The Roads Less Travelled …

The only thing that propels me to see every movie by a Tom, Dick, and Harry is that once in a while, by sheer chance on basis of the large numbers involved, I get my hands on one these classic masterpieces that people seem to have forgotten. After a week of seeing what I very generously term “action flicks with hot chicks” (now that I think of it this topic in itself deserves a blog post), Hopscotch was a reminder that you don’t need to make a few hundred cars to blow up and a few million bullets to be fired to make a good spy movie. Yes, The Bourne Ultimatum does give you that nice adrenaline rush as Matt Damon runs through world capitals like he runs through his list of girlfriends or something but it does get boring after a time. Movies like Hopscotch though you could see anytime.

The idea that spies are this set of nasty people, more like machines and rather indestructible too, is what comes when you read much too many Ludlum or Follett novels. On the other hand, if you are fan of the early Forsyth or the Le Carre (minus their moodiness) protagonists you would see spies as rather smart people who more than anything else have dollops of black humor poured on them and are rather nihilistic since they do the job not for the love of some flag or something but because they are good at it. Miles Kendig portrayed immaculately by Walter Matthau is one such spy. And he is taken off the field by his I-really-want-to-punch-you-on-the-face boss Myerson and decides to teach the entire agency a lesson. The old dog then proceeds to run rings around them before publishing a book of his memoirs. And yes there is romance with an old flame and the evil Russian as well, who seems to enjoy the game of his friend as much as his American boss hates it.

In his Criterion Collection essay Bruce Eder says

Ronald Neame’s Hopscotch has the distinction of being the only “feel-good” realistic spy film ever made. As the movie walks a fine line between serious drama and satirical comedy, and between topicality and escapism, it beguiles the viewer with its sophistication and complexity. The most surprising aspect of Hopscotch, however, may not be how well it walks that tightrope, but that its makers accomplished this balancing act in an era that saw the spy movie genre reduced to tales of relentless despair.

Add to this a touch of tongue-in-cheek Brit humor and you have a perfect cocktail. But seriously, don’t take his or my word for it. Go and watch it.

My erstwhile roommate and colleague and now-but-soon-to-be-ex Stanford student, Ajay seems to be addicted to movies. But the best thing is that he has gotten addicted enough to start writing about them here.

And while browsing the internet randomly, the other day I found this. A more noble pursuit I cannot think of.

And while I am at it allow me to introduce Jaman. Jaman aims to be for movies what Amazon and eBay have been for traditional marketplaces. Actually, more eBay than Amazon. It is a movie download service without a single blockbuster in its list. Apart from the South Asia collection, I had heard very little of any of the movies there.

Saw this, this, this and this after downloading them from Jaman. All free and legal. And regardless of their IMDB ratings each of these movies had the director trying to do something new. Whether they pulled it off or not doesn’t really matter because they give you food for thought. If you realize what the film is trying to say but not saying it in the best way, you have a problem and thats half the battle won. Really looking forward to seeing some of the other movies from this service.

And yes, Grindhouse is deliciously gruesome and Kung-Pow is the greatest undiscovered movie gem. Thanks DJ for the latter.

The first part of this list is foreign movies (Hollywood et all) and some really good ones miss out (Blood Diamond, Apocalypto, The Illusionist, The Prestige, The Departed, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Fountain) but for what it is worth, these are for me the top of 2006.

El Laberinto del Fauno - Guillermo del Toro’s surreal modern day fairy tale, peeks into the deep abyss that is human psyche to understand the root of our fears and desires, and our notions of good and evil. The first time I saw this movie, I was tempted to describe it Magic Realism on film. Ofelia, an eleven year old girl travels to the countryside with her pregnant mother so that the son her step-father, a maniacal army general fighting the rebels, expects can be born in his presence. Here she discovers (creates??) an alternate world where she is the long lost princess Moanna. She has to complete three tasks in order to return to her kingdom and true self. The narrative seamlessly alternates between the brutality of the ongoing Civil War and the horrors faced by Ofelia in her tasks. The viewer soon begins to wonder, what is that which is real, fully knowing which is which and yet wishing that it was the other way around. The shot where Ofelia tells a story to her yet unborn brother takes us smoothly from the real world to the realm of dreams and without any apparent effort brings us back, encapsulates the basic themes of the movie. Set in the post civil war era in General Franco’s Spain, this movie can be read at once a trenchant indictment of Fascism as well as the beauty that lies in Innocence that is often forgotten in the dark days of humanity. Spellbinding story, beautiful images and unobtrusive special effects that add to rather than overshadow the story make this a brilliant piece of cinema and by far the best movie of the year.

Children of Men - There is something about Mexican directors this year. Alfonso Cuaron’s last directed movie was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. This one could not have been more different. The movie starts with the news of the youngest person on earth being killed and that it was more than 18 years since the last person was born on this planet. The entire human race had suddenly turned infertile. Scarcely, has the importance of this piece of information sunk in that the viewer is taken head-on into a dystopian Britain of the future, where all immigrants are being evacuated (the scenes reminded me of Schindler’s List, though this time in colour) and a group of “terrorists” are fighting the oppressive regime. Clive Owen plays a disenchanted government servant, and is entrusted the task of escorting Kee, the first pregnant woman in nearly two decades safely to Human Project, so that secrets of procreation might be known again to humanity. The yet unborn baby, however, is being viewed as massive propanganda tool for the terrorists and they have managed to convince the mother that the government will never accept that the first baby in so many years was colored. There is, on the other hand, a mother’s love and her concern for the safety of her child where the cause of the government or the terrorists are of no concern. Completely different in treatment from El Laberinto del Fauno, another movie that delves deeply into what it means to be human in the first place.

Volver - Pedro Almodovar returns with this sweeping epic drama across generations to his first love, Women and the colour Red. It is in filming the stories of women, their joys, fears, trials and conquests, that Almodovar truely finds his forte (Talk to Her, Women on the Verge of Nervous Breakdown, All About my Mother). Volver is story of Raimunda, her mother Maura and her daughter Paula. Each generation of women cannot escape the actions of the other, forcing Maura to come back from afterlife to tie the loose ends up. Deaths happen, corpses are hidden and parties thrown as if they were merely just another ritual in the daily monotone of the female protagonists. Penelope Cruz as Maura and the entire cast do a brilliant job of infusing life into the script. With the theme, Almodovar also returns to his standard pallete, brilliantly filming the reds and the browns of the dresses, landscapes and the spilt blood, almost making colour as a separate voice in the film. This is not a film with a twist. Or a message. It is merely a superbly beautiful rendition of a story on film by a master.

V For Vendetta - The Wachowski brothers return to the silver screen with their rendition of Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel. Directed by James McTeigue, this movie has all ingredients to become a cult movie. Chock full of quotable quotes (V’s memorable introduction comes to mind) and cross referencing works across ages and genres, V for Vendetta presents an almost savage rebuttal of the fascist state, that preaches a return to chaos and anarchy rather than tolerating repressive order and rule of law. While, the politics of movie would clearly the unpalatable to those inclined otherwise, it is almost impossible for anyone, having a pretense of concern for the affairs of the world today, not to be affected by it. Topped with Natalie Portman’s brilliant acting (and British accent) and the almost comical madness of Hugo Weaving as V, V for Vendetta is at the very least a very intense film.

Babel - The final installment of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s trilogy on death, Babel was probably the most awaited movie of the year for me. The narrative structure of Babel is similar to both Amores Perros and 21 Grams which preceded it. However, while in the first two movies the separate storylines transpire in a limited space (same city) but are widely varying in their temporal occurence, Babel’s story spans across four countries and no less than six families, but a very limited time span. The denouement with the revelation of all the connecting threads leaves something to be desired. It does not really shock the viewer as it did in the earlier two movies, with the threads appearing tenuous at best in some cases. That the director was able to hold together such an ambitious script finally leading to a conclusion, is a feat in itself. Babel primarily deals with fear; the fear of an individual in an alien land, neither trusting nor trusted, with an overarching scepter of death looming in the horizon. While the previous two movies kept away from socio-political messages, a clear message is sent out in this movie in terms of trying to understand those who are not the same as us, rather than immediately stereotyping them. While this does not add to the cinematic quality of the movie as such, it does provide a clue to the gradual progress of Inarritu’s work.

Technorati Tags: top 2006, movies

“The name is Bond. James Bond.”

A line etched in cinematic history, this line encapsulates the essence of the 007 canon. Suaveness. Panache. Above all a surety that with Bond around nothing can go wrong. The villain has to die and the girl has to fall into his arms like a limp, rag doll that most of the Bond girls are portrayed as. That these are Daniel Craig’s closing and not opening lines in the new Bond offering Casino Royale is an indication that this is not the regular kill-the-world-order-threatening fiend and bed-the-hottest-chick-in-the-show flick.

Casino Royale is the story of James Bond coming of age. His receiving the 00 status at the beginning of the movie provides the viewer a clue that the Bond we are going to see is not the indestructible character, Pierce Brosnan essayed over the years. Daniel Craig’s Bond is naïve. His Bond is human. He pummels victims to death. Gets blood on his starched white shirt. Falls in love. And gets his heart broken. Heck, he almost loses a poker game and does not care if his martini is shaken or stirred. Bond enemy here is his own heart; his humanity; his ego. And he has to crush them in the road to become the perfect and indestructible James Bond, we all know.

Casino Royale lacks the fancy gizmos that viewers have gotten used to. Q does not even make an appearance. It takes its inspiration not from the last four movies in the series but the first four. His opening interaction with Vesper Lynd contained the typical tongue in cheek Bond humor that has been lost to viewers ever since Sean Connery passed on the mantle.

Vesper Lynd: I’m the money!
James Bond: Every penny of it!

[Was this an allusion to the missing Miss Moneypenny??]

Vesper Lynd: Am I going to have a problem with you, Bond?
James Bond: No, don’t worry. You’re not my type.
Vesper Lynd: Smart?
James Bond: Single.

And yes there is, all said and done, a considerable amount of the mindless violence, destruction of fine cars and impeccable display of markmanship by the new Bond. These too are an integral part of the Bond canon. But this movie reiterates they are not the only things. And that is what makes Casino Royale, amongst the finest Bond movie to come out in years (in my opinion the best after The Spy who Loved Me).

technorati tags:bond, movies, casinoroyale

Blogged with Flock

Through a Glass Darkly, is the first and probably the most engimatic and yet the most lucid of Bergman’s Winter Light trilogy (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence). It is also the starting point of his collaboration with Sven Nyquist, the master cinematographer who is credited with the creative and masterful use of natural light and shadows in many of his other works.

As in many of his other works, Bergman subject matter centers around the struggle to define one’s own concept of God, a struggle that was intensely personal to him. The greatness of the film lies in the fact that it is a compelling family drama on the surface and that Bergman never loses the grip on this narrative while all the time posing to the viewer the question of conception of a creator. David, a reasonably successfull author is torn between the love of a  father for his daughter Karin, a schezophrenic, and the artist’s urge to observe and record her descent into madness in view of creating a magnum opus. The other major characters are Minus, the brother and Martin, the husband of Karin. All characters love Karin and yet each of their affections is distorted by their own percpetions of her. The movie is set in a desolate island; the characters have nowhere to escape and have to face and come to terms with their feelings, fears and inhibitions about each other.

The literal English translation of the original Swedish title (Såsom i en spegel) of the movie, taken from Corinthians 13:12 in Bible

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass darkly, but then we shall see face to face. . .”

obfuscates and obscures the intent of the film - to expose the distorted view we have of people through the mirrors of our own minds and bring us face to face with our own emotions. Our search for God, Bergman contends is to end within our own selves if it has to ever end and not in some external creation.

As with many of his other movies, the harrowing psychological analysis of the characters and the ascetic setting of the movie give, Through a Glass Darkly, the reputation of a depressing film. The use of natural light and the brilliant interplay of shadows give the viewer far keener insights into the minds of the characters than is possible through the spoken word. It is here that Bergman displays the power of cinema as a medium and his forte as a director. As many critics have said, Through the Glass Darkly is probably best construed as a cinematic equivalent of a String Quartet; each character with his own story to tell and at the same time taking forward the main storyline in a coherent manner.

technorati tags:bergman, cinema

Blogged with Flock

Collective Chaos screened three movies of the much acclaimed director Jim Jarmusch this weekend - Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law and Broken Flowers. While missed the Friday screening of the much acclaimed Stranger than Paradise (which I hope I will catch some other time), I did manage to catch the other two despite losing my membership card. I must thank the CC guys for letting me in without really any proof of membership. I had on earlier occasions seen two of his other films (Coffee and Cigarettes and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai) so it was great that CC showed these three.

Jarmusch’s movies to me have always seemed to me like snippets of a journey; starting at a station and end on another: none of them is either the start or the end for the they are fixed at birth and death of the individuals. It is when the paths of more than one such traveller entwines that we have something akin to a plot. The plot and the setting therefore is not something which shapes the characters but it is other way around. If even one of the participating characters were different it would probably lead to different plot. Jarmusch is a master of setting situations and bringing in the main players (often characters from the edge of the society) together as a result of which all his movies have an air of inevitability around them. And then there is a comic vein running through the body of all his works; sometimes ironic and satirical but mostly plain humour, when you laugh because somebody just touched that cord somewhere. Both Down by Law and Broken Flowers, though separated by a couple of decades bring out these aspects.

The first can alternatively seen as humanist comedy or an harsh indictment of the justice system. Apurva’s post on this says almost everything there is to be said about the second issue. However I do not believe that Jarmusch wanted to deliver a strong message here. What transpired in the courts, what course the law took or what crimes any of the main characters are charged with are not known to the audience. The prison in my opinion is merely a device (why he chose such a device is another discussion) to bring the characters together; it is the station where the story starts unfolding. The characters in the beginning are shown to be somewhat self-centered; Zack (Tom Waits) and Jack (John Lurie) not listening to their girlfriends and each other and Roberto; and Roberto (Roberto Benigni) not really wanting to understand what an English word really means or if anyone is really interested in what he is talking about. The prison cell mirrors their close minds about themselves and others. The turning point in the movie was when Roberto draws a window on the cell wall, showing an willingness to explore and to see out. Soon they escape and on their first stop - a bunk in the swamp - is a replica of their cell but with a real window indicating that the tranformation has started. By the end the only character with any sort of a proper denouement seems to be Roberto who has decided to settle down in the wilderness with Nicoletta; but others too have reached their ending stations for the last scene shows them taking a decision amicably the only time in the movie. Their journey has not ended but a milestone has been reached.

Broken Flowers reminded me greatly of Sophia Coppolla’s excellent Lost in Translation; not as much in its theme but in how the entire script is written to fit Bill Murray’s personality; and Murray does deliver a stellar performance as the newly rich ex-computer-geek with with slew of girlfriends who have deserted him. The film’s trailer starts with the journey of a letter from the drop box to the delivery address and the film’s story starts with the Sherry (Julie Delpy), leaving Don (Bill Murray). A just arrived letter in a pink envelope seems to be the last straw for her, and yet for Don is the start of a new journey of self-realisation; for the letter informs him of his son with a long forgotten lover. As Don visits his previous flames one by one, it dawns slowly on him that he is not really made a mark on anyone’s life; each of his exes have continued their lives without him and slowly discarded him. This dawning realization furthers the feeling that somewhere there is someone who could never forget him for he is his father and increases the ache of meeting him. This pushes him further in his journey ultimately ending unsuccessfully in a graveyard in front of the grave of now dead ex-lover. The success of this journey is open to interpretation. The ending shows Murray standing alone looking ahead into a road into which a roadie he mistook for his son has just disappeared and he seems all alone in the world; but there is still hope for Sherry has written saying she still loves him. The letter itself is merely a device (just like the prison cell in Down by Law) - the audience can neither deny nor affirm its authencity till the very end. That Don says to the roadie, “Well, the past is gone, I know that. The future isn’t here yet, whatever it’s going to be. So, all there is, is this. The present. That’s it.“, made me think that his journey was worthwhile.

Technorati Tags: movies, jim jarmusch

If one has to take a message out of the Oscars this year, it would be “Go watch movies in the theatre and not DVDs and definitely not pirated ones.”; not surprizing since the theatre revenues fell enough in 2005 to warrant the Academy’s august attention. Those hunting for reasons can find some here.

I see the problem as a cyclical chain. Reduction in the number of people going to the theatres greatly diminishes the experience of watching a movie there, which in turn keeps away more viewers. As the preseident of the Academy said, watching a movie in a theatre is akin to sharing your emotions with hundreds of strangers; and the opportunities for such platforms are not many in todays world. What makes the Govinda movies funny is not only his over-the-top-comic actions but also the comments, hoots, jeers and shouts from the general public. What transforms a Lagaan into a rivetting tale is not the script but the wishing of the crowd that Bhuvan hits the last ball for a six, as if it was not a movie but a live cricket match going on. Theatre adds a different dimension to the experience of watching a movie.

Sadly, such experience is proving to be a costly affair these days.

Match Point, has been called alternatively Woody Allen’s return to form or a break (not a great one at that) from his unique style of filmmaking. One thing is certain, Match Point from the top does not look like a Woody Allen movie but is nonetheless a cracking movie. And once we dig a little we find the same themes that Allen has always talked about in his previous flicks.

Allen deserts his muse New York here; moving over to her distant cousin London across the Atlantic. There are none of the standard Allenisms in terms of the overpowering satire or biting sarcasm in the movie; or no judgements on a society malformed. In fact, it seems that Allen is finally trying to tell *only* a story. And he does that well. And for this reason I would say Match Point is a good movie.

However as much as he has sacrificed in terms of style and practices, he has embraced his core themes that much more closely. Allen has grown old; he seems to have lost the hope that tearing apart the existing structures and conventions with his mordant wit is possible. He presents the characters so enmeshed in this societal structure that they themselves murder any hope of an escape from it. The same themes as before, merely a new way of looking at them.

Stupidly deleted my earlier post. Reposting it again. Also please note the spoilers warning - *SPOILERS AHEAD*

In this ambitious project, one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of recent times, Krzysztof Kieslowski, takes on the issues of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity - the pillars of the French republic in particular and democracy in general, symbolized by the three colours in the French flag. His attempt, with three separate storylines is as much to put these traits in the perspective of contemporary French society as to also answer his own question “Do people really want liberty, equality, fraternity? Is it not some manner of speaking? “

Bleu (Blue) the first movie of the trilogy deals with the grief of Julie, admirably enacted by Juliette Binoche, who has recently lost her composer husband and daughter in a car accident with her being the only survivor. Here, as in the rest of the trilogy, Kieslowski gives a very personal and individual twist to the meaning of Lberty. Julie initially attempts suicide and then cuts herself off from her old life in her attempt to liberate herself from her grief. Gradually though her old life creeps back bringing with itself the liberty that Julie so desperately seeks.

Blanc (White) is less a French and more a Polish movie. It is the story of Karol Karol, a Polish immigrant, whose French wife Dominique deserts him, leaving him bankrupt and heartbroken, on the grounds of his incompetence in the bed. Karol meets a fellow Pole Nikolaj, who takes him across to Poland in a suitcase, where Karol reinvents himself as a business magnate. In his quest for equality with Dominique, Karol elaborately stages his own death, gets her into Poland and makes love to her in her hotel room, finally leaving her to be deemed insane for believing he is alive. Karol’s quest for revenge is his search for Equality.

Rouge (Red) is the only movie in this series which deals with an entire gamut of characters rather than having a single focal character. This is interesting because both Liberty and Equality can be seen as individual traits, while Fraternity clearly needs numbers. Also the plot here is much more complicated, starting with the chance occurrence of Valentine (the central character if one has to be identified) meeting a retired judge, who spies on the telephone conversations of his neighbours. This narrative is intertwined with the life of law student Auguste, a mirror for the narrating the life of the retired judge. The judge and Valentine grow closer always knowing that theirs was a meeting that would never be fruitful. To quote the judge, “… you are the girl, I never met”. The movie in the end is about fate. How our lives are shaped by the people we meet and how different it could be if we met somebody else. The denouement brings together all the major characters in the trilogy together as the survivors of an accident (it had to be fate). Finally Liberty, Equality and Fraternity meet.

A discussion on every aspect of these movies would be big project in itself. I would however restrict myself to things that I personally found interesting.

• Camera speaks - Kieslowski’s movies are known for their frugality with dialogues. All three movies share the same trait. He chooses the camera to say things rather than the character. Be it the unshakeable strength of Julie, or the unabashed devilishness of Dominique or the uncomplicated goodness of Valentine, it is the camera which says it all.
• Use of colours - Each movie features prominently its theme colour. Blue is the colour of the trinket that Julie takes with her when she escapes her past life. Blue is the colour of the pool that she endeavours to lose herself in to find her liberation, only to rise to surface, her face silhouetted by a red light. Similarly it is white snow of Poland that heralds the equality of the Karol. And the constant flashback to his wedding with Dominique, she being in white reinforcing the belief of status quo that Carol probably seeks. There is also a nice interplay of white and black throughout the entire movie. In red; well you cannot miss the red. It is everywhere to the point that I sometimes felt irritated (probably Auguste smokes Malboros because the pack is red).
• The old lady - All the movies have a common scene where an old lady tries to put a bottle into a waste basket as the central character looks on. It is only on the third movie that the character actually gets up and helps the old lady in her task. My friend Supriyo reasons that Kieslowski does this because the director himself believes that of the three traits, it is Fraternity that is to be valued most. It is interesting to see the scenes in this light, because one can then understand several other parts of the puzzle - on why the third and final movie had to be red, or why the colour red is omnipresent in the movie, while in the other two the references are more subtle.
• The accident - Red and the trilogy ends with an accident where the sole survivors are the characters from the three movies. This can probably be summed up in Kieslowski’s own words, “In ten phrases, the ten commandments express the essential of life. And these three words-liberty, equality, and fraternity-do just as much. Millions of people have died for those ideals“. Kieslowski’s wants to stress through the accident and the death of the so many that regardless of what happens the ideals of French Revolution will not be lost to humanity. (The ten commandments reference here is to his earlier work Decalogue)
• The intertwining of the narratives - The end in Red is clearly the case in question, but the each movie is linked to the other in numerous other subtle ways. The characters of White appear for a moment in Blue and the vice versa and all finally come together in Red. Going back to the use of colours each movie while predominantly shaded in its theme colour also uses the others to bring out the effect that the three ideals do not and cannot exist in vacuum.

As with all good movies Three Colors asks more questions than the answers it provides. It actively engages the viewer in a game of guessing, providing hints and suggestions all along the way without ever explicitly telling out what is it that the director intends to say. Maybe the intent is to engage in a conversation with the viewer about these traits and their relevance in today’s world. On these grounds the movie scores a perfect ten.

Postscript:: One can read much more comprehensive individual reviews of the movies at Roger Ebert’s site. (Blue, White, Red)