NO REGRETS (2006)
What qualifies as a gay film? Is it because the lead characters are gay or it’s something else? Korean film No Regrets is a gay film not because it tell the tumultuous relationship between two men, but also how it depicts the gay subculture running beneath the conservative Korean society. Queer cinema has come of age. Coming out is not longer an issue. The issue is finding love, as anywehre else. But while dealing with the love strory between two very unlikely younsters, how they fall in love, fall out of love, fall in love again, fall out again, director Leesong Hee-il, himself an open gay man, captures the eseense of the thriving gay subculture in modern Korea with such finesse that the love story becomes incidental, what’s become more apparent is the class struggle, and ghettoism, and the moral that the gay sensibility can overcome the heterosexist barriers. The film may be a little longer than it should be, better never boring.
SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER... AND SPRING / CROCODILE / THE ISLE / BAD GUY
South Korean auteur Kim Ki-Duk is a difficult person to pigeon-holed in a category. His movies are not overtly esoteric, arthouse, but they are. Ki-Duk was a trained artist before he became a director, and this is evident from the fact that most of his film focuses more on visuals than other forms of film narrative. Most of his films have very less dialogues, the bare minimum, it’s the moving pictures that talk, and how. And, there’s his world view, despiring and overtly misogynist. Yet, his pictures are hypotonic, at least most of them. The best among them is Spring, Summer... deals with the Buddhist philosophy of the circle of life. The entire film takes place in the interiors of Korea, where in a lake there’s a floating house where lives an old monk and his young disciple. And the seasons here refer to the cycle of life, from childhood to old age. Half of the film is without dialogues, yet, how it affects the viewers! Crocodile, his debut, is an odd fish. It’s not an easy task to understand the protagonist, the crocodile of the title, who makes a living the robbing people who commit suicide by jumping off the bridge on a Seoul river. Yet, the underwater scenes, complete with a sofa and a framed picture, are a marvel in cinematography. Ki-Duk obsession with water continues in The Isle, the story of sexual powerplay and jealousy. The film is also famous for its Visceral scenes of self-mutilation, involving a bunch of fish-hooks. I don’t think I can describe the tension and goriness of the scenes. The issues of sexual powerplay continues in Bad Guy, set in a Seoul red light district.
GOODBYE SOLO/ CHOP SHOP
Roger Ebert called him the future of American cinema. Future I don’t know, but the present is exciting and very surprising, considering the fact that he had made three films so far, that too being in the land of Hollywood, America, where his sensibilities conform to Italian neo-realism. Ramin Bahrani, an American of Iranian descent, and raised in the land of plenty, focuses his meticulous lenses on the havenots, in America. His first film, Man Push Cart, focuses on a Pakistani man who sells fast food on a wheeler. There’s not much of a story there, the usual, the unrealised American Dream, and the Diaspora conflict... What Bahrani does instead is meticulously records the man’s daily activity as he goes through the grind. What emerges is an unfliching portrait; you draw your own conclusion. His next Chop Shop carries that dream, this time with teen-ager Alejandro, who lives with his sister in a junkyard and dreams of owner a burger cart, for which he would go to any length, even stealing. But what happens when the dreams shatter? You carry on with your life, and try again. The same theme reoccurs in his third feature, Goodbye Solo. Solo is a Senegalese cab driver who wants to be a flight assistant. He is married to a spanish woman and shares a special bond with his step daughter. One day he gets an offer from one of his passengers, to carrying him to the nearby hill in a week’s time, for a substantial amount of money. The stranger does not mention about a return journey. Solo knows what this means. Now, the good cabbie, despite the fact that he has thousand and one thing in his mind, tries to change the stranger’s mind. Here begins the study in contrast. While Solo, representing the new multicultural America tries to connect, William, representing the old world, has already lost all hopes. There is no Hollywood Ending here. Yet, at the end, there’s hope which will outsurvive any tragedy.
BAD LIEUTENANT
No, not the Warner Herzog, Nicolas Cage blockbuster, which is good, but the original Abel Ferrara, Harvey Keitel picture. It does not have the Herzog razzmatazz, and frankly, it’s a very difficult film to watch with Keitel’s doped out cop descending from one personal hell to another, looking for a redemption. As the title suggests, the protagonist is a bad cop and the film goes all the way out to explain how and why. There’s where the problem starts. Cinema must find a redemptive quality in its hero. Otherwise, what’s the point? So, Keitel’s cop is assigned to investigate the case of a nun’s rape. It’s all well, till the victim in question refuse to help the cop, saying that she has already forgiven the men who outraged her modesty. This comes as a shocker to the bad cop. Now, will he able to find his redemption?
MEDEA/ SALO/ THEOREMA/ THE DECAMERON/ THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST METHEW/ ARABIAN NIGHTS/ OEDIPUS REX
Pier Paolo Pasolini is not only an important figure in Italian cinema, he is important to the cultural history of the world, for the simple reason that he had the ability to see things beyond the constrains of the existing culture. Most of his films are based on mythology; but it’s not an anthropological, but an idealistic mythology, the depiction of the world he wanted it to be, not the depiction of the world as it was. We know about his Marxist idealism, his homosexuality, his love for the downtrodden, but what comes to the fore in his films is his humanism, his love for mankind as it is, warts and all. Agreed. None of his actors can act, well mostly, except probably for Maria Callas in Medea. He is one director who can make bad acting look like good human drama.
TROPICAL MALADY/ BLISSFULLY YOURS/ SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY
When he won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival this year for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, it was a sort of personal victory for me. For, I have discovered and started to like the works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul by accident, and I think his films are marvellous, especially Tropical Malady. There is a misconception that art film must be slow. Not necessarily. I mean, all slow movies cannot hold your interest. There must be a connecting thread why we must follow the camera faithfully. Weerasethakul, on the other hand, transport you to the location. In Tropical Malady, you are not watching the two guy trying to express their love, you are sitting them, there, listening to then, and later, travel with them to a underground shrine. If nothing else, this ability to tranport your audience to the celluloid world you have created is skill in itself. Many people can shoot beautiful pictures, but only few can make them come alive. Apichatpong Weerasethakul is one of them...
NOWHERE IN AFRICA
... Caroline Link is another. You have seen Africa in numerous film, from Tarzan-like adventure films to Blood Diamond to District 9, but you have never seen the sight and sound of Kenya come alive as it does in Nowhere in Africa, especially the sound, the haunting soundtrack. The film won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 2001, and rightly so, if nothing else for the very fact that it created a character like Owuor, the Kenyan Man Friday to the Redlich family, who lands in Africa while fleeing from Nazi Germany. The bond between Owuor and Regina has all the element of a melodramatic plot, but how the film charts the progress of the relation, and how Owuor is played by Sidede Onyulo is just extraordinary. You feel like reach up to the screen and hug him.
SWEET SWEETBACK’S BADASSSSSS SONG
Today, after the successes of Spike Lee and Danzel Washington, Melvin Van Peebles’ film may look very raw — an exercise in idealism. But consider the time when the film was released — 1971. The film boasts of several firsts. It’s one of the early examples of American independent cinema. Peebles proved that a director can be the sole arbitrator of a film, not the financiers or the studio system. It was one of the earliest film that proved that black cinema is possible. In one sense, it paved the way for the genre of blaxploitation. But Peebles film is not blaxploitation, it’s not cheap thrills, the film wants to tell you something. But it does have the voice and resources; so Peebles tells the story with the cheap thrills, sex, and the story of a man on the run. While narrating the story of a black vicitim, Peebles opens up the whole gamut of black and while dichotomy, the master and slave paradigm. But Peebles hero, Sweet Sweetback, played by the director himself, won’t face the injustice lying down. He will have his revenge.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
A YEAR OF STARING AT THE SCREEN Part III
BROKEN SKY (2006)
In world cinema, there is a school called New Queer Cinema, about movies which deals with the queer sub-culture openly and aggressively, and in the mainstream. There are people like Todd Haynes (Poison, Far From Heaven), Gus Van Sant (Mala Noche, Milk), Pedro Almodover (The Law of Desire), and so on. However, perhaps no other film highlights that exclusive gay sensibility as does El cielo dividido. The film is a poem on celluloid, sad and profound, and so much immersed in desire that it does not allow any other sensibility to come near it. The threadbare plot tells the story of three teen-agers, falling in love and out of it, trying to understand their own emotions, and the emotional responses they evoke. There is no story, no resolution to meet, but the languid shots of lovers’ tryst, how they respond to each other, how they make love... It’s a demanding view, but absolutely worth the try, especially when the actors are so beautiful.
READ MY LIPS (2001)
Last year, Jacques Audiard’s prison drama Un Prophete made a lot of noise, and deservedly so. I expected it to win the Oscar for best foreign language film. It’s a fantastic film, not to mention the scene when the protagonist puts a razor blade on his mouth as part of an elaborate plan to kill another prisoner. But what struck me most in Audiard’s work, apart from his fascination for criminals, was his ability to use extreme close ups as part of the narrative design, not just a gimmick. Sur Mes Lèvres begins with an extreme close up, of the heroine, Emmanuelle Devos, as she puts on the hearing aid. The story here is pretty melodramatic, but Audiard treats it like a thriller, and yes, the film ends up as a thriller, through the audience expect it to be a love story from the time Vincent Cassel makes an appearance as an ex-convict, now taking up a job as Devos’ secretary’s assistant. They are both interesting characters, because they won’t tell us what they are really thinking, and now, as they meet, each try to teach the other the things they know. It’s time they fall in love. No, not so soon. Audiard has other plans...
CHILDREN OF MEN
There is a pattern. A movie based on an apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic theme must always end with an optimistic note. Children of Men also end with optimism; a child is born after 18 years. But this optimism floats in dark waters; as the film ends, we are not sure if the baby will live. This feeling of hopelessness, that men finally may not be able to survive its own destruction, makes Children of Men one of the best movies made in the last decade, not to mention the bleak thriller plot the film follows, the presence of Clive Owen as man on a misguided mission, and the presence of Michael Caine as a man who refuses to give up in despair. The time is future. The city is London. Mankind has turned barren. As the film begins, the last man born on earth, an 18-yr-old youth is dead. The earth is divided into zones, a la 1984, and they are constantly at war. In midst of all these, our hero is given the task to protect a young woman, who is pregnant.
EASTERN PROMISES
You can call it The Godfather in London. But David Cronenberg’s masterpiece on the Russian Mafia in London, goes beyond the usual gangster fare and becomes a tale of crime and redemption, and human understanding. Naomi Watts plays a nurse, who one day help deliver a young woman. The mother dies, the child lives and Watts gets a diary of the dead woman. It’s written in Russian, the language of her parents, which she cannot read. She gets her uncle to decipher the content. What she discovers is the uncomfortable truth that will shake the Mafia empire of Armin Mueller-Stahl and his son, Vincent Cassel. Viggo Mortensen, his body covered with tattoo, is their bodyguard cum driver; he may be a spy as well, the way Cassel’s characters may be a homosexual and in love with Mortensen. When the three characters cross paths, the stage is set for some tense drama, with several lives at stakes, with one deception following the other. What you see a taut drama, not to mention the dramatic climatic fight with a naked Mortensen on a bath. Fantastic stuff.
THE STING
Thank god, no one is thinking of remaking this film. It has potential for a remake, but we know for sure that the film, which won the Oscars for best film of the year, cannot be remade to the modern time. Conman film is a genre in itself, and The Sting plays like the finest gem of the genre, thanks to the camaraderie between the two lead stars, Paul Newman and Robert Redford, who will later go on to make the over-rated yet fantastic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The film works solely on Newman’s charm, and a taut script where not a single sequence is out of place, unnecessary. The plot is so clockwork, yet plays like a noir thriller, taking the audience to the edge of the street. When his partner is killed and he is being hunted down, Robert Redford’s small time conman goes to Newman’s famous and now-retired con artist. After much cajoling, Newman agrees to teach Redford the rules, and do a con game for one last time to take revenge upon the mighty Robert Shaw. It all takes a little confidence.
SOLARIS/STALKER/ANDREI RUBLEV/ MIRROR/ IVAN’S CHILDHOOD
If an image speaks more than thousand words, then surely an Andrei Tarkovsky image speaks nine thousand words. His films are not overtly difficult, but they surely deal with issues and human psychology. But the highlight of a Tarkovsky film is the images, the ruins in Stalker, the house in fire in Mirror, the sequence involving the making of a bell in Andrei Rublev, these are only but a few examples. Each frame of a Tarkovsky film is filled with extraordinary images, which takes the art of filmmaking to a different plain. Solaris was remade in English by Steven Soderbergh, an able director, and the film is good. But if you compare this film with Tarkovsky’s original, you understand the genius of the Russian master. Where the English version ends in a posh, modern and bleak kitchen, the original ends in a farmhouse, where the film had begun, with something extraordinary happening, it’s raining inside the house while outside, it’s dry. That scene alone solidifies Tarkovsky’s place in the history of world cinema. Among his film, my favourite is Stalker. This is probably the most religious of all movies without even uttering the word god for once. In the interior of Russia, there is a place called zone, where something mysterious is going on. Nobody knows what it is, and the authorities have sealed off the place. Yet, there are who come to visit the place, for rumour has it, there is a room inside the zone where your wishes come true. Our hero is the Stalker, a local whose job is to guide visitors to the room. It’s a dangerous task, but he does it for a fee, but also with a purpose we are not very sure about. The film recounts the journey of two men, known as the writer and the profession, and the series of events that unfolds in the zone. The film questions the importance of belief. It’s not a horror film per se, yet the film is fearsome.
DIRTY PRETTY THINGS
Perhaps the word versatile fits no other director as it does to Stephen Frears. He has been a prolific director for the past 20 years or so, and no two films of his are similar, in theme, content and style, and each film is soulful. If he focused on the Pakistani minority in London in My Beautiful Laundrette, in Dirty Pretty Things the focus on the illegal immigrants in the city of dreams. The characters here are presented with such clarity and in such closeness that their struggle and their plight becomes the fodder for a thriller. And thriller the film is. Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a Nigerian who drivers cabs in the day and works in the hotel in the night. He shares an apartment with Senay (Audrey Tautou), a Turkish immigrant. They are both illegal immigrants running away from the law. And the manager of the hotel where they works can give them passports, for a price of course, a kidney to be precise. He is especially interested in Okwe, since he is a trained surgeon. Chiwetel Ejiofor is a revelation. He is the British Danzel Washington, with the same charisma, same screen presence. As the film progresses, Okwe is thrown into a situation where he must act heroically, and he does, but the way Frears and Ejiofor present these scenes, this heroism resonates with a tragic pathos. And thankfully, its does not adhere to the Hollywood ending, despite coming very close to it.
THE HANGOVER
The Hangover was a certified hit, with even critics going ga-ga over it. The film is a buddy comedy, a sort of ‘bromance’ and somewhat a ‘stonner’ comedy. It’s all of these, but what clinches it for the film is how the plot is treated and how the actors, especially Zach Galifianakis, make even the most offensive statements funny. Four friends go to Las Vegas for a bachelor party, and inadvertently takes some potent drug. The next morning they wake up in the wreck of their suit, with the bridegroom missing, one of them missing a tooth, and with a baby and a tiger in the room. What the hell is happening? They have no memories of the previous night. They decides to retract their steps. This is where the film scores. Instead of the routine what happened flashback, our unwitting heroes actually land into the results of their misadventure of the previous night, of which they have absolutely no memory. So appears Mike Tyson, and Heather Graham as a pole dancer, the baby’s mother, and so on. In the midst of all these, our friends have no idea what’s happening. A classic comic situation.
THE SECRET LIVES OF THE BEES
Neo-feminist fairy tale, anyone? It sounds trite, but that’s the what the movie is about, and surprisingly, at most places, it works, thanks to the actors, namely Dakota Fanning, on the verge of adulthood, and remarkably poised. and Queen Latifah. Roger Ebert said if anyone deserved to be called Queen, it’s Latifah, with her sheer presence. She can do anything and you believe her, and in this movie, he epitomises female empowerment as a way of life. Feminist fable, may be romantic, and too sweet, but then again, what’s wrong with that?
In world cinema, there is a school called New Queer Cinema, about movies which deals with the queer sub-culture openly and aggressively, and in the mainstream. There are people like Todd Haynes (Poison, Far From Heaven), Gus Van Sant (Mala Noche, Milk), Pedro Almodover (The Law of Desire), and so on. However, perhaps no other film highlights that exclusive gay sensibility as does El cielo dividido. The film is a poem on celluloid, sad and profound, and so much immersed in desire that it does not allow any other sensibility to come near it. The threadbare plot tells the story of three teen-agers, falling in love and out of it, trying to understand their own emotions, and the emotional responses they evoke. There is no story, no resolution to meet, but the languid shots of lovers’ tryst, how they respond to each other, how they make love... It’s a demanding view, but absolutely worth the try, especially when the actors are so beautiful.
READ MY LIPS (2001)
Last year, Jacques Audiard’s prison drama Un Prophete made a lot of noise, and deservedly so. I expected it to win the Oscar for best foreign language film. It’s a fantastic film, not to mention the scene when the protagonist puts a razor blade on his mouth as part of an elaborate plan to kill another prisoner. But what struck me most in Audiard’s work, apart from his fascination for criminals, was his ability to use extreme close ups as part of the narrative design, not just a gimmick. Sur Mes Lèvres begins with an extreme close up, of the heroine, Emmanuelle Devos, as she puts on the hearing aid. The story here is pretty melodramatic, but Audiard treats it like a thriller, and yes, the film ends up as a thriller, through the audience expect it to be a love story from the time Vincent Cassel makes an appearance as an ex-convict, now taking up a job as Devos’ secretary’s assistant. They are both interesting characters, because they won’t tell us what they are really thinking, and now, as they meet, each try to teach the other the things they know. It’s time they fall in love. No, not so soon. Audiard has other plans...
CHILDREN OF MEN
There is a pattern. A movie based on an apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic theme must always end with an optimistic note. Children of Men also end with optimism; a child is born after 18 years. But this optimism floats in dark waters; as the film ends, we are not sure if the baby will live. This feeling of hopelessness, that men finally may not be able to survive its own destruction, makes Children of Men one of the best movies made in the last decade, not to mention the bleak thriller plot the film follows, the presence of Clive Owen as man on a misguided mission, and the presence of Michael Caine as a man who refuses to give up in despair. The time is future. The city is London. Mankind has turned barren. As the film begins, the last man born on earth, an 18-yr-old youth is dead. The earth is divided into zones, a la 1984, and they are constantly at war. In midst of all these, our hero is given the task to protect a young woman, who is pregnant.
EASTERN PROMISES
You can call it The Godfather in London. But David Cronenberg’s masterpiece on the Russian Mafia in London, goes beyond the usual gangster fare and becomes a tale of crime and redemption, and human understanding. Naomi Watts plays a nurse, who one day help deliver a young woman. The mother dies, the child lives and Watts gets a diary of the dead woman. It’s written in Russian, the language of her parents, which she cannot read. She gets her uncle to decipher the content. What she discovers is the uncomfortable truth that will shake the Mafia empire of Armin Mueller-Stahl and his son, Vincent Cassel. Viggo Mortensen, his body covered with tattoo, is their bodyguard cum driver; he may be a spy as well, the way Cassel’s characters may be a homosexual and in love with Mortensen. When the three characters cross paths, the stage is set for some tense drama, with several lives at stakes, with one deception following the other. What you see a taut drama, not to mention the dramatic climatic fight with a naked Mortensen on a bath. Fantastic stuff.
THE STING
Thank god, no one is thinking of remaking this film. It has potential for a remake, but we know for sure that the film, which won the Oscars for best film of the year, cannot be remade to the modern time. Conman film is a genre in itself, and The Sting plays like the finest gem of the genre, thanks to the camaraderie between the two lead stars, Paul Newman and Robert Redford, who will later go on to make the over-rated yet fantastic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The film works solely on Newman’s charm, and a taut script where not a single sequence is out of place, unnecessary. The plot is so clockwork, yet plays like a noir thriller, taking the audience to the edge of the street. When his partner is killed and he is being hunted down, Robert Redford’s small time conman goes to Newman’s famous and now-retired con artist. After much cajoling, Newman agrees to teach Redford the rules, and do a con game for one last time to take revenge upon the mighty Robert Shaw. It all takes a little confidence.
SOLARIS/STALKER/ANDREI RUBLEV/ MIRROR/ IVAN’S CHILDHOOD
If an image speaks more than thousand words, then surely an Andrei Tarkovsky image speaks nine thousand words. His films are not overtly difficult, but they surely deal with issues and human psychology. But the highlight of a Tarkovsky film is the images, the ruins in Stalker, the house in fire in Mirror, the sequence involving the making of a bell in Andrei Rublev, these are only but a few examples. Each frame of a Tarkovsky film is filled with extraordinary images, which takes the art of filmmaking to a different plain. Solaris was remade in English by Steven Soderbergh, an able director, and the film is good. But if you compare this film with Tarkovsky’s original, you understand the genius of the Russian master. Where the English version ends in a posh, modern and bleak kitchen, the original ends in a farmhouse, where the film had begun, with something extraordinary happening, it’s raining inside the house while outside, it’s dry. That scene alone solidifies Tarkovsky’s place in the history of world cinema. Among his film, my favourite is Stalker. This is probably the most religious of all movies without even uttering the word god for once. In the interior of Russia, there is a place called zone, where something mysterious is going on. Nobody knows what it is, and the authorities have sealed off the place. Yet, there are who come to visit the place, for rumour has it, there is a room inside the zone where your wishes come true. Our hero is the Stalker, a local whose job is to guide visitors to the room. It’s a dangerous task, but he does it for a fee, but also with a purpose we are not very sure about. The film recounts the journey of two men, known as the writer and the profession, and the series of events that unfolds in the zone. The film questions the importance of belief. It’s not a horror film per se, yet the film is fearsome.
DIRTY PRETTY THINGS
Perhaps the word versatile fits no other director as it does to Stephen Frears. He has been a prolific director for the past 20 years or so, and no two films of his are similar, in theme, content and style, and each film is soulful. If he focused on the Pakistani minority in London in My Beautiful Laundrette, in Dirty Pretty Things the focus on the illegal immigrants in the city of dreams. The characters here are presented with such clarity and in such closeness that their struggle and their plight becomes the fodder for a thriller. And thriller the film is. Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a Nigerian who drivers cabs in the day and works in the hotel in the night. He shares an apartment with Senay (Audrey Tautou), a Turkish immigrant. They are both illegal immigrants running away from the law. And the manager of the hotel where they works can give them passports, for a price of course, a kidney to be precise. He is especially interested in Okwe, since he is a trained surgeon. Chiwetel Ejiofor is a revelation. He is the British Danzel Washington, with the same charisma, same screen presence. As the film progresses, Okwe is thrown into a situation where he must act heroically, and he does, but the way Frears and Ejiofor present these scenes, this heroism resonates with a tragic pathos. And thankfully, its does not adhere to the Hollywood ending, despite coming very close to it.
THE HANGOVER
The Hangover was a certified hit, with even critics going ga-ga over it. The film is a buddy comedy, a sort of ‘bromance’ and somewhat a ‘stonner’ comedy. It’s all of these, but what clinches it for the film is how the plot is treated and how the actors, especially Zach Galifianakis, make even the most offensive statements funny. Four friends go to Las Vegas for a bachelor party, and inadvertently takes some potent drug. The next morning they wake up in the wreck of their suit, with the bridegroom missing, one of them missing a tooth, and with a baby and a tiger in the room. What the hell is happening? They have no memories of the previous night. They decides to retract their steps. This is where the film scores. Instead of the routine what happened flashback, our unwitting heroes actually land into the results of their misadventure of the previous night, of which they have absolutely no memory. So appears Mike Tyson, and Heather Graham as a pole dancer, the baby’s mother, and so on. In the midst of all these, our friends have no idea what’s happening. A classic comic situation.
THE SECRET LIVES OF THE BEES
Neo-feminist fairy tale, anyone? It sounds trite, but that’s the what the movie is about, and surprisingly, at most places, it works, thanks to the actors, namely Dakota Fanning, on the verge of adulthood, and remarkably poised. and Queen Latifah. Roger Ebert said if anyone deserved to be called Queen, it’s Latifah, with her sheer presence. She can do anything and you believe her, and in this movie, he epitomises female empowerment as a way of life. Feminist fable, may be romantic, and too sweet, but then again, what’s wrong with that?
Thursday, March 18, 2010
A YEAR OF STARING AT THE SCREEN Part II
DONA HERLINDA AND HER SON (1985)
After watching so many movies, you can instinctively segregate good acting from bad. And, I don’t have any patience for bad acting anymore. As a medium of artistic expression, cinema is an expensive business. So, if you are actually spending money, can’t you find someone who can at least act? And we had never short of acting talents, there are abundant of them, waiting to be exploited. Hence, I started watching Dona Herlinda and Her Son with a distrust, sure that in 10 minutes’ time, I am going to switch it off; the acting was that terrible. Then something happened, almost impossible. The two actors, playing clandestine gay lovers, displayed so much passion in an innocuous scene of one of them drying the other, that I had to sit up and take notice. For then on, I hated the movie and loved it. The bad acting persisted. But, what fun! It’s a inflated wish-fulfilment, which, I guess, even the writer and the director knows, near-impossible in real life. But the filmmaker braves the theme nonetheless and give us a sweet romance — the story of a doctor who loves a music student but marries a lawyer to make his mom happy. The mom, Dona Herlinda of the title, isn’t dominating in the traditional sense, but she will have her way nonetheless. So, the son gets married, but also invites his lover to stay with them, they have a big house, anyway. And everybody lives happily ever after. Sample this scene towards the end of the film: The wife is going though labour pain. The mother panics and calls for her son. He is nowhere. So she calls the friend. The shot: the good doctor is under his male lover, and he says, let’s finish this till the ambulance arrives. If this is not wish-fulfilment, nothing is.
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (2009)
This is Blairwitch Project of the new millennia. This small film, short with a handheld camera and presented a ‘real’ horror film, captured in a handheld camera, was leapt up by fans and critics with such fervour that it would have been a sacrilege to say anything against it. So, I didn’t, won’t. Why to make so many fanboys upset. One thing is true. This film hinges on a gimmick, and in most part, it works. Here the digital camera is not a prop to induce suspense, it’s the movie’s POV. Remove it and the film won’t be half so scary, and scary the film is. I mustn’t say anything more. Hold your breath...
CENTRAL STATION (1998)
There are movies and movies about two unlikely people coming together in an unlikely situation and then bond and then part. In this sense, Walter Salles’s film is nothing much, but for the two lead characters, the old woman and the young brat. The sign of a great road movie is that there must be a goal, a treasure to be found at the end (Indiana Jones), and the journey itself should be such that you don’t want it to end. In this sense, Central Station achieves that greatness. Talking about journeys, Walter Salles will later go on to make The Motorcycle Diaries based on Che Guevera’s eponymous biography before he came El Che. Unlike The Motorcycle Diaries, where the journey itself is the focus of the narrative, here the narrative closely scrutinises the bond between the two lost souls, who are thrown together by unlikely circumstances where they must make the best of the situation. Imdb tells me Vinicius de Oliveira, a shoeshine boy, beat out more than 1,500 other young actors for the role of Josué, and he is a natural, but it’s Fernanda Montenegro as Dora, a practical, worldly-wise former school teacher, who finally gives in to her instincts, who makes the film worth-a-while.
DERSU UZALA (1975)
Japanese and Russian, a very unlikely combination. In 2005, Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov made a biopic on Japanese Emperor Hirohito during the time of Japan’s defeat in World War II, Solntse (The Sun). Considering it’s Sokurov, it’s an impressive film, but can you compare it with Dersu Uzala, the 1975 co-production between Japan and Russia, directed by the great Akira Kurosawa? Perhaps not. Unlike Solntse, Kurosawa’s theme is not grand, but the scope and the way Kurosawa tells the story of the friendship and mutual admiration between two men from very different backgrounds, makes for a sweeping cinema. It’s not about nations, it’s about nature and men, but mostly nature. It’s perhaps one of those rare films where the setting of the story becomes a character in itself. In this case, it’s Siberia, where a Russian army explorer meets a Mongol hunter, the Dersu Uzala of the title. As the friendship between the two men grows, despite the fact that they do not have much in common, Kurosawa takes us to a breathtaking journey to the wilderness, where the nature preserves you and kill you.
LOVES OF A BLONDE (1965)
He will later go on to direct masterpieces like the Czech The Fireman’s Ball and Hollywood blockbusters and Oscar-winners like Amadeus, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Goya’s Ghost. But this 1965 Czechoslovakian film by Milos Forman, which was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1967, is a sweet tale of a girl’s search for a lover of her choice. Granted, the film takes enormous amount of time till the girl meets the boy, but then the early adventure of Andula and her friends being seduced by a few armymen have their charms as well. There isn’t much of a story, but how the interactions are projected between Andula, the blonde in question, a bookishly romantic girl, and various people she meets, especially the piano player who says that her body is shaped like a guitar, but a guitar painted by Picasso. In the beginning, she resists him in an elaborate choreography of body language. After the piano player finally succeeds in seducing her, she is in love. For the poor piano player, it was just a one-night stand, little did he knew that a few weeks later, she would land up in his house because he never wrote to her. The lover in question is not a bad guy, but Andula would not live happily ever after with him. Yet, the experience taught her much, especially to hide the true feeling and tell a lie. Very emotional in a very funny way.
WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957)
Can memories of your own past make you a better man, at a point in life when no one actually cares about you? Probably, it cannot. But regret itself can be a redemption, as in the case of Eberhard Isak Borg in Wild Strawberries, Ingmer Bergman’s finest and most optimistic film, and probably his most accessible film (Though my favourite remains The Hour of the Wolf, with Liv Ullmann’s character asking: Is it true that if you love someone truly and deeply, you can even see that person’s dreams!). As someone said, Bergman is all about bad dreams; in this case bad memories. Borg remembers the girl he loved and could not marry as he tries to reconcile his relationship with his son. It’s not the tale but the telling that makes Wild Strawberries marvellous, especially how the flashback sequences were shot, with the old doctor physically being transported to the playing field of his memory, the wild strawberry patch. And did I mention the handless clock in the beginning of the film?
MONTENEGRO
On the first glance, Yugoslav director Dušan Makavejev’s Montenegro looks like a depressing movie, but it’s not, unlike his other films, like WR: Mysteries of the Organism and Sweet Movie, both of which are politically-conscious satire on, well, everything. Montenegro, which at the first glance looks like a feminist commentary and ends with the heroine killing his entire family, the film is actually about the joys of living, and about appreciating life for what it is. That’s probably the reason why the film was also called Pigs and Pearls. The idiom: "Casting pearls before the swine." The film is a contrast between the two lifestyles - the conservative and the bohemian. Though Marilyn finds love and life in a bohemian setting, in a night club called Zanzi Bar, where she meets the titular Montenegro, a handsome young man (there is a beautiful scene when Marilyn regards him while he is having a bath), and they make love. But Marilyn is worldly-wise to appreciate that this idyll is not for her, she must go back to her husband and her children, even if they do not really need her. She returns, but she refuses to accept the things are they are. That leads to the film’s chilling conclusion.
TURK FRUIT/ BLACK BOOK
In Hollywood, he is known for the blockbusters RoboCop, Total Recall and Basic Instinct. Yet, Paul Verhoeven’s artistic genius finds true blooming in his native Dutch, for example, in his pre-Hollywood Turk Fruit and post-Hollywood Black Book. While the first one is an out and out romantic tragedy, the second one WW II drama presented as a love story. What’s most interesting about both the films is who Verhoeven narrates the story.
Truck Fruit has enough sex and nudity to even make the Showgirls blush. Showgirls was Verhoeven’s last Hollywood venture, which critics penned and is now known mostly for its erotic content. In fact, Fruit begins with the protagonist masturbating looking at the picture of his lost girlfriend. But, make no mistake, the film tells a passionate love story, between a down-and-out sculptor and a girl from a conservative family. Together, they bridge all obstacles to stay together, but how would they bridge each other, when both of them are strong and highly individualistic. Verhoeven draws a sympathetic picture of the lovers who cannot stay together, and who cannot live apart either. How do you reconcile with love when it starts to clash with your very being?
And, how do you reconcile with love when the person you love is your enemy? There was a huge possibility for Black Book to turn into another WW II war movie, to begin with Verhoeven is a first-rate director to film action sequence. There are several such sequences in Black Book, but the heart of the film is Rachel, a Jewish Dutch singer, now, part of a underground resistance group, and her almost inhuman zeal to survive at any cost, falling in love with her enemy and betrayed by friends. Dutch actress Carice van Houten, in her career-defining role etches Rachel as a person, who is at the same time exquisite and real, someone who bleaches her pubic hair to match the colour of her hair, and someone whose beauty cannot be diminished even when she is bathed in human excreta.
BILLY ELIOT
There are score and score of movies about underdog achievement. In this sense, Billy Eliot is nothing new. It’s a story of small boy from a mining town who wants to be a ballet dancer. Now, boys don't really dance, especially in mining towns, so, the father is against it. But Billy finds a kindred soul in the local ballet teacher, Julie Walters. The rest of the story is how Billy rises about the opposition to realise his dream. Bravo. The film is however is a beautiful experience, especially how intimately and lyrically the story is told by director Stephen David Daldry. A feel good film for a rainy day. (Just wondering why most gay male film directors are so interested in musical, case in point being Bill Condon of Dreamgirls, Rob Marshall of Chicago, Nine.)
BONNIE AND CLYDE
Imagine a Hollywood of Bonnie and Clyde. It will turn into a full throttle action fare. Oh, the potential of the story is enormous, even in the context of depression-era America. And, that probably the reason why the film is such a enduring classic, because it does not go all bang bang, but tries to underplay the reality. When they say, ‘we rob banks’, they are not boasting it, or glorifying it, but stating it as a matter of fact, as if it was just any other job. What they are doing is just trying to survive, and make sense about themselves and their surrounding.
TOKYO!
Anthology films are boring and interesting at the same time. Boring because they are over so soon, and interesting because they are over so soon, so that you don’t have to suffer a bad movie and waste your time. In this context, Tokyo! begins brilliantly and ends with an whimper. I liked the first part of the three-part movie, directed by Michel Gondry of The Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, called ‘Interior Design’. I had a mixed feeling about the other two segments directed by Leos Carax of Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, Bong Joon-ho of Memories of Murder and The Host. The thematic similarity of all the three segments is that all of them are based in Tokyo, Japan and all of them are directed by non-Japanese directors.
After watching so many movies, you can instinctively segregate good acting from bad. And, I don’t have any patience for bad acting anymore. As a medium of artistic expression, cinema is an expensive business. So, if you are actually spending money, can’t you find someone who can at least act? And we had never short of acting talents, there are abundant of them, waiting to be exploited. Hence, I started watching Dona Herlinda and Her Son with a distrust, sure that in 10 minutes’ time, I am going to switch it off; the acting was that terrible. Then something happened, almost impossible. The two actors, playing clandestine gay lovers, displayed so much passion in an innocuous scene of one of them drying the other, that I had to sit up and take notice. For then on, I hated the movie and loved it. The bad acting persisted. But, what fun! It’s a inflated wish-fulfilment, which, I guess, even the writer and the director knows, near-impossible in real life. But the filmmaker braves the theme nonetheless and give us a sweet romance — the story of a doctor who loves a music student but marries a lawyer to make his mom happy. The mom, Dona Herlinda of the title, isn’t dominating in the traditional sense, but she will have her way nonetheless. So, the son gets married, but also invites his lover to stay with them, they have a big house, anyway. And everybody lives happily ever after. Sample this scene towards the end of the film: The wife is going though labour pain. The mother panics and calls for her son. He is nowhere. So she calls the friend. The shot: the good doctor is under his male lover, and he says, let’s finish this till the ambulance arrives. If this is not wish-fulfilment, nothing is.
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (2009)
This is Blairwitch Project of the new millennia. This small film, short with a handheld camera and presented a ‘real’ horror film, captured in a handheld camera, was leapt up by fans and critics with such fervour that it would have been a sacrilege to say anything against it. So, I didn’t, won’t. Why to make so many fanboys upset. One thing is true. This film hinges on a gimmick, and in most part, it works. Here the digital camera is not a prop to induce suspense, it’s the movie’s POV. Remove it and the film won’t be half so scary, and scary the film is. I mustn’t say anything more. Hold your breath...
CENTRAL STATION (1998)
There are movies and movies about two unlikely people coming together in an unlikely situation and then bond and then part. In this sense, Walter Salles’s film is nothing much, but for the two lead characters, the old woman and the young brat. The sign of a great road movie is that there must be a goal, a treasure to be found at the end (Indiana Jones), and the journey itself should be such that you don’t want it to end. In this sense, Central Station achieves that greatness. Talking about journeys, Walter Salles will later go on to make The Motorcycle Diaries based on Che Guevera’s eponymous biography before he came El Che. Unlike The Motorcycle Diaries, where the journey itself is the focus of the narrative, here the narrative closely scrutinises the bond between the two lost souls, who are thrown together by unlikely circumstances where they must make the best of the situation. Imdb tells me Vinicius de Oliveira, a shoeshine boy, beat out more than 1,500 other young actors for the role of Josué, and he is a natural, but it’s Fernanda Montenegro as Dora, a practical, worldly-wise former school teacher, who finally gives in to her instincts, who makes the film worth-a-while.
DERSU UZALA (1975)
Japanese and Russian, a very unlikely combination. In 2005, Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov made a biopic on Japanese Emperor Hirohito during the time of Japan’s defeat in World War II, Solntse (The Sun). Considering it’s Sokurov, it’s an impressive film, but can you compare it with Dersu Uzala, the 1975 co-production between Japan and Russia, directed by the great Akira Kurosawa? Perhaps not. Unlike Solntse, Kurosawa’s theme is not grand, but the scope and the way Kurosawa tells the story of the friendship and mutual admiration between two men from very different backgrounds, makes for a sweeping cinema. It’s not about nations, it’s about nature and men, but mostly nature. It’s perhaps one of those rare films where the setting of the story becomes a character in itself. In this case, it’s Siberia, where a Russian army explorer meets a Mongol hunter, the Dersu Uzala of the title. As the friendship between the two men grows, despite the fact that they do not have much in common, Kurosawa takes us to a breathtaking journey to the wilderness, where the nature preserves you and kill you.
LOVES OF A BLONDE (1965)
He will later go on to direct masterpieces like the Czech The Fireman’s Ball and Hollywood blockbusters and Oscar-winners like Amadeus, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Goya’s Ghost. But this 1965 Czechoslovakian film by Milos Forman, which was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1967, is a sweet tale of a girl’s search for a lover of her choice. Granted, the film takes enormous amount of time till the girl meets the boy, but then the early adventure of Andula and her friends being seduced by a few armymen have their charms as well. There isn’t much of a story, but how the interactions are projected between Andula, the blonde in question, a bookishly romantic girl, and various people she meets, especially the piano player who says that her body is shaped like a guitar, but a guitar painted by Picasso. In the beginning, she resists him in an elaborate choreography of body language. After the piano player finally succeeds in seducing her, she is in love. For the poor piano player, it was just a one-night stand, little did he knew that a few weeks later, she would land up in his house because he never wrote to her. The lover in question is not a bad guy, but Andula would not live happily ever after with him. Yet, the experience taught her much, especially to hide the true feeling and tell a lie. Very emotional in a very funny way.
WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957)
Can memories of your own past make you a better man, at a point in life when no one actually cares about you? Probably, it cannot. But regret itself can be a redemption, as in the case of Eberhard Isak Borg in Wild Strawberries, Ingmer Bergman’s finest and most optimistic film, and probably his most accessible film (Though my favourite remains The Hour of the Wolf, with Liv Ullmann’s character asking: Is it true that if you love someone truly and deeply, you can even see that person’s dreams!). As someone said, Bergman is all about bad dreams; in this case bad memories. Borg remembers the girl he loved and could not marry as he tries to reconcile his relationship with his son. It’s not the tale but the telling that makes Wild Strawberries marvellous, especially how the flashback sequences were shot, with the old doctor physically being transported to the playing field of his memory, the wild strawberry patch. And did I mention the handless clock in the beginning of the film?
MONTENEGRO
On the first glance, Yugoslav director Dušan Makavejev’s Montenegro looks like a depressing movie, but it’s not, unlike his other films, like WR: Mysteries of the Organism and Sweet Movie, both of which are politically-conscious satire on, well, everything. Montenegro, which at the first glance looks like a feminist commentary and ends with the heroine killing his entire family, the film is actually about the joys of living, and about appreciating life for what it is. That’s probably the reason why the film was also called Pigs and Pearls. The idiom: "Casting pearls before the swine." The film is a contrast between the two lifestyles - the conservative and the bohemian. Though Marilyn finds love and life in a bohemian setting, in a night club called Zanzi Bar, where she meets the titular Montenegro, a handsome young man (there is a beautiful scene when Marilyn regards him while he is having a bath), and they make love. But Marilyn is worldly-wise to appreciate that this idyll is not for her, she must go back to her husband and her children, even if they do not really need her. She returns, but she refuses to accept the things are they are. That leads to the film’s chilling conclusion.
TURK FRUIT/ BLACK BOOK
In Hollywood, he is known for the blockbusters RoboCop, Total Recall and Basic Instinct. Yet, Paul Verhoeven’s artistic genius finds true blooming in his native Dutch, for example, in his pre-Hollywood Turk Fruit and post-Hollywood Black Book. While the first one is an out and out romantic tragedy, the second one WW II drama presented as a love story. What’s most interesting about both the films is who Verhoeven narrates the story.
Truck Fruit has enough sex and nudity to even make the Showgirls blush. Showgirls was Verhoeven’s last Hollywood venture, which critics penned and is now known mostly for its erotic content. In fact, Fruit begins with the protagonist masturbating looking at the picture of his lost girlfriend. But, make no mistake, the film tells a passionate love story, between a down-and-out sculptor and a girl from a conservative family. Together, they bridge all obstacles to stay together, but how would they bridge each other, when both of them are strong and highly individualistic. Verhoeven draws a sympathetic picture of the lovers who cannot stay together, and who cannot live apart either. How do you reconcile with love when it starts to clash with your very being?
And, how do you reconcile with love when the person you love is your enemy? There was a huge possibility for Black Book to turn into another WW II war movie, to begin with Verhoeven is a first-rate director to film action sequence. There are several such sequences in Black Book, but the heart of the film is Rachel, a Jewish Dutch singer, now, part of a underground resistance group, and her almost inhuman zeal to survive at any cost, falling in love with her enemy and betrayed by friends. Dutch actress Carice van Houten, in her career-defining role etches Rachel as a person, who is at the same time exquisite and real, someone who bleaches her pubic hair to match the colour of her hair, and someone whose beauty cannot be diminished even when she is bathed in human excreta.
BILLY ELIOT
There are score and score of movies about underdog achievement. In this sense, Billy Eliot is nothing new. It’s a story of small boy from a mining town who wants to be a ballet dancer. Now, boys don't really dance, especially in mining towns, so, the father is against it. But Billy finds a kindred soul in the local ballet teacher, Julie Walters. The rest of the story is how Billy rises about the opposition to realise his dream. Bravo. The film is however is a beautiful experience, especially how intimately and lyrically the story is told by director Stephen David Daldry. A feel good film for a rainy day. (Just wondering why most gay male film directors are so interested in musical, case in point being Bill Condon of Dreamgirls, Rob Marshall of Chicago, Nine.)
BONNIE AND CLYDE
Imagine a Hollywood of Bonnie and Clyde. It will turn into a full throttle action fare. Oh, the potential of the story is enormous, even in the context of depression-era America. And, that probably the reason why the film is such a enduring classic, because it does not go all bang bang, but tries to underplay the reality. When they say, ‘we rob banks’, they are not boasting it, or glorifying it, but stating it as a matter of fact, as if it was just any other job. What they are doing is just trying to survive, and make sense about themselves and their surrounding.
TOKYO!
Anthology films are boring and interesting at the same time. Boring because they are over so soon, and interesting because they are over so soon, so that you don’t have to suffer a bad movie and waste your time. In this context, Tokyo! begins brilliantly and ends with an whimper. I liked the first part of the three-part movie, directed by Michel Gondry of The Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, called ‘Interior Design’. I had a mixed feeling about the other two segments directed by Leos Carax of Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, Bong Joon-ho of Memories of Murder and The Host. The thematic similarity of all the three segments is that all of them are based in Tokyo, Japan and all of them are directed by non-Japanese directors.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
KP, Two Weeks After Feb 13
At Koregaon Park, some things are lost forever
Dibyajyoti Sarma & Mayuri Panchbhai
"Life goes on," says a resident of Koregaon Park, who refused to give his name. "But, the life as we knew it is lost forever. The idea of a bomb blast is no longer a news. It’s a reality for Pune as well."As the city, especially the North Main road in Koregaon Park, slowly comes to terms with the reality a week after a bomb ripped apart the landmark German Bakery, killing 15 people so far, and begins to pick up the pieces, some pieces are lost forever.
"We left Kashmir for Pune because it was safe. But after what happened, where do you go?" says Arshid, sitting alone in his plush shop of gemstones and trinkets. He opened the shop, located a few furlong away from the blast site, two days later; but he has no buyers. "Earlier, we used to earn at least Rs 3,000 a day. Now, we are not doing even 10% of the business. We do not even have window-shopping visitors."This is reality today at Koregaon Park. Most shops are open, but all are eerily empty. "Look at the road. Does it look like regular Koregaon Park traffic?" Says a rickshaw driver. "These days, I barely earn Rs 100. No customer.
"The traffic is noticeably less, reiterates Sanjay Jaunjal, a garment shop owner. His shop too is empty. He says he had not done any business in the last few days. "The place has become a silent zone," he says. "People are visiting the place strictly on business, not to hangout."That’s a fact. You see just a few sanyasins in their maroon cloaks wondering about, and you see a number of cops posted, especially surrounding the blast site."Look around," says Arshid, "And everything has changed. There used to be chaiwalla just across the road. He disappeared after all roadside shops were asked to close down. The stall was his only source of income." You look around. Once the road was dotted with street vendors, selling fancy garments to the famous Osho chappals. Now, there s just one such shop, and no visitors.
Arshid continues: "Then the corporation sent notices to several shops for ‘encroachment,’ and the shop owners do not know what to do. They have been doing business here for ages and nobody questioned their location so far.
For Arshid, it’s going to remain bad. "Most foreigners are gone. No new visitors are coming. Anyway the season ends by the end of March or the beginning of April." After that, there will be a lull in Koregaon Park. "The peak season for people visiting the Osho Centre is from December to March," says Maa Sadhana of the centre. So the inflow of visitor is less. This is not necessarily an impact of the blast. Death cannot scare those who follow the path of meditation, she says.
Dibyajyoti Sarma & Mayuri Panchbhai
"Life goes on," says a resident of Koregaon Park, who refused to give his name. "But, the life as we knew it is lost forever. The idea of a bomb blast is no longer a news. It’s a reality for Pune as well."As the city, especially the North Main road in Koregaon Park, slowly comes to terms with the reality a week after a bomb ripped apart the landmark German Bakery, killing 15 people so far, and begins to pick up the pieces, some pieces are lost forever.
"We left Kashmir for Pune because it was safe. But after what happened, where do you go?" says Arshid, sitting alone in his plush shop of gemstones and trinkets. He opened the shop, located a few furlong away from the blast site, two days later; but he has no buyers. "Earlier, we used to earn at least Rs 3,000 a day. Now, we are not doing even 10% of the business. We do not even have window-shopping visitors."This is reality today at Koregaon Park. Most shops are open, but all are eerily empty. "Look at the road. Does it look like regular Koregaon Park traffic?" Says a rickshaw driver. "These days, I barely earn Rs 100. No customer.
"The traffic is noticeably less, reiterates Sanjay Jaunjal, a garment shop owner. His shop too is empty. He says he had not done any business in the last few days. "The place has become a silent zone," he says. "People are visiting the place strictly on business, not to hangout."That’s a fact. You see just a few sanyasins in their maroon cloaks wondering about, and you see a number of cops posted, especially surrounding the blast site."Look around," says Arshid, "And everything has changed. There used to be chaiwalla just across the road. He disappeared after all roadside shops were asked to close down. The stall was his only source of income." You look around. Once the road was dotted with street vendors, selling fancy garments to the famous Osho chappals. Now, there s just one such shop, and no visitors.
Arshid continues: "Then the corporation sent notices to several shops for ‘encroachment,’ and the shop owners do not know what to do. They have been doing business here for ages and nobody questioned their location so far."The liquor shop next to the erstwhile German Bakery was finally open. "We are trying to start over," says the person attending the counter, arranging the bottles, some of them were broken. The glass panel on the counter showcase was shattered after the blast, and it’s yet to be repaired. The coffee shop next to it is still closed. There are, however, customers at the other coffee shop located down the road. "People need to eat," reasons Rajaram, the boy attending the counter. "Those people who used to visit German Bakery now comes here." Therefore, there has been no loss in business.
"But this is a second rate option to German Bakery," says Peter, while paying the bill. A Londoner, he was in Goa while the blast took place. This, however, could not deter him to change his travel plans. "As a Londoner, I have seen bomb blasts, first the IRAs, then the Islamists. It does not scare me," he says.
"More than the foreigners, it’s the local people who are really shaken by the blast," says Jaunjal. For the residents here, it was an unimaginable event, and the presence of the police are the constant reminder of what had happened.
"There was security arrangements for a month or so after the news report about David Headley’s visit," says Mayur, manager of a hotel near the Osho Centre. "But nobody took the news very seriously." Now, everybody is aware. Now, people do not mind being frisked or asked to show their bags. At another coffee shop, they have introduced a logbook where you will have to enter your name and phone number before visiting the shop.The impact of the tragedy is still palpable; the wounds are still fresh. But, what the future looks like?
For Arshid, it’s going to remain bad. "Most foreigners are gone. No new visitors are coming. Anyway the season ends by the end of March or the beginning of April." After that, there will be a lull in Koregaon Park. "The peak season for people visiting the Osho Centre is from December to March," says Maa Sadhana of the centre. So the inflow of visitor is less. This is not necessarily an impact of the blast. Death cannot scare those who follow the path of meditation, she says.
Three Poems
After a very long time these poems came to me. I am writing poems again. Touchwood!
Making Love
Making love is like
Savouring a magic trick.
You are awe-struck till
you learn how the magician
conjured a rabbit or
a silver spoon up his sleeves
and you know, it was not what
you expected when you first saw
him under the soft light
wearing a green sweater.
You close your eyes and imagine his
unclothed body. But you did not
envision the mole on his chest, the
cut-mark on his back, and
how his thighs are so small.
Making love is like
Savouring a magic trick.
You know it’s just a trick
But you believe it and
applaud the magician.
You close your eyes
and imagine that perfect body
that perfect kiss
that magical passion.
And when it’s done, you
applaud the magician.
Making love is like
Savouring a magic trick.
You do so because you
allow yourself to do so.
Making love is like
Savouring a magic trick.
You make love to yourself.
Considering Borders
Let’s play a game
You and I
Let’s play a game.
You stand there facing me
And I’ll confront you.
You draw a circle around me
And I’ll draw a circle around you.
You draw another, narrower
I’ll draw another, narrower.
You draw another.
I’ll draw another.
You draw a circle and slice my toe
I’ll draw a circle and slice your toe.
You slash my feet
To fit me in it
And I’ll slash your feet.
Let’s play a game
You and I.
You dig a hole
And I’ll dig a hole.
You bury me alive
I’ll bury you
Alive.
Let’s play a game
You and I.
You kill me
And I’ll kill you.
In the name of the lines which aren’t drawn yet.
In the name of the prophet who isn’t born yet.
Let’s play a game
You and I.
Sour Grapes
My friend
He’s practical, worldly-wise.
He did not believe in love
Until he met her.
And after the heartbreak
Seventy five bottles of rum
Twenty six select curses
And three weeks of sleepless nights
He’s practical again, worldly-wise.
"Love, like happiness," he concludes,
"Is a conspiracy by the capitalists
To make you stop being a human.
Happiness, like love, is like being in heaven; you are
In heaven only when you are dead.
And when you are unhappy, unloved
It means you are alive. You are breathing.
Breathing is painful…
Grapes are indeed sour.
— Dibyajyoti Sarma
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