kolkata wrote to us saying that he has been sued by a customer for deliberately giving the patient a pill he was allergic to. The doctor refused to accept responsibility for the mistake, saying he had recommended the medicine with the possible reactions of the patient in mind. The cause of confusion was his barely legible writing. The Kolkata chemist is frustrated and furious that he has to bear the brunt."<br />
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The publication of the notice is expected to delight all Indian pharmacies who have had to put up with bad handwriting for decades. The complaint letter from IPA demands that the handwriting course be introduced in at least two semesters of the medical degree and that failure in the subject be treated with a seriousness at par with that reserved for the 'important' subjects in medicine.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The news however failed to delight Mr. Banerjee, a resident of Kolkata. Mr. Banerjee was positively delighted to receive a missive from his son's school - the teachers had complained that they could not read little Rahul's handwriting at all, and therefore had to mark his papers on conjecture. The senior Banerjee was absolutely sure that this could only mean one thing - his son was destined to become a doctor. Little Rahul was also a little crestfallen. He could no longer scribble a "medical prescription" in his own handwriting and claim that he missed class for a nasty stomach ache. </span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0LcntopedAmqBRWSJEusLcmU6-lpCoK2v6f2jN7uZX1PM75hfennInqUhJ6KN-a7-CrWvHKBdPWjKmS5m_Ukw_RA1ZSS24rDkDarSuekBVZ-G14cLvvnMV9INdE6uazHGTyURoWKfKOQ/s1600/doc.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0LcntopedAmqBRWSJEusLcmU6-lpCoK2v6f2jN7uZX1PM75hfennInqUhJ6KN-a7-CrWvHKBdPWjKmS5m_Ukw_RA1ZSS24rDkDarSuekBVZ-G14cLvvnMV9INdE6uazHGTyURoWKfKOQ/s1600/doc.jpg" /></a></div></div>Sudipto Basuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833411083213663905.post-81167107307937912442011-01-01T10:55:00.000-08:002011-01-02T00:55:09.488-08:0015 "Chhobi" in 15 Minutes<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: small; line-height: 16px;"><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">Abhigyan-da, now a good friend of mine, requested me a couple of days back that I make a list of 10 Bengali films, both old and new, which are worth seeing. Well, obviously it has been a hard time making such a list. A lot of good works and some of my favourites have been left out (with much heart-ache, I must say! :P). I’ll violate two conditions though: I’ll list 15 films, instead of 10 and I’ll, for now, talk only about old films, i.e., the black-and-white-era. <b>Also, these are among those which I’ve seen and so, this is absolutely <i>my</i> opinion.</b> But, I have tried to be as unbiased as possible. I’ve also tried to bring as much diversity to my choices as is possible. No two films are thematically the same, as far as I can see. I’ll leave the often-seen-obvious-great-works-that-have-received-enough-recognition (like the ‘Apu Trilogy’, the Goopy-Bagha series, ‘Charulata’, ‘Nayak’, ‘Meghe Dhaka Taara’, ‘Galpo Holeo Shotti’, ‘Kabuliwala’, ‘Saptapadi’ and probably a few others):</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">1) <b>Teen Kanya</b> (director: Satyajit Ray, year: 1961) – A classic collection of three short films. All the basic elements of drama (humour, poetry, horror, romance, psychology, coming-of-age, relationships, time…) are so innately combined to give perhaps one of the world’s most memorable art forms.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">2) <b>Jana Aranya</b> (director: Satyajit Ray, year: 1975) – A clever take. There have been many stories portraying the struggle of youths to find a job in Naxal or post/ pre-Naxal period, the earnest desire to make a proper living, ultimately finding a not-so-good offer with a happy-sad “atleast I’ve got something” feeling, the psychological pressure on a middle class family owing to the fear of losing security, and so on. But rarely has a film been made central characterising a man so utterly common! He is unromantic, uncharismatic, uncomplicated, un-plottable, un-philosophical. But, he is uniquely conscientious. A great find, Pradeep Mukherjee, is one of the most under-under-rated actors in the world film industry.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">3) <b>Jalsaghar</b> (director: Satyajit Ray, year:1958) – A must-see to grow a universal view of the world. Even the autocrat or the aristocrat might have a softer, weaker mould hidden beneath several layers. The power, the aura, the luxurious ways of amusement (from smoking the pricey tobacco to arranging the royal festivity) – all are linked with an odd sense of childish possessiveness and of course, pride, a super sensitive pride. A hint of fall brings devastative remorse (shade comparable with that depicted in Billy Wilder’s ‘The Sunset Boulevard’). Mind-boggling work with psychology!</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">4) <b>Kshaniker Atithi</b> (director: Tapan Sinha, year: 1959) – A tale so sensitive can’t be said in a simpler way. Only someone like Tapan Sinha could produce such magic perhaps. Great cast selection! Nirmal Kumar says most with his wordful eyes. It leaves a ‘songful lull’ long after it is over, if there can be any such thing.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">It makes the viewer re-discover the many bits of precious shattered glass that cover his path, some of which can’t be retrieved again, some of which can still be collected...</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">5) <b>Ajantrik</b> (director: Ritwik Ghatak, year: 1958) – A very important subject, but has been rarely worked upon: man’s relationship with machines. I think, I don’t need to say more to the people here reading this on Facebook or on the blog! :P But, yes, this film is about how much a machine can become the part of our very selves. I think most people of the 20th – 21st century will connect to this film a lot. Enjoy!</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">6) <b>Ahwan </b>(director: Ardhendu Mukherjee , year: 1961) – A tale of simplicity, of the wish of “giving” amidst and despite utter poverty, of the mindlessness of the thousand divisions in the society and of the inexplicability of those rare relationships that know no beginning nor any end. Watch this film for the very old lady, wrinkled, toothless and bent with age, who has abundant affection stored in her being, but very precious few to shower it on.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">7) <b>Jhinder Bondi</b> (director: Tapan Sinha, year: 1961) – A royal film, both in terms of subject and treatment. Can be a million-budget film if made today, but still the effect of the original, which had a budget that will embarrass modern producers, can’t be reproduced. The cast is superbly selected, once again! And, all the actors, away from their comfort zones (except Uttam Kumar perhaps, who doesn’t have to work much hard to be in the skin of the characters he plays here and as usual he is easily cool), have done their bit perfectly. The backdrop of the film, i.e., the Rajasthani royals, is very rare in Bangla cinema but is done with all the required élan and elegance. A sumptuous bit of art. Just lap it up!</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">8) <b>Thaana Theke Aashchhi</b> (director: Hiren Nag, year: 1965) – Rarely there has been such a neat work done on a highly complex mystery plot. Behind a man’s irreversible misery, that’s so huge to bring him to the brink of taking his own life, never is any one man or any one factor responsible. The entire society is. In fact, we might unexpectedly discover each of us responsible for the utter distress of that person (yes, quite in the Hitchcock-ian style). The unveiling of each such encounter with our victim might strike us – those with a wee bit of conscience, of course – with a wave of shame and guilt. And, we actually never know when we might come face-to-face with those cruelly honest and insightful eyes behind the black rimmed spectacles someday, which will reveal our “sins” to us! Watch this film to know why the fans of Uttam Kumar have turned the same.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">9) <b>Marutirtho Hinglaj</b> (director: Bikash Roy, year: 1959) – One of the bravest <i>and</i> most difficult projects in Indian cinema. The story of a group of poor pilgrims who undertake a very difficult terrain in the wish to reach the “blessed spot” some place far away that they believe will get them salvation. Some very ordinary people like us are put to a series of indomitable tests. We see how some overcome them, while some fail. The huge amount of heart and dedication that is involved in this semi-epic is perceptible and is almost contagious. Watch this one just for the experience!</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">10) <b>Bikele Bhorer Phool</b> (director: Pijush Bose, year: 1974) – A remarkable film that brings out the eternal contrast between the young and the free on one side, while the mature and the limited/ bounded on the other side. While the former is fearless, the latter can’t afford to ‘dare to bare’. Due to years of struggle (and often by regular practice) against the odds, many layers of skin have covered their (the ones in the latter group) natural selves. They have learnt what the world can put up with and what it cannot. This “learning” is called maturity. Watch this again to understand The Uttam Kumar factor.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">11) <b>Neel Akasher Niche</b> (director: Mrinal Sen, year: 1959) – A very affectionate story, drafted with a sadness strange to Bangla culture. A promising debut of course, for it made the permanent space for The Mrinal Sen, who later went on to develop a style, very different from his start, distinct to him. A very sensitive take on the refugees, on the ‘pain of compromising’ with the arrangement of living away from the homeland you love so much and how we suddenly find the shadow of our lost loved ones in someone practically “alien”, how we find a cross-road on a “foreign” land very familiar or how an unknown river reminds us of one back at home. After all, poverty, discrimination and war bring the same kind of distress everywhere. A very poignant tale!</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">12) <b>Kaancher Swargo</b> (director: Yatrik (Tarun Majumdar, Sachin Mukherji and Dilip Mukherji ), year: 1963) – A Bangla film noir. The story of a promising surgeon lost in the despairing pool of failure to gain a degree. But, can anything really stop him from applying the knowledge and the skill he possesses to save many hundreds of lives? How important law is when a man is dying? How important a stamp is when real work needs to be done immediately? Dilip Mukherji, an actor seldom appreciated, does most through his silent yet dignified grimness. A theme that surely demands a lot of importance even in contemporary times.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">13) <b>Dweep Jweley Jaai</b> (director: Asit Sen, year: 1959) – One of the most touching and empathic tales in Bangla cinema. The best performance of Suchitra Sen undoubtedly. The director has revealed a very measured sense of drama in this film. Even melodrama is there, but very briefly and strongly. This is not only the story of an exceptionally kind nurse, or a dutiful human being for that matter, but of the general Indian lady.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">14) <b>Chupi Chupi Ashe</b> (director: Premendra Mitra, year: 1960) – There have been many better works on crime and detection than this one. But, no other film like this one sent a chill down my spine. Very few films in Bangla have been made on serial killing. (In fact, right now I can’t remember another one except ‘Jighansha’.) Very few Bengali films have made the audience fear the murderer. In some way or the other, it has been the general tradition to justify the killer and draw a generous amount of sympathy from the viewer. There is a reason shown, of course, but very much like that in Hitchcock’s ‘The Shadow of a Doubt’: too skewed.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">Crime lovers can try this!</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">15) <b>Palatak</b> (director: Tarun Majumdar, year: 1963) – It is an anecdote on the joy of losing oneself among all that is natural and true. And, I think, that one line will do. :)</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><i>Afterthought</i>:</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">Most of these films are from the genre ‘drama’, are content-based works and were primarily made with “commerce” in mind. Music is one of the basic elements (both as songs and as background music) of these films, the medium that links the various nuances of the story in one unbroken garland. Again, many of the directors of the above films are scarcely named, scarcely known, scarcely remembered. But, the above list may roughly be an eye-opener to the question “why the golden age was golden age” that probes many bright young minds of today. Most of these films were hits in their times, signaling an average good taste residing in the then Bangali mass. Almost nil-resourced (‘resource’ includes money, access to capital, innovative mind in technique and style, eyes for detailed perfection, probably a sharper sense of art et al) and nil-equipped, in as many ways as possible, these film-makers made magic just because they had the mind-heart-and-eyes worth living! So, anyone earnestly wishing to know the “Bangali sentiment” may refer to the above list.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">Happy seeing! :)</div><div><br />
</div></span></div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0