North East Book Fair

Random rambling on Assamese Literature after attending the 12th North East Book Fair, December 2010

Part I

It was a happy coincidence that it was the time for the 12th North East Book Fair when was visiting Guwahati in early December 2010. This was to be my second visit to this particular book fair. I had attended the first-ever NE book fair 12 years ago, when it was organised as a separate event from the then lone Guwahati book fair. The Guwahati book fair is a semi-government affair, as it is organised by the Assam Publication Board. If I remember correctly, a few local publishers did not get a good deal in the Guwahati book fair, and lobbied to start a similar event on their own. Thus was born the North East book fair.

This time, I was really surprised and happy to see how much media coverage the fair generated. There are at least three television chanels in Guwahati. All of them did quite extensive coverage, even going live for certain events. Even the newspapers covered the event every day for a week or so. The event became so popular that the organisers had to extend the dates for two more days. The papers reported a healthy sale of books. There were news of inauguration of numerous books — novels, poetry, what-not! In short, Guwahati was in a frenzy of book mania.

For me, it was sort of an eye-opener. Assamese is my mother tongue, and there was a time I wanted to be a writer in Assamese. However, in the last 12 years or so, my connection with Assamese literature has been scanty. I left Assam for higher studies in 1997, and since then I an not really in touch with Assamese literature. I am familiar with the works of a few writers, authors I knew and admired — Arun Sharma, Dhrubajyoti Bora, Mamoni Roisom Goswami, Nirupama Borgohain, Homen Borgohain, Arupa Patangiya Kalita, and among poets, Sameer Tanti, Gyan Pujari, Anubhav Talasi. But, things had changed. For example, there was a time, like every youngster of the time, I was hooked to the poetry of Nilim Kumar. He gave a brand new perspective to Assamese poetry, a bold new voice. His first collection, Panit Manuh Manuhbor Maas (Men in Water, Men are the Fish), was a landmark achievement. Now, a few years ago, I picked up his latest collection Tomak Akasot Dujoni Jon (There’s Two Moons In Your Sky), and I could not read it. The language sounded awkward, the images trite, the form weak. Was it because I was reading Assamese after a long time, or was it because the Assamese language had evolved in the last decade and I am not aware of this? I guess, it was both. Assamese language has evolved over the years, and not really for the best. It makes most of the works by the new writers unreadable, especially for me. But, in case of Mr Kumar, it’s not the language, it’s the depth. He is now a established poet, whatever he writes would sell, and he writes whatever; mundane observation in mundane language, in broken sentences. His poems these days sound like all those Facebook status messages; a meaningless effort to sound profound. Whatever!

But, I must confess, I haven’t read much. There was a time Debabrat Das was my favourite author. He in a way introduced me to world cinema, and Marquez. I remember meeting him once in the office of the then editor of ‘Goriyashi’, the number one literary magazine in Assam, the Late Chandraprakash Saikia. He was so affable. I miss talking to him sometimes. Anyways, Mr Das and I talked about Pablo Coelho’s ‘The Alchemist’. I told him how he inspired me, and also gave him a copy of my book of poems (which I am sure he did not read). Now, I cannot even read him; his style has become so dull. Recently, I came across an article by him in Goriyoshi where he discusses, among other things, the film ‘Cinema Paradiso.’ I have seen the film years ago, and the article did not really did justice to the magnificant film.

Then there are those popular names I have never read, and it’s not due to the lack of willingness. I tried to read those books and gave up, these book did not speak to me.

Therefore, during this Book Fair, I decided to give these new writers a try, and boy, is it a huge list, and most of them are women authors (which is an admirable achievement, I must say). In one sense, these new writers are led by Anuradha Sharma Pujari (Arupa Patangia Kalita was also a starting point, but owing to her dilligence, talent and feminist ideology, she’s now a league apart.). There are others — Mausumi Kandali (who, according to a friend is a very good writer; she has recently translated Salvador Dali’s Autobiography of a Mad Genious into Assamese), Maini Mahanta, Rita Chowdhury (Who latest tome ‘Makam’ was selling like a hot cake at the festival), and the writer, I have forgotten the names, whose latest book is called Moi Desdemona Haba Khujo (I Want To Be Desdemona).

End Of Part I

AIDS Sutra

Negar Akhari (ed.). AIDS-Sutra: Untold Stories from India. New Delhi: Random House India, 2008.

A collection of 16 personal essays by Indian authors, who have made a name for themselves, on the subject of HIV/AIDS, the book claims to have featured (untold) stories of the men and women affected by AIDS. It's almost a valid claim. But, there's scope for debate whether these stories are really "untold."

We have heard about these issues in newspapers, journals. What the book does however is to give these stories faces. The format of personal essays is an interesting one. The writers go to the field and narrate their experiences first-hand. If you believe in the theory of two Indias, the book is the mainstream India visiting the minority India and reporting from the fields.

Here lies the problem. Can the mainstream really understand the minority in just a few day's time. It's doubtful. This makes you look at the book with a certain amount of suspicion. After all, this is a book financed by Bill Gates, one of the richest man in the world, and the book talks about prostitutes who earns less than Rs 5,000 a month. See the contradiction!

But the personal essays are touching, heartfelt. Quite so, because the writers featured here are understanding. It gives the book an emotional edge. But, does it reflect the realities of the lives lived by the victims of AIDS. That's a million dollar question.

Most of the writers are new to the environment. For example, Salman Rushdie among the transgenders in Mumbai; William Dalrymple among the Devadasis in Karnataka. Despite their best efforts, the authors can go only to a certain length, not the whole nine yard. For example, Nalini Jones talks about a man who has survived the HIV stigma to become an activist. She narrates in great details, with calculated pathos, about the trauma the man went through in the last 16 years. Yet, she fails to probe how the man contacted the virus in the first place.

Despite all its flaws, the book is a noble attempt, in telling the stories of the voiceless whom nobody would listen to if it is not told by someone who commands respect.

Thus, we have Booker Prize winner Kiran Desai visiting coastal Andhra Pradesh to meet the prostitutes; Aman Sethi hitch-hiking with a truck driver on the National Highway 31, trying to understand 'Gadar' and what makes the truck drivers tick, William Dalrymple visiting the seat of goddess Yellamma in Karnataka, while Sidhartha Bose goes to Manipur to meet the drug addicts. Sunil Gangopadhay visits Sanagachi and Salman Rushdie Mumbai's hijras. Amit Choudhury talks to doctors dealing with AIDS, so does Nikita Lalwani. Nalini Jones writes about finding love in the wake of death in Bangalore while Sonia Faleiro tries to read the psyche of the policemen and prostitutes on Mumbai streets. Jaspreet Singh befriends AIDS orphans and Siddhartha Dhanwant Shanvi writes about gay filmmaker Riyad Wadia, Shobha De talks about her driver who died of AIDS and Vikram Seth remembers his inspirations to write a poem on AIDS.

Unlikely Hero

Puri, Nandita C., Unlikely Hero: Om Puri (New Delhi: Roli Books, 2009.)

Om Puri is one of the greatest actors the Indian film industry has ever produced, but this biography by his wife does not do anything for his enviable legacy. At best, it’s a bad biography, at worse, it’s unnecessary.

“Being a journalist of conscience, I have been brutally honest in my columns, even to the point of annoying my friends," writes Puri the biographer. Annoy, Mr Puri would surely be. The sad reality is this brutal honesty does not serve any purpose.

The focus of a biography is not to tell the story of a man -- he was born, he went to college, and he became famous and successful -- but try and understand and analyse how the man became what he is now. In this case, the biography should be able to tell us how Om Puri came to be such a nuanced actor.

This is something Mrs Puri fails to handle in the book. The author was a journalist once. The journalistic writing is evident here; it's all reportage, no in-depth analysis. Take for example, Puri's days as a struggling actor in Bollywood. He is one of the actors who was closely associated with the parallel cinema movement in the 1970s. The book could have seen the movement through the actor's eyes. Instead, Mrs Puri's retelling is haphazard, who gives us just the dates and the sequences. No insight.

It's a pity, especially when Mrs Puri had access to her subject to a degree which every biographer worth her salt would envy.

The Curious Incident...

Haddon, Mark, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (London: Red Fox Books, Random House, 2003, 2004)

In short, the book is a triumph in narrative technique, and description of point of view. When an adult writes about children and their thought process, inevitably the adult point-of-view creeps in. In The Curious Incident..., Haddon succeed in maintaining the momentum.

The novel is a story told by 15-year-old Christopher. He is special (The readers can hazard a guess that he has Asperger syndrome, high-functioning autism, or savant syndrome), and he does not know it; he has his quirks, he does not realise it. And, where he stands, the world looks different.

Haddon describes Christopher's world in vivid details (The red cars and the yellow cars). Often, when we describe things, we take a lot of things for granted. But Christopher does not. He describes even the minutest details, and how Haddon presents these details in the book is just extraordinary.

When his neighbour's dog is killed, Christopher decides to investigate the murder and write about it. What we read is Christopher's murder mystery novel. As he moves along, he ends up discovering more things than he could ever imagined possible.

As you read the novel, it's not the plot which becomes important, but how it is told. Scenes and situations which appear so mundane to us, appear to Christopher as unique, for example, his journey to London to find his mother who had left him because she could not handle his quirks anymore.

Haddon does not tell us that Christopher may be Autistic. We learn about it by intuition. And after we do, we do not pity Christopher, but marvel at how much he has achieved.

Pandit Bhimsen Joshi

Don Mclean moaned in the 1971 song, American Pie, about ... "The day the music died." January 24, 2011 would perhaps be the day for us in India, especially in Pune, the day when music died, with the death of Pandit Bhimsen Joshi. No epithet can define his importance in the world of Indian classical music; no amount of mourning and eulogy can sufficiently redeem what is lost forever.

Newspapers would write it was an end of an era, and that's right. But the real implication of Panditji's death is much widespread. It is as if the reality of Hindustani Classical Music suddenly became a myth.

Apart from being an extraordinary vocal artist as he was, the greatness and relevance of Pandit Bhimsen Joshi lies in his ability to popularise Indian classic music among the masses. You may not be a connoisseur of all these raga business, but you have heard of Pandit Joshi, and you have heard him singing, somewhere or other, in some form or other. That was the influence of the Bharat Ratna.

In Pune especially, he was as if the first citizen, and his residence, Kalashri, a veritable pilgrimage. You cannot command this kind of respect from the artistes and the common men if you are not the real thing. And he was indeed for real.

Among other things, Pandit Joshi gave Pune its annual music festival, in the memory of his guru Sawai Gandharva, the Sawai Gandharva Music Festival, which has a pride place in the calendar of music events organised in India. For a lot of people Sawai Gandharva is an occasion to look forward to, from one year to another. And, you are lucky if you get to hear Panditji performing, or at least see him in person.

I remember seeing him four years ago at the Sawai Gandharva. By then he had already taken ill. But he could not avoid visiting the event which over the years has become synonymous with his name. A performance was in progress; as the white car entered the field and stopped near the stage, everything stopped. Even the artistes performing at the moment, a big name in his own right, stepped out and reached the car to get Panditji's blessing. I was right there. I had seen God.

The first time I heard Pandit Bhimsen Joshi was sometimes in 1997-98, at a live event the University of Pune main building. The hall was quite big; but the organisers were sure it won't be sufficient. They were right. As the crowd overflew from the hall to the lawn outside, there were a huge screen and sound boxes carrying Panditji's voice and the persona. I listened to him sitting on the grass, in the soft glow of the growing evening. What can I say, it was sheer bliss...

Still Walking

My friends tell me: Why do you waste your time watching all those esoteric foreign language films? Why don’t you do something worthwhile.

I tell them, there is nothing worthwhile than experiencing life. I have lived life over and over again though the movies. I have been to places beyond imagination through the movies.

Right now, I am spending time with the Yokoyama family in Japan. The family has gathered to commemorate the death anniversary of their eldest son Junpei. There’s is the second son Royta, who has recently married a window with a son, and daughter Chinami, her husband and their two children. There are the parents, the now-retired doctor father and the housewife mother, who have still not recovered from the death. Visiting a child’s grave is the biggest burden for a parent, says the mother matter-of-factly.

Nothing much happen in the 24 hour the movie depicts. There are a lot of things that shimmer below the surface, below the banal talks at the dinner table, so much so that you are reminded of your family. Tolstoy said all happy families are alike. All unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways. Then perhaps, the idea of a happy family is a myth. And unhappy families learn to go along and continue to walk ahead.

Earlier, I had a major problem with slow movies. There are some films which are pretentiously slow. And there are other films which are slow because it’s a device to invite the audience live with the film’s characters.

In Still Walking, you live with the characters.

The 2008 film is directed by Hirokazu Koreeda, whom Roger Ebert calls the cinematic heir to Yasujiro Ozu, and this is not an exaggeration. He has been making movies since 1995, and critics would make you believe, each of his films — Maborosi (1995) After Life (1998) Distance (2001) Nobody Knows (2004) Hana (2006) — are a gem.

Pune International Film Festival

Is it me, or the quality of the films selected in this year’s Pune International Film Festival was really, I don’t know, not up to expectations? Probably both. Personally, Piff is the one event in the city I really look forward to, as it gives me a chance to see films on the big screen, films that I may have seen on a computer screen, and films that would never be released in India. For example, some years back, I saw Seven Samurai at Piff. It was a magnificent experience. This year, I got to see Mike Leigh’s Another Year. It’s the only Leigh film I have seen in the big screen; he’s is one of my favourite filmmakers. I also saw Kiarostami’s Copie Conforme (Certified Copy), though I had seen the film before, on computer screen. I will have to see a film where Juliet Binoche works and wins an award (She had received the best actress award at the Cannes last year).

Talking about Cannes, there were just three Cannes films at the festival, the two mentioned above and Iñárritu’s Biutiful. There were a few other films that I had heard of and wanted to see: Everyone Else, R, Of Love and Other Demons (a Costa Rican film which was a disappointment, as any film based on the writings of Gabriel Garcia Marquez would be.).

Most of the films however were either very young, or very old. This is the thing about Piff. Despite what the organisers may say, it is still a tier-two event. Films that have won international accolades won’t bother to come here (It therefore was a surprise that Biutiful was in the competition category.). Instead what we get are the newer films, the wannabes. Some of them are actually good (I remember seeing the Kazakh film Tulpan two year ago before it went on to win awards and accolades in the West). But it’s a tricky situation to choose pearls in the filth. I remember sitting through some really bad films. (My friend would suggest that we get up and leave; I refuse. My argument: Filmmaking is the most expensive of all art forms. When a person has spend so much money and time and energy, as an audience, it is our duty to give him a chance to explain himself. We cannot see just a few shots and decide that the film is no good. I stick to this argument. However, there are times I have to confess, I have sat through movies, which are actually pretty bad. But then, it’s a feature of all film festivals.)

This year, the country focus was Japan, and you won’t believe there was no Kurosawa. This I can agree, he’s after all not really country specific, but no Yahujiro Ozu, no Hayao Miyazaki? Among animation films, no Akira (the anime I liked among the selection was 5 Centimetres Per Second.). Among the selections I would recommend Kurutta Kajitsu’s 1956 film Crazed Fruit, Kobayasi’s The Human Condition, all the three parts (I wish his Kwaidan was there too.). There is Takeshi Kitano’s Boiling Point, but it’s not Beat Takeshi’s best film; I would have preferred Hana-bi, or Zatoichi. There was another Zatoichi film there of course. Kitano reminds me, oh, there was no films by Nagisha Oshima (at least Marry Christmas Mr Lawrence) or the recent Japanese classics Okuribito, (Departures), Still Walking, Tokyo Sonata. This reminds me of the anthology film Tokyo. Why cannot we get that film?

The retrospective this year was of Michael Cacoyannis. There were the classics, Iphigenia (1977) and Electra (1962). And the film version of The cherry Orchard (1999). I was really exited about this film. This is the text I read in my MA at the University of Pune, and we had a time of our life. Thanks to our teacher Professor Prashant Kumar Sinha. He made us play the role of the characters. I was Lopahin. In short, the film was a disappointment. It was too staggy. I would have liked to see Zorba the Greek, for instant, despite the fact that I have seen the film for thousands of times. Anthony Quin, in this film, and in La Strada...

Overall, there was not a single film this year that I was dying to see.

Is this because, I have other sources to see foreign films, which I did not have earlier? I don’t know.

But my friends, other film freaks, say, this year, the Pune International Film Festival was not up to the mark. Huh!!!

A Serbian Film

What makes A Serbian Film a better movie than your average torture porn flicks, a la Hostel, Saw and their numerous mutants, is that the film establishes its lead character with such sympathy and nuance that you start to care about him, despite the film’s extreme content (or perhaps because of it), so much so that the film compels you to follow Milos till the very end. Not necessarily a pleasant journey, but engrossing.

Despite you are told that the film is extreme and graphic, the first half is beguilingly simple, even touching. The film begins with a clip of a soft porn film. We see a little boy watching it on the TV. His parents arrive. They are shocked and mildly surprised. The mother switches off the TV. The father says, it’s okay, even I saw my first porn at his age.” “But that film did not star your father,” says the mother.

We are introduced to Milos’ happy family. He has retired from being a porn star and they are running low on money. We are introduced to Milos’ brother, a cop, who lusts after Milos’ wife.
One day one of his former colleagues brings him an offer. Someone wants to hire him for an ‘artistic porn’ and the money is astronomical. Milos is doubtful. Why should anyone pay him such a huge sum. But the money will help his family settle down. He meets the filmmaker in a shady villa. But there is a catch. Milos won’t be told what he would be shooting beforehand and once he signs the contract, he would have to follow the director’s orders (If this reminds you of Faust, you are right.). Milos sells his soul. He starts shooting. Slowly things start to turn bizarre. He is forced to have sex with a girl severely beaten up, with a teen-age girl in school uniform watching.

After a few days, Milos cannot take it anymore. He talks to the director and wants out. To convince him, the director shows him a film — this is where the extremes begin, this scene being the most extreme of all (it’s new born porn, shouts the director; the scene is too bizarre to describe in words).

Milos is disgusted and he walks out. As he continues to drive, he realises that he is horny. Why? Cut to the next scene and we see Milos on his bed, all bloody and bruised, 24 hours later. What happened?

Beyond this point, see the film at your own peril. You have been warned.

Millions

As Danny Boyle comes up with his latest, 127 Hours, the other day friends were having a vote on the best Boyle film. I said 28 Days Later. See, it redefined the whole zombie/undead genre, and it was the first zombie movie I really enjoyed, much before I came to Resident Evil. More names were swapped — Trainspotting, The Beach, Sunshine (Nobody mentioned Slumdog Millionaire). Then someone said, Millions, and everyone started nodding. And I was clueless. I hadn’t seen Millions until then.

Directed by Boyle between his two ambitious sci-fi films 28 Days Later and Sunshine, Millions (2004), is far less ambitious, like a hard candy that gets sweeter as you continue to suck it.

The film catches you unawares, and for this, despite Boyle’s visual inventiveness, you will have to thank the film’s casting director for finding Alex Etel to play the film’s lead, Damian. He is a nine-year-old who lives with his father and 11-year-old brother Anthony. Their mother is dead and they have changed house, moving to a place next to a railway track (Boyle’s obsession with the railways!). Damian is quite obsessed with the Christian saints, whom he sees in visions and talk to them, and builds himself a ‘hermitage’ out of cardboard boxes. Then one day, an airbag comes rolling from a running train and falls in front of him. Damian opens the bag, and it’s full of currency notes.

It’s interesting how the plot brings in so many different elements, and so smartly avoids falling into clichés. Money plays an important plot point, but it’s not the focus, neither are the saints who materialise out of thin air. It’s not even about greed and piety, or family — all these threads, and many more, including a stranger lurking in the corner ready to strike our young hero, play out together with such cohesion, you cannot think of the story in any other way.

Damian thinks the money is from God. So, following the advice from the saints, he decides to help the poor. But his brother has a different idea; he wants to invest the money. But they are too young to do any of these, and they cannot tell about the money to the adults. What makes the situation more complicated is that euro is being introduced, and in a week’s time, England may just forego pound sterling and introduce euro. If it happens, the entire amount would be obsolete. But where did the money come from, who does it belong to?

You may view Millions as a kid’s movie, and in a sense, it is. But it plays better for the adults, especially since Boyle keeps the films grounded, despite it’s fantastical elements, and never resorts to melodrama and moralising. An absolute treat.

On the side note: While the film was being made, screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce adapted the screenplay into a novel which eventually was awarded the prestigious Carnegie Medal.

Leaving

Kristin Scott Thomas plays Suzanne, English by birth, wife of a rich French doctor in south of France, and mother of two teen-age children, who falls in love with a working class Spanish man Ivan, played by Sergi López, in this middle-age marital romance directed by Catherine Corsini. Rather a flaccid affair with an ambition to be a modern-day ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’! Strictly for Scott Thomas fans, yours truly included.

You really wish the 2009 French film Partir had more meat, or for that matter some sizzling bedroom scenes which the French are very good at churning out. The film itself is not very bad, somewhere along the line you fall short of empathising with Suzanne and how she is going about to claim her love. But you cannot find fault in Scott Thomas’s performance, she is more than brilliant. Or is it a fanboy speaking?

One word about Spanish actor Sergi López, who was brilliant as the El Capitane in ‘Pan Labyrinth’ (who got his cheek silted at the end). Is there a method in madness that he has recently decided to work with woman directors, and make love with women who are not his own age. In Mapa de los sonidos de Tokyo (Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, 2009), directed by Isabel Coixet, he sleeps with a very young Rinko Kikuchi, another doomed affair.

I think López is best when he plays sly villains, like Sneaky in Pretty, Dirty Things (2002).

The Kids Are All Right

It’s little surprising when you find a ‘lesbian comedy’ with loads of on-screen sex (actually, heterosexual sex) in the end-of-the-year- top ten lists of major movie critics. Has queer cinema finally arrived in the mainstream, that Brokeback Mountain was not a fluke?

The reality is much more complicated than this. The Kids Are All Right is a well-made film, funny and touching, with a stellar star cast with first rate acting. However, it’s not queer cinema as we know it, despite the fact that director Lisa Cholodenko is queer herself.

The film is being marketed as a family drama, where the lesbian couple as the parents is just incidental. As the film ends, it reinforces the same: The family stays together (and you need a man to bring home the idea.)

That’s where I had a problem — the man in question. And this is where the drama hinges — the man is question, a sperm donor.

While categorising the actors in their reviews, a few critics named Annette Bening’s character as lead and Julian Moore as second lead. This is an interesting marker how the mainstream critics have viewed the film — the lesbian couple at the centre of the film is just a plot point, not intrinsic to the film. And the film? The film is about family, queer or otherwise. And, family comprises of husbands and wives, the leader and the follower, the breadwinner and the housewife. So, the Bening character is lead in the film because she is the breadwinner. And, don’t get me wrong, she behaves like one.

Nick and Jules is a couple who have two children, Joni and Laser, each one is the mother of one of them, and both the children are fathered by the same anonymous sperm donor. When Joni turns 18, Laser persuades her to follow up on their mysterious dad, without the knowledge of their moms. Joni agrees sceptically, and soon they land up at the place of Paul, a happy-go-lucky follow who is in restaurant business. Laser is not really impressed with his dad, but Joni is, and they decide to meet up with him again. Okay, let’s go a little faster: The mothers come to know, invite Paul home, and Jules decides that she wants to be landscape architecture, and what better place would it be than to do Paul garden? One thing leads to another and Jules and Paul starts sleeping together. But wasn’t Jules gay? Okay, every woman is till she meets the right man. And the right man promptly falls in love with her, for, among other things, she is very proactive in bed. When the cat is out of bag, all hell breaks loose, but you need not worry. As the film ends, everything is all right.

Yeah, you will have to give it to the film, it does not forces Jules to choose the man over her partner, but covertly and overtly, it still try to sell that without the father, the family may not be complete. You get this message, despite the film being so perceptive.

But the real strength of the film is the actors and how they play the roles, especially Bening and Moore. Moore does not have problem with sexuality in films (In Savage Grace, she tries to seduce her on-screen son), but here she is something else, underplaying the character with such banality that it shine through, amply supported by Bening, who also puts up a bravura performance.

Pune International Film Festival

The Pune International Film Festival Begins. I am attending the festival for the 8th time this year; the event is in its 9th year. I had missed it on the second year. Since then, however, I make it a point to attend the event — it's not as much about seeing the films, but being there among the crowd is an experience in itself. Pune has a young and enthusiastic audience community. For eight days, the festival venues, especially E-Square on Ganeshkhind Road, looks like a mela. It's a nice to be there, among the crowd. Thank you, Mr Jabbar Patel.

Foreign Films

This is the last time I am posing another list. I just could not avoid the temptation.

Roger Ebert publishes his list of The 10 best foreign films of 2010. I have seen quite a few of them and wanted to write comments on it; then thought, his comments are good enough. Anyway, what do you say about a Claire Denis film? You feel it.

The comments to Ebert’s post were more interesting (There was sugar and venom in equal measures). From there I culled another handful of names which made to someone or other’s list. In all, you have quite a list of non-English language films.

Ebert’s List
“35 Shots of Rum".
"Biutiful"
"Cell 211".
"The Chaser."
"Father of My Children".
"Home".
"Life, Above All"
"Mother" .
"Vincere" .
"White Material".

Other’s Choices
"Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives."
"The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo?"
"13 Assassins"
"Confessions"
"Alamar"
"Doogtooth"
"The Wind Journeys",
Jeonwoochi: The Taoist Wizard
“Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame”
“The Sword With No Name”
“Reign of Assassins”
“Summer Wars”
“Merantau”
“Red Cliff”
“The Good, The Bad, and The Weird”
“Hadewijch”
"Enter The Void"
"Soul Kitchen"
“Lebanon”
“Carancho”
“When We Leave (Die Fremde)”
“The Round-Up (La Rafle)”
“Everyone Else”

Surprisingly, nobody mentioned “A Serbian Film”. I saw it the other night and I am still reeling from its effect. Torture porn would be very easy definition; but it’s a very extreme and unsettling film. I would, nonetheless, put in my list, if I would ever make one.

The Addams Family

Based on The New Yorkers cartoon series, which was made into a television serial, the movies, The Addams Family and The Addams Family Values, about the eccentric (probably a mild term to describe them) Addams family, are hilarious, to say the least. What’s interesting here is that the fun comes not from the funny gags and cleaver one-liners, they are all there, but how the plot, and characters subvert everything that is considered ‘normal’. Consider the scene: The girl is chasing her brother with a meat knife. The mother stops her and give her an axe; that’s a proper weapon to kill.

Here’s a family for whom the graveyard is the best park in the world, where being a homicidal maniac is an achievement.

The premises are wonderful. The problem starts when they fall short of telling a story. But the characters inhabit the place as if they have lived there all their lives. Above all, the chemistry between Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia is just extraordinary.

RIP: Pete Postlethwaite

Peter William Postlethwaite, OBE (7 February 1946 – 2 January 2011) was an English actor. After routine early appearances in small parts for television programmes such as The Professionals, Postlethwaite's first success came with the film Distant Voices, Still Lives in 1988. He received an Academy Award nomination for his role in In the Name of the Father in 1993. His played a mysterious lawyer "Kobayashi" in The Usual Suspects, and he appeared in Alien 3, Amistad, Brassed Off, The Shipping News, The Constant Gardener, Inception, and in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet.

Victim

There are some films which need to be viewed in the context of the time it was made. Today, Victim, starring Dirk Bogarde, may sound silly and non-committal on the issues dealing with queer sexuality. However, considering the time it was released (1961), it’s a marvel that the film was actually got made.

The film is considered to be a major catalyst in de-criminalising homosexuality in Britain. It was banned in the US for the use of the word homosexual.

And consider Bogarde, the rising star of the day, who was probably gay in his personal life (He never said so, despite the fact that he authored several volumes of autobiography, and that he shared a house with his manager till the later’s death.), who had the courage to accept the role at a time when your being gay may invite a jail term.

The film highlights how an average gay man is like everyone else, and how he falls prey to blackmailers due to the existing law.

Things have changed considerably since in Britain. However, in India, the story of Victim still rings true and resonates with pathos.

Another List: A Long One

indieWIRE's 2010 Critics Poll is out. This is considered to be one of the respected end-of-the-year lists in American film journalism, compiled by indieWIRE every year, comprising of 125 film critics and bloggers. There are actually several categories. Check out the link.

The following is the result in the Best Film Category. I had added the reviews of the movies I have seen.

1 The Social Network:
2 Carlos:
3 Winter's Bone: A young girls takes the proverbial journey to the heart of darkness to find his father, dead or alive, to save her family of a catatonic mother and two young siblings.
4 Black Swan:
5 Everyone Else:
6 Dogtooth: Three children are raised in isolation, without any knowledge of the world by their parents to dangerous and haunting consequences.
7 The Ghost Writer: The biography of a former British Prime Minister is much more complicated than it seems.
8 Mother
9 I Am Love: A trophy wife and mother reclaims her life.
10 Another Year
Wild Grass: A chance find a woman’s wallet leads to life-changing consequences.
11 White Material
12 Exit Through the Gift Shop: A documentary about street artist Banksy, or is it really?
13 Toy Story 3:
14 Alamar:
The Kids Are All Right: Mid-life crisis in a lesbian family hits the roof at the arrival of the sperm donor ‘father’.
15 Greenberg:
16 Inception: A dream inside a dream inside a dream heist drama. Christopher Nolan’s latest mindfuck.
17 A Prophet: An Arab learns the rules of the underworld in a French jail.
18 Blue Valentine:
19 Secret Sunshine:
20 True Grit:
21 Shutter Island: Inmate of a mental asylum imagines that he’s a US Marashal send to crack a case in the island. Are things as simple as it seems?
22 Enter the Void:
23 Sweetgrass:
Vincere:
24 Fish Tank:
The Strange Case of Angelica:
25 Father of My Children:
26 Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl:
27 Our Beloved Month of August:
28 The King's Speech:
29 Around a Small Mountain:
30 Change Nothing:
31 127 Hours:
32 Boxing Gym:
33 Animal Kingdom:
34 Marwencol:
Somewhere:
World on a Wire:
35 Life During Wartime:
36 The Oath:
37 Last Train Home: How the population from rural China build the capitals of modern, urban China at the expense of their own lives.
38 Red Riding Trilogy:
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Comic book, video game aesthetics meets moving images. Cinema as a visual art kicks ass.
39 Lourdes:
40 Lebanon:
41 Inside Job:
Rabbit Hole:
42 Daddy Longlegs:
Never Let Me Go:
43 Trash Humpers:
44 The Illusionist:
45 Let Me In:
46 Please Give:
47 Four Lions:
48 And Everything Is Going Fine:
Bluebeard:
Mesrine:
49 Jackass 3D:
50 The American:
51 October Country:
The Fighter:
52 Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench:
Hadewijch:
No One Knows About Persian Cats:
53 Catfish:
Tiny Furniture:
54 Ajami:
Splice: A pair of scientists create a monster and raise it as their baby
The Exploding Girl:
55 Ghost Town:
The Tillman Story:
56 Mademoiselle Chambon:
The Town:
57 Inspector Bellamy:
Restrepo:
Soul Kitchen:
The Girl on the Train:
The Portuguese Nun:
58 Mid-August Lunch:
Mother and Child:
Red Riding: 1974:
59 Biutiful:
Cyrus:
Film Socialisme:
Night Catches Us:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo:
60 Amer:
Get Out of the Car:
I Love You Phillip Morris:
The Girl:
Unstoppable:
61 12th and Delaware
A Film Unfinished:
Heartbreaker:
Ondine:
Prodigal Sons:
Step Up 3-D:
The Secret In Their Eyes:
Undertow:
Vengeance:
62 Best Worst Movie:
Buried:
Get Low:
Idiots and Angels:
Le Amiche:
Micmacs:
The Art of the Steal:
The Square:
War Don Don:
63 Between Two Worlds:
Conviction:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I:
The Secret of Kells:
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger:
64 45365:
Audrey the Trainwreck:
Brooklyn's Finest:
Chloe:
City Island:
Down Terrace:
Flipped:
Kuroneko:
Liverpool:
Nowhere Boy:
Solitary Man:
The Milk of Sorrow:
The Red Chapel:
The Two Escobars:
65 Double Tide:
Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno:
How To Train Your Dragon:
Machete:
The Anchorage:
The Lottery:
Waste Land:
66 Anton Chekhov's The Duel:
Cairo Time:
Easy A:
George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead:
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work:
NY Export: Opus Jazz:
The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector:
The Killer Inside Me:
67 Barking Water:
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer:
Get Him to the Greek:
Kawasaki's Rose:
Monsters: Sin Nombre meets District 9 in Mexico. A long story in the sci-fi territory.
Prince of Broadway:
Red Hill:
Takers:
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe:
Youth in Revolt:
68 From Paris With Love:
Have You Heard From Johannesburg?
How Do You Know:
I'm Still Here:
It's Kind of a Funny Story:
La Mission:
My Dog Tulip:
REC 2:
Red Riding: 1980:
Stone:
The Eclipse:
The Expendables:
The Good The Bad The Weird:
The Next Three Days:
The Thorn in the Heart:
The Way Back:
Wah Do Dem:
Waiting for Superman: