True Grit

I am fascinated by history. Ture Grit is a remake of a 1960s movie and I think also inspired by a novel. The story is simple - dude killed unfairly, his daughter is angry and wants to take some revenge; she hires an old marshall to find the killer in order to kill him.
The Wild Wild West was indeed wild. There was honour and animalistic behaviour. I liked the girl's performance and the Jeff was outstanding. Still don't know how he did a drunkard so well :)
The reason I had to write about this movie is that towards the end (because the end is simply cinematic awesomeness) I was peering into my laptop screen - took me a while to realise that I was literally drawn to the movie.
A particular scene right at the very end made me say, "Damn... no wonder this movie was named True Grit".

Ilhaam

Every thought is unique. Similar to how everyone who saw this play would have thought of different things.

There is a time when the world flows into you, when you can sense everything around you and understand all that there is; when that happens, things that used to matter, cease to matter in the same way. What would you do if you were to choose between moksha and bondage to human societal life?
/I can't be here and there at the same time... that is what humans want./
/Kya poori duniya aa kar tumse kehti hai... main hoon...?/

There is a joy in being a kid and there is regret in seeing that innocence in somebody else.
Someone weird is just someone who does not conform to accepted norms of human societal behaviour. Epilepsy was deemed madness, homosexuals are still not treated well, cross-dressers are not accepted, autistic people are scary, deformed faces are revolting. Odd people exist because of the categorization by other people who form the majority.

Moving to another point; what would you do if your loved one goes insane, i.e. you can't understand/ tolerate him/ her? What happens when that someone does not appreciate your presence?
What is the similarity between someone who treats you badly and someone who suffers from dementia or Alzheimer's? Are you liable to take care of a loved one more because of your love or because of society? What would you do if you realised you were losing control over your sanity?

Ilhaam is a play that I saw at Prithvi Theatre yesterday. One of the best I have seen in a while. A note to the buffoons who like to text and email while the play is on - one fine day, you might be shot or stabbed by someone like me.

Kshay

Revolutionary Road meets Trainspotting in India. Not suggesting that the creators of this movie copied from any other movie - am just referring to how deeply thought-provoking, social, intense and terribly depressing this movie was.
An absolutely wonderful creation shot in black and white - good idea though because it focuses attention on the characters. I haven't heard such wonderful use of music in a while now and the story was simple yet filmed in a brilliant way. Even with the use of expressionism, the director didn't tire the audience as it happened in that god-awful movie: The Tree of Life.
Rasika Dugal was awesome and it was her movie through and through.

Thoughts:
Why was the sculptor kid such an angry boy?
Why was Chhaya obsessed with the stone?
Why did Laxmi always look at Chhaya?
Could losing a child during pregnancy be that disturbing?
Would Chhaya have been the same if she would not have cared for the neighbour's kid in the beginning of the movie?
Why was Arvind oblivious to everything?
Is India finally becoming like the West, where social support is difficult to find?
If life really is that difficult, why do people struggle through it?
Would a dead spouse be better than a dead self?

I went for this movie because a friend recommended it. I didn't know the meaning of Kshay until I came back home after the movie. The progression towards the end.
"Do you know what a woman goes through when her child has died and she will never know what it would be like to ever give birth to one of her own? Do you know what it's like when she is left all alone at home with nothing to do with her life?"

Dosar

I love human relations. The movie kept things vague and kept one engrossed with the questions or comments: "What is she going to do/ say? How is he going to respond? Why is this woman suffering an abusive husband? Who was Mita? Yeah sure, now he wants her back... Who are these two? Yeah, the prostitute makes sense... I think."
Wonderful symbolism and art meshed with a good story. Don't know why he did a B/W film, but read somewhere that he did it just for kicks...
"Here's the pack of condoms; my wife won't need it. Your husband might." Ghosh seems to do a wonderful job with personalities and close-ups. Aaaah... Bengali movies...

Dahan

I met someone who recommended a bunch of bengali movies. I saw Dahan last night. Fabulous movie - there is beauty in its creation, in its characters, in their emotions, in the nuances of being Indian/ Bengali. I liked how the director did not make it a 'powerful' movie about rape, but rather about molestation born out of an act of instinct. I loved the grandmother in the movie.
There was a story about how many years ago, someone from her (grandmother's) family forgot a wallet full of money in the cab. Everybody was upset. In the morning, the cab driver returned with the wallet. Everybody was happy and rejoicing and distributing sweets and giving a tip to the cabbie. "They reacted as though stealing the wallet was the natural thing and returning it was something special."
I loved that story because it is thought-provoking.
Coming back to the movie... characters were thoroughly controlled. The husbands/ boyfriends were quintessential MCPs and may be a little more than that. When Romita (victim) thought about divorce, it wasn't made a big issue in the movie, but the snap response was, what will the people think? Think how much your parents spent on the marriage? Polash (Romita's husband) shied away from the incident and hoped to not face it in society; as a defense mechanism, he diverted his angst towards Romita and accused her of having pre-marital relations with the molesters. May be she was raped? That's the story which floated about in the community.
It was odd, how I thought the movie would be about the plight of a girl who had been molested and when  I sat through the movie, the plight was shared by every character in the movie but based on the perceived thoughts of others in the community.
We Indians grow up with a cultural burden based on how society perceives events; luckily, things are changing in cities such as Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore but not as much as they should.
I am also reading Swami Vivekanand's letters right now and I see that the Hindu culture had a wonderful influence on Indian development, but somewhere, society has indeed become such an overwhelming force which dictates most people's behaviour based on what is the right or the wrong thing to do.
Strawberry fields forever. Nothing's gonna change my world. I am happy to be a Mumbai-ite. Thank you Rituparno Ghosh.

Tagore's Speeches

The past is important and reading from the past brings us closer. Tagore had thoughts and these thoughts gave rise to speeches around the world. I am currently reading Speeches by Tagore in the book called "Race Conflict and other Speeches". An excerpt from a speech titled Women's Place in the World:

"A man's interest in his fellow beings becomes real when he finds in them some special form of usefulness or striking gift of powers, but a woman feels interest in her fellow-beings because they are human, not because of some particular purpose they can serve, uncommon talent which they may possess. Her exuberance of vital interest is spontaneously expressive; it makes her speech, her laughter, her movement, graceful and picturesque: for the note of gracefulness is in this harmony with all our surrounding interests."

...

"Woman has her natural power that penetrates through the surface to the heart of things, where in the mystery of life dwells an eternal source of interest; and therefore her love has not necessarily to wait for the excitation of surprising qualities. God has sent woman not merely to explore or exploit but to love the world which is a world of ordinary things and events. She is not in the world of fairy tale where the fair woman sleeps for ages till she is touched by the magic wand. In God's world women have their magic wands everywhere, which keep their hearts awake, and these are not the golden wands of wealth nor the iron rods of power.
Of late, with the help of science, civilization has been growing increasingly impersonal in character, so that the full reality of the individual is more and more ignored."

_________________________________________

Tagore wrote well and thought better. It's important for us to look back at what he wrote and from what I have read thus far, this essay has struck me most.

Indian Summer

Book

March 1947:

"While all this [riots] was going on, Mountbatten had to meet the Indian leaders. For that first week, the two least compromising and highest profile among them declined his invitation... Mohammad Ali Jinnah, representing the Muslim League, remained in Bombay making inflammatory speeches. Mohandas Gandhi, representing Mohandas Gandhi, was living among the outcastes in distant Bihar, and refused to take advantage of the viceregal aircraft. "


1937:

Excerpt from published article:
"Men like Jawaharlal with all their capacity for great and good work, are unsafe in democracy. He calls himself a democrat and a socialist, and no doubt he does so in all earnestness, but every psychologist knows that the mind is ultimately a slave to the heart and logic can always be made to fit in with the desires and irresistible urges of a person. A little twist and Jawahar might turn a dictator sweeping aside the paraphernalia of a slow-moving democracy... His conceit is already formidable. It must be checked. We want no Caesars.

This powerful vilification was published under the pseudonym 'Chanakya', after an ancient political philosopher, and caused great outrage among Nehru's followers. What they did not realise was that 'Chanakya' was actually Jawaharlal Nehru himself. Introspection, honesty, wit and mischief: few other politicians in history could have written such a lucid essay in self-deconstruction. "

1947 August:

From the outset, Indian women would earn equal pay for equal work - a right not conferred upon British women until the 1970s....
But behind this image of feminist progress, lay a long, dark shadow of feminist despair. At Calcutta in 1946, and subsequently, the vengeance of the rioters had been wreaked deliberately on women. As the great migration and great slaughters following partition got underway, so too did a sustained and brutal campaign of sexual persecution. The use of rape as a weapon of war was conscious and emphatic. On every side, proud tales were told of the degradation of enemy women. Thousands of women were abducted, forcibly married to their assailants, and bundled away to the other side of the border. Many never saw their families again. Thousands more were simply used and thrown back into their villages. There were accounts of women who had been held down while their breasts and arms were cut, tattooed or branded with their rapists' names and the dates of their attacks.





- Indian Summer by Alex Von Tunzelmann

Fantastic book. Brazen and factual. Boring in parts but enjoyable nonetheless.

Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi

Emotions when hidden, stories when unsaid, and love when unconsummated can create pieces of art that stay engraved.
I cried twice during this movie and was filled with rage once.
The name of the movie means: "A thousand desires such as this..." The literal translation may not be possible as the name implies something and is open to interpretation.
A story that seems to be about ideologies but is in fact about emotions, behaviours, choices, helplessness and unbridled suffering; great work by Shiney Ahuja, Chitrangada Singh (possibly one of the most beautiful women I have seen) and Kay Kay Menon.

Period movies rarely rear their heads from the Indian stable; there are a lot of untold stories from India's past, possibly because Indian film-makers do not have the courage to make them - which is quite understandable.

Technically unsound, weird editing, but the silence spoke and the story was told. A movie that should be seen for there are a lot of things that this movie can make one think of, because art, at times, has rough edges, because pain is difficult to feel - and this movie gets one close to it. I may sound a bit too poetic about this, but such is the movie.

This Boy's Life

One of those that gets lost in the plethora of movies that rush by year on year... A great story that every child can relate to, even though it may be in the smallest of ways. I wonder if people knew that Leonardo DiCaprio would one day be as big an actor as he is today... I have seen a lot of his movies and his performance in this one stands out; he was a natural.
The new father (De Niro) seems paternal at times and turns to his wicked side all of a sudden; a fabulous actor in his own right but is overshadowed by DiCaprio in this flick.
I believe that most great movies are made great through the cast, its ability to convince an audience and the director's ability to mould everything together - all of which have been achieved. One can't help but believe that this is Tobias Wolff (DiCaprio) himself, as this movie is based on his childhood.
One notices the mother's helplessness, the new father's own dark background and resentment, Tobias's friends, Tobias's different sides and the raw emotion in almost each scene. There was nothing over the top, given that De Niro's performances are, at times, too 'in your face'. Every part of the movie blended perfectly with the other and a reason for this could be the fact that this was Tobias's real story - writers are often overlooked, but it is they who plant the seed for what can be a great on-screen story.