“… And then, there are the regrets. Things ignored and forgotten, things not done, wishes not fulfilled, promises not kept — and, you wake up to a life you did not plan. You may get back the person, but cannot get back the time, and the time changes the person. I am not the same person I was 10 years ago. I am not the person I was one year ago. I am not the same person I was last month. But, how do you tell them who expect you to remain the person you were 10 years ago?

“Yes, I was in love with you. I had a dream. We wanted to grow old together. That was a decade ago. Today, I don’t love you. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth and it’s nothing to do with you. My priorities have changed. Yes, I may not meet anyone like you again, ever. I know. Yet, I will have to take the chances. I will have to take the step forward.”

West Is West

Writes Mayank Shekhar:

A popular pir (learned man) at a pind (village) in the Pakistan side of Punjab makes a point about tradition. It's like taking the same road everyday, he says. But one
related storiesAngry Old Man: Om Puri on West Is West ‘Have a temper, but not unreasonable’ day, if you find a snake sitting on that same road, would you not change your path?

As for immigrants and how their new worlds influence them, that's natural, inevitable, bound to happen, the pir suggests. You can't be fighting it.

Old man Jehangir (Om Puri), who calls himself George in England, should have been taking these lessons. Instead, his young son Sajid (Aqib Khan) does. His father’s brought him down from a small town Salford to see his Punjabi village -- so he can unlearn his immediate environment, return to roots he’s never known.

“Who holds Zam-Zamah holds the Punjab,” an 18th century line, in Rudyard Kipling's Kim, remains the boy's only text-book relation to Pakistan. He prefers to read The Beano. The writers of this movie are no different.

The dad is also looking for a Pakistani rural bride for his elder son, whose idea of love and beauty is the gorgeous Greek singer Nana Mouskouri. The two sons are decidedly western in thought. As, it turns out, is the pir. He even seems a British actor by the accent. Even the little Pakistani village boy Sajid befriends will seem British to an Indian audience. The filmmakers have clearly not penetrated the culture of the east their British movie’s set against. That’s understandable. It would be tough to.

We’re in the mid-‘70s. This is before Zia’s Islamisation programme took over Pakistan. Though the film makes no reference to its historical time-line. Music is the food of love in these calm, peaceful, dusty countrysides.

The Complete Review Here. http://www.hindustantimes.com/Entertainment/Reviews/Mayank-Shekhar-s-review-West-is-West/Article1-708016.aspx

Wari To Pandharpur

The wari is an annual pilgrimage event in which devotees walk for the holy sites of Dehu and Alandi near Pune to Pandharpur in Solapur district. The traditional journey, which is more than 100 years old, involves carrying the padukas (footwear) of Sants Tukaram and Dnyaneshwar, in two palkhis (palanquin) with devotees (called warkaris) following on foot. The arduous journey takes at least 20 days, when the procession reaches Pandharpur, the seat of Vithala and Rukmini, the deity worshipped in the Bhakti tradition, on the day of Ashari Akadashi, have a bath in the holy river of Chandrabhaga, and offer obeisance to the Lord God.

For the event, warkaris from all over the state and from outside the state gather in Dehu and Alandhi, in groups, which are called Dindis. Most of these Warkaris are from the farmer community from rural Maharashtra.

This is one event when Pune city drops everything and gets into the groove of devotion, bhakti, especially on Fergusson College Road from where the procession passes on its way to Pandharpur from Dehu/Alandi.

This year the wari reached Pune June 25.



The Warkaris walk hundreds of kms to reach Pandharpur. The Sant Dnyaneshwar Maharaj palkhi starts from Alandi, and travels through Pune, Saswad, Jejuri, Vhalhe, Lonand, Taradgaon, Phaltan, Barad, Natepute, Malshiras, Velapur, Bhandishegaon, Vakhari to reach Pandharpur.



The Sant Tukaram Maharaj palkhi, which starts from Dehu travels through Akurdi, Pune, Loni Kalbhor, Yavat, Varvand, Baramati, Sansar, Lasurne, Nimgaon Ketaki, Indapur, Sarati, Akaluj, Borgaon, Pirachi Kuroli, Vakhari to Pandharpur. Both the Palakhi merge together in Vakhari, just prior to Pandharpur.



Warkaris mostly dress in dothi-kurta or women in sari, with gandh on their forehead, playing musical instruments such as, cymbals, mridang, veena (which is kind of a signature instrument for a warkari), and singing Abhangs.



Each dindi has a truck allocated to carry luggage and food items.



As the warkaris pass through towns and villages, local people contribute as per their capacity to the food either by donating raw material or by serving food.



As the Warkaris stop at towns and villages, they organise a special event called 'ringan', which literally means circle, where apart from singing, and playing, they also participate in games.



Most of the prayers chanted by the Warkaris come from the poems composed by Tukaram in praise of the Vithoba or Vithalla.



Lord Vithoba is a variation of the pan-Hindu god Vishnu.



The pilgrimage culminates on the day of Aashadhi Ekadashi at Pandharpur.



The 'bhakti movement,' of which the wari is an integral part, begun in Maharashtra, at the same time it begun elsewhere as a reaction to the absolute power of brahminical tyranny. In short, the bhakti movement proffers the view that to reach to god we don't need a third party involvement (the brahmin priests); everyone can reach out to god through bhakti, devotion. Hence the chant: "Vithalla, Vithalla..."

Priest

Writes MIKE HALE in NY Times:

Not far into “Priest,” Scott Stewart’s second consecutive film starring Paul Bettany as a John Wayne-like Christian avenger, you’ll say to yourself: “Oh! It’s ‘The Searchers and Vampires’!” That realization will keep you amused for a few minutes, but it becomes clear pretty quickly that the only real thought in the movie has gone into the cowboy-gothic costumes and the computer-generated effects.

“Priest” is what you get when you open a male geek’s toy box and dump everything on the floor: John Ford, Sergio Leone, comic books, throwing stars, computer-enhanced martial arts, a runaway train, schoolboy Roman Catholic rebellion and Maggie Q in skin-tight vestments.

Mr. Bettany is the Ethan Edwards of the piece, a clerical ninja living in a post-vampocalyptic world in which the humans cluster in dingy cities, and the vampires are imprisoned in underground “reservations.” When a band of renegade vamps kidnaps the priest’s niece, he sets out with a young sidekick to find her, vowing that he will kill her if she’s been infected. (Yes, the “Searchers” parallels are that literal.)

The Complete Review Here. http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/movies/priest-review.html

Eat Pray Love

The Julia Roberts vehicle, Eat Pray Love (2010) is a bad film. This has been acknowledged universally. Now, the question is why and how, especially when the book, on which the film is based, was a bestseller?

In short, the film is a classic picaresque plot in which the central character moves from place to place, from issues to issues, from people to people. Elizabeth Gilbert dumps her husband in the US, have an affair with James Franco, goes to Italy to eat, to India to pray and to Bali to find love, which she actually does, and it gives the film an happily-ever-after ending — all these within less than two hours.

Since a picaresque plot doesn’t have a conventional plot in terms of beginning, middle and end, it relies on three important aspects: 1) A well-etched, well-rounded protagonist whom the reader/audience can believe and trust, somebody who is interesting and who invites us to invest our emotions to his/her fate. 2) Other interesting characters, episodes, events that the protagonist meets on the way. 3) Change. The protagonists, and also the minor characters he/she meets on the way should change on the course of the tale.

In EPL, the Julia Roberts character is neither very interesting nor likeable, and when the character is played by Julia Roberts, it’s saying a lot. She was once American’s sweetheart, remember? In the film, she’s supposed to be writer, but she’s very mediocre, in every sense, and in the Eat section, she acts like a glutton. Eating is an art, gorging isn’t.

And the characters she meets are equally uninteresting, barring perhaps Richard from Texas, played with a rare dignity by Richard Jenkins, and in bits, the Xavier Bardem character, before he falls in love with protagonist.

Now, about the Indian section. (I remember how it made news when Roberts was in India shooting for the film, but not as much when Angelina Jolie was in Pune shooting for A Mighty Heart.) There’s is nothing in the film that’s not a cliché — you have the ashrams, gods and spirituality, poverty, a big, fat Indian wedding, and of course, elephants. (I remember my friend, an IT-type, one day went to the airport to receive a client of his from Amsterdam. The client meets him, exchanges pleasantries and asks: “Where can I get an elephant ride?” Indian is after all a country of elephants and tigers. Of course, why not!)

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The picaresque novel (Spanish: "picaresca", from "pícaro", for "rogue" or "rascal") is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts, in realistic and often humorous detail, the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. This style of novel originated in sixteenth century Spain and flourished throughout Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It continues to influence modern literature. (from Wikipedia.)

Narrator: In ancient times, the land lay covered in forests, where, from ages long past, dwelt the spirits of the gods. Back then, man and beast lived in harmony, but as time went by, most of the great forests were destroyed. Those that remained were guarded by gigantic beasts who owed their allegiances to the Great Forest Spirit, for those were the days of gods and of demons.

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San, The Princess Mononoke: It's over, the Forest Spirit is dead now.
Prince Ashitaka: Never. He is life itself. He is here with us now, telling us, it's time for both of us to live.

Stranger Than Fiction

"You have to die. It's a masterpiece."

Writes Roger Ebert: What a thoughtful film this is, and how thought-stirring. Marc Forster's "Stranger Than Fiction" comes advertised as a romance, a comedy, a fantasy, and it is a little of all three, but it's really a fable, a "moral tale" like Eric Rohmer tells.

Will Ferrell stars, in another role showing that like Steve Martin and Robin Williams he has dramatic gifts to equal his comedic talent. He plays IRS agent Harold Crick, who for years has led a sedate and ordered life. He lives in an apartment that looks like it was furnished on a 15-minute visit to Crate and Barrel. His wristwatch eventually tires of this existence and mystically decides to shake things up.

Harold begins to hear a voice in his head, one that is describing his own life -- not in advance, but as a narrative that has just happened. He seeks counsel from a shrink (Linda Hunt) and convinced he is hearing his own life narrative, seeks counsel from Jules Hilbert, a literature professor (Dustin Hoffman). Hilbert methodically checks off genres and archetypes and comes up with a list of living authors who could plausibly be writing the "narration." He misses, however, Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), because he decides Harold's story is a comedy, and all of her novels end in death. However, Eiffel is indeed writing the story of Harold's life. What Hilbert failed to foresee is that it ends in Harold's death. And that is the engine for the moral tale.

Meanwhile, an astonishing thing happens. Harold goes to audit the tax return of Ana Pascal, a sprightly, tattooed bakery shop owner (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and begins to think about her. Can't stop thinking. Love has never earlier played a role in his life. Nor does she much approve of IRS accountants.

How rare, to find a pensive film about the responsibilities we have to art. If Kay Eiffel's novel would be a masterpiece with Harold's death, does he have a right to live? On the other hand, does she have the right to kill him for her work? "You have to die. It's a masterpiece."

The Complete Review Here. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061109/REVIEWS/611090301

Of A Wedding

Recently my sister got married. It was a traditional Assamese wedding, which lasted for two days and one night, with breaks, of course. It was a hectic event, something I don't really appreciate. There were scores of relatives. There were more than 1,000 guests swarming the place from morning till midnight. The bridegroom arrived at 11.30 pm, and by the time everything was over, it was the next day morning.

Of course, we took loads and loads of pictures, which I am sure would interest no one other than the people who feature in it.

Here’s four pictures, without personages, to highlight a few rituals involved in an Assamese wedding.

>>>> Here is the pandal. Or chamiyana, or tent or canopy. We call it a rabha. It’s the part and parcel of a wedding. Without a gate like this, without these two banana plants on both sides of the gate, a wedding isn’t complete. The banana plants represent auspicious beginning and luck. Traditionally, your neighbours should come and help you build the canopy, with bamboo sticks and coloured-clothes and tin sheds on top during monsoon. This is a way of involving your neighbours in your happiness. Nowadays, however, most neighbours are busy, and in most cases there are no neighbours. Instead, there are private contractors who does these tents; the charges vary according to the type of tent you want.

>>>>> Water plays an important role in the wedding. In the morning, the bride's mother and other women, neighbours and relatives, followed by the band party (The role of the band party is very important. It is to indicate that a wedding is taking place. The idea of a wedding is to let people know that someone is getting married, and it's a nice thing.), go to a nearby river or pond, in short, a public source of water. Privately-owned water won't do. The women carry copper or earthen pots with them. Once they reach the source of water, they perform a ritual to cleanse the water (there are mantras to do so), and fill the pots and return home.

As the day progresses, and the ritual to offer homages to the forefathers is over, it's time to give the bride a public bath. For that a banana tree is planted at a convenient spot, under which the bride would have a bath. This banana tree is important. Once the ritual is complete, the household must tend the plant and keep it alive till it bears fruit. The fruit-bearing capability of the tree is linked to the fertility of the bride.

Now, the bride stands under the tree while the women smear her with raw turmeric, mustard oil and other cosmetic herbs. Then they pour the pots of water collected from the river. Then the bride is given new clothes and the old cloth is discarded and given away to the poor. Once the bath is over, a male member of the family carries the bride to the courtyard. She's not allowed to enter the house until the rituals are over.

>>>> These are the items to welcome the bridegroom to the household. The actual ceremony, in front of the sacrificial fire, takes place outside the house, in the courtyard. Once the ceremony is over, the menfolk, including the priest, retire and the womenfolk take over. The bride's mother welcomes the groom by throwing rice grains at him, then sprinkles water from the pot with the help of the mango leaves, and offers him the whole areca nut and the betel leaf.

This is followed by a few games, where a ring is hidden in the pot full of rice. It is said that between the bride and the groom whoever find the ring first would have the upper hand in the household (as the English people say, would wear the pants.)

>>> This is the holy ground where the wedding takes place. These are the paraphernalia of the ritual. On the left, the sacrificial fire burns. Traditionally, it is the wood of a mango tree that is used for the fire. Ghee is used to keep the fire burning. There is the banana sapling, the symbol of purity. In the middle of it all, is the jantra, the machinery to invoke the gods, to help conduct the ceremony. Prajpati, a version of Brahma, the god of creations, is the presiding deity.

The jantra is made of all organic colours, acquired from nature: The white is rice powder; the black is charcol ashes; the yellow is turmeric; the red is sindoor, the green is dried wood apple leaves. The jantra is designed by the priest who officiates the wedding.

The Ring On My Finger

My Pete Seegar obsession continues. More than a musician, Seegar was a performer. He not only sung his own songs, he always played other’s music, and also music from different countries. For example, he popularised the classic Cuban song, ‘Guantanamera,’ among the American audiences. Therefore, the album, Pete Seeger - We Shall Overcome: The Complete Carnegie Hall Concert’ is a pleasure to listen to, not only for how Seegar connects to his audience, but also how he plays diffferent tunes.

There’s a nice, little tune in the album, called ‘The Ring on My Finger (Johnny Give Me)’. There are only four or five lines in the 2.17 minute track, which are repeated three times, and when the song ends, the realisation you arrive at is hearbreaking. Here is the song (The lines here cannot give you any idea how beautiful the track is when Seegar sings it...)

The ring on my finger Johnny give me … 3 times
Johnny alone until morning.
The shoes I’m wearing Johnny give me … 3 times
Johnny alone until morning.
The dress I’m wearing Johnny give me … 3 times
Johnny alone until morning.
Johnny say he loves me, I don’t believe … 3 times
Johnny alone until morning.

It begins as a typical love song; and once you have reached the fourth line, things become complicated. Why she doesn’t believe that Johnny loves her, and what does it mean that there was only Johnny until morning. Then it dawns on us that the speaker may be a sex worker. She is happy to receive gifts, but she cannot afford to commit to one man. Yet, she is happy with the time she can spend alone with Johnny. Heartbreaking.

I’m happy to report that there are more people like me who love Pete Seeger. One among them is my favourite Bengali singer Anjan Dutta. He was so enamoured by Seegar’s ‘Little Boxes’ that he did a Bengali version of it, called ‘Choto Baksho’, which is not a literal translations, but a solid inspiration.

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Talking about rings, the only ring that fascinates me is the One Ring of Lord Sauron of Mordor in Middle Earth, the “one ring to find us all and in darkness bind us”. After the Peter Jackson films based on Tolkien’s books became popular, they had actually started selling the replicas of the ring used in the film, in solid gold, no less. It’s been my reccurent dream to own one such ring. Unfortunately, I cannot afford it.

It brings us the the tale of Shakuntala and her ring that King Dushyanta had given her. The ring was the proof of their marriage, and when Shakuntala lost it, the king forgot her and threw her away from the castle, only to remember her when a fisherman found it inside a fish.

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‘We Shall Overcome: The Complete Carnegie Hall Concert CD’ by Pete Seeger

Capturing a complete mid-'60s solo concert at New York's Carnegie Hall on two hour-long discs, Pete Seeger's WE SHALL OVERCOME is a glorious-sounding document of the folksinger/musicologist/social activist at the peak of his powers. Opening with a fleet-fingered banjo medley and ending more than two hours later with a stirring version of his classic "Guantanamera," Seeger touches on every aspect of his music, from protest songs to blues to traditional ballads to leftist anthems. The entire concert is remarkable, but a particular highlight comes in the middle of the first disc, when Seeger covers two songs by Bob Dylan, the apocalyptic "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and the anti-boxing tirade "Who Killed Davey Moore?," a gesture of solidarity from one generation of folkies to another. The remastered sound is pristine and the set includes new liner notes.

Recorded at Carengie Hall on June 8, 1963, this recording is one of Pete Seeger's most famous concerts. It contains the entire concert, about twice as much music as the LP. More here.

The other day, I read a fantastic comic strip that succinctly encapsulates how we are acquiring new vocabulary with the advent of new technology: A family at the breakfast table. Father is reading the paper, when the son sees a news item and says: “Wii consoles now stream netflix.” The father comments: “A few years ago that wouldn’t have even sounded like a sentence.”

It still won’t sound like a sentence if you don’t know the meanings of 1) Wii consoles (a device) 2) streaming (an internet process) 3) netflix (a video download site).

Does it mean we are technologically illiterate?

Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia

Writes Roger Ebert:

I think I can feel Sam Peckinpah's heart beating and head pounding in every frame in ''Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia'' (1974), a film he made during a period of alcoholic fear and trembling. I believe its hero, Bennie, completes his task with the same dogged courage as Peckinpah used to complete the movie, and that Bennie's exhaustion, disgust and despair at the end might mirror Peckinpah's own. I sense that the emotional weather on the set seeped onto the screen, haunting it with a buried level of passion. If there is anything to the auteur theory, then ''Alfredo Garcia'' is the most autobiographical film Peckinpah ever made.

The film was reviled when it was released. The reviews went beyond hatred into horror. It was grotesque, sadistic, irrational, obscene and incompetent, wrote Joy Gould Boyum in the Wall Street Journal. It was a catastrophe, said Michael Sragow in New York magazine. ''Turgid melodrama at its worst,'' said Variety. Martin Baum, the producer, recalled a sneak preview with only 10 people left in the theater at the end: ''They hated it! Hated it!''

I gave it four stars and called it ''some kind of bizarre masterpiece.'' Now I approach it again after 27 years, and find it extraordinary, a true and heartfelt work by a great director who endured despite, or perhaps because of, the demons that haunted him. Courage usually feels good in the movies, but it comes in many moods, and here it feels bad but necessary, giving us a hero who is heartbreakingly human--a little man determined to accomplish his mission in memory of a woman he loved, and in truth to his own defiant code.

The film stars Warren Oates (1928-1982), that sad-faced, gritty actor with the crinkled eyes, as a forlorn piano player in a Mexican brothel--an American at a dead end. When a powerful Mexican named El Jefe (Emilio Fernandez) discovers that his daughter is pregnant, he commands, ''bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia,'' and so large is the reward he offers that two bounty hunters (Gig Young and Robert Webber) come into the brothel looking for Alfredo, and that is how Bennie finds out about the head. He knows that a prostitute named Elita (Isela Vega) was once sweet on Alfredo, and he discovers that the man is already dead.

The Complete Review Here. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20011028/REVIEWS08/110280301/1023

Source Code

A science fiction mumbo jumbo which metamorphosises into a love story. On paper, the idea is too weird to warrant a good film, but it does deliver.

A dead man’s memory of the last eight minutes of his life is planted on another dead man so that he can revisit the train just before it blows up and find the person who planted the bomb. Sound preposterous, and it is preposterous.

The train blows up several times. The suspect is caught several times. The dead hero finds the woman of his dreams several time. It’s an endless circle, yet it comes with a satisfying payoff.

Writes Roger Ebert: "Now comes the human touch. As he returns again and again to those fateful eight minutes, Colter finds that he can remember his previous visits, even though for Christina and others on the train, they are of course happening for the first time. This is the "Groundhog Day" paradox: You remember your previous passages through the same span of time. Colter begins to care for Christina, as well he might, as anyone who loved Michelle Monaghan in "Trucker" (2008) will understand. As the conscious occupant of this borrowed body, he apparently possesses free will and need not duplicate exactly what the original memory donor did.

"This involves the possibility that he could relive the memories of a man's final eight minutes and act in such a way as to affect the outcome. If the man were to survive — whose memories would he have, his own or his visitor's? Don't go there. The Army's no doubt brilliant Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright) starts out to account for the experiment, but abandons his explanation, which is our loss. If you had a speech in this movie actually saying in so many words how this was possible, it would rival the findings of such great thinkers as Dr. Moreau, Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Frankenstein.

"No matter. The director and writer, Duncan Jones and Ben Ripley, hurtle ahead with the speed of their commuter train, which like the man on the Grecian urn always speeds forward and never gets anywhere. Colter's challenge increases in complexity. The city grows ever closer to destruction. Christina becomes more poignant. The scientists grow more desperate."

Letters From Iwo Jima

Writes Roger Ebert:

For a fraction of a second at the very beginning of Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima," you may think that you are gazing overhead at a field of stars. In fact, you are looking straight down into the ground, at waves of black sand on the volcanic island where, over the course of five weeks in February and March, 1945, an invasion force of 100,000 Americans (two thirds of them U.S. Marines) fought 22,000 entrenched Japanese infantrymen. Only 1,083 Japanese survived the battle, while 6,821 Americans were killed and 20,000 wounded.

It's a simple establishing shot: a tilt up from the beach where the Allied forces landed to Mount Suribachi, a rocky knob on the southern tip of the island where the Japanese holed up in a network of tunnels and bunkers, and on top of which the famous, iconic image of the raising of an American flag was taken. That classically heroic-looking photo, and the collateral damage from its exploitation as a propaganda tool to sell War Bonds, was the subject of Eastwood's 2006 "Flags of Our Fathers," the companion piece (or other half) of "Letters From Iwo Jima," though it doesn't really matter which one you see first.

The opening moments of "Letters" have a cosmic zoom-like effect, taking us from the timeless and abstract (stars/sand) into a specific place and time: "Iwo Jima 2005," as a title denotes. It was on this barren little sulfuric spec in the Pacific Ocean, only about five miles from one end to the other, that so many people fought and died 60 years ago.

The Complete Review Here. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070111/REVIEWS/701110301

Letters from Iwo Jima

Clint Eastwood is one director I really admire. Yet I had never had a chance to see Letters from Iwo Jima, the other half of his film Flags of Our Fathers, telling the story of the Japanese soldiers, when it came out. On the other hand, I had reviewed the other film for a local daily and really, really like Adam Beach’s performance. It was heartbreaking.

Letters from Iwo Jima is in Japanese, played by Japanese actors, led by marvellous Ken Watanabe, about a true event where the Japanese soldiers laid their lives fighting against the American. And the film is directed by an American, who, as sources claim, do not understand Japanese.

Against the backdrop of this paradox, Letters from Iwo Jima is a monumental achievement, and you must give the credit to Eastwood as a director. He was never better than he is here, and in BluRay video, the film looks astonishing.

Yet, it is the human drama that touches you, not the photography, which is of course brilliant, especially in the underground scenes. In Flags of Our Father, Eastwood examined the politics of war, and its affect on individuals, especially on those who cannot process it or fail to make sense of it, like Ira Hayes.

Letters from Iwo Jima concerns the collective fate of a group, under a commander who is compassionate, yet rigid, and the soldiers are “not to ask why, but to do or die,” like the soldiers in Tennyson’s poem.

Dying is an important Japanese ritual. It may be difficult for an outsider to understand and comprehend the essence of it, but Eastwood succeeds in internalising the effect.

Writing about Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983), American critic Roger Ebert said, the major problem of the film lies in how Japanese actors and Europeans actors respond to a particular situation. The method is different, and Oshima fails to create a cohesion between the two approaches. You cannot say the same thing about Eastwood, and for all its intend and purposes, Letters from Iwo Jima is a Japanese film, perhaps more than Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1965).

This Land Is Your Land

You won’t believe how much the American culture has influenced me. It’s not a joke, it’s a serious concern. Am I forgetting my own heritage? I don’t know. But, I have realised recently, there are times when I think in terms of American imagery, American cultural iconography, American socio-political worldview. This is not always a good thing.

For example, the other day, I was reading a news story about land, and the first thing that came to my mind was the Pete Seeger song I had heard a long time ago: ‘This Land Is Your Land.’ Or was it Woody Guthrie? Anyway, I downloaded the song, and for the last two days, I’m listing to it. The song is about American patriotism, the places it mentions are all American, places I have never seen and I don’t think I will ever. Yet, the song moves me in a peculiar way. It stirs emotions in me. Is it because the way Pete Seeger sings it? He has a fabulous voice. And the tune is so hummable!

While at it, I also got the the Pete Seeger version of ‘We Shall Overcome.’ Now, this is what I mean by American influence. I am listening to the English language song, not the Hindi one, ‘Hun Honge Kamyab...’

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Peter "Pete" Seeger (born May 3, 1919) is an American folk singer and an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Leadbelly's "Goodnight, Irene." Members of The Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, and environmental causes. As a song writer, he is best known as the author or co-author of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?," "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)," (composed with Lee Hays of The Weavers), and "Turn, Turn, Turn!," which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement and are still sung throughout the world. Seeger was one of the folksingers most responsible for popularising the spiritual "We Shall Overcome" (also recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists) that became the acknowledged anthem of the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement.

More on Pete Seeger here.
Pete Seeger performs This Land is Your Land.

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"We Shall Overcome" is a protest song that became a key anthem of the US civil rights movement. The lyrics of the song are derived from the refrain of a gospel song by Charles Albert Tindley. The song was published in 1947 as "We Will Overcome" in the People's Songs Bulletin (a publication of People's Songs, an organization of which Pete Seeger was the director and guiding spirit). It appeared in the bulletin as a contribution of and with an introduction by Zilphia Horton, then music director of the Highlander Folk School of Monteagle, Tennessee, a school that trained union organizers. It was her favorite song and she taught it to Pete Seeger, who included it in his repertoire, as did many other activist singers, such as Frank Hamilton and Joe Glazer, who recorded it in 1950. The song became associated with the Civil Rights movement from 1959, when Guy Carawan stepped in as song leader at Highlander, and the school was the focus of student non-violent activism. It quickly became the movement's unofficial anthem. Seeger and other famous folksingers in the early 1960s, such as Joan Baez, sang the song at rallies, folk festivals, and concerts in the North and helped make it widely known. Since its rise to prominence, the song, and songs based on it, have been used in a variety of protests worldwide.

More on We Shall Overcome here.
Pete Seeger performs We Shall Overcome

The Lyrics to This Land Is Your Land

(Woody Guthrie)
[Chorus:]
This land is your land,
This land is my land,
From California to the New York Island,
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters,
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway,
I saw below me that golden valley,
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and I rambled, and I followed my footsteps
To the sparking sands of her diamond deserts,
All around me a voice was sounding,
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, then I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving, and the dust clouds rolling,
A voice was chanting as the fog was lifting,
This land was made for you and me.

One bright sunny morning, in the shadow of the steeple,
By the relief office I saw my people,
As they stood there hungry, I stood there wondering if,
This land was made for you and me.

Was a big high wall there that tried to stop me,
Was a great big sign that said, "Private Property,"
But on the other side, it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking my freedom highway,
Nobody living can make me turn back,
This land was made for you and me.

[Additional verses by Pete Seeger:]
Maybe you've been working as hard as you're able,
But you've just got crumbs from the rich man's table,
And maybe you're thinking, was it truth or fable,
That this land was made for you and me.

Woodland and grassland and river shoreline,
To everything living, even little microbes,
Fin, fur, and feather, we're all here together,
This land was made for you and me.

[And a Native American verse:]
This land is your land, but it once was my land,
Until we sold you Manhattan Island.
You pushed our Nations to the reservations;
This land was stole by you from me

>>>>
The Lyrics of ‘We Shall Overcome’

Lyrics derived from Charles Tindley's gospel song "I'll Overcome Some Day" (1900), and opening and closing melody from the 19th-century spiritual "No More Auction Block for Me" (a song that dates to before the Civil War). According to Professor Donnell King of Pellissippi State Technical Community College (in Knoxville, Tenn.), "We Shall Overcome" was adapted from these gospel songs by "Guy Carawan, Candy Carawan, and a couple of other people associated with the Highlander Research and Education Center, currently located near Knoxville, Tennessee. I have in my possession copies of the lyrics that include a brief history of the song, and a notation that royalties from the song go to support the Highlander Center."

1.
We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day

CHORUS:
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day

2.
We'll walk hand in hand
We'll walk hand in hand
We'll walk hand in hand some day

CHORUS

3.
We shall all be free
We shall all be free
We shall all be free some day

CHORUS

4.
We are not afraid
We are not afraid
We are not afraid some day

CHORUS

5.
We are not alone
We are not alone
We are not alone some day

CHORUS

6.
The whole wide world around
The whole wide world around
The whole wide world around some day

CHORUS

7.
We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day

CHORUS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOURCES:
Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History, Second Edition (Norton, 1971): 546-47, 159-60.

Even The Rain

Writes Roger Ebert:

The genre of movies about movies coils back on itself in “Even the Rain.” The film involves the making of a film about Columbus and his discovery of America. That story shows how his arrival began centuries of exploitation of native Americans. “Even the Rain” is about how the filming of this story begins yet another cycle of exploitation.

As the film opens, a cast and crew have arrived on location in the mountains of Bolivia, far from the Caribbean shores first founded by Columbus. Here, as the producer Costa (Luis Tosar) boasts, the local Indians can he hired as extras for $2 a day and count themselves lucky. They can also be used for manual labor, and Costa is happy to use them to haul a giant crucifix into position, saving the cost of tractor rental.

You may begin to glimpse some symbolism coming into view. The film will exploit the Indians just as Columbus did. The difference is that Columbus evoked Christianity as his excuse, while the modern film thinks it is denouncing him while committing the same sins. This is more clear to us than the characters, including Gael Garcia Bernal as Sebastian, the director, who has vague sympathies for his low-paid workers but places his film above everything.

An opening scene establishes the poverty in the district. A casting call for extras draws a line of hopefuls that reaches out of sight. One of these is Daniel (Juan Carlos Aduviri), a worker who protests when the auditions are cut short. Sebastian ends up casting him in an important role, and he discovers that in real life, Daniel is a leader in a local revolt against the privatization of the local water resources. A California company has bought land rights and plans to charge the Indians for water from their own wells.

The Complete Review Here. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110224/REVIEWS/110229991

Once Upon a Time in America

Writes Roger Ebert: This was a murdered movie, now brought back to life on home video. Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, which in its intended 227-minute version is an epic poem of violence and greed, was chopped by ninety minutes for U.S. theatrical release into an incomprehensible mess without texture, timing, mood, or sense. The rest of the world saw the original film, which I saw at the Cannes Film Festival. In America, a tragic decision was made. When the full-length version (now available in cassette form) played at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, I wrote:

"Is the film too long? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that it takes real concentration to understand Leone's story construction, in which everything may or may not be an opium dream, a nightmare, a memory, or a flashback, and that we have to keep track of characters and relationships over fifty years. No, in the sense that the movie is compulsively and continuously watchable and that the audience did not stir or grow restless as the epic unfolded."

The movie tells the story of five decades in the lives of four gangsters from New York City -- childhood friends who are merciless criminals almost from the first, but who have a special bond of loyalty to each other. When one of them breaks that bond, or thinks he does, he is haunted by guilt until late in his life, when he discovers that he was not the betrayer but the betrayed. Leone's original version tells this story in a complex series of flashbacks, memories, and dreams. The film opens with two scenes of terrifying violence, moves to an opium den where the Robert De Niro character is seeking to escape the consequences of his action, and then establishes its tone with a scene of great power: A ceaselessly ringing telephone, ringing forever in the conscience of a man who called the cops and betrayed his friends. The film moves back and forth in a tapestry of episodes, which all fit together into an emotional whole. There are times when we don't understand exactly what is happening, but never a time when we don't feel confidence in the film's narrative.

The Complete Review Here. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19840101/REVIEWS/401010365

The Purple Rose Of Cairo

Writes Roger Ebert: About twenty minutes into Woody Allen’s The "Purple Rose of Cairo", an extraordinary event takes place. A young woman has been going to see the same movie over and over again, because of her infatuation with the movie’s hero. From his vantage point up on the screen, the hero notices her out in the audience. He strikes up a conversation, she smiles and shyly responds, and he abruptly steps off the screen and into her life. No explanation is offered for this miraculous event, but then perhaps none is needed: Don’t we spend our lives waiting for the same thing to happen to us in the movies?

Life, of course, is never as simple and dreamy as the movies, and so the hero’s bold act has alarming consequences. The movie’s other characters are still stranded up there on the screen, feeling angry and left out. The Hollywood studio is aghast that its characters would suddenly develop minds of their own. The actor who played the hero is particularly upset, because now there are two of him walking around, one wearing a pith helmet. Things are simple only in the lives of the hero and the woman, who convince themselves that they can simply walk off into the sunset, and get away with this thing.

The "Purple Rose of Cairo" is audacious and witty and has a lot of good laughs in it, but the best thing about the movie is the way Woody Allen uses it to toy with the very essence of reality and fantasy. The movie is so cheerful and open that it took me a day or two, after I’d seen it, to realize how deeply Allen has reached this time. If it is true, and I think it is, that most of the time we go to the movies in order to experience brief lives that are not our own, then Allen is demonstrating what a tricky self-deception we practice. Those movie lives consist of only what is on the screen, and if we start thinking that real life can be the same way, we are in for a cruel awakening.

The Complete Review Here. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19850301/REVIEWS/901069998/1023

Ikiru

Writes Roger Ebert: The old man knows he is dying of cancer. In a bar, he tells a stranger he has money to spend on a ``really good time,'' but doesn't know how to spend it.

The stranger takes him out on the town, to gambling parlors, dance halls and the red light district, and finally to a bar where the piano player calls for requests and the old man, still wearing his overcoat and hat, asks for "Life Is Short--Fall in Love, Dear Maiden."

"Oh, yeah, one of those old '20s songs," the piano man says, but he plays it, and then the old man starts to sing. His voice is soft and he scarcely moves his lips, but the bar falls silent, the party girls and the drunken salary men drawn for a moment into a reverie about the shortness of their own lives.

This moment comes near the center point of "Ikiru," Akira Kurosawa's 1952 film about a bureaucrat who works for 30 years at Tokyo City Hall and never accomplishes anything. Mr. Watanabe has become the chief of his section, and sits with a pile of papers on either side of his desk, in front of shelves filled with countless more documents. Down a long table on either side of him, his assistants shuffle these papers back and forth. Nothing is ever decided. His job is to deal with citizen complaints, but his real job is to take a small rubber stamp and press it against each one of the documents, to show that he has handled it.

The opening shot of the film is an X-ray of Watanabe's chest. "He has gastric cancer, but doesn't yet know it," says a narrator. "He just drifts through life. In fact, he's barely alive."

The X-ray fades into his face--into the sad, tired, utterly common face of the actor Takashi Shimura, who in 11 films by Kurosawa and many by others, played an everyman who embodied his characters by not seeming to embody anything at all.

There is a frightening scene in his doctor's office, where another patient chatters mindlessly; he is a messenger of doom, describing Watanabe's precise symptoms and attributing them to stomach cancer. "If they say you can eat anything you want," he says, "that means you have less than a year." When the doctor uses the very words that were predicted, the old bureaucrat turns away from the room, so that only the camera can see him, and he looks utterly forlorn.

The Complete Review Here. http://www.rogerebert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19960929/REVIEWS08/401010329/1023

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Berlin Alexanderplatz, originally broadcast in 1980, is a 14-part television film adapted and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder from the Alfred Döblin novel of the same name, and stars Günter Lamprecht, Hanna Schygulla, Barbara Sukowa, Elisabeth Trissenaar and Gottfried John. The complete film is 15½ hours long.

It was a co-production between the German Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), Bavaria Film GmbH and the Italian network RAI. Production of the film at the Bavaria Film Studios took nearly a year. In 1983, it was released theatrically in the United States, where a theatre would show two or three parts per night. It garnered a cult following and subsequently, it was released on VHS and broadcast on PBS and then Bravo.

Director Fassbinder dreamed of making a 'parallel' film specifically for theatrical distribution after the completion of this series. The cast list he made for this fantasy included Gérard Depardieu as Franz Biberkopf and Isabelle Adjani as Mieze.

More Here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Alexanderplatz_(television)

Chungking Express

If you ask me to choose a Wong Kar-Wai film, it won’t be Chungking Express (1994). It would be In The Mood For Love (2000). Then, give me any Kar-Wai film, and I will be glued to the screen. Then, you give me any film that has Tony Leung, and I will be glued to the screen.

Naturally, for me, the best scenes in Chungking Express are those when Tony Leung’s character’s talks to himself in his apartment after his girlfriend has dumped him. In most parts of these scenes, he’s in a white underwear and a white baniyan, and talks to objects in the house, a soap bar, a mop, a shirt, and reprimands them for not able to forget the girl who has left him.

It’s so poetic and so romantically done, I can see those scenes, like, forever...

Aguirre The Wrath Of God

Writes Roger Ebert:

On this river God never finished his creation.

The captured Indian speaks solemnly to the last remnants of a Spanish expedition seeking the fabled El Dorado, the city of gold. A padre hands him a Bible, “the word of God.'' He holds it to his ear but can hear nothing. Around his neck hangs a golden bauble. The Spanish rip it from him and hold it before their eyes, mesmerized by the hope that now, finally, at last, El Dorado must be at hand. “Where is the city?'' they cry at the Indian, using their slave as an interpreter. He waves his hand vaguely at the river. It is further. Always further.

Werner Herzog's “Aguirre, the Wrath of God'' (1973) is one of the great haunting visions of the cinema. It tells the story of the doomed expedition of the conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro, who in 1560 and 1561 led a body of men into the Peruvian rain forest, lured by stories of the lost city. The opening shot is a striking image: A long line of men snakes its way down a steep path to a valley far below, while clouds of mist obscure the peaks. These men wear steel helmets and breastplates, and carry their women in enclosed sedan-chairs. They are dressed for a court pageant, not for the jungle.

The music sets the tone. It is haunting, ecclesiastical, human and yet something else. It is by Florian Fricke, whose band Popol Vuh (named for the Mayan creation myth) has contributed the soundtracks to many Herzog films. For this opening sequence, Herzog told me, “We used a strange instrument, which we called a 'choir-organ.' It has inside it three dozen different tapes running parallel to each other in loops. ... All these tapes are running at the same time, and there is a keyboard on which you can play them like an organ so that [it will] sound just like a human choir but yet, at the same time, very artificial and really quite eerie.''

The Complete Review Here. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19990404/REVIEWS08/904040301/1023

X-Men: First Class

Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Produced by: Gregory Goodman; Simon Kinberg; Lauren Shuler Donner; Bryan Singer
Screenplay by: Ashley Edward Miller; Zack Stentz; Jane Goldman; Matthew Vaughn
Story by: Sheldon Turner; Bryan Singer
Based on Characters by: Stan Lee; Jack Kirby; Chris Claremont
Starring: James McAvoy; Michael Fassbender; Rose Byrne; January Jones; Jennifer Lawrence; Oliver Platt; Kevin Bacon
Music by: Henry Jackman
Cinematography: John Mathieson
Release date(s): June 1, 2011
Running time: 132 minutes
Country: United States; United Kingdom
Language: English
Budget: $140–160 million

The best scene in the new X-Men film comes at the beginning of the climatic face-off when a submarine slowly emerges out of the water and begins to float in the air as the America and the USSR army watch in disbelieve. Of course, it’s the handiwork of Erik Lensherr, the young and revengeful mutant who can manipulate metals, and who would later become Megneto, the archvillain of the X-Men universe. The shot, which runs for a few seconds, in a sense defines the film and its plot — it defies logic, and it’s absolutely mesmerising to behold.

I saw the film in theatre, which you must, if you are a fan of the X-Men, and I’m a fan, the films, more than the Uncanny X-Men comics, and especially Magneto, as played by Ian McKellen in the first three films of the series. And that why you applaud when Wolverine makes a split second appearance, smoking his trademark cigar. You know these characters, and First Class gives you a chance to see them what they were like when they were young.

Is the end result satisfactory? I don’t know. If you like something, you always want more. But Michael Fassbender as young Magneto is a perfect cast. You identify with his anger, and his need to seek revenge on Sebastian Shaw, played malevolently by Kevin Bacon; he looks especially nasty in a moustache in the early scenes.

But, when you think objectively, the film looks like a pilot of a television series; we are introduced to a host of characters, and before you get to know them and they each other, we are thick into the Cuban missile crisis and the inevitable face-off. The Cuban missile crisis situation is an ingenious plot point where the fictional world collides with the real world with credibility. But why must CIA be involved in anything and everything?

Much has been talked about the friendship between Magneto and Professor X, who eventually choose to walk different ways. However, this friendship never blooms to its full potential on screen; same is the case with the development of Mystique/ Raven characters (played with blue makeup by Jennifer Lawrence of Winter’s Bone, for which she received an Oscar nomination. Imagine!). So, when at the end she leaves with Erik, it doesn’t look credible.

The film ends with Michael Fassbender filling the screen with the trademark robe and headgear, and saying, “They call me Magneto.” And you know, there are more Magneto adventure in the anvil.

The Adjustment Bureau

Directed by: George Nolfi
Produced by: George Nolfi; Chris Moore; Michael Hackett; Bill Carraro; Isa Dick Hackett; Joel Viertel
Screenplay by: George Nolfi; Based on "Adjustment Team" by Philip K. Dick
Starring: Matt Damon; Emily Blunt
Music by: Thomas Newman
Cinematography: John Toll
Release date: March 4, 2011
Running time: 106 minutes
Country: United States
Language: English
Budget: $50 million

There has been a whole range of science fiction fantasy that try to understand the existence and purpose of God as the supreme being and his relationship with us, humans. In most cases, the idea of this God stems from the Judeo-Christina philosophy. Therefore, with God comes his minions, the angels, and while we talk about angels, we cannot just ignore Satan, can we? He was God’s favourite archangel, and his first enemy.

In Phillip Pullman’s smart and controversial His Dark Material trilogy, God is called Authority, and he (yes, he) is an old decrepit man who dies before the novel is over.

When we discuss God, what figures prominently is the man’s purpose in life, in the universe. Who are we? Why do we do what we do? Is life a random series of chance, or is there someone who guides us, like the Bible says, a shepherd?

These are some of the questions that the Matt Damon starrer The Adjustment Bureau seeks to answer. In the beginning of the film, Damon’s David asks one of those mysterious characters: “Are you an angel?” The mystery man answers: “We have been called that. But we are more like case officers. And we live longer than the humans.” Nice.

Like vampires, angels are mystery characters. So, there are scopes to invent things for them — like how much power would they have, their dress code, their physical appearance (here, one looks like Terrence Stamp and another Anthony Mackie, what a contrast), whether they would have wings or not (And, I am not discussing Wim Wender’s fantastic Wings of Desire and its American clone City of Angels.)

In The Adjustment Bureau, based on a short story by Philip K Dick, The Adjustment Team, they are case officers whose job is to maintain the plan made by the Chairman (the God), and see that the humans don't deviate from it. The film’s logic accepts the Christian idea of Free Will. They can help people to a certain extent, where these case officers will have no power. They can travel anywhere in New York by opening a few doors. They wear hats to be able to do so, and their abilities are at their lowest near water.

The plot-slot involves a young politician with a complicated past, who has the potential to become the President one day. The day he loses an election, he meets a girl at the man’s room, and it’s love at the first sight. The couple meet again and exchange numbers. Soon, David encounters those mystery men who tell him that he must stay away from the girl, Elise. Why? Because that’s the plan. If it’s so, why do they feel the attraction for each other in the first place?

From here, the film becomes a fascinating cross between science fiction thriller and a tender love story, and in most places it succeeds. There is a palpable chemistry between Damon and Emily Blunt. Blunt is essentially a comic actor. Serious roles like in The Wolfman or The Young Victoria doesn’t suit her. She was at her best in The Devil Wears Prada. Here she gets to explore her comic side, with great support from Damon.

As usual, it’s the climax that dampens. As Roger Ebert says, it’s a good movie which could have been great.

Tales of the City

After reading the first book of Armistead Maupin’s famous ‘Tales of the City’ series, it’s not hard to figure out where Candace Bushnell found her inspirations to write ‘Sex and the City.’

But make no mistake, Maupin’s tales are not anything like ‘Sex...’ Carrie Bradshaw would be ill at east among the ‘Tales...’ characters, with their witticism and forthrightness, and with their willingness to experiment...

A frank, open-hearted attitude to sex in its myriad forms may be the bottomline of both the fictional universes, but everything else is different, the time, the place and the sociological history.

While ‘Sex...’ is a celebration of capitalism at its best, ‘Tales...’ leans towards socialism, towards equality, with an inherent understanding for the ‘flower power’ idealism. So, unlike the New York of high rises and designer dresses, parties and beautiful people, Maupin’s San Francisco, a few years before the AIDS epidemic, focuses on a group of middle class people, their hopes and aspirations and their journey to find love. Unlike the upper-class, heterosexual (okay, there are a few gay characters, but they stand in the fringes and serve at best as a plot device), capitalist world of ‘Sex...’, Maupin explores the alternative lifestyles and the underground culture of San Francisco in the 1970s.

The ‘Tales...’ begins with Mary Ann Singleton, girl from Ohio who comes for a vacation to San Francisco and decides to stay back. She takes up a job as a secretary in an advertising firm, and rents a flat. In the process, he meets a series of characters, who change her life and the lives of each others.

In short, ‘Tales...’ reads like a picaresque novel, which is not a bad idea, especially when the episodes are peppered with witty dialogues and silly misadventures. There aren’t much of a plot and story in the book, as there are series of human comedy, all played out with open-hearted seriousness.

The best of the book is the author’s love and patience for his characters; Maupin loves them, even the despicable ones, like Norman Neal Williams, who may or may not be a phedophile. About the autobiographical nature of the characters, Maupin once said: “I’ve always been all of the characters in one way or another...”

There are two things that stands out. First the chance meetings. The characters meet each other at random, at unlikely of places, and they instantly form a bond. Second, their speeches. All the characters speak in the same way. In the long run, the book sounds like a solo act by Armistead Maupin, who plays all the roles in his own, charming way.

Is an author’s sexual orientation in any way reflects on the characters he create? May be, may be not. But, in ‘Tales...’, when Maupin, an open gay man writers about San Francisco in the heydays of gay liberation, the queer sub-culture in the city gets a typical treatment. Unlike ‘Sex...’, especially the HBO series, also created by a gay man, which exoticises the alternative sexual orientation, Maupin places it in the midst of everything, and it works beautifully. While all his characters sound and behaves more or less the same way, it’s the character of Michael Tolliver that stand out. He is the heart of the book, and an interesting heart. (Maupin would later writer a full-fledged novel on the character — ‘Michael Tolliver lives’.)

The Series
Tales of the City (1978)
More Tales of the City (1980)
Further Tales of the City (1982)
Babycakes (1984)
Significant Others (1987)
Sure of You (1989)
Michael Tolliver Lives (2007)
Mary Ann in Autumn (2010)

Solaris

The other day someone asked about my favourite movies. Name one film you genuinely liked, the friend asked me.

Now, that’s a difficult question to answer. I have watched uncountable number of films; I have at least 2,000 films in my collection. To pick just one name is impossible.

Several names vied for the honour: Seven Samurai, In the Mood for Love, Happy Together, Ten Canoes, My Neighbour Totoro, Stalker, Wings of Desire, Casablanca, Kings and Queen, The Valley of the Bees... the list grows bigger by the minute.

But, I will have to pick just one film. If you really insist, here it is: Andrei Tarkovasky’s Solaris (I don’t mind if you allow me to add Stalker with it.)

Kris Kelvin outside his father’s house as he gets ready to leave the Earth for Solaris, a recently discovered planet

Kris Kelvin’s father’s house. This is perhaps the best house ever featured in a film. If I were given all the resources to build my dream house, it would look like this

Minority Writings

Life as Art, Art as Propaganda: Finding the Centre of Minority Writing

Introduction:
Following Gramsci, Gayatri Sprivak argued that subalterns are those groups and communities which fall outside the purview of the structure. They not only lack the voice, they do not even exist within the context of the socio-political structure.
Minority identity however has its existence within this defined structure. The ideal of the minority completes the binary of the mainstream. Therefore, for the mainstream to survive minorities must not only exist, it must remain in the periphery. Therefore, it’s an interesting hypothesis: What happens when a defined minority stops becoming such? Or what happens when a minority community gears up for the same rights the mainstream enjoys? But first, what is minority?

A minority is a sociological group that does not constitute a politically dominant voting majority of the total population of a given society. A sociological minority is not necessarily a numerical minority — it may include any group that is subnormal with respect to a dominant group in terms of social status, education, employment, wealth and political power. Dominant minority groups may include the following: Racial or ethnic minorities: Every large society contains ethnic minorities. They may be migrant, indigenous or landless nomadic communities; Gender and sexual minorities: An understanding of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people as a minority group or groups has gained prominence in the Western world since the 19th century. The acronym LGBTQ is currently used to group these identities together. While in most societies, numbers of men and women are roughly equal, the status of women as a "subordinate" group has led some to equate them with minorities; Religious minorities: Persons belonging to religious minorities have a faith which is different to that held by the majority; Age minorities: The elderly, while traditionally influential or dominant in the past, have in the modern age usually been reduced to the minority role. Children can also be understood as a minority group; Disabled minorities: The disability rights movement has contributed to an understanding of disabled people as a minority or a coalition of minorities who are disadvantaged by society.

In the recent years, these and other various minority groups have produced their own literatures which not only question the binary of mainstream and minority and but also seek to disrupt it altogether. These literatures range from a sedate plea for equality for everyone to militant demand for rights. At best it offers insight to a community which till now was ignored or stereotyped, at worse it offers a picture of deep-rooted dissidence.

The current course will make an attempt to read these literatures from various minority groups in the context of the changing socio-political, militant ideology and will try to find an answer as to what these minority literatures seek do and what they have achieved.

The Course:
The course will read select writing from the gamut of minority literature in the context of the following:

a. Minority Writing as Opposed to Mainstream Writing: While mainstream writing seeks to be ‘universal’ to appeal to a diverse readership, the scope of minority writing is limited. It is personal at its best and political at its worse. Its focus of vision is always narrow, focused on an individual or a small group. It resists the idea of transcending from the immediate reality.

b. Art vs. Propaganda: Art is an end in itself; it does not serve any other purpose other than representation. On the other hand, propaganda is information spread for the purpose of promoting a cause. There is a common tendency where minority writing veers towards propaganda. Where does one draw the line between art and propaganda?

c. Language as a Sign of Difference: Language is a social construct, and the dominant language is always mainstream for example, Sanskrit in Ancient India and English in modern India. Even in the local languages, there are variations. In this context, it is interesting to see how the minority writing exploits the mainstream language, especially when a text written in a local language is translated into English.

d. Seeing Things: From Inside/From Outside: For a long time, the minority identities have been represented in literature by mainstream writers where even the sympathetic look at the identity comes from the outside. How does this change when a writer from a minority community decides to write for himself. Is there a possibility to compare and contrast Mulk Raj Anand’s ‘Untouchable’ and Laxman Gaikwad’s ‘Branded?’

e. Minority Writing & the Audience: Who are the target audience of minority writing, the people who share the same identity and concerns or those outside the community and experience?

f. Art for Art’s Sake & Art for Activism: While art represents a reality, activism seeks to change the reality. Is it possible to use art as a tool for social change?

g. The Personal as Political: Unlike the mainstream writing, which seeks to universalise an experience, minority writing seeks to personalise an experience as the point of reference, where an individual becomes a political entity and a point of reference.

h. The Politics of Vocabulary: A minority identity essentially stems from the mainstream reality. It takes the existing structure and disrupts it. While doing so, minority identities appropriate certain mainstream constructs as part of their own political agenda. For example, the word ‘nigger’ has been appropriated by the black community in the US. The same way, the word ‘queer’ has been appropriated by the people of alternative sexuality.

i. Intolerance & Militancy: The mainstream seeks a homogenous social structure. The minorities seek to disrupt it. In this struggle, both the sides have to face intolerance and militancy, the reason why books are banned and writings are censored.

j. Social Construct & Economy: Money and power and the access to both define what makes a minority, for example, the Jews in Germany just before the rise of Hitler.

k. Positioning Identity: What the minority writings seek to achieve and how they have been successful in the Indian subcontinent?

The Course Design:
The course will study the above mentioned issues in modules. Each issue will be made into a module where the students will read selected texts, watch films and discuss the theories and discourses.

The following are selected authors/texts to be discussed in the course:
Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar: Selected writings
Jyotirao Phule: Selected writings
Namdeo Dhasal: Selected poems and political writings
Laxman Mane: From Poison Bread
Laxman Gaikwad: Branded
Malcolm X: Selected writings
Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Jean Genet: The Thief’s Journal
Tony Morrison: The Bluest Eye
Sashi Deshpande: That Long Silence
Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart
Maya Angelou: I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing
Kamala Das: My Story
Mahasweta Devi: Arjun
Michel Foucault: Selected writings
Aswini Suktankar: Facing the Mirror
Hoshang Merchant: Yaraana
Pandey Bechan Sharma “Ugra”: About Me
Revathi:
Baby Haldar:

Course Hours:
Tentatively, the course should be completed in less than 30 teaching hours.

Course Evaluation:
Apart from the classroom discussions preceding/ followed by each module, students will be asked to prepare a presentation. They will also have to submit a paper at the end of the term, for which the students will choose their topics in consultation with the instructor.