Filed under: Uncategorized
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Carl Jung, collective unconscious, Double Mirror Construction, existentialism, Federico Fellini, Marcello Mastroianni, Nina Rota Sigmund Freud Sisyphus
It’s dark and claustrophobic. The silence reeks of inexplicable discomfort below the underpass. An array of vehicles stranded languidly, with no intent of awaiting the road to be cleared. Passengers are poker faced with lustful eyes and sadistic glee of being audience to a man’s end. The man encircled by a sea of vehicles, passengers with strange expressions, wipes the steam off his car’s windshield. The steam creeps around the bourgeois glass shields, slowly filling up the entire car. He struggles to escape but is imprisoned. Sardonically, the images gently move to the passengers showing no apathy to the man’s asphyxiation, devouring every slam of the wrist on those steamy windshields, as though it is some kind of fetish. He suddenly levitates free from the car, and glides across the bevy of vehicles. He escapes in to the air out from the underpass into light, brushing past the clouds and experiences momentary bliss of weightlessness watching a huge unconstructed edifice. A caped man on a horse stops across the beach to announce “Counselor, I’ve got him”. The tormentors hold the reins of the rope that is tied across the ankles of the flying man, as though holding back a kite from touching the sky. He snaps the rope and has a free fall from the sky and plummets into the lashing sea. In a flash we see his hand raised for help, snapping out of his nightmare in to the realm of reality. The opening scene of Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ is a grandiose depiction of the Jungian integration of unconscious with the waking consciousness. It marks the subtext of the film from here on, the decent of man in to hopelessness, fighting from his bourgeois life of being a stagnated director and finding solace in his dreams.
8 ½ is a film about film-making stricken by artistic crisis of Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), who is about to make his next big film. Its title refers to the fact that, up to then, Fellini had made seven features and two episodes in composite films that added up to about a half. 8 ½ is clearly about Fellini and is autobiographical in Nature. Fellini was born in a middle class family in an Italian town called Rimini. He had a conventional catholic upbringing and later moved to Rome. The film which is being made is also partly about the Catholicism in post war Italy. Guido is struggling to complete the film for which he has lost all inspiration and motivation. The entire film looks like a subject intoxicated on a psychoanalysis couch, answering questions about his life to a psychic shrink. Reality is interspersed with dreams about his past; his wine bathed pristine childhood, his sexual awakening by a prostitute called Saraghina, his inabilities in school, his fascination with women, the longing for family. All form archetypal constructs of his dream space, the “collective unconscious” as how Jung puts it. He is haunted by his past and is suffering from psychological repression. In the midst of all this he has to finish the film which he envisages to be a portal, “ a simple film that would bury everything that is inside of us… no lies whatsoever” but strangely, he loses the intellectual inspiration for the film. The producer of the film has also invested on a giant edifice constructed to be a launching pad for a spaceship that would save humanity. He announces a press conference to make Guido serious about completion of the film as he watches him gradually disowning it. At the gathering, Guido is swarmed by predatory journalists asking him questions about the film, his life, his beliefs and his inadequacies. Unable to bear this torture he hides under the table and shoots himself.
The Popular Double Mirror construct: The double mirror sounds like a cinematographic constructbut it is actually about an art form in an art form. Like a photograph of a girl holding a photograph. 8 ½ is not just a film about filmmaking but it is also a film about a film that reflects upon cinema. Guido is almost the alter ego of Federico Fellini. Fellini recalls his travails during the film.
The glasses were emptied, everybody applauded, and I felt overwhelmed by shame. I felt myself the least of men, the captain who abandons his crew. . . . I told myself I was in a no exit situation. I was a director who wanted to make a film he no longer remembers. And lo and behold, at that very moment everything fell into place. I got straight to the heart of the film. I would narrate everything that had been happening to me. I would make a film telling the story of a director who no longer knows what film he wanted to make
Fellini used Guido to liberate himself from his cinematic contraptions by putting up his own life on celluloid. It was in a way what was happening on screen was in fact his own redemption from his absurdity. There are particular sequences which are dramatized but most of them were part of Fellini’s childhood. These sequences are not shown as they would have occurred, but more in light of Fellini’s cinematic expression of his childhood. The Saraghina sequence is exemplary in making us understand this. In his childhood, Guido ran around the streets wearing black cape along with his school friends. The kids once go to the beach to watch Saraghina, the prostitute perform a rumba for them. She looks evil with dark circled eyes, buxom, bare footed and her dress torn form sides. These smaller details of Saraghina are captured with extreme close-ups. The church priests catch him on the beach, shown in a comic chaplinesque fashion. Guido is punished in school for this “heinous” act. He seeks the answers for his deeds from god. A subtle depiction of irony: Guido bows down to mother Mary just after the church dignitary told him that Saraghina is the devil and the subsequent scene we see a shot of Mother Mary slowly fading, almost juxtaposing in to Saraghina’s desolate home. The point is that even his childhood dream sequences are glorified and self referencing with cinematic emphasis , a double mirror of sorts.
The Carl Jung Construct of Guido’s dream world: Carl Jung who was Freud’s student disagreed with the stereotyping of the unconscious. He maintained that the unconscious, which is the unperceivable contour of humans, is not merely a reference point for various projections of dreams. He argued that the unconscious is in fact a sum of the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. Fellini was very much inspired by Jung’s philosophy on dreams. His childhood memories and his association with women are all part of his personal unconscious, now resurfacing through his personal crisis. The glamorized childhood, the harem that has him coexisting with his wife and all his love interests is a depiction of that collective unconscious constructed through the medium of cinema. One cannot be looked at as a disjoint entity from the other; both “compliment” each other’s existence.
The spacio-temporal alchemy: 8 ½ was a far cry from the narration of sequences in contiguous form. Some critics pointed out that the spacio-temporal space in 8 ½ was difficult to discern, whether it is a dream sequence or if it is indeed reality that was shown. However, it is far from it. Deft cinematography by Gianni Di Venanzo and the director’s precision makes it easy to differentiate. The dream state is faded into the reality with masterful wizardry. For instance, the initial dream sequence of Guido falling down the sky is beautifully faded into his hand raised as a call for reality. Fellini gives considerable attention not to give visual friction of his mis-en-scene. Guido is sleeping beside his mistress in the room. We see Guido’s mother waving at the solid wall of the room. She appears out of nowhere but the viewer is aware of the real space and also the dream space at this point. Slowly the wall turns translucent and then finally turns into glass. As she moves away the glass wall, the scene is different and shifts to an abandoned area. We are gradually taken from the dream space to the real.
Another form of editing used is the use of visual irony. The dream sequence at the abandoned area where he meets his wife along with his parents ends with a long shot of vast open area in white color and his wife Luisa is standing in the centre. Immediately the scene is cut to Guido walking along a closed corridor with no doors open and the predominant dark color heightens the irony and thereby differentiating the two worlds. Many dream sequences in the film appear disjoint and forcefully altered to give an effect of confusion borne out of troubled childhood. Case in point is the altering of space and time in many of the shots in the Sarghina sequence.
Nina Rota’s music aids the narrative in creating layers of sound and music. Be it the operatic feel while showing the “existential inmates” of the fashionable spa or the nondiegtic sound in the background to which Saraghina dances which is contrasted by the understated diegtic hymn that she sings on the beach. Sometimes the sound is completely digetic to heighten the effect of horror; the opening dream sequence only makes us hear the moaning, the sound of hands wiping the glass or the sound of air beneath the clouds.
Guido, the Sisyphus of Fellini: Outwardly, 8 ½ may be a film about a film that is waiting to be deconstructed, bit by bit by the protagonist’s philosophical blockage but the undercurrent is clearly about the absurdity of life. Guido is surrounded by the people who hold no meaning for him anymore. Fellini shows how every character is trying to exploit him of his intellectual attention. Fledgling actors quote rehearsed lines of being a thinking actor to impress him: “I need to coexist with my character for a while before shooting” or the pseudo intellectual conversations around Italian Catholicism, Marxism vs Catholicism, left or right centric political affiliations, about the greatest writer being Fitzgerald(“ and then his writing became all about pragmatism or brutal realism”)and “Americans thinking too much about cholesterol”. All this bourgeois conversation is intersected by Guido’s question to the fledgling actress “Is your ice-cream good? This sequence beautifully highlights his alienation from all the chaotic idealism around him. He finds liberation in his dreams from his stagnation, the pointlessness of everything. His futile labor of lies and procrastination is only leading him to his peril. His longing for a sweet family, or how his sister’s possessiveness hurts him, his wife walking out on him, all of these only take him to a point of realizing the absurdity of life. 
The climax is quite worthy of a debate. Guido reaches his peak of frustration and the scavenging journalists hit the last nail in the coffin. He hides under the table and shoots himself. Fellini’s oeuvre gains meaning in what happens after this shot. Even the suicide shot is left as a puzzle in the viewers mind between reality and dream. Did he actually die or was it one more figment of his imagination. We see him leaving the premise while his collaborator is talking about how it was best not to have continued with the film anymore, which would have been a creative and financial disaster ( alluding that Guido had in fact called off on the film at the press meeting). He is then shown in the final dream sequence where he is the “ring master” and all the characters of the film and his dreams, circle around in white clothes, holding hands. He confesses to his wife that he has indeed changed. His creative crisis magically resolved. He picks up a megaphone and begins to direct everyone around the circle. He directs himself as a child (the source of his poetic inspiration as an adult) now dressed in a white cape as opposed to his earlier dreams where he was wearing a black cape, signifying the metamorphosis. The magnanimous launching pad, created for the spaceship that would save humanity, was actually a metaphor for Guido’s escape from internal conflicts through fantasy, into an evolved state of attaining togetherness with his “collective unconscious”
PS: This post was originally published on PassionforCinema.com http://passionforcinema.com/fellini%e2%80%99s-8-%c2%bd-the-collective-unconscious/
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AMOLE GUPTE, NURI BLIGE CEYLAN, PRIYANKA CHOPRA, PULP FICTION, QUENTIN TARANTINO, SAMUEL.L.JACKSON, SHAHID KAPOOR, VISHAL BHARDWAJ
A non-linear narrative meanders along a heady cocktail of inopportune satire and violence, noir seduces pastiche, genres go hand in glove yet celebrate their explicit irony, mafia machinations that fuel a redemption and then there is a chase for a mysterious object; either a briefcase or a guitar case. In any case, what have you here; India’s answer toPulp Fiction. Kaminey opens with a greenish tinge caressing a speeding train while Charlie stands by the edge of the track unmoved. Only his hair brushes off with the wind but not his dogged spirit for money and power. Rail tracks, a superior metaphor for paths that life makes you choose. Kaminey opens the narrative’s harbinger; it’s not the path you take that makes the difference but the path you choose not to tread. So he follows the serpentine thousand rupee note, spotlighted in dark, alone and then suddenly with a whip, he is brought to light; power, fame and money blows up as confetti. Everybody is mean here.
Kaminey is a story of twin brothers separated by hatred towards each other. Charlie (Shahid Kapoor) wants to get rich by taking shortcuts and his delectable defect of saying the “f” letter for “s”. Guddu is the naïve stutterer who chalks out his career path from Polytechnic course to marriage in 2014. He is in love with Sweety ( Priyanka Chopra) , the gritty woman in his life. Guddu needs to save his hurried marriage with Sweety, thanks to an unplanned rubber accident.Sweety’s menacing mafia brother Bhope ( Amole Gupte) is out to get him. Charlie is on the run as he discovers a stash of cocaine in a guitar case. He is chased by a bevy of Mafioso men out to make money out of the cache. Gudduand Charlie cross paths at the joints of time and there begins a story of redemption.
Chapter 1: Paradoxes of the narrative: Guddu works for an NGO that educates the use of condoms in order to avoid AIDS. His introduction has him dancing around brothels educating the usage of condoms and his scarf impeccably resembles the AIDS red ribbon symbol. While he is shown to preach about the usage of Condom; in haste he doesn’t wear a condom and impregnates Sweety. Comic irony forms a strong hold of the film. Bhope is reading his sister’s pregnancy certificate in fitting rage while a little boy yells at him “Mala chocolate paijee” ( I want a chocolate). The stutter and the lisp are accentuated when the viewer is craving for an explanation; it should create a sense of quest but is blatantly broken by comic tones. This is a technique used by Vishal to heighten the effect of the narrative. Imagine the pregnancy scene without the kid interrupting him for a chocolate. This technique is used in Dev.D too with sudden quirky moments breaking the aggression of a powerful scene.
Chapter 2: Pastiche and postmodern referencing: A shootout in a hotel has Charlie shooting a gang while on the TV you can hear the famous R.D. Burman song “Do lafzon ki hai dil ki kahani”. Note that the song is echoed when the lines go: “Is zindagi ke din kitne kam hai” and in that exact instant, you see killings on the screen. Likewise there are other songs by R.D. Burman that are used as a backdrop. The film borrows from classic Bollywood clichés and then completely alters them to a taste of its own flavor: the twin brothers separated, the zero-defect hero or even the dramatic over-the-top entry of the heroine in our Bollywood films, all are completely contrasted in Kaminey; both the heroes with speech impediments, Priyanka’s de-glam entry or even the subtle self-referencing: Bhope doing a version of Pankaj Kapoor’s Abbaji act from Vishal’s Maqbool.
The director also pays homage to Quentin Tarantino. Taking from his small “Saanp bill me ghus ke Kill Bill Kill Bill kar raha tha” in The blue umbrella, Vishal goes full throttle in his exploration of Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction here. Kaminey has a non-linear narrative. Some scenes make sense only when you view the subsequent scenes in detail. Pulp Fictionhas seven primarily storylines which are deliberately not shown in chronology. A viewer appreciates when the narrative challenges the intelligence like a puzzle; you find satisfaction in solving it. So it is no casual viewing. You really need to concentrate. Pulp Fiction is about the redemption (Remember Samuel.L.Jackson’s Biblical monologue?; I will strike upon thee…”)of a man entangled in a bloody mafia brawl that involves a briefcase. Here you have Charlie caught in the same maze except that, it’s a guitar case this time. The most overt reference is Sweetyholding a rifle and shooting at people, reminds you of “Honey bunny” during the classic hold-up scene in Pulp Fiction. And yes both films start and end at the same point.
There is homage to various cultures form Marathi, Lucknowi, Bengali to even Angolan cultures. Some pastiche lead impressions are prominent like the “Apna haath jagnaath” perched right above a Mallika Sherawat poster on a wash room. Fiderman fiderman and then faying alive, faying alive!
Chapter 3: Cinematography, music and the bitches: Tassaduq Hussein deserves a bear hug for his camerawork. His clouds are perfect; dark, brooding and announce the oncoming hell. I was reminded of clouds from Nuri Blige Ceylan’sfilms immediately. The urban war set is made with astute detail that you will mistake it for real. The camera angles are innovative: extreme close shots to long shots, hand-held imagery with hand crafted magic of deliberate out-of-focus camerawork. Crisp editing aids the film immensely. In the start of the film, you see Charlie conversing with his friendMikhail about a loot that went kaput. In parallel, a scene is shown where Bengali mafia men are calibrating a gun’s aperture angle. Though there is a shot of the lamp through the sniper’s view, we realize that both scenes are happening in the same room only when the lampshade is blown out by the gun. Simply outstanding! Vishal creates the best score, ranging from the garrulous Dhan Te Nan to the demure piano playing ironically at a killing scene. There is music from silence too. Some part of the film has no background score. The scene where Guddu is explaining his career path to Sweety, is interspersed with sounds from kids playing in the street and there is no background score. I found the peculiar referencing to dogs quite innovative; taking the logical extension of Kaminey to kutte ( Thanks Dharam paaji). Charlie quips “life baddi kutti cheez hai” in the opening act, Guddu and Sweety are cuddling in love while a stray dog wags its tail around them, Bhau bhau is everywhere and last but not the least Tashi, the uber don says “I don’t like dogs, I like bitches”
Chapter 4: Breathtaking Ensemble cast: Honey Tehran is spot on with her casting and Vishal has churned out outstanding performances from all the actors. Shahid’s Guddu and Charlie are pathbreaking, Priyanka’s fiestyMaharashtrian Sweety act; she is the revelation of the film, Amole’s Bhope is only seen to be believed, Tenzing Nima’s Tashi is cool as cucumber; watch him say “Business is business” in darkness, power comes back on and he immediately appends his earlier line “And power is power” . The characters Lobo, Lele, Mikhail are perfectly cast and even the little kid in his two scenes shows brilliance. Above all it’s a director’s film. Vishal Bhardwaj is without a doubt the biggest star of the film. Kaminey is India’s proud answer to Pulp Fiction
PS: This post was initially posted at PassionForCinema: http://passionforcinema.com/kaminey-india’s-pulp-fiction/
Filed under: world cinema | Tags: anurag kashyap, DEV D, EMIR KUSTURICA, MATADOR, PALME D'OR, PEDRO ALMODOVAR, TARKOVSKY, UNDERGROUND, world cinema
A quiet Balkan town wakes up to festive sound from a drunken stupor. The ominous brass composition is interspersed with gun shots and money is hurled in the air. The euphoria fades into the sound of war, bombs piercing the harmony of a nation. A man is seen to be having an insipid love making act in a whore house. The woman is hurriedly faking orgasm with moaning. She escapes in horror but the man persists and jacks off to the sound of catastrophe as the town explodes. Another man is seen to enjoy his meal while the chandelier lands on his plate with the shudder of air raids. He is clearly not moved but is worried that an elephant is swiping his shoes off the window. A retarded kid is running a zoo and is seen to be bottle feeding a baby monkey. As the commotion of war engulfs the zoo there is chaos and animals go berserk. The baby monkey’s mother is seen bleeding while the kid shuts her eyes in repulsion. Three epic wars are seen from the self-annihilating lives of three men while a nation ceases to exist. Once upon a time there was a country; Yugoslavia.
Emir Ksuturica’s Palme D’or winning epic film Underground is a poetic amalgamation of genres; socio-cultural and political satire, musicals, war-docu drama, apocalypse, comedy, surrealism and above all the human exploration of power, love and integrity. Through the elaborate exploits of its war torn protagonists – aggressive yet naïve Blacky(Lazar Ristovski), the intellectual yet conspiring Marko (Miki Manojlovic) and the innocent Ivan, Kusturica has painted a delirious recreation of erstwhile Yugoslavia’s devastating history from being a Nazi-occupied territory during World War II, through Communist regime during Cold War, to the ugly Balkan Wars that resulted in the disintegration of the country along ethnic lines. The plot also involves the three timing Natalija (Mirjana Jokovic).
The film is shown in three episodes: In part I, we are introduced to Belgrade at the behest of evil Nazi invasion. Marko and Blacky are part of the anti-fascist resistance and they are minting profits from the war, and so they are able to make love and eat in peace while their country burns. Natalija, an over the top actress at the theatre is a mistress to Blacky. Blacky is kidnapped by the Nazis during his attempt to get married to Natalija. Marko saves him but sends him underground hiding from the war while he seduces Natalija with power, poetry and alcohol.
In part II Marko and Natalija become an integral part of the communist movement under Tito. Marko convinces Blacky, his brother Ivan and others that the war is raging and makes them live underground in the basement for over 20 years. All through the while he makes them work on ammunition and weapons in order to profit from the sale. In Part III, Yugoslavia no longer exists. Yet, Blacky is out in the world, fighting for his country and searching for his dead son; Marko and Natalija are in hiding but are still war profiteers.
One of the most significant metaphors of the film is the underground itself. It’s a sign of how people are kept ignorant, of the anarchy created by Marko in Tito’s Yugoslavia. There are interesting shots of how Marko comes to power; morphed historical footages show Marko meeting important personalities to influe
nce his carrier in the communist party. In the underground people ride a bicycle in the air making the cycle bulb turn on and show light at a woman’s womb, waiting for the miracle of life. Babies become old enough to marry. Kids run around playing football. This is a world in itself. There is a fraternity formed by Tito’s revolution but is also orchestrated by Marko’s farce about the non-existent war. While on metaphors, another poignant scene in the film shows a wounded tiger troubled by a bird. Finding the tiger helpless, the bird tries to poke its beak into the dying animal. The bird is finally killed by the tiger. This is an extremely complex scene which shows the fragility of corrupted power. For me this scene is a premonition to Marko’s and Ivan’s end which the director has beautifully placed as subliminal construct.
Kusturica’s hyperbolic cinematic construct is not an assembly on political polemics but is an aesthetic meditation on human behavior. Aided by an astounding score by Goran Bergovic, the film meanders from avant-garde cinema to the realm of commercial over the top fun. The brass band compositions throughout the film alleviate the irony of war and the ignorance of the people underground. It’s relentless, uniquely Balkan energy fuels the film, functioning as an endless shot of adrenalin for both the characters and the audience. The score is made so conspicuous that the band literally follows Marko and Blacky everywhere, even when they take a leak in the woods. The music has even inspired Anurag Kashyap for Dev.D. The initial scene where Dev returns home while a brass band follows him is a actually a homage to the opening scene from Underground.
Satire is a strong element of Underground. In fact, it won’t be wrong to call it a film based on dark humor. Blacky’s wife Vera is in labor pain and she cries out “Where are you now, you Blacky bastard?” Marko getting off to the sound of Belgrade burning (subtly reminds of Pedro Almodovar’s film Matador where the protagonist is jacking off to watching horror exploitation films). There is subtle humor too; Blacky is getting married to Natalija and he keeps asking throughout “where is the priest?” to everyone around. One man answers “The priest will arrive any moment now” and the Germans come at the exact instant and abduct Blacky. The humor goes on to another level here; In the outside world a film is being made on Blacky’s life which has been falsely narrated by Marko to the world. Blacky escapes the underground and ends up seeing the crew of the film with Germans. He believes the war is continuing because of the actors. So he believes the unreal film to be reality which is actually based on unreal citations of his life.
Kusturica’s directorial virtuosity lies in his fine balance; calculated satire, outstanding images and cinematic tapestry of ingenuous characterization. In the initial scenes, as the city burns, Ivan is roaming in the hopeless town with his zoo animals. The irony of these characters is immediately displayed with Blacky lighting up his cigar from the ashes that remain from the bombs and then polishing his shoe with the fur of a crying cat. Though he is shown that way, the director immediately cuts to Blacky offering milk to the baby monkey. It sums up his character; hard on emotions, aggressive but yet benevolent; like Robin Hood. He even comments that he steals from the rich for the poor. There are some pure cinematic moments that make this film a tour de force in world cinema history. Natalija in a red dress, soaked in guilt, does the Freudian dance in front of erect cannon. This shot is extremely layered; on one side it communicates the obvious Freudian pretext on the other side it actually emphasizes how the Balkan community is seduced by the war and Tito’s revolution. Natalija’s dance in a red dress conveys the frailty of a society drugged on the revolution and which is fooled by a fictitious war.
The finale is what consumed me, the images that stayed with me for days; Tarkovsky on steroids. Ivan has finally broken free from the prison and lost his monkey that he grew up with underground for decades. His country exists no more, no home to go to. He realizes Marko, his own brother has planned this elaborate farce. He finds him in a weapon trafficking deal with a group ( Kusturica in a cameo). Marko is now on a wheel chair fleeing from the civil war championed by Blacky . Ivan bludgeons Marko to death on his wheel chair. Natalija comes to rescue but is also killed on the chair in the ensuing battle. The civil war perpetrators set them on fire. The burning chair with Marko and Natalija revolves around a cross with Jesus strung inverted. There are layers of meaning in this shot even beyond the contours of cinema.
Ivan finally finds redemption by hanging himself to the abandoned church bell. A goose is shown escaping in slow motion from the church in the smoke drenched skies. The last scene of the film shows a surreal land where all the characters of the film are celebrating a wedding in happiness. The piece of land slows cuts off and ebbs away into the sea while Ivan speaks to the audience; “Once upon a time there was a country; Yugoslavia”
PS: I had initially submitted this post on PassionForCinema http://passionforcinema.com/emir-kusturica’s-underground-a-nation-that-ceased-to-exist/
Filed under: world cinema | Tags: BELA TARR, JULIETTE BINOCHE, KIESLOWSKI, KRZYSZTOF KIEŚLOWSKI, WERCKMEISTER HARMÓNIÁK, world cinema
A camera mounted behind the wheel captures the hues of a journey, adorned in asphalt blue and embellished with the sound of raw tires rubbing against the road. A little girl flags a blue candy wrapper from the car, celebrating freedom, announcing the dawn of awakened consciousness and the wind claims the wrapper. The car stops for a comfort break. Camera behind the dripping brake fluid, building up the uneasiness, and the signs of oncoming uncertainties. A rambler sitting by the road, arguing with chance, manages to place the cup on a stick while playing the bilboquet. In that exact instant of momentary triumph the car crashes in to a tree, the ironic synchrony of paradoxical chances. Fumes from the car gently blend with fog, faintly showing the barren land and the odds of a smashed car at the mercy of a lone tree. A beach ball colored in red and white rolls out with the sound of a squealing woman. This forms the opening sequence of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors Blue, the first installment of the Three Colors trilogy. The trilogy superficially refers to the three colors of the Fench Flag: blue (liberty), white (equality), and red (friendship).
Bleu is a requiem to longing, the reincarnation of grief:, its nebulous fight with “now”, the unsettling lull, the echoes, the fierce unpredictability, violent bouts and the sublime comfort of emptiness. Julie (Juliette Binoche) survives a fatal car crash but loses her daughter and husband Patrice de Courcy, a famous French composer. Julie is unable to contain the grief and flees from everything that is connected to the past. She attempts suicide but fails to kill her unsettling grief along with her. She even tries to have sex with Olivier, the assistant to her husband, who is truly in love with her. In the morning, dressed and ready to go, she wakes him, smiles sweetly and says, “I appreciate what you did for me. But you see. I’m like any other woman. I sweat. I cough. I have cavities. You won’t miss me. You understand that now…Shut the door when you leave.” She tries to sell off her belongings and moves to Paris. There she maintains a quiet solitary life but is haunted by her husband’s last unfinished work: a piece celebrating “the unity of Europe”, commissioned by the Council of Europe. During the process she realizes how she can never be free from the human connection.
The combination of virtuosic cinematography and searing music by Zbigniew Preisner becomes a central character in the narrative. In recent times Bela Tarr’s Werckmeister harmóniák had the extended long shots forming the character in the narrative. Especially the assault sequence in the hospital is the hallmark scene from that film. Zbigniew’s intoxicating music takes us under the skin of the characters, the emotions that you cannot see but feel through the music. Feeling the music with the touch of fingers on the music notes written on a paper or the visual feeling shown by the particular note in play clearly while the rest of the sheet is blurred, highlights the concerto that haunts Julie’s insides. There are four points in the film where we see a blackout; these are the points where she is graduating from temporal consciousness to her grieving consciousness. We hear the concerto in the backdrop. Camera placements like in the opening sequence; mounted on the wheel, or even the masterstroke shot of showing a character’s entire frame in Julie’s iris is awe inspiring.
Palpable tension is built in the viewer’s mind through subtle sequences; the extremely long shot of the barren land and the car crashing into a silent tree, the extreme close-ups of Julie while she is watching the funeral on a phone tv, cocooned inside her bed sheet. The claustrophobic angles and close shots of shivering lips heighten the grief. Light beams, glass and mirror images are also used in the film which is atypical to Kieslowskian form of film making. A poignant scene in the film shows an old lady meandering her way through a recycle trash bin to throw a bottle. In many films Kieslowski has used this scene to convey the character’s relation to their surroundings. Fundamentally, I think it’s a metaphor for feelings that can never be recycled. Julie shuts her eyes at this scene,
oblivious and immersed in the music from the past. The same scene is used in The double life of Veronique and the other films of the trilogy. The interpretations of this scene in these films convey their relation with their existence.
There are semiotic references to feelings that communicate and take the viewer in to Julie’s mind. We are shown small sequences of people jumping off the cliff or a free fall of skydivers. Both Julie and her mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, are shown to be watching these clips on TV. This is a metaphor for freedom, in fact the irony of freedom; it gives an immediate connect with suicide but still connotes freewill, confidence and hope of survival. Both the characters are somewhere in the middle of these phases of freefall; an echo of metaphysical weightlessness. Kieslowski uses ordinary sequences to highlight Julie’s abnegation of human bond and how she cocoons herself in to her own world. The extreme close-up of the cup with the sunlight changing from dusk to dawn, camera focusing on the gentle blow of air on a dead insect’s fur, sugar cubes absorbing coffee, watching a spoon revolve 
in a bottle, the flutists who haunts her, all are elements that subliminally show us her renunciation of the worldly things and finding meaning in triviality. The style of the film is diegetic (narration and implicit understanding of the mis-en-scene) in nature than being merely mimetic (Visual representation of mis-en-scene to covey actions). The trivial details all refer to the former representation of her inner emptiness. Important actions in the scene happen off the camera and focus on reaction. The time when the car crashes, Antione’s face is shown than falling for the obvious graphic display of the crash. Julie witnesses a street fight and a person who is caught up in the brawl, runs straight in to her apartment, knocks every door. This entire scene is shown from Julie’s expression of fear on her face, her helplessness.
Kieślowski has used a lot of science in the usage of colors, to map the viewer’s liminal and subliminal space. The road in the beginning is shown in blue, the girls candy wrapper, the blue beaded chandelier, the blue walls, the blue pool, there are blue filters used throughout the film. The blue here connotes the freedom, free-will to abandon everything and yet not be free. Sometimes the usage of color is done subliminally so that only the sub-conscious mind gets affected. For instances: the Red and white ball that rolls out of the car soon after the crash or the little girls who jump in the pool wearing red and white swimsuits when Julie is drowning her misery with a swim, all these allude to the Red and White films that follow. The sequence where Julie accidentally barges in to a court room trial is actually a scene from White. That probably is not that subliminal in nature as much as Karol (the character from White) walking hurriedly and brushing past Julie near the pillars of the court, the sequence is momentary and lasts little over a second. Karolcan be seen in the picture 
Blind chance also plays an important part of the film; the realm of the impossible coincidences that form the soul of the film. Off all the human bonds that Julie has distanced herself away from, maternal love is the one that becomes ominous and haunts her existence. Her friend Lucille, who is a stripper in a club, reminds her of her daughter in the scene when Lucille touches the blue beaded chandelier and tells her as a kid she had the same blue chandelier at her place and how it reminded her of those days. Julie is awestruck and her face conveys her inner rage to talk about her daughter with her but she holds back. In another episode, the discovery of mice in the flat transfixes Julie with fear. She is unable to kill them herself because the nest holds a mother with its newborn litter. She is trying to run away from these feelings and still they return to haunt her. There is also the inexplicable occurrence of chance of two people doing or thinking the same thing at the same time. The flutist with tunes that remind her of husband’s work; the flutist says “these are his inventions”. Julie asks Olivier if she had not looked at the file she would not have discovered that her husband Patrice, had a mistress who is carrying his child.
Zbigniew’s aural assault reaches a crescendo in the last sequence showing how each character had a transformed life because of Juliet’s deeds. In the final sequence, the Unity of Europe piece is played (which features 1 Corinthians 13 in Greek), and we see images of all the people Julie has affected by her actions. Out of a dark frame Antione is shown to be awakened through an alarm clock (metaphor of moral awakening by the touch of the cross; redemption of regretful theft and the vivid memory of an accident). Again the same dark frame and then we see triple reflection of Julie’s
mother awaiting death in tranquility. There follows a glimpse of Lucille in the strip club where she gazes into the dark. The camera pans once again out of blackness onto Patrice’s lover and an ultrasound picture of her baby. After the next black frame we see extreme close shot of Julie’s pupil and a glint of light brightens it up. Last frame shows Julie sitting by the window and her face is slowly being filled with morning light as her grief melts in to tears.
PS: I had posted this post initially on PassionForCinema. Here’s the link :http://passionforcinema.com/kieslwoski’s-three-colors-trilogy-blue/
Filed under: Uncategorized
I am bored of my posts. Verbosity, forced philosophical innuendos, too much reading into things and the same dour themes. Hell, I needed a break. So I went back in time and read those dog-eared cinema diaries from my childhood. Back in those days, I had no choice but to sit with my family and watch those films of the 70s/80s and the early 90s. It’s only now that I am this pseudo-intellectual avant-garde cinema snob. Anyway, in this post I thought I’d write about the clichés of yore that are not much talked about, that we all probably grew up watching. We all know about the flowers that cover up the kisses, the kaali mata ka mandir-howling-ghantis or the rich heroine and poor hero clichés. So I thought I’ll write about the clichés that have not been talked about much. However, I can’t promise complete novelty here nor can I promise LMAO stuff that would make Chaplin turn in his grave and fart in appreciation. Okay, here goes: Damsel in distress jumps diagonally: When our heroine has to cry because the hero cheated on her, she would run wearing a flaring white “nightie”. She would climb up the circuitous stairs. After this short effortless run she jumps diagonally on the bed and buries her head in the pillow, her hair is let lose in this scene. Then she would cry by stroking the pillow with her head. The pace of stroking the pillow is directly proportional to her misery (stop reading between the lines). The Kodak finale: A parivarik saaf suthri film ends with all the leads of the movie standing in a line just about covering the camera eye. The salt-and-pepper hair maaji, her husband with a black stick and rimmed glasses, the heroine with red wrists after the rope was undone, the hero all bruised fighting out the baddies, the villainous relative who becomes a good guy and the house servants, all of them stand together in a line. At this, the standard comedian would crack a joke to which everyone laughs in perfect synchronization and immediately the credits roll. Sometimes it says” This is not the end, it’s the beginning” (Tip: Raja Babu; Shakti Kapur does the honors here at the end) Hawas, tapish aur sulagte jism: When a hero and heroine are making out this would most likely be in slow mo with some soothing music so that it doesn’t seem vulgar ( Tip: Dor; Both the couples are making out in separate locations and it is shown in slow mo). Next is a special category in kinds of makeouts; rape scene. Now when our dear villain is making out with our damsel in a rape scene, it would most likely be raining, villain pouring down a whisky bottle and in all likelihood the damsel will act naïve. The damsel wears a special rape dress for this momentous occasion. Usually white in color, this special dress is such that the left sleeve, the right sleeve, the back is detachable and the villain detaches them in that order. Watch how the camera pans around not to show the actual rape. So you’d see a stuffed tiger head on the wall that is zoomed in and zoomed out (you get the metaphor here, don’t you), thunder and lightning, a squeaky fan going round and round, windows shattering. Watch carefully our damsel here shows the amazing act of irony; she needs to fight back but yet willfully submit to the villain’s force. So she would sway her head left-to-right in harmony with a nahhiiinn but will never kick him in his balls which should be lot easier. In the end, when it’s all over, the damsel will definitely have spread out red sindoor ( even if she did not have a proper one in the start) and she’d walk around like a zombie. Another kind of make-out is when the lead protagonist is indulging into territories he/she should not have. Like when the hero is accidentally sleeping with the heroine’s friend. There will definitely be a sax playing in the background; highlighting the oncoming guilt trip and also balancing the act of keeping the protagonist’s image clean ( It was all circumstantial, that’s the message). Wait, how can I forget the make-outs in the semi-porno flicks with names like Adh-nangi-nagan-ka-inteqaam. In every make-out session the lady will be a buxom aunty and she would never let the poor lean guy smooch. 70% of the time you will see lip biting and scratching one feet to another; that should make for a good mosquito repellant viral ( Tip: watch any south Indian masala flick and you’ll know what I mean). It’s all in the name: Rich people are mostly likely to have last names like; Singhania, Malhotra, Bajaj, Kapadia, etc. Working class people are most likely to have names like: Deenu kaka, Ramu Kaka, Shanti bai, Ramu, Gangu Bai, Phoolwanti, Saku Bai. Don’t get me started on Rahul and Raj.
Professional and cultural stereotypes: Doctor: Patients are never expected to go to hospitals, doctors do home delivery (well literally). They usually wear a black suit, stethoscope around their necks and a black suitcase that god only knows what’s in there. The host carries the suitcase and the patient is never told what happened to him/her even if it is common cold. Every doctor has some standard lines in every movie: “ Injection de diya hai, subah tak hosh aa jayega”, “Ab inhe dawan nahin, dua ki zaroorat hai” , “ Ab who khatre se bahar hai”, “Mubarakho aap baap ban gaye” The Law: The cop is always sporting the line “Kanoon ko apne haath mein mat lo”, “chup chap apne aap ko kaanoon ke hawale kar do warna…”, “Kanoon ke haath bahut lambien hote hain” . Stereotype supercop award definitely goes to Iftekhar. He has played a police wala 18 times in his career. Yes I actually googled up this trivia. By the way, Iftekhar has also played the judge in many movies. The judge has one motherhood line “Tamaam sabooton aur gawahon ko madde nazar rakhte huye, mujhrim ko taaze rate hind, dafa 302 ke tahat sazae maut di jaati hai…” . As soon as the judge announces this, some of the stock scenes show up; like the poor pigeons outside the court will fly out and then freeze, waves are shown to smash the shore and then freeze, the affected person will have his image halved or the best is, the insaaf ka tarazu is shown and it evens out. Catholics: Women are wearing a skirt, usually widows and every sentence ends with “man”. Men are alcoholics and have names like Peter, John, Tony etc. Catholics are shown quite god fearing so much so that they keep uttering god in every statement followed by a “man” of course. Sab rasta god ki taraf jaata hai man. Goldie Hawn once said “There are only three ages for women in Hollywood – Babe, District Attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy”. Now we have a Bollywood version too: There are only three ages for women in Bollywood: Maaji, Mamta aur Mallika. “Maaji” is a woman in her late 60s; she will either be a shrew or a very naïve old woman. If she is a widow then she gets more screen time so her husband is usually killed in a plane crash or by the goons ( the hero is obliviously taking revenge) There will be a mid 30s-40s Mamta who will be a wife or a mother to two kids. She is a homemaker too like our Maaji but the problem is that she is usually given a small screen time. Either she is shown back in those days when she was a gal or she ages fast to become Maaji. And then there is Mallika, the hot siren, the heroine, the temptress, the babe. Mallika would be wearing cool clothes in college, won’t talk to random boys but would spew venom at the hero and eventually fall for him. Mallika is dumb; beautiful, rape-prone and has no opinion of hers. Just when we were enjoying these women stereotypes Anurag came and ruined it. He killed the concept of Maaji, Mamta aur Mallika with his liberated women in his movies The fight chase props: It’s either a water filled pot, fruit cart or a vegetable cart that invariably comes in the way of a fight chase. The villain’s sidekicks will be thrown on the fruit cart in slow mo. When the fruits and the villains have fallen off the cart, the hero gets on top of it to continue his chase. In a car chase, there will be a mother who is carrying her baby and crossing the road. In case the car hits the mother the baby will take a parabolic flight and so will our hero, just in time to catch the baby. It may also involve a blind man or a man on wheel chair. Hordes of people either running or on bicycles form the speed breakers in a chase. Even the gang shooting in the middle of all this won’t deter them from crowding the road. Losers Inc. they all die: Hero Heroine finally coming together at the climax involves many sacrifices. One of them involves the second heroine who sacrifices her love for our hero. So she will have no purpose in life after discovering hero and lead heroine are in love, she is madly in love with the hero. So when the hero is being shot at, she will take the bullet in her chest and following her dying (unending) speech she will put the hero and heroine’ s hands together. Men are in a more bad shape here. Usually if the hero’s best friend is not seeing anyone, he must die after taking the bullet for the hero. The price you pay for being single I tell you. Another kind of sacrifice is by the scheming saas, the rich capitalistic dad, or the vamp. Now throughout the film they will be against our hero/heroine but at the end when they turn good people (this usually happens with one line utterance of “Tumne meri aankhein khol di”) they will take the bullet. All the losers who die in these scenarios get a 3 word climax for them too, an obituary of sorts. It goes something like this. Let’s say Sita, the other woman, died in the hero’s arms. The hero would show his grief in the exact 3 steps: Sita! (Gently as though he is trying to confirm her death), again Sittaa!! (this time there is minor shock) and then with an orgasm like cry he would go Sssssiiiiiitttttaaaaa!!!. So it would go something like; sita, sittaa, sssssiiiiiiiiittttaaa! PS: I had initially published this post on PassionForCinema http://passionforcinema.com/lesser-known-bollywood-cliches-of-yore/ 
A silver lining in the sky forms shadows on an unkempt man’s face. A bird meanders, treading no path in particular bathed in the bliss of nothingness. Flowers sway to the man’s poetry strewn in ailing emptiness while a bee relishes the sweet life and gently perches on the ground. The bee oblivious to reality is squished to death by a passerby. In an unfathomable instant, the utopian world of momentary happiness is broken; the man shrugs and embraces the absurd of life. This masterful act forms the epoch of a young man’s story in which he is wandering to know the purpose of life but only finds himself battered by the brutal absurdity of our existence.
Vijay (Guru Dutt) is a poet who abdicates romanticism as a form of art. He is on a narcissistic exploration to find acceptance of his oeuvre, depicting hopelessness of mankind. His art is only remained by his poetry screaming from dog eared manuscripts, lying in dustbins and being sold for dus anna in scrap. His brothers detest his presence at home as he is an expense to an already impoverished family. He takes refuge at a friend’s house; a friend who is willing to do anything for money and has just returned from giving a false testimonial for a car accident. His publishers consider his nihilistic works inappropriate in a time when a woman’s beauty seemed to be the only topic of poetry. He stumbles upon Meena ( Mala Sinha), his love from the times of bourgeois education. She had walked out on him to marry a rich man. Vijay alienates from this society that is seduced by the stupor of money, greed and materialism. He is finding the meaning of life through a moral teleological exploration, the absurd of life. He is Albert Camus’ Sisyphus who is led in this world to carry a huge rock atop a mountain, all along he is aware of the futility of this labor, the meaning is the bait and that eludes him perpetually. He is gradually discovering the hopelessness of life. The absurd is a juxtaposition of man’s pursuit to find significance, reason and essence of life and the cold, hopeless world he is pitted against.
His art is understood and appreciated by the most unlikely person, a courtesan, Gulabo ( Waheeda Rehman) who buys his poetry off the scrap market. She falls for him and confesses that there is nothing more to know about him after having read his works as though his art speaks more than his ontological frame of existence. Vijay’s mother hides food from his vicious brothers, in the hope that her son would return someday but he drifts in the hope of recognition. Meanwhile Meena’s rich husband hires him as his servant and tries to humiliate him, a reaction to the suspicion of Meena’s alleged affair. Meena’s arrogance is displayed in the elevator when she confronts Vijay and explains her side of the story and at the end of this fleeting conversation says “Mujhe to upar jaana tha” and takes the elevator to the top floor while letting Vijay leave. His unbecoming comes in the death of his mother, when his brothers deprive him of the ceremony of her departure. This scene of final dissent into absurdity is shot magnificently. Through an arch we see the river glistening with light and Vijay’s dark silhouette fills up the space gradually. He gives into drinking, witnesses the tragic dance of survival by a prostitute who has to intentionally ignore her baby crying for food. He meanders in the by lanes of prostitute areas whose world he earlier considered immoral. He finds meaning in their lives and spends a night at Gulabo’s attic, a la Devdas. His existence wallows and pursues the elusive essence.
Camus argues; suicide is a confession that life is not worth living; it is a choice implicitly declaring that life is “too much”. Suicide offers the most basic “way out” of absurdity: the immediate termination of the self and its place in the universe. This is the realization that dawns on Vijay, that sums up the culmination of Vijay’s attempt to end everything. He flees from Gulabo’s attic convoluted by his internal reflections. He attempts to get run over by a train. On his way, he confronts a tramp trembling in cold. He takes off his jacket and puts it around him. This is his philanthropic deed to bring hope, to see life in everything but himself. The tramp realizes his intentions and stalks him to his dissent only to get caught in the tracks himself. Vijay, in his attempt to save the tramp, is pushed off the track. The tramp dies wearing Vijay’s jacket and the world thus knows the end of Vijay. Purists would argue that it is destiny that sends the tramp as messiah. The question then would be, was the tramp ever destined to die wearing a poet’s jacket caught in a train track? It is the existence and the unintelligible truth of life that we are born to experience, born to suffer. We are merely led by our choices and what we make out of them. We are what we can become. This defines the underlying principle of existentialism: existence precedes essence (Jean Paul Sartre).
Gulabo is devastated yet determined to resurrect Vijay’s art which was more crucial than his own existence. She is in contrast to Meena who in her pursuit of money and fame walks out on him while Gulabo begs with all her life’s income to publish Vijay’s works. They are finally published posthumously. His poetry is flying off the racks and he becomes a literary legend. While recuperating in a hospital, he is woken up from a coma by the recital of his works. He claims his poetry and is understood to have gone insane. Here he is again witnessed by the absurdity of his being. He flees the asylum where he has been trapped only to end up at his own death anniversary, a ceremony to felicitate him. He witness the horrifying deed of all his adversaries feasting on his fame, squeezing every penny of his dead worth. His publishers, brothers and friends, all conspire to prove him dead even after discovering him alive. As he is struggling to prove himself alive, in an ironic turn they all turn to become his closest confidants and start to own up to their relation with him, hoping for a better royalty off his poetry. This profoundly changes Vijay’s belief in the system that corrupts our morality.
His belief in absurdity peaks at this point which lyrically explodes on the screen with the
legendary “ Jaala do ise, phoonk daalo, tumari liye hai, tum hi sambahlo yeh duniya”. The song is shot with brilliant usage of light, as he walks among mortal plebs with spiritual gusto. He realizes he is not the person who was the poet, who was struggling to make his voice heard. He audaciously confesses he is not “Vijay” ( the celebrated poet). He is beaten up and is called an impostor. He gives up his identity which is the futile labor of carrying the burden of being. He renounces the world, is convinced by Meena to own this fame, this new found identity that he yearned for. He finds it meaningless and returns to Gulabo, the only person who truly understood him. He escapes the world with her and an artist turns into a man and existence finds its essence.
Popularly, this film is hailed as a romantic masterpiece and which for me is to brutally disrespect the art and philosophy behind it. If life is so meaningless and absurd as shown in the film, the logical reasoning then would be suicide. Camus’ ideology negates this argument. On the contrary, he suggests, accepting the absurd is a matter of living life to its fullest, remaining aware that we are reasonable human beings damned to live a short time in an unreasonable world and then to die. We remain aware of the conflict between our desire and reality, and so living the absurd is living in a constant state of unceasing conflict. It is a revolt against the meaninglessness of our life and the conclusiveness of the death that awaits us. Suicide, like hope, is just another possible way out of this conflict. Living the absurd is more analogous to the predicament faced by the man condemned to death yet who, with every breath, revolts against the notion that he must die. We may take Vijay to be contemplating suicide as his interpretation of the meaning of life. However, he doesn’t make a conscious choice to live but is saved from a suicide. The confrontation at the town hall felicitation following his death, changes his interpretation of existence altogether. The meaning of life that he comes to know is of higher dimension and he decides to abdicate everything and start with nothingness, as though on a quest of newer absurdities.
Many instances in the film show Vijay spending his time on a bench overseeing ships that are ready to leave the shore. Those who have known the absurdity of life will know what Vijay was waiting for at the harbor in discreet points of his life. You can hear him scream for freedom. You will probably know what went through Guru Dutt’s mind at the last hours of eternal sleep.
PS: On October 10, 1964, Guru Dutt was found dead in his bed after an alcohol and drug overdose. He was scheduled next day to meet Mala Sinha for his ironically titled film, Baharen Phir Bhi Aayengi, and Raj Kapoor to discuss making color films. Pyaasa was a black and white film. I can’t wait to see how Anurag Kashyap adds color to this film. I hear he calls it Gulaal.
I had initially posted this blog on PassionForCinema
http://passionforcinema.com/existentialism-the-absurd-and-pyaasa/
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ceylan, dark films, noir, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, three monkeys, three monkeys review, turkey, uc maymun review, us maymun, world cinema
This review contains spoilers. Viewer discretion is advised
Dark brooding clouds hover around a couple recovering from an aftermath. Guilt melting on the wrinkled face, hand blithely perched on forehead waiting for an undoing of fate. Smoke emanating from a face hopelessly silent like battered streets following a hurricane, looking at the sky for an answer that has never returned. The couple’s unwilling chemistry awaits the rain or may be an absolution. An image cast a spell on my senses and I had to pick up this film. If the image could talk so much about a film, I wondered what the film would be like.
At the onset you may expect that the three monkeys will be a metaphorical film about the obvious meaning but make no mistakes, this film just borrows a cue from that philosophical undertone and weaves cinematic magic. The proverbial three monkeys are a hapless husband, his guilt soaked wife and his embittered son. See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil is what the family surrenders to when a coercive politician turns their lives upside down. Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Uc Maymun is an artistic meditation of relentless guilt, searing imagery and the vicious circle of vice. It won the award for best director at Cannes 2008.
Turkish politician Servet (Ercan Kesal) falls asleep at the wheel as he drives through the woods at night. He runs over someone and is desperate to hide his crime in order to save his political career. Servet’s crime is now covered up by his loyal driver, Eyup (Yavuz Bingol), who takes the blame on himself after Servet’s promise of hefty lump sum money. Eyup accepts his fate of a year’s imprisonment in lieu of the money. Wife Hacer (Hatice Aslan) and son Ismail (Ahmet Rifat Sungar) are coming to terms with his absence in their own ways. Hacer finds her son becoming aimless and unmotivated. She approaches Servet to pull them out of their misery. She falls for Servet and indulges in sexual infidelity. This is witnessed by her son Ismail. One lie leads to a domino of lies, deceit and rage. Meanwhile Eyup, the husband returns and becomes suspicious. In a fit of rage Ismail kills Servet.
The acting from each character is breathtakingly understated, constantly reminded me of Trois couleurs: Bleu. In fact the depiction of mood is similar to Tarkovsky (Mirror and The Sacrifice; the only movies of Tarkovsky that I have seen). Dialogue is minimal but the panting, the pauses, the uncomfortable angst-ridden silence, the loud ringtone; makes you almost hear their emotions even when they are not enacting them out. The sound is perfectly married to the narrative. You can hear the scream for freedom from that loud ringtone, from the train that runs past the house killing silences of waves ebbing from nearby sea, sounds of speeding train and Eyub walking uncomfortably under those tracks. Everyone is trying to come out of their shells of dreary existence.
The camera ellipses are conspicuous by their ‘absences’ and that defines the movie. The opening scene captures the sound of a screeching car and the accident is heard in the backdrop, the camera on the politician’s face mapping his brilliant expression of an oncoming loss in the elections more than the guilt of a hit-and-run. Hacer sleeping with the politician is off camera, while the camera focuses on Ismail’s eye peeping from a key hole. Soon after his rage and his refusal to accept this bitter reality is what the camera focuses on. Ismail killing the politician is again not shown but the cold confession of “I did it” and the fantastic reaction portrayed by Hacer. These three sequences are what define the film’s intent to hide a disaster but to show the reactions and what becomes of the people associated with it. It’s more with how each one of us cope with continuity of a calamity surpassing its transitory existence.
Initially it is not apparent that the couple ( Hacer-Ayub) lacks chemistry but still you empathize with Hacer when she confesses her obsession with Servet. How do you know it? You know this from the director’s eye of subtlety that there was prevailing uneasiness in the marriage even when it does not form part of the mise-en-scene. The shot when Hacer confronts and confesses her love to Servet is intere
sting. There are no close ups. On the contrary it is an extreme long shot with the backdrop of a cliff overlooking dark clouds foreboding the essence of their ailing chemistry. The color palette is kaleidoscopic ranging from sepia, to green to natural, almost as though the sun doesn’t rise in this city, they are just dark times. The scene with Ismail’s imagination of his dead brother walking in to the house is chilling and subtly conveys the yearning. Both men witness this imagination in their darkest hours. The final scene is a visual feast with his redemption, washing off his sins or is it that they are just passed on? By the end of the movie you feel like you are gradually being released by an unnerving hold of a python. The tension is taut and yet languid in its pace.
The film has a layered spiritual sub text which questions our morality. We end up committing crime which we would have never imagined as though our lives have no control on our actions. Is it righteous of man to denounce his morality to salvage human bonds? Does existence and survival justify the espousal of sin?
This post was originally posted at PassionForCinema : http://passionforcinema.com/uc-maymun-three-monkeys-film-review/
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: film and media, media, yellow journalism
A mystic location in the woods, a group of anorexic sadhus invoking cult.. cut.. a young couple being educated about dyslexia while a kid is painting his mind… cut… a star couple and their hickeys with animated figments of conversation.. cut .. a Kafkaesque atmosphere with metaphorical depiction of cigarettes and freedom of expression.. cut.. a besotted jungle, a lion dates a lioness with poetic lines exchanged.. cut… man in alienation plots bombs across the city for survival.. cut.. Graphic depiction of a teenager being murdered by a domestic help in a rage of vendetta.. cut.. a political warfare of power and power plants.. cut.. a mother weeping with dead son in her arms and being asked “aapko kaisa lag raha abhi?”
Did you have the faintest idea that I juxtaposed news ticker scripts and movie plots from the new wave bollywood cinema? Understandably no I presume. This seemingly disconnected array is a depiction of how the news media is gesturing huge pay checks to wannabe film writers/directors and that bollywood cinema is getting real with themes of modern existence and characters are beginning to renounce their larger than life tags. In a way television news media has swapped its role with cinema.
I fail to comprehend the chain of events that triggered this mad frenzy: sensationalism taking precedence over news and information. I think the trend started with sting journalism tapes of some politicians caught on camera under the table. This garnered TRPs that could beat a hundred farmer suicides or our neighborhood in state of emergency. This was compounded by the psyche of people, of getting over awed by calamity and chaos, the urge to propagate fear and trepidation. Specifically the towns and hinterlands, they get traumatized with every false fear and believe in god reincarnating in a kid from Jharkhand or impostors who predict apocalypse from a news room. The media blatantly capitalizes on this unnerving gullibility. The reason for a teen murder case is parent’s infidelity or the teen’s character in question. It could be possible that the cops who make these inane allegations are victims of sensationalized news and at some point they try to internalize the “news” to reflect it in their judgment.
Entertainment from real people as opposed to stereotypical bollywood interpretations is becoming a strong factor for this change. Audiences find a person caught in a criminal case on news channels more interesting than a serial killer movie. 9/11, 7/11 and other such precarious situations have ushered in era of “glorified chaos” as the new mantra for TRPs. It’s a classic equation of self sustaining supply-demand. A news channel throws in some irrelevant but fear inducing footage, the audience with initial resistance, succumbs to it as entertainment. Meanwhile 20 other channels replicate this model. In order to differentiate, the news channel ups the level of its tamaasha factor and then the audience attunes to this new level of atrocity. All along this vicious cycle, the audience is oblivious to this change that is happening to the subconscious.
On the other side of this dichotomy is a new face of Indian cinema resurrecting from small budgets, rational thinking and of course love for quality cinema. With increased exposure to world cinema, multiplexes and multiplexing audience, filmmakers are now beginning to up the level. I can see an undercurrent of French New Wave of cinema which focused on realism. Films like, Johnny Gaddar, Aamir, TZP, No Smoking, Mithya, Vishal’s movies, Kukunoor’s and many others are now bringing the realism in Indian cinema. The masses are refusing melodramatic content and exaggerated emotions of the actors. Which now, the news media is lapping it up. Stereotypes like rich heroine-poor hero, hero wants to elope with already married/engaged heroine etc are dying at the resurgence of fresher characters like working moms, hero-heroine peacefully breaking up because of mutually understanding incompatibility, socially responsible cola-teens, zero-song- great-background-score movies. All of this is changing the society at large. Cinema has a lot of influence on our attitudes, lifestyles and our actions. I feel happy that this effect is slowly bringing progression and reason in the society. For instance TZP raised awareness about dyslexia in many schools for the handicapped. Parents of dyslexic kids are no longer embarrassed of the condition. A school in Hyderabad for the mentally handicapped has had record enrollments form the time the movie was released. Before this they had to go town to town to educate people about the importance of special education for these children.
Incongruous yet dissecting paths of cinema and mass media, and we are here at the joints of time. One is leading to newer cinema improving social beliefs and the other ceasing us, we, the people to a regressive society. There has to be some medium that controls media sensationalism but then that would control our freedom of expression, the objective of mass media. In pursuit of truth, let truth be our guiding force and fiction improve the way we perceive truth.
PS: I had initially posted this blog on Passion For Cinema with the same name (
http://passionforcinema.com/truth-is-getting-stranger-than-fiction/ )
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This film was made as an intro for Tech Mahindra. It was to be shown in between films at the New York Film Festival.
