Bright Star

Bright Star is a romantic verse by British Romantic poet, John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821), who was one of the main figures of the second generation of romantic poets along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his work only having been in publication for four years before his death.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.


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Bright Star is a 2009 film based on the last three years of the life of poet John Keats and his romantic relationship with Fanny Brawne. It stars Ben Whishaw as Keats and Abbie Cornish as Fanny. A British/Australian/French co-production, it was directed by Jane Campion, who wrote the screenplay and was inspired by the biography of Keats by Andrew Motion, who served as a script consultant on the film.The film competed in the main competition at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, and was first shown to the public on 15 May 2009. The film's title is a reference to a sonnet by Keats named "Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art", which he wrote while he was with Brawne.

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Writes Roger Ebert about the Jane Campion film: John Keats wasn't meekly posing as a Romantic poet. He was the real thing, and the last born of the group that also included Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron and Shelley. He died at 25 and remains forever young.

The great and only love of his life was Fanny Brawne, the daughter of his landlady. He lived with his friend, Charles Brown, and she with her mother, sister and brother in the two halves of a Hampstead cottage so small, it gives meaning to the phrase "living in each other's pockets." Their love was grand and poetic and -- apart from some sweet kisses -- platonic, for he had neither the means nor the health to propose marriage, and they were not moved to violate the moral code of what was not yet quite the Victorian era.

Jane Campion's beautiful, wistful film "Bright Star" shows them frozen in courtship, like the young man Keats wrote about in "Ode on a Grecian Urn": the youth who is immortalized forever in pursuit of a maid he is destined never to catch.

The Complete Review Here.

Gangs of Wasseypur

Now that Anurag Kashyap’s ambitious ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ is a bonafide hit (Is it, or am I misinformed?), can I ask someone what does ‘Keh Ke Loonga’ actually mean?

My friend from UP tells me: It means a challenge, a threat, which can be sexual in nature, but not always. It means an open challenge — I will deal with it, do whatever you want to do. Literally, “I tell you that I’ll “beat” you up, and I’ll.” (you can add your preferred kind of action instead of ‘beating up’.)

Anyway, I want to see the film, but, cannot find anyone to accompany me to the theatre. Everyone is frightened by its publicised length, not the violence. And I wonder what happened to those good ol’ days when every Hindi movie was more than three hours long (Remember ‘Mohabbatein’?)

Meanwhile, I love the soundtrack, though I cannot go gung ho about it. Talking about Anurag Kashyap films, I still absolutely love the soundtrack of ‘Gulaal’, no comparisons, no competitions, not even the brilliant soundtrack of ‘Dev D.’ (Remember how they squeezed all the juice from the catch phrase ‘emotional atyachar’ from the record-breaking number.)

Anyway, I love the ‘O wamaniya’ song, the Live one, not the fusion one. There’s something very unrestrained flavour to it, which I just cannot figure out. I also love the ‘Keh ke loonga,’ and ‘Jiya ho bihar ke lala’.

But, the song I like most is of course, ‘Ik bagal’, again, sung by Piyush Mishra from his own lyrics (it was he who made the soundtrack of ‘Gulaal’ so memorable!)

The following is a brief translation of the song, below is the original.

(Tail Piece: Talking about Sneha Khanwalkar and how she has created a fearless soundtrack (fearless in the sense that it doesn’t want to please its listeners, but make them sit and listen, and if you don’t want to, get lost!), I was thinking of other women music directors in Bollywood, and I couldn’t come up with any names, other than Usha Khanna. Seriously!?)

[A detailed review of the soundtrack here.]

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On One Side

On one side would be the moon
On the other rotis.

On one side would be sleep
On the other lullabies.

We on the moon...
Will lie down wrapping ourselves
With blankets made of rotis
And will
Tell sleep come tomorrow
To sing the lullabies...

On one side would be sleep
On the other lullabies.

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Ik Bagal
Music: Sneha Khanwalkar
Lyricist: Piyush Mishra
Singer(s): Piyush Mishra
Song Duration (mm:ss): 05:28

Ik bagal mein chand hoga
Ik bagal mein rotiyan

Ik bagal mein neend hogi
Ik bagal mein loriyan
Hum chand pe…
Hum chand pe
Roti ki chadar daal ke
So jayenge
Aur neend se……
Aur neend se keh denge
Lori kal sunaane aayenge
Aur neend se
Aur neend se keh denge
Lori kal sunaane aayenge

Ik bagal mein chand hoga
Ik bagal mein rotiyan (repeat once more)

Ik bagal mein neend hogi
Ik bagal mein loriyan
Hum chand pe…
Hum chand pe
Roti ki chadar daal ke
So jayenge
Aur neend se……
Aur neend se keh denge
Lori kal sunaane aayenge
Aur neend se
Aur neend se keh denge
Lori kal sunaane aayenge

Ek bagal mein khankhanati
Seepiyan ho jayengi
Ek bagal mein kuch rulati
Siskiyan ho jayengi
Hum seepiyon mein…..
Hum seepiyon mein bhar ke sare
Taare chhoo ke aayenge
Aur siskiyon ko……
Aur siskiyon ko
Gudgudee kar kar ke yun behlayenge
Aur siskiyon ko
Gudgudee kar kar ke yun behlayenge

Hum andheri, sikiyon pe
Koi rone… aayega
Kohi rone aayega…
Hum nagar jo aayega wo
Phir kabhi na.. jaayega
Wo phor kabhi na jaayega..

Yaad rakh par koi anhoni
Nahi tu laayegi
Laayegi toh phir kahaani
Aur kuch ho jayegi

Yaad rakh par koi anhoni
Nahi tu laayegi
Laayegi toh phir kahaani
Aur kuch ho jayegi

Honi aur anhoni ki
parvaah kisse hai meri jaan
Had se zyada yehi hoga
Ki yahin mar jayenge
Hum maut ko…..
Hum maut ko sapna bata kar
Mut khadi honge yahin…

Aur honi ko…..
Aur honi ko thenga dikha kar
Khilkhila kar jayenge...

Kehna Usey Part II

After I posted a rudimentary translation of the Mehdi Hassan Ghazal a few days back, a friend pointed out that the gender mentioned in the translation is wrong. In the original verse, the poet, who is obviously male, he calls himself ‘Shehazad’, addresses his beloved in masculine gender, which is obvious in the words like ‘samjha’ (not samjhi), or ja raha (not ja rahi), and so on.

I agree.

The truth is, if it were possible, I’d have liked to keep the beloved gender-neural, which is in reality the essence of a Ghazal, where love is experienced outside the bounds of earthly desires and transcends the bounds of the body. But, it’s not possible in the English language, which has an altogether different grammar than the Eastern languages. My best option was to make the beloved a woman since the speaker of the verse is male. It conveys the point without creating confusion.

For the uninitiated, if I make the beloved male, then, the verse could be read as a declaration of same sex desire, which may or may be true, since most Ghazals actually carry an undercurrent of same sex desire. (For example, Saki in Omar Khayyam’s ‘Rubaiyat’: In the original Persian verses, he is a boy at the wine bar, but the English translator Fitzgerald turned him into woman for easy appreciation in Victorian England.)

Ghazal as an art from flourished during the mediaeval age, and it was strongly influenced by the tenets of Sufism, with Amir Khusro being one of its proponents. For Sufism, all love is in fact divine love, all love is a way to reach out to the God. So, when Khusro sings in praise of Nizamuddin Auliya, he actually sings in praise of God. For, Sufism believes that God is the ultimate male figure, everything else in the world is feminine. Therefore, to attain God, the devotee must assume a feminine role (devotion is feminine, aggression is masculine.). Hence, almost all Ghazals, though composed and performed by male singers, assumes a female point of view.

Ghazals talk about two kind of love — the Divine Love (ishq-e-haqiqi), and the Earthly Love (ishq-e-majazi), and a perfect Ghazal can be interpreted in both terms. And, finally, the gender of the object of devotion, love, doesn’t matter since all Ghazals talk about unrequited love. It’s about desires that cannot be attained, and there, I suppose, lies its popularity.

More on Ghazals here.

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So, what happens we change the gender? Here’s an attempt:

The buds have sprouted on the bough again, tell him
He never appreciated it, and never will, still,
Go and tell him.

The torrent of time swept away every bit of everything
Such lonesome is this existence
Go and tell him.

Leaving me alone for whom he walked away
Wouldn’t offer him the solace that stranger
Go and tell him.

My lips tremble at the heaviness of my heart
Still laughing, this skill destroys me
Go and tell him.

Who with wounds filled my ‘Shahazaad’ heart
With a smile would find the destination
Go and tell him.

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And, here are the three verses of an original Ghazal written in English, by Agha Shahid Ali, in a peerless composition:

The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer
fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.

My rivals for your love– you’ve invited them all?
This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.

And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee–
God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.

The Station Agent

You may know Peter Dinklage from the popular HBO series ‘Games of Thrones’, where he plays a general or something, or from the comedy film ‘Death at a Funeral’, both the British version with the white star cast, or the American version with the black cast. He does stand out, because, in an industry obsessed with beauty, where women must wear high heels to look taller than they actually are, he’s a dwarf. And, what makes Dicklage unique is that he refuses to be typecast as a dwarf. He doesn’t want to be one of the merry bands of Snow White; he wants to assert his individuality; this reflects in his choice of roles. After all these years, his struggle seemed to have finally paid off. This year, he won the Golden Globe award for best supporting actor in a miniseries, beating actors of stature like Guy Pierce, for his role in ‘Games of Thrones’ and this is not a mean feat.

The journey of Dinklage as an actor of tremendous potential started with Tom Mccarthy’s ‘The Station Agent’, a slow, understated relationship drama. In his first breakout role, he plays a train-obsessed dwarf (a young girl, Cleo, asks him if he’s a midget. No, he says, a dwarf.) at war with his surrounding after years of taunts and ridicules (he goes to a pub, and as the other patrons continue to stare at him and pass comments, he stands up, in an act of anger and resignation and says, “Here I am. Take a look.”), and how he grudgingly accepts the people around him, as they begin to accept him as he is.

Though Dinklage the dwarf remains the centre of the film, it however is not about his physical peculiarities, and how society treats those who are different. It’s there, but first and foremost, ‘The Station Agent’ tells a human story of three individuals – a dwarf, a son of a Italian immigrant, and a divorced woman mourning for her dead son – outside the bounds of the mainstream, and how they find each other.

Finbar McBride works in a shop selling toy trains and train models. He leads a solitary life, his only friend seems to be the owner of the shop, as he takes the public reaction to his size on his stride (as he walks on the road, someone screams at him, hey, where’s Snow White). One day, the owner drops dead, literally, Fin inherits a piece of land with a station depot in Newfoundland, New Jersey, a godforsaken country. But, Fin is happy to move out, less the people the better.

Here he meets Joe, an American Italian, who sells hot dogs and coffee from his father’s wheeler. He is also lonely, in a different way, of course, and he almost imposes himself upon Fin, and soon, Fin warms up to his innocent charm. He is played by Bobby Cannavale, who was one of Will’s lovers in Season 7 of ‘Will & Grace’. And, there’s Olivia (the ever-wonderful Patricia Clarkson), as an artist, recently divorced and mourning for her dead son.

As their worlds collide, they learn to hold to each other, there are no other options. But, acceptance doesn’t come easily. To welcome a different person in your, life it not only requires that you let go to your prejudices, but be aware of your own limitations.

There’s also an African-American girl, Cleo, who befriends Fin, and a librarian (Michelle Williams), who finds in Fin perhaps the only person she can be who she really is.

‘The Station Agent’ doesn’t have much of a plot. It unfolds slowly, gradually, by and by, as we follow Fin in his daily routine, and Dinklage’s central performance is a compelling watch. He not only further the case for dwarfs, but also for loneliness, and the need for acceptance and the need for human connect.

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Writes Roger Ebert: "There was a documentary on cable the other night about little people, describing their lives in their own words, and its subtext seemed to be: Yes, I'm short. Get over it. I remember my face burning with shame early one morning when I was 6 years old and went with my father to where the circus was setting up. I gawked through a flap in the dining tent at the circus giant, and he scowled and said, "Can't you find anything else to stare at?" and I learned something that I never had to be taught again.

"The Station Agent" makes it clear that too many people make it all the way to adulthood without manners enough to look at a little person without making a comment. It isn't necessarily a rude comment -- it's that any comment at all is rude. In a way, the whole movie builds up to a scene in a bar. A scene that makes it clear why Finbar does not enjoy going to bars. The bar contains a fair number of people so witless and cruel that they must point and laugh, as if Finbar has somehow chosen his height in order to invite their moronic behavior. Finally he climbs up on a table and shouts, "Here I am! Take a look!" And that is the moment you realize there is no good reason why Peter Dinklage could not play Braveheart..."
The Complete Review Here.

Kehna Usey

The buds have sprouted on the bough again
Do tell her
She has never understood, and never will, still,
Do tell her.

The torrent of time swept away every bit of everything
Such lonesome is this existence
Do tell her.

Leaving me alone for whom she has walked away
Wouldn’t offer her the solace that stranger
Do tell her.

My lips tremble at the heaviness of my heart
Still laughing, this skill has destroyed me
Do tell her.

Who with wounds filled my ‘Shahazaad’ heart
With a smile would find the destination
Do tell her.

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The above is a rather poor attempt to translate the Mehdi Hassan Ghazal into English. There are certain words I don’t understand; so I have replaced them with my rather unimaginative choice of words. I’m not trying to prove anything. Just a pointless exercise.

The original verse has a defined rhyme scheme, where last word of every stanza ends with the ‘R’ sound: magar, rehguzar, sim-o-zar, hunar, charaagar… My translation couldn’t just achieve it.

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The Original Shayari by ‘Shahazaad’, and Performed by Mehdi Hassan:

...konpalein phir phuut aayin shaak par
kehna usey
wo na samajha hai na samjhega, magar
kehna usey

waqt ka tuufaan har ik shay baha kar le gaya
itani tanha ho gayi hai rahaguzar
kehna usey

ja raha hai chhod kar tanha mujhe jis ke liye
chain na de paayega woh sim-o-zar
kehna usey

ris raha ho kuun dil se lab magar
hansate rahe kar gaya barbaad mujhako yeh hunar
kehna usey

jisne zakmon se mera ‘Shahazaad’ sina bhar diya
muskara kar aaj pyaare chaaraagar
kehna usey...

The Immortals of Meluha

You cannot blame me for not trying. I had purchased a copy of Amish’s sensational bestseller ‘The Immortals of Meluha’ a long time back, before the second edition came up with HarperCollins deciding to do a reprint, and also deciding to publish the second volume, ‘The Secret of the Nagas’. The book was originally self-published, after it was rejected by all publishing houses, before it became a bestseller. The book has also the distinction being one of the earliest Indian books to market it via a youtube video. The video was really impressive.

And, I was really impressed with the idea of the book, of humanising a mythical figure, and try and reimagine the history of the elusive Harappa civilisation. But, somehow, I never got around actually reading the book. After a few of my friends gave it glowing reviews, all of them had borrowed the book from me, I decided to give it a try. Why not!

The book opens with Shiva, chieftain of a tribe called The Gunas in the Himalayas, next to the Mansarovar lake, with his battle scars and his tiger skin skirt. Soon, we are introduced to their sworn enemies, the Pakratis; there is a war, and their leader is called Yakhaya. You can guess who they are. They are the savage beings, semi-divine, not as bad as the Asuras, but bad enough. In mythology, their king is however, Kubera, the divine banker, known for his thriftiness, and he has a particular relationship with the mythical Shiva.

Then we meet Nandi, an emissary from the country of Meluha, the Land of Pure Life, who has come to invite Shiva and his tribe to migrate to Meluha, the best place on earth, like countries like Canada did years ago. We are given a hint that there is a motive behind inviting Shiva to Melhua, and that would be the main plot line of the novel. (In mythology, Nandi is Shiva’s assistant, often represented as a bull.)

Following the battle, the tribe, without much ado, pack up their staff and begins the journey to Meluha. Another battle and they reach a valley, beautiful beyond imagination, and Amish tells us that this is Kashmir, and the capital of Kashmir is Srinagar, and the river here is called Jhelum. Really. I mean, really? I thought the story is set in pre-historic times. I am sure, the pre-Aryan people did not call the place Kashmir, did they? Or called the Dal lake Dal. I don’t know the finer points of history, but I found it hard to digest the names. I had to really try hard to keep willing and willingly suspend my disbelieve (Note: British poet Coleridge’s theory of Willing Suspension of Disbelieve, where you go along with the imaginary world created by an author, even if it may not always be logical. Say, the world of Harry Potter, for example!)

I dragged on and arrived at an Urban settlement of Meluhans in Srinagar. The description is fine. It corroborates with the archaeological history of the Harappa civilisation. Then Nandi leads Shiva and his tribe to a man, introduced as an immigration officer. They have a conversation, where Nandi address Shiva as sir, and Shiva says, don’t call me sir, call me Shiva.

The scene is perfectly written, but, but, it looks like it has been copied from the screenplay of a Hollywood film. Did people in the pre-historic time speak like that, even in English translation? The idea of calling someone sir, or its equivalent in the local language, it simply did not ring true to my ears, and I could no longer suspend my disbelieve.

It’s Page 14. I plod on. I am not giving up so soon. Back in Srinagar, the Gunas are given a luxurious living quarters. The amenities are described in great details (later, Shiva sees a “cake-like object” in the bathroom to wash the body. The soap. But, look at the image. Cake-like? Did Shiva know what cake look like?) Then, Shiva is told that the tribe has been “quarantined.”

Quarantined?

Some years ago, I did a class on creative writing (I know, I am not qualified enough to do such a course; then all of other unqualified people are doing it, why not me!), and we discussed the dangers of using modern words in a narrative where it doesn’t fit. I understand, in the novel, the Meluhans have a great civilization and they have a well developed vocabulary, but I don’t think they’d call the procedure quarantine. For, the word is very modern.

Then we meet the doctor, Lady Ayurvati, who dresses like a Brahmin. As Nandi reveres her, I imagine her as played by Hollywood actress Sigourney Weaver, from those Alien films. And for obvious reasons. The conversations still sound like they have been borrowed from Hollywood films. Ayurvati asks Shiva if he is free so that she can explain him something. Shiva says he is free now, but will charge her next time. It’s supposed to be joke. Lady Ayurvati did not smile. Neither did I. For, I was in the pre-historic milieu, and then, I got it. The joke is about money (free as opposed to paid for). But did the Gunas know about money? I thought, the idea of currency to buy and sell objects came very later.

This was Page 16. On Page 23, we have another conversation borrowed from Hollywood action films. The hero’s tribe is in danger and he wants to help, but cannot. A while later, Shiva wonders, and I quote: “What the devil is going on?” Devil? Aren’t we talking about a time when monotheism isn’t invented yet!

Then on the next page, Bhandra, Shiva’s friend explains to Shiva the Caste system that the Meluhans follow. This did it for me. All the while I was under the impression that Meluha was a pre-Aryan civilization. Apparently not.

I just couldn’t go on.

Byomkesh Bakshi

It’s very difficult to imagine Byomkesh Bakshi without the very talented Rajit Kapoor as the eponymous detective and KK Raina as Ajitbabu, the writer and the sidekick, from the iconic TV serial by Basu Chaterjee which ran for 33 episodes in Doordarshan in 1993 (I haven’t seen Satyajit Ray’s ‘Chiriyakhana’ (1967) with Uttam Kumar in the lead.)

In Anjan Dutt’s 2010 film, ‘Byomkesh Bakshi’, said to be the first installment in a proposed trilogy to be directed by singer-songwriter-actor-director, Abir Chatterjee plays the home-grown Sherlock Holmes, a popular figure in Bangla crime fiction (along with Ray’s Feluda), created by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, and Saswata Chatterjee plays the Dr Watson-like sidekick, Ajitbabu. Both are competent on screen, especially Saswata Chatterjee (You may know him as Bob Biswas, the insurance agent cum contact killer in Sujay Ghosh’s ‘Kahaani’), and the memories of the earlier reincarnations of Byomkesh Bakshi should not spoil the fun. (The next film, titled ‘Abar Byomkesh’, (Byomkesh Again) is set to be released soon.) The current film dramatises the story, ‘Aadim Ripu’, while the next two films are supposed to be adaptations of ‘Chitrochor’ and ‘Kohen Kobi Kalidas’.

It’s a murder mystery set in a few years after India’s Independence, in the middle of a communal riot in Kolkata, with the Ajit character also serving as narrator, filling the gaps in the story, and also creates a backdrop for the narrative to flourish, but it’s not always convincing. I’m not sure the riot backdrop serves any purpose other than underscoring the fact we human being are capable of doing anything, even the most heinous of crimes. The story also highlights the moral bankruptcy in post-independent India, and also hints at robbery and black money, and also crimes of passion.

Anyway, all these work well in the context of the film where the person least suspected turns out to be the killer. But, I cannot tell you who, this is a detective story. And, it doesn’t matter since the proceedings are so interesting, despite the fact that the entire film is dialogue-driven instead of action, with most scenes taking place indoors. When the narrative goes outdoors, the film tries to maintain the period look, but not always with success. The rioters running amok in the streets do not look convincing, and they are very few. It looks more like a TV film, than a feature film.

A woman, Nonibala Devi, visits Byomkesh saying that she fears that her adopted son may be in danger. They were in Patna, she was a nurse, never married and adopted Prabhat. A few years back, they met an old and wealthy man, Anandibabu, who took a filial interest in Prabhat. He invited the mother-son due to live with him in Kolkata, and helped Prabhat open a bookshop (Prabhat is a binder by profession. Remember, this has something to do with the mystery.) In short, Anadibabu has all but adopted Prabhat. Now, the old man’s nephews want a share of his wealth, and for that, they might harm Prabhat.

But Byomkesh cannot take the case as no one is hurt yet. A while later, the detective takes up the case anyway, as he has nothing better to do, with the riot going on, and with his wife in Patna (a sub-plot never developed properly). This gives the filmmaker a chance to introduce the dramatis personae of the story, till Anadibabu is killed, and in Byomkesh’s eyes, everyone is under suspicion and each has a motive.

Books play an important role in the investigation. The dead man’s closet is full of books, but he did not look like a man who could read. The mother says she cannot read English, but carries a Sherlock Holmes book with her. The son owns a bookshop (he is in love with a glamorous singer and it’s unlikely that she loved him, unless she had other motives.). There’s a reference to Sukumar Roy’s collection of nonsense verse ‘Abol-Tabol’ (for period detail, there’s also reference to 1937 film ‘Prisoner of Zenda’ (or was it the 1952 version with James Mason and Deborah Kerr?)). And then, there’s Ajit, the well known writer.

What works well for the film is the tight screenplay. Everything is there for a reason; there’s no red herring, there’s no suspense for suspense sake, and everything is explained in the end, a hallmark of a good detective story. Above all, the film works due to the chemistry between Abir Chatterjee as the ‘goenda’ (spy), though he likes to call himself a ‘Satyanweshi’ (seeker of truth) and his admirer and chronicler played by Saswata Chatterjee.

And it was great, after a while, to listen to Bangla as it should sound, with the intrusion of English and Hindi, as it has become a trend in modern spoken Bangla (for that matter, every local language in India).

Here’s looking forward to ‘Abar Byomkesh’.

More on Byomkesh here.

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale

The film begins with a fantastic action set-piece in the middle of an ancient forest, between two warring tribes. There are arrows, guns, people falling off the cliff, jumping underwater, decapitations – all very gory and visceral. And a lot of dead people. So much so that you wonder if anyone from the tribe would be left to propel the narrative further. This scene, how it is composed and presented, sure to gladden the heart of every action-film aficionado.

‘Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale’ (2011) has several such sequences, shot with a carnivalesque zest, including the climatic battle between the tribe and the imperial Japanese army, set in the tune of a haunting folk ballad. There’s just one word for it. Mesmerising.

But, the Taiwanese film, an overlong and overambitious epic, released in two parts originally, which was the Number 1 film in the country last year, is much more than a action picture. It’s a reinvention of the nationalistic pride. It tells the story of the time of Japanese invasion of China (last year, we saw at least two Chinese films on the subject: The very grim and very effective ‘The City of Life and Death’ and polarised and Hollywoodised Christian Bale starrer ‘The Flowers of War’), and how it came about occupying Taiwan, till then a virgin territory.

Following the invasion of China, the Japanese set their eyes on the untapped resources of Taiwan, the timbre and the minerals. As the royal Japanese army invades the land, the local tribes rise to the occasion. There are skirmishes, there are battles. At first, the Japanese are at disadvantage. But, they have more resources and soon, the tribal warriors are overpowered.

In India, we know the story, how the colonialists arrived, fought with us, and then made us work for them as they took the resources to their own country.

One such tribe, who now works for the Japanese is the Seediq, led by their legendary chieftain Muana Rudo. He’s fierce, proud and doesn’t want to be ruled by the outsiders.

The Seediqs have their code of honour and it is related to war and bloodshed. They must smear their hands with enemy’s blood before they could cross the rainbow bridge to the other world. And, before the film ends, Muana Rudo and his tribe get plenty of opportunities to shed their enemy’s blood.

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Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale’, was director Wei Te-sheng (‘Cape No. 7’), and was produced by iconic action director John Woo, along with Terence Chang & Jimmy Huang, and stars Lin Ching-Tai, Umin Boya, Ando Masanobu, Kawahara Sabu, Vivian Su and Da Ching.

The film reclaims an extraordinary episode from 20th-century history, which is little known, even in Taiwan. Between 1895 and 1945, the island was a Japanese colony inhabited not only by the majority Han Chinese Immigrants, but also by the remnants of the aboriginal tribes who first settled the mountainous land. In 1930 Mouna Rudo, the leader of the Seediq tribe settled on and around Mount Chilai, forged a coalition with other Seediq tribal leaders and plotted a rebellion against their Japanese colonial masters.

Green

The other day I was in my green Levi’s t-shirt (of course, not the original Levi’s, but it looks very original considering that I picked it up from a streetside shop), when a colleague asked me, incredulously: “You are wearing green!” I tell him, yes. I lover green. It’s the colour of the season. Green is the new black.” The colleague stares at me and repeats: “You are wearing green!”

Then it hits me. Of course, green is a Muslim colour. But, I am Hindu. My colleague is Muslim. Why should I wear green? By wearing the colour, am I showing my affinity to Islam? Not really. I am wearing green because I love the colour. There’s no politics involved.

My colleague grins. Then he tells me about another colleague. Another Muslim. This one is a little orthodox. Recently, his son did well in the exams, and his was distributing pedas, and yes, you are right. The pedas were green.

The question is where do we draw the line?

PS. But, green isn’t a Muslim colour, not in India at least. It’s the colour of the national flag. In Maharashtra, it’s the colour of the married woman. During a wedding, there’s an occasion when the bride must wear a green sari. She must also wear green bangles. The traditional saris the Maharashtrian women wear come in green. And, a widow isn’t allow to wear that particular shade of green. (You wonder when green became a tradition in Maharashtra; is it the influence of the Mughal Empire?)

Green is colour of peace. It’s the colour of fertility. It’s the colour of nature, of rejuvenation, of life.

TMK/Three Times

Film journalists/ critics love dropping names, showing how well-informed they are. Here’s a piece of information floating around: The new Kunal Kohli (‘Hum Tum’, ‘Fanna’) film, ‘Teri Meri Kahaani’ is “inspired” by Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s 2005 opaque romance ‘Three Times’. And, I’d say, using a British expression, it’s tosh.

There’s nothing similar between Shahid Kapoor-Priyanka Chopra Bollywood romance and Hsiao-Hsien’s moving examination of how the contemporary history effects interpersonal relationships — except perhaps both the films are set distinct time periods, and in both the films, in all the three stories, the lovers are played by the same actors.

But, unlike, Hsiao-Hsien’s rumination of history, and to a great extent, individual choice, in Kohli’s film these different time-frames are a novelty, and at best, cosmetic; it helps change the costumes and the background, nothing else. In TMK, it’s essentially the same story told thrice, in different costumes.

‘Three Times’, on the other hand, is more problematic, slow, and fraught with heartbreaks, which Bollywood is essentially ill-equipped to handle. The film doesn’t even arrive at a cohesive end. It’s as anti-Bollywood as it can possibly be, and not an ideal choice of inspiration.

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I have attempted to see ‘Three Times’ several times, but could never complete seeing the film in one sitting — as the narrative moves in the slow place, with static cameras and the play of light and darkness. But, if you sit through it, it’s worth the while. However, if you haven’t seen any Hsiao-Hsien film yet, the ideal place to start would be his 2008 film ‘Flight of the Red Balloon’ with Juliet Binoche, and puppeteering, and of course the red balloon floating over the Parisian sky.

Then perhaps ‘Flowers of Shanghai’ (1998), with Tonny Leung, my favourite actor. His other films include, ‘A City of Sadness’ (1989), ‘The Puppetmaster’ (1993), ‘Good Men, Good Women’ (1995), and ‘Café Lumière’ (2003), all masterpieces to varied degrees.

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Writes Roger Ebert: Three stories about a man and a woman, all three using the same actors. Three years: 1966, 1911, 2005. Three varieties of love: unfulfilled, mercenary, meaningless. All photographed with such visual beauty that watching the movie is like holding your breath so the butterfly won’t stir.

More here.

More about Three Times Here.
More about Hou Hsiao-Hsien Here.

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A filmmaker makes a film to tell a story on the big canvas. Well, here director Kunal Kohli goes on to tell three of them. So, there are three love stories set in three different eras that see Shahid Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra meet under different circumstances with the same outcome. Love happens and so do all the side-effects and dramabaazi that come as a part and parcel of falling in love. Thankfully, however, Kunal completely refrains from taking the tried and tested route of depicting the film as a tale of reincarnation, though the soul-mate connection is hard to miss!

Read the complete review from DNA here.

We Have A Pope

I read about it in Dan Brown’s pulp thriller ‘Angels & Demons’, how a Pope is elected at the Vatican after the demise of the Pope. Cardinals from all over the Christendom assemble at the Vatican and they are locked in a room, and they sign the ballots and vote. Once the Pope is elected, white smoke bellows from the building, and people rejoice, before a representative of the church appear on the balcony and announces: ‘Habemus Papam’ (We Have A Pope).

Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti’s ‘Habemus Papam’ begins with this election. The Pope is dead and we need a new one. All the cardinals have gathered and place is fraught with emotions, strong emotions, and just one emotion — “dear god, let it not be me.” Being a pope is a responsibility and none of the cardinals ready to bear it.

Though the film has been billed as a comedy, and there are comic movements, especially when the director himself appears as a psychiatrist (He is best psychiatrist in Rome and his wife left him because he was the best, and his wife is obsessed with “parental deficiency.”), Moretti doesn’t want to make fun of the Church, or use it for cheap thrills, as the Dan Brown novel and the film version by Ron Howard did.

It’s all serious business. After several failed attempt, the college of cardinals finally choose Cardinal Melville as the next pope. He wasn’t even a forerunner in the elections. Poor Melville (played with enduring gravitas by Michel Piccoli) is understandably shell-shocked. The others, now relieved that they are spared, congratulate Melville, and soon, he is dressed up in the habit of the Pope. Now, the time has come to announce ‘Habemus Papam’ from the balcony to the faithful and the media who have assembled in the St Peter’s Square. Slowing realising what was happening, and realising the gravity of the situation, Melville suffers a panic attack, and the ceremony is on hold.

Now, the problem is unless the name of the Pope is announced, the ceremony is not over, and the cardinals cannot be free of their confinement. And, Melville is a wreck. He needs help. A psychiatrist is summoned. But, he’s not of much help, as he cannot ask any intimate questions to the Holy See, especially questions of sexual nature, and with the other cardinals surrounding them, asking any question is a difficult task. He suggests that Melville should visit his wife.

Melville is taken to the lady psychiatrist under heavy security, and in civil dress, and from there, Melville escapes. Here’s begins the film, as the narrative alternates between the Vatican with the confined cardinals, who decide to organise a volleyball match to pass time, and Melville, stumbling across the city.

What is Melville’s problem? Doesn’t he want to be a Pope. He cannot refuse to be Pope. God has chosen him. But, he doesn’t believe that he is worthy to be a Pope, when he couldn’t even be a stage actor he always wanted to be (his sister did), and in the final scene we meet Melville in an auditorium attending the performance of a Chekhov play.

The film was screened in 2011 Cannes film festival, and though it failed to garner the buzz Moretti’s earlier film, the devastating ‘The Son’s Room’ (2001) did, it was warmly received by the critics and audience.

About the film, Moretti, who served as jury head in this year’s Cannes film festival, said: “I wanted to depict a fragile man, Cardinal Melville, who feels inadequate in the face of power and the role he's called to fill ... I think this feeling of inadequacy happens to all cardinals elected Pope, or at least that's what they say."

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More about We Have A Pope Here.
More about Nanni Moretti here.

Goon

‘Goon’ is a superb comedy which borders on slapstick and offensive, and it is very violent (it begins with a falling tooth), and warm-heartedly funny, powered by a solid central performance by Seann William Scott (You remember him from those ‘American Pie’ movies; in one of those films, if I remember correctly, he smiles beatifically as someone pees on him. He was also an action hero in ‘Bulletproof Monk’). That the film is about ice hockey in Canada, or more specifically about “enforcement” in ice hockey, is just incidental. You don’t need to know anything about ice hockey to enjoy the film, and that’s the beauty of it.

Seann William Scott has a natural talent to play dumb (‘Dude, Where’s My Car?’), and here, the film works because of his skills. Here, he’s Doug Glatt, all muscle and no brain, in a brainy family of doctors, where he is constantly reminded that he’s stupid (There’s a beautiful scene in the middle film where the family meets, and Doug points to his brother and says, “I’m stupid and you’re gay.” It’s poignant and funny at the same time.).

Doug is really a nice guy, and boy can he fight? One day, an ice hockey coach sees him knock another guy and he’s hired to act as an enforcer. An enforcer is not really a player, and as another star enforcer, Doug’s idol, Ross “The Boss” Rhea (played with gleeful seriousness by Liev Schreiber) explains, he’s just a goon, a hired hand to beat up the players of the opposition. This Doug can do really well, and soon he is hired by a Canadian minor league team Halifax Highlanders and soon, he’s a star himself. And he is enjoying it with the seriousness of a kid in a candy shop.

All these are just a set-up for the ultimate face-off between Doug and his idol Ross the Boss, and it takes place like a standard climax of a standard sports movie.

But, you don’t complain as the ride is a great one. The film moves in a blistering speed, from one scene to another, from one game to another, with a little romance in between, a little introspection perhaps, little friendship, aided by a great soundtrack (by a music director who has a very Indian-sounding name, Ramachandra Borcar; looks like his ancestors were from Maharashtra. Borkar is a common Maharashtrian surname.). The soundtrack introduced to me a wonderful rapper called Lord Kossity (‘Morenas’).

The film is an adaptation of the book ‘Goon: The True Story of an Unlikely Journey into Minor League Hockey’ by Adam Frattasio and Doug Smith. Footage from Smith’s career as a hockey enforcer is shown during the film’s credits.

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Writes Roger Ebert: “Having recently disliked a movie named "The Raid: Redemption" that was wall-to-wall violence, I now feel fondness for another movie that's also mostly mayhem. It's not violence itself I object to, but the absence of engaging characters and human interest. The best thing about "Goon" is not the hockey action, or who wins and who loses. It's Doug's rags-to-riches story.”

More here.
More about Goon Here.
More about Ramachandra Borcar here.

Safe House

As the film, ‘Safe House’, begins, a British spy, played by Liam Cunningham, tells Denzel Washington’s American spy Tobin Frost: “You look good.” (He does, with French beard and a stud on his ear). Washington’s Tobin smiles his trademark smile and says, “I do, don’t I?” And you know why Washington agreed to do this movie. You can clearly see Washington enjoying the role. You wish the same were true about the audiences.

If there’s one actor I have admired equivocally, it has to be Denzel Washington, a first-rate actor. Therefore, it’s saddening to see him make those dumb action pictures year after year (‘Book of Eli’, ‘Unstoppable’, ‘The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3’), especially with his long-time collaborator Tony Scott.

‘Safe House’, his latest is another Tony Scott picture not directed by Scott. It’s not a bad film, it looks good, Washington looks good, and he delivers, only that it’s a paint-by-number Hollywood actioner about spies and CIA secrets and foreign locations, smart action sequences involving cars and gun-fights — a poor cousin to those ‘Bourne’ movies (now, wait for another series of Bourne movies, this time with Jeremy Renner.). But, the film does not do justice to Washington’s towering talent, and sometimes, the film becomes quite inadequate to contain the cultivated charisma of its star.

Washington is Frost, a legendary CIA operative who has gone rogue, a traitor selling his country’s secrets to whoever would pay. But, when Washington is playing the man in question, you know there’s more than meets the eye, and you must survive the ordeals of a standard Hollywood actioner before the truth is revealed, and some under-developed characters, like Vera Farmiga as a CIA boss, is killed.

Oh, there’s Ryan Reynolds too in the mix. He is a handsome dude, but with questionable acting abilities. Here, however, he’s better than expected, almost matches with Washington (unlike in films like ‘Green Lantern’), which is a good thing.

Anyway, acting is not the highlight of the film, neither the story, plot points, they are all excuses to mount some action sequences, and ‘Safe House’ delivers these sequences pretty well. Not that you haven’t seen it done before!

Goon

‘Goon’ (2012) tells the story of a kind-hearted and polite "idiot" who lands in an ice hockey team as an enforcer in Canada, where he uses his skills to beat up players of the opponent team. Doug Glatt is played by Seann William Scott, and Alison Pill plays his object of affection Eva (“It’s same as Eve,” she says about her name, “just more mustard on it.”)

Eva: You make me wanna stop sleeping with a bunch of guys.
Doug Glatt: That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.

The Pilgrim Dreams

On this night, I’m with Commander Lachit Barphukan,
In Saraighat, next to the precipice where
There should stand the fort before the night is out.
He stands there, his eyes on the valley below, next
To the river, bathed in moonlight, the trees like pillars,
And the swaying grass beneath. This is his land. He heaves
A sigh. This is his land till the night is out. He clasps
The hengdang that rests next to his leg, still dripping blood.
He clasps the hengdang: This is his land, till he can wield
His weapon, and till his weapon is hungry for blood. He
Thinks of his momai; it wasn’t his fault. He spoke for everyone.
They are tired, and there’s battle to win tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
He knows, there’d be no war if the fort is not done. The
Bangals would take over. He can smell the enemy in the
Sweet breeze of the twilight, or is it the blood of his kin?
“My momai is not greater than my motherland,” he repeats, as if
To console himself. He had uttered the same words, tonight, before
Piercing the heart of his uncle, his assistant, counsellor, dear friend.
He wants to cry. No. Not yet. He’d cry when it’s all over, when
The Bangals arrive, and destroy them. And there’d be nothing to mourn.
His diseased body shivers in hope and apprehension. He’s dying too.
Soon. But not before he fights this war. The last battle of his life, and
Perhaps, the last battle of his free country. He doesn’t regret death.
But, he wants to die in the free country. His land.

Notes on the ‘Indian Woman’

1. In India, woman is not a cohesive category, but a series of archetypes, a long list of other categories, each of which can function independently without the reference to other categories. On one spectrum of this is the whore and on the other is the goddess. (It is interesting how to make the Durga idol, the archetype of the mother goddess, it is compulsory to use at least a handful of soil collected from the house of a prostitute. This ritual suggests that whore as a category must exist to popularise the goddess as a category.)

2. This is what makes a comprehensive "rights" movement for women in India. Here, women are not just the other of men. Within being the other to man as a category, women in India are sub-divided further and further, to the extent that a woman cannot always come to the aid of another, since their immediate realities are different – a daughter wouldn’t identify with a mother, a wife wouldn’t identify with a “fallen” woman.

3. In Sudraka’s ‘The Little Clay Cart’ (Mricchakatikam), Vasantasena, the courtesan is richer than the Brahman Charudatta. But, Charudatta’s wife Dhuta is given more respect in society than Vasantasena. Vasantasena has riches, but she cannot “consummate” her love; her maid Madanika, on the other hand, cannot marry her lover because she doesn’t have the finances to free herself from servitude, and her mistress cannot help her.

4. There are three stages of Indian womanhood: Mother: Wife: Daughter.

5. Man & Woman: world/ home; field/heath, political/moral…

6. Women from Indian mythology, all categories unto themselves: Sita, Savitri, Draupadi, Gandhari, Kunti, Shakuntala, Gargi, Maytreyee, Urvashi, Menaka, Rambha, Sharvari…

7. The myth of Manu, who wrote the treaties of Manu, and how he lived in the golden age where the women had the rights to choose a man of her choice, and how his mother left him and his father for another man and how, sad and angry, he formulated the rules for the women to have a “master” in various stages of her life – father/daughter, husband/wife, son/mother. A woman is never free, a woman is never on her own.

8. In ‘The Serpent & the Rope’, one of the seminal texts in Indian writing in English, Raja Rao writes how women do not form the part of the family history. (P3)

9. The myth how curiosity is a woman trait and how it brings about the downfall of men: Pandora and her box, Eve and her apple, Sita and her golden deer, Draupadi and her blue lotus.

10. Even the so called mothers of the god-figures cannot escape the fate of being a woman: Marry, Yashoda, Parvati.

Agent Vinod

Armond White is an American film critic. He calls himself a “pedigreed film scholar,” which he is. But, that’s not the reason we are discussing him. We are discussing him because, White has almost infallible tendency to criticise every mainstream cultural artefact, mostly Hollywood movies. He’d tear apart movies which even the regular critics would like (‘HP7’, ‘The Avengers’). In short, he is famous for his negative criticism of films.

In common parlance, this tendency is called being a “hater”. The Urban dictionary explains a hater as: “A person that simply cannot be happy for another person's success. So rather than be happy they make a point of exposing a flaw in that person. Hating, the result of being a hater, is not exactly jealousy. The hater doesn’t really want to be the person he or she hates, rather the hater wants to knock someone else down a notch.”

The more sensitive term would be a “contrarian”. Wikipedia explains contrarian as “a person who takes up a position opposed to that of the majority, no matter how unpopular. Contrarian styles of argument and disagreement have historically been associated with radicalism and dissent.”

Being a hater or a contrarian is not essentially a bad thing. In fact, in a democratic society, we actually need a voice of dissent. What we need however, for a contrarian to flourish, is an ability to form our own judgement, and not trust anyone blindly, either the contrarian, or the mainstream.

In India, we have our own contrarians, or haters. In film criticism, it would be Raja Sen, the movie critic of Rediff.com. I love going through the comments section of a Raja Sen review in Rediff, more than the review itself where the reading public, the mainstream viewers criticise Sen for criticising their favourite film. It’s a nice blame game going on out there. And, it’s fun.

It’s not that Raja Sen cannot praise a film, he can (recently, he was all praise for ‘Shanghai’, and no criticism), and that he isn’t right in his criticism (say, for example, his review of ‘Agent Vinod’), but this is not always true. There are times Mr Sen criticises a film for the sake of doing so. And, I believe it serves a purpose too.

I remember after seeing ‘3 Idiots’, which I said I liked, when I was dissecting the finer points, a friend had complained, why to criticised the film if you liked it? It was a strange question and I did not have an answer for it. But, the truth is, a film needs to be criticised, more so the good one, even if to highlight why it’s good.

In short, what I am trying to say is that all criticisms have values, even the bad ones (badly-written criticism is however different from an well-argued negative criticism.)

This brings us to the Saif Ali Khan magnum opus ‘Agent Vinod’, which, if you believe in the buzz, was held prisoner in the box office, meaning, the much-talked about Shriram Raghavan film where the real-life couple of Saif and Kareena play a pair of spies, is a flop.

I saw the film in DVD, just recently, and I liked it. My argument is ‘Agent Vinod’ isn’t James Bond or Bourne Identity, but within the context of a Bollywood masala film, it’s well-made, the locations are stunning (they shot the film in Latvia, among other places), and not consciously over-the-top, like most Bollywood film. It’s over-the-top nonetheless, being a Bollywood film. And, I liked the film for Adil Hussain’s terrific performance. Another villain is born. He deserves more work, more meaty roles.

But, why did I mention Raja Sen? After seeing the film, though I had enjoyed it at the visceral level, I had problems from the intellectual point of view. So, I was interested to know what Raja Sen thinks. He is mostly right. Even I agree that the one-liners the Saif Ali Khan character uses (like, “I don’t want to spoil your yaadon ki baarat’...) is pathetic. But, I couldn’t agree when Sen likens the film to a video game. The film has more heart than that.

Then I asked around. A friend, who saw the film in theatre like the “look”. It was a good timepass. And, here is what a high society female friend had to say about Kareena Kapoor’s turn: “I think Kareena Kapoor has decided that from now on, she won’t act, only pout.” But, this is not true. I found her superior than her beau. And she can carry a strapless gown (in the opera). Another friend, who doesn’t know English (for those, the film itself was very helpful, explaining the nature of the nuclear bomb), found the film confusing. It spend a long time outside India, he complained. This is true.

And I found the film long, inordinately so.

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More about Armond White Here.
Agent Vinod isn’t clever enough. The Raja Sen review here.

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust

There were vampires once, beginning with ever-intriguing (imagine Christopher Lee) Count Dracula, and his brood, all dark, handsome, brooding figures with fangs and lust for blood, before Mr Edward Cullen shows up (in the shape of the pale and shinning Robert Pattinson), and tamed the bloodlust forever (You see, the “good” Cullen family in Stephenie Meyer’s insanely popular and unworthy ‘Twilight’ series do not drink human blood, but that of animals).

Then, there were those half-breeds — like Blade — half-human, half-vampires, who operate without allegiance to either; they are the race unto themselves, and boy, are they dangerous!

In the very popular Japanese series of comic books, later turned into animation films, these half-breeds are called “dunpeal”, and these comics tell the tale of one such dunpeal, Vampire Hunter D.

The story is set in the distant future, where vampires have ruled for centuries. Now, their powers are in the wane and the humans have reclaimed much of the earth. There are, however, certain places which are still ruled by the creatures of the night. (If the premise reminds you of another Japanese comic book series ‘Priest’, then of course, there are similarities).

This reality of the skirmishes between daylight human and nightly vampires have given rise to groups of mercenaries, bounty hunters, who hunt vampires for money. Among them, the best is “D” because, like Blade (remember him?), he is half-vampire himself and hence can smell other vampires and like Blade, he has all the strength of the vampires and none of their weaknesses. And, like Blade, he has no love for the vampire-kind, for, they are responsible for his being. Apparently, his father was a vampire king, allegedly, Count Dracula, and his mother was a mortal. D is an all-round expert in fighting and wears a cape, and rides a horse with metal legs and has a peculiar left hand, on the palm of which resides a talkative demon (very much like Calcifer in Studio ‘Gibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle’).

In ‘Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust’, the second animation film featuring D the Dunpeal, he is hired to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a wealthy man, or to kill her if she has already been turned into a vampire. D would willingly do so, as he doesn’t approve the union between the two species. But, there is another group of mercenaries on the same trail, and they have a young girl with them, Leila, a human, who’d would be our heroine for the story. Both the parties cross path and fight numerous creatures of the night before they could find the kidnapped girl, who, it turns out, is in love with the vampire who kidnapped her and now, they are on their way to escape into a safe haven where they’d be happy.

So far as stories involving vampires are concerned, the film doesn’t break any new ground. But, the film takes its narrative very seriously, in turn forcing us to do the same. It helps that the screenplay is fast, and the animation is flawless.

A friend had given me the film years ago, and I never bothered to check it out, it being a vampire story and being the second part of a story I did not know anything about. Then, the other day, I played the film, and I was glued into it. Worth a watch.

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A Dhampir in Balkan folklore is the child of a vampire father and a human mother. The term is sometimes spelled dhampyre, dhamphir, or dhampyr. Dhampir powers are similar to those of vampires, but without the usual weaknesses. Dhampirs are supposed to be adept at detecting and killing vampires.

In recent vampire fiction, Dhampir (or sometimes "dampeer" or dunpeal due to translation difficulties with the Japanese anime Vampire Hunter D and its sequel) refers to any hybrid of one human and one vampire parent; they are half-breeds, not vampires themselves.

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Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is a 2000 anime film written and directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri. The film is based on Hideyuki Kikuchi's Vampire Hunter D novels, D - Demon Deathchase.

More about Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust here.

We Were Here

Between the end of the Flower Power and the arrival of the HIV virus in the United States, San Francisco was the “Mecca” of the American gay people. With the rise of Harvey Milk as the spokesperson of their rights, and availability of acceptance, and being a place of hedonistic pleasures, young people from all over the country thronged the streets of the Bay Area, “to be gay.” Daniel says: If you had a bus ticket, it better be for San Francisco. Because that’s where everyone was going.” The Castro district and the surrounding areas were filled with young, handsome men ever ready to have sex with another man — the more the merrier. How much sex can you have? Someone asked. A lot actually, if you think about it.

Everything was perfect. Then Harvey Milk was shot dead in 1978, and as the 1980s arrived, things had taken a worse turn, with those handsome, hedonistic, carefree young men showing symptoms of unheard of diseases, like Kaposi’s sarcoma, or some other ailment that can be found only in sheep, and they started to drop dead. By every passing day, more and more people started to fall sick; it was beginning to turn into an epidemic. Nobody knew what the disease was. There was a large scale panic and stigma. They called it “gay plague” or “gay cancer”, as it appeared that most of the victims were active homosexual men. By the time doctors discovered the virus and figured out how it spread, half of the young men in San Francisco were already dead, or dying. The situation had already worsened by the time doctors started to prescribe a series of drugs to combat the condition, which, in common parlance, came to be known as the cocktail drug.

All this was almost 30 years back. Things have changed considerably since then, despite the fact that AIDS continues to kill people. The queer identity itself has evolved. There is more awareness. Now, the queer community doesn’t need acceptance, they need the rights, the rights to merry, which has now become an election issue in the US.

In this context, ‘We Were Here’ (2011), is a beautiful and heartbreaking documentary by David Weissman, visits the past and recreates the stories of those “AIDS Years” with the help of personal interviews, photographs and newspaper clippings. As one of the interviewees mentions, it was like a war zone those day, and even those who survived, could not escape the battle scars.

To give credit where it’s due, ‘We Were Here’, as the title sounds, isn’t a melodramatic story of a disease, of loss, neither it is a smug tale of survival. Instead the film tells the story of a time of personal crisis and how a few individuals responded to it. It was a unique time when a utopia turned into a nightmare. Already spurned by society and family, those gay men, now dying, had no one but themselves, and the community, and the community rose to the occasion, with more strength than anyone could ever imagine. As the virus almost destroyed a generation, it was also the triumph of the gay rights movement, when the gay men did all they could to help their lovers, friends, everything culminating into movements like ACT UP, with activists screaming “Silence = death.”

The film features four men and one woman, who were there in the middle of all this (one of them being HIV+ himself. The respondents recount their own stories of the AIDS years, how it started, how they lost their lovers, friends, and how they cope with it, all in simple matter-of-fact manner, without trying to manipulate the emotions of the audience. This is the film’s greatest strength — its stoicism. And you feel for those people because they are still trying to make sense of life after what happened. As Daniel says, people say I’m brave to have gone through all this. But, it’s not the case. He was in the middle of this battleground, and he had no choice but to fight it and hope.

The film ends with a sense of muted optimism, as Daniel says how after all these years he had allowed himself to hope for the future, again, despite the fact that he still missed his lovers, friends, who did not make it.

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The Official Description: “We Were Here documents the coming of what was called the "Gay Plague" in the early 1980s. It illuminates the profound personal and community issues raised by the AIDS epidemic as well as the broad political and social upheavals it unleashed. It offers a cathartic validation for the generation that suffered through, and responded to, the onset of AIDS. It opens a window of understanding to those who have only the vaguest notions of what transpired in those years. It provides insight into what society could, and should, offer its citizens in the way of medical care, social services, and community support.

Writes Ann Hornaday: ... The tragic but empowering arc of the gay community's response to AIDS is limned with acumen and sensitivity in "We Were Here," David Weissman and Bill Weber's documentary that is all the more moving for being so lucidly understated. Interviewing four men and a female nurse who were on the front lines during the most deadly years of the "gay cancer," as it was known in the early 1980s, the filmmakers take viewers back to those first vague glimmers of distress, then plunge them headlong into the crisis at its most florid. "How were you getting it? Who were you getting it from? Who was giving it to who?" Ed Wolf, an early caregiver, recalls the questions as the panic that set in ... As an activist named Paul Boneberg recalls in the film, his friends' and neighbors' immediate impulse to care for the sick and dying "was a response America should be proud of." He's right, and "We Were Here" pays eloquent homage to men and women who deserve to be celebrated and remembered as heroes...
The Complete Review Here.

Writes Stephen Cole: ‘We Were Here’ tells first-hand the story of how AIDS attacked San Francisco, killing more than 15,000. Whole peer groups were happy, healthy, and then dead in months. Early in David Weissman’s eloquent, overpowering documentary, we’re shown a street-party photo. AIDS activist Paul Boneberg comments: “HIV arrives in San Francisco in 1976 and by 1979 probably 10 per cent of gay men in that crowd were infected. By the time we discover something is happening in June, ’81, 20 per cent are infected. By the time we get the test so people can find out if they’re infected, close to 50 per cent of gay men in San Francisco are infected.” ... Survivors interviewed include an artist, Daniel Goldstein, a nurse, Eileen Glutzer, and a street florist, Guy Clark, who did too much pro-bono work in the eighties. Goldstein lost two partners and every close friend. Collectively, they sketch a heroic chronology of life during wartime, providing more drama than the fictional characters in ‘Contagion’ (2011).
The Complete Review Here.

Writes Stephen Holden: “There was nothing extraordinary about the fact that you lose the people you love because it’s going to happen to all of us,” observes Ed Wolf, a gentle, gay San Franciscan in his mid-50s who devoted years to counseling dying AIDS patients during the peak of the epidemic. “It’s just that it happened in this targeted community of people who were disenfranchised and separated from their families. And a whole group of other people stepped up and became their family.” ...
The Complete Review Here.

Mehdi Hassan

Growing up, my father wasn’t rich, if he wasn’t poor. Understandably, I did not have access to many things which an upper middle class teen-age boy (which all my friends were) gets as given. It was all the more acute since I had an elder brother; if we wanted something, it was my brother’s want that was a priority, and I was an understanding kid. On most occasions I accepted my father’s decision of depriving me of what I wanted. For years, I used to wear my brother’s discarded clothes, and I did not really complain.

Coming to my access to music, I really had to fight with my father for months to get a music system at home. (we had a radio, and a TV set, but those days, just after T-Series introduced cheaper audio cassettes, a cassettes-player was a must-have. All my friends had it.). Now that I had completed my 10th, in flying colours no less, I wanted a music system, nothing else would do. It was not easy to convince my father. To his credit, however, he got me a bicycle the next day I got the results; since I’d be going to college now, I needed a new bike.

Anyway, we finally got the music system. The next issue was the cassettes. A cassette cost Rs 27 or thereabouts. Those days it was a lot of money. And, I couldn’t really ask my father money for audio cassettes. So, I’d save up my pocket money, and had to choose which cassette I was going to buy. The choices were mostly between one popular Hindi film soundtrack or the other. Since I couldn’t afford to buy all cassettes I’d settled for those combined ones which had songs from two different films, on either sides of the tape. I remember I had cassettes of ‘Baazigar’ combined with ‘Imtihan’, ‘1942: A Love Story’ combined with ‘Darr’ and so on.

Later, after I made friends in college, the cassette problem was temporarily solved, when I’d borrow cassettes from my friends, listen to it non-stop for a few days and then return it and get another. And, our choices were very limited. The majority of the songs we listened to were from Hindi films, songs which we would hear first in ‘Chitrahar’ in Doordarshan. There were occasional Indie Pop albums — Baba Saigal (‘Thanda Thanda Pani’), Alisha Chinai (‘Made in India’), or Daler Mehndi (‘Dardi Rab Rab’), and rarely some western music, like Bryan Adams (‘18 Till I Die’) and Michael Learns To Rock (‘Paint My Love’), and Dr Alban (‘It’s My Life’; Does anyone remember him anymore?). We had some Assamese music as well. Apart from Bhupen Hazarika, the popular singer was Jitul Sonowal (‘Marami Lagari’), before Zubin Garg came to prominence.

In short, classical music was not in the horizon of my listening agenda. Neither was Gazals. I had heard of Mehdi Hassan, but never heard him. For me, Gazal was restricted to select Jagjit Singh numbers (‘Yeh Kagaz ki Kashti’, Yeh Tera Ghar Yeh Mera Ghar’), and Penaz Masani with her candyfloss hair as seen in Doordarshan. And just one song of Ghulam Ali (‘Chupke Chupke’).

In short I had never heard Mehdi Hassan sing, and I did not know what I was missing.

I first heard Mehdi Hassan in 1997, in Pune. It was the same year I also discovered Kaifi Azmi’s poetry, Marathi music, Hollywood films and other such assorted stuff. The first number I heard was ‘Ranjish Hi Sahi’, and the song is sheared in my memory. I may forget everything, but I won’t forget the experience of listening to this song for the first time, it was like first kiss, and then over and over again. Those were days of carefree youth, when mourning for lost love was a vocation to indulge in. So we friends would get drunk, mourn about our tragic love lives, and listen to Mehdi Hassan’s desperate voice: “Do come, even if to break my heart all over again, do come.”

Those days I was a non-drinker. Now, I cannot even imagine the time when I’d hate the smell of alcohol. I stayed in a hostel-cum-lodge, called Shridhar Lodge, opposite the Wadarwadi slums, where four of us shared a room, and we had a lot of friends. So, on any given day, the room would always be filled with people, and every evening, there’d be a party — mostly Rum, preferably Old Monk, and often, ganja, grass, weed, whatever you call it, it was so easily available at the slum. And I was the good boy. A roommate would bring the bottles in the evening and arrange it on the table, next to his books, and ask me, “Don’t you feel like opening the bottle right now and finish it?” I did not feel like. I did not care about drinks then. Now, I can understand the sentiment of the friend. This is what you call addiction. (Ask me, I know: Between 2001 and 2002, I used to get drunk every afternoon for one whole year, perhaps a little more than that. I was in love, and the only way we could sustain our love was to hit the bar and get drunk till we were out of our minds. It went on for a long time. It had to end sooner or latter, and it had to end in a tragedy. R is now dead, and I don’t hold any grudges against him.)

So, every evening these youngsters would gather in our tiny room filled with alcohol stench and smoke, and they’d talk, about their tragic love stories, mostly, and play Mehdi Hassan, all through the nigh. Though I won’t drink, I’d get a plastic glass filled with drinks anyway, and I will nurse it till I could find a place it empty it without anyone noticing and I would close my eyes and listen to Mehdi Hassan’s voice filling the room.

How do you explain the mesmerising effect of Mehdi Hassan? I cannot. But, the voice spoiled me forever. After listening to him I couldn’t listen to any other Gazal singer, not Jagjit Singh, not Ghulam Ali, not Talat Aziz, no one, except perhaps, Bhupinder Singh. He is another singer with a inspired, haunting voice, especially when he sings the poetry of the great Gulzar.

There are a number of verses immortalised by Mehdi Hassan’s voice that I can recite from memory. If I remember correctly, most of these verses were written by Farhat Shehzad. I remember the couplet: “Khud apni hathon se Shehzad usko kaat diya, jis darakth ke tehni pe aashiyana tha...” With his own hands Shehzad axed the bough on which branch was his love nest...” Extraordinary.

I love the Urdu language, there is a regal beauty about it; but I don’t understand all the words, and when there’s such an extraordinary voice, and extraordinary style of singing, you don’t need to understand, all you need is to feel.

Then there’s is ‘Kya Toota Hai Andar, Andar...’, and then my favourite of all time, from the album ‘Kehna Usey’:

“...konpalein phir phuut aayin shaak
par kahana
use wo na samajha hai na samajhega
magar kahana use
waqt ka tuufaan har ik shay baha kar le gaya
itani tanha ho gayi hai rahaguzar
kahana use
ja raha hai chhod kar tanha mujhe jisake liye
chain na de paayega wo sim-o-zar
kahana use
ris raha ho kuun dil se lab magar
hansate rahe kar gaya barabaad mujhako ye hunar
kahana use
jisane zakmon se mera ‘Shahazaad’ sina bhar diya
muskara kar aaj pyaare chaaraagar
kahana use...

(Remembering Rajib Deka, Bhaskar Goswami, Santanu Saikia, Surja Talukdar, Raju Das, Bipul Kalita and others...)

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"The magic of his voice cannot be described in words... He drew everybody - the common man, the well read, the rich, equally to him when he rendered the ghazals of such profoundly intellectual and philosophical poets as Faiz Ahmed Faiz or Ghalib for instance," says veteran actor Dilip Kumar. The full story here.

Making the Deal

What is it with Hollywood actor Nicolas Cage and the Devil? (Or Angels?) The actor seems to have specialised in playing roles of conflicted persons, a men with questionable moral integrity, who must fight with the Devil to redeem themselves. He seems to be playing versions of these in every other movie, and it seems, he is succeeding as well, the latest being the sequel to the 2007 super hero (villain/being?) flick ‘Ghost Rider’; this time, he is the ‘Spirit of Vengeance’ (2012).

There’s nothing special about ‘Spirit of Vengeance’, but as a standard Hollywood actioner, it works. The film is relentless, with enjoyable action sequences, top class special effects and a strong supporting cast, including Idris Elba, and Ciaran Hinds as the Devil (He takes the mantle from Peter Fonda who played the Devil in the earlier film). If you want a comparison, it’s at least better than ‘Drive Angry’ (2011), another relentless actioner, where Cage was Milton, a mercenary from hell, on a mission to save his granddaughter from a Satanic cult.

In ‘Season of the Witch’ (2010), Cage played Behman von Bleiruck, a deserter from the Crusade who must help transport a woman possessed by the Devil to an isolated monastery located very conveniently in the wilderness. The highlight of the film was the appearance of the Devil himself in the climatic battle, complete with the amber eyes and bat wings. No prizes for guessing that our hero finally defeats the villain, at the expense of his life.

In ‘The Sorcerer's Apprentice’ (2010), Cage is a wizard called Balthazar Blake, who manifests in today’s New York after being trapped in an urn for thousand of years, and now, he must devise a plan to stop the impending resurrection of the fabled Arthurian witch Morgana.

In 2006, he was the new Wicker Man, in the remake of the film, where he becomes the human sacrifice of a cult.

There is a pattern in these Hollywood stories involving Devil, the most important of them is that the Devil must be defeated, and the hero must rise to the occasion. To bring home the point, the hero/protagonist is always a person with questionable moral integrity, someone who is outside the bounds of law and society, someone who has lost his “faith.” In the course of the narrative, leading to the final face-off, the protagonist must regain his “faith”, and earn the powers to defeat the fallen one.

There are numerous examples. In ‘End of Days’ (1999), Arnold Schwarzenegger faces the Devil. In ‘Stigmata’ (1999), it’s a faithless priest played by Garbriel Byrne. In ‘Constantine’ (2005), it’s Keanu Reeves’ dying demon hunter. The poor Devil! He no match with the humans. There was an interesting departure to this template in Danzel Washington starrer ‘Fallen’ (1998), where the demon (not Satan himself, but one of his minions) manages to outsmart the ever-resourceful hero.

Where did this structure of the face-off between the supernatural villain and all-very-human faithful hero originate. In the context of Hollywood, the answer lies in the tale of ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster’. Webster was a real-life lawyer and orator, and this fictional tale relates how a farmer sells his soul to the devil and when the Prince of Darkness comes to collect what is his due, Webster argues on behalf of the poor farmer and defeats the Devil.

It’s an inspiring story, which has been told and retold, and was also made into a movie. However, to take look at the bigger picture, the theme of the story is as old as The Bible itself. It’s the story of faith vs temptation, righteousness vs evil, God vs Satan, and most importantly, it’s about making a choice, the right choice.

And these themes found its most recognisable representation in the tale of Faust or Faustus, a German folk tale, the story of a scholar who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange of unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Since then, the story has been told and retold numerous times, most prominent among them being the play by Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe, and 200 years later, by German poet Goethe. But, Marlowe’s Faustus is different from Goethe’s Faust and they are very different from Thomas Mann’s 1947 book or F W Murnau’s 1926 silent film or Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov’s recent ‘Faust’ (2011).

Personally, I have a soft corner for the poor doctor, especially in the Goethe version, where he is an intellectual, who is not satisfied with whatever he has learnt. He wants to know more, know everything, and it becomes his undoing. (My favourite portion is when Gretchen asks him whether he believes in God, and he passionately answer, who can point to a certain artefact and say that this is God and I believe him, and who can point to a certain artefact and say I do not believe him. The idea of belief is more complicated than that.).

This was the tragedy of Dr Faustus — his incredulity, his disbelief, his doubts, his faithlessness. He summoned Satan to do his bidding in a pure scientific curiosity. He did not believe that Satan existed, or God, or hell, or eternal damnation. Hence, he had no qualms in making the deal, and bartering his soul. At the end, in Marlowe’s version of the story, when Mephistopheles arrives to collect his soul, Dr Faustus cannot even ask God for help. He now knew that Devil existed, because he had seen him, but how did he believe that God existed. He had never seen him:

.... The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.
O I’ll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?
See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah my Christ—
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ;
Yet will I call on him—O spare me, Lucifer!...

Personally, I believe, Dr Faustus paid a rather heavy price for his inability to believe. For this, the blame goes to the structure of organised religion, who wants you to believe/have faith without question. It was this power that made Dr Faustus an example, to be aware of.

Too bad Dr Faustus did not have Daniel Webster to argue on his behalf, and too bad, he was not a Hollywood hero, who would defeat the Devil at any cost.

Just to be clear, Johnny Blaze in the original ‘Ghost Rider’, made the deal with the devil, not for power and knowledge, but to save his father’s life. And the devil tricked him.

Tail Piece: In Indian folk tradition, there are no devils. That doesn’t stop us from making the deal though. We make the deal with the Gods, or the Demons, the Asuras. However, our heroes in Indian mythology do not trade their souls (the soul is not theirs to trade, it’s part of the param-brahma, the ultimate super-soul), but their offspring, their firstborn. Like the ‘Beauty and the Beast’ story, where the father escapes with his life with the promise that he’d send one of his daughters to the beast. The same way, Yayati trades his old age with the youthfulness of his younger son, Puru. Again, the Sage Markendaya was born with the express condition that he’d be death on his 16th birthday. It’s another story that he managed to cheat death, with some timely divine help.

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"The Devil and Daniel Webster" is a short story by Stephen Vincent Benét. This retelling of the classic German Faust tale is based on the short story "The Devil and Tom Walker", written by Washington Irving. Benet's version of the story centers on a New Hampshire farmer who sells his soul to the Devil and is defended by Daniel Webster, a fictional version of the famous lawyer and orator. The story was published in 1937 by Farrar & Rinehart. In 1938, it appeared in The Saturday Evening Post and won an O. Henry Award that same year. The author would adapt it in 1938 into a folk opera with music by Douglas Stuart Moore, a fellow alumnus of Yale University, member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and winner of a Pulitzer Prize. Benét also worked on the screenplay adaptation for the 1941 RKO Pictures film.

More here.

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Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical works. The meaning of the word and name has been reinterpreted through the ages. Faust, and the adjective faustian, are often used to describe an arrangement in which an ambitious person surrenders moral integrity in order to achieve power and success: the proverbial "deal with the devil". The Faust of early books—as well as the ballads, dramas, movies and puppet-plays which grew out of them—is irrevocably damned because he prefers human to divine knowledge; "he laid the Holy Scriptures behind the door and under the bench, refused to be called doctor of Theology, but preferred to be styled doctor of Medicine". Plays and comic puppet theatre loosely based on this legend were popular throughout Germany in the 16th century, often reducing Faust and Mephistopheles to figures of vulgar fun. The story was popularised in England by Christopher Marlowe, who gave it a classic treatment in his play, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. In Goethe's reworking of the story 200 years later, Faust becomes a dissatisfied intellectual who yearns for "more than earthly meat and drink".

More here.