Showing posts with label LSD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LSD. Show all posts

Tuesday, 27 February 2018

Lonely at the top!

Becoming Cary Grant (Documentary; 2016)

It is tough being on top of the pecking order. Your every move and omittance are hawkishly scrutinised and publicised. People in the lower end of the food chain, without an iota of a clue of what it is to set the trend for tomorrow's society, sit in their armchair to pass judgements on the appropriateness of their leaders' moves.

For the leader who had spent a lifetime trying to get to the top, he would find it increasingly difficult to perch on the top savouring the fruits of his endeavour. Then he would ask himself the meaning of it all. He would ponder on what he is actually seeking for and when does it all end? Roosting a lonely high up on a pedestal where most of his contemporaries are out-of-league, he explores realms less travelled for answers.

In the 60s, LSDs were in vogue to search the answers to these intriguing questions in the hidden crypts of our gyri and sulci. Correctly or otherwise, this medically sanctioned psychoanalytical psychotherapy dug deep into the repressed memories of a person's past to find answers to the present listlessness and behavioural maladaptations.

This documentary is a product of the findings of actor Cary Grant's weekly LSD therapy with his doctor. Through this and his collection of home-made videos and photographs, we get a composite picture of the actor's early life in Bristol as a boy in a working-class society, of a mother who was institutionalised after his father's recommendation that his mother was 'not right in the head', of a death sibling from a gangrene thumb after his mother accidentally slammed the door against it and his indulgence in a travelling acrobatic troupe.

Living with his paternal grandmother after his father remarried, he started working and landed in America when his troupe performed there in the 1930s. From then on, the lure of the big lights of Broadway and Hollywood drew him to the celluloid screen. Archibald Alec Leach became Cary Grant.

All through the documentary, the director is trying to portray Grant as one who is trying to find his real self. Archibald, not knowing who he really is, seeks to build a persona for himself through a fictitious name with no past in Cary Grant. He is a private man who loves the company of the four walls. Even though it seems far-fetched, the documentary seems to suggest that the various directors that he worked with helped him to discover his true self. Perhaps, Cary Grant was just a good actor who could fit snuggly into any shoe, a suave hero, a cunning conman, a devious agent or a comic.

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson

Saturday, 20 February 2016

A life full of void?

Enter the Void (2006)


Void? Empty space? Our inner soul, void? That is how our universe is supposed to be. Mostly void, to be filled with pockets of existence. The existence or mere presence?

The Mayans used coca leaves with respect and reaped maximum benefit from it. The Tarahumara Indians and tribes from the Amazon used DMT sparingly to give them superhuman powers to complete mammoth tasks. Specific components of marijuana are actually irreplaceable in treating some intractable childhood seizures. Even the great Muslim physician and philosopher Avicenna found his inspiration late into the night in the company of his wine after his daily worldly and divine duties. Some workers even suggested low dose psychedelics allay anxiety, to heighten sensation and to explore the hidden crevices of our creative potential (think Beatles).

Unfortunately, these potentially life-saving drugs had not been given their appropriate place in society. Quite often than not, they have been abused a mode of escapism to compensate for Man’s malaise to solve their void in their soul.

This 2006 film is a psychedelic journey of the soul of a man who had just been shot. As per described in some Buddhists scriptures, the soul would wander around before entering another body, it is the filmmaker’s perception of ‘life’ after the protagonist, Oscar’s death before the soul finds another physical body.

The technique of filmmaking is somehow unique here. It looks as if Oscar’s eyes are the camera. We see from Oscar’s perspective, even when he is floating around as a spirit, piercing wall and hovering buildings. We share many of his psychedelic experiences after he consumes stimulants. The stroboscopic lighting that appears so often may not excite those prone to migraines and may trigger epileptic seizures; I am sure.

Oscar is small-time drug pusher in Tokyo who dies from his mortal gunshot wounds after a police bust-up. As in all narration of ’near-death’ experiences, we would not know death experiences for obvious reasons, we learn about his whole world life. There is an attempt to explain his life and things that happened wherein from a Freudian angle. Oscar and his sister Linda lose their parents quite early in life and grow in separate foster homes. As Oscar grows older, he migrates to Japan, earns some money and brings Linda there. They get messed up in a seedy world of sex, drugs and decadence. With the help of flashing neon lights that seem typical of Tokyo, graphic images and sometimes deafening silence between shots, we are presented with the whole picture. You would either love it or loathe it.

“Be afraid. Be very afraid.”*