Love, an often abused word

Nadigaiyar Thilakam (2018)

People do a lot of things under the guise of love. They justify wrongdoings and rationalise breaking of sacred bonds with the same excuse. They sanitise guilt by saying that love conquers all. They give love such a status as if it is the one that maintains human civilisation and makes the world go around. In short, love moves mountains. Love is Grace. Love is God.

Perhaps love has been over-glorified. If we were to dissect love into subsets, maybe then the true intentions may manifest. A rose in any language may smell the same, but its thorns hurt, nevertheless. To be fascinated, to admire, to have passion, to desire, to have devotion, to like, to lust, to obsess, all denote different degrees of love. The end results in the pursuit of these ambitions may not always be a happy ending. 

This film is a biopic drama of the darling of the early 1960s' Tamil silver screen, Mrs Savithri Ganesan. Savithri landed in Kollywood in the 1950s as a starry-eyed youngster. Even though failing to secure an acting role initially, she made her acquaintance with Gemini Ganesan. By a twist of fate, she finally was given a role in Kollywood and developed a relationship with an already married Gemini.

The story tells about their union, how they legitimise their wedding using love as a reason. Surprisingly this power of love only lasted as far as the going was good. When Savithri's career outshone Gemini's, he became defensive. The romance fizzled out and, hatred took over. Booze took charge to numb the pain. Love took the form of another woman. Somehow, it all made sense when Savithri was the other woman but not when she was two-timed.

Bad business decisions and naivety landed Savithri in a collision course with the Income Tax. Embroiled in debts, alcoholism and bad health, she never regained her rightful place as the doyen of the Tamil cinema but died a pauper.

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More than a pretty face!

Bombshell: The Story of Hedy Lamarr (2017, Documentary)

“Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.” Hedy Lamarr. 

I bet you did not know that the image of Snow White that we have in our minds, thanks to Disney's classic cartoons, is based on the features of the then dubbed as the most beautiful woman of the world, Hedy Lamarr. Even Catwoman's representation is of hers. There was a time when every actress wanted to spot her similar hairstyle, centre-parted dark hair. Beneath the beauty that she possessed, there remained an inventive scientific mind waiting to create something new.

This Viennese daughter of a Jewish banker, Hedy Kiesler, was a free-spirited lass when at the spur of the moment acted in a dirty German film, 'Ektase' which bewildered her the rest of her adult and professional life. She married an arms merchant (to the Nazis and Mousillini) soon after her fame at Austrian movie set later. Things took a turn after Hitler and his Jewish-hating propaganda took centre stage. Her father, her idol, succumbed to a heart ailment. She staged an escape plan for herself. Swapping clothes with her maid and stitching her money and jewellery in her tunic, she made a dash out of Vienna on a bicycle.

Hedy Lamaar ©Pinterest

She landed in London where Louis B Meyer (of MGM) was scouting for talents. Contracted, she made her debut in a 1938 Hollywood film, Algiers. Struggling through the stereotype that the cinema world gave her as an exotic seductress and the ghost of Ektase, she had her ups and downs. Despite her gruelling schedule in Hollywood, in the nights, she worked in her small lab at home.

It was at this juncture that her full potential as an inventor came to fore. She is said to have given Howard Hughes, the eccentric billionaire inventor, the idea for a brand new design for the wings of his planes. During the heights of WW2, when most Hollywood actresses were content with making special appearances to entertain the US Army and to sell War Bonds, she and a composer-pianist, George Antheil, were busy inventing. When the Navy was paralysed by the German U-boats which could jam the Naval torpedoes, they came up with the idea of a 'frequency hopping' system which could bypass the German interference. They patented this invention, but the Navy was not keen to use this design for a non-military layperson.

Her beauty was also her gilded cage. Perhaps, the feminist she was and the intelligence that she possessed proved too overwhelming to many of her partners in her many (six) failed marriages. She is best remembered as Delilah in 1945 'Samson and Delilah'. Her mega production, The Loves of Three Queens, could not be distributed as no distributors wanted to take it.
Her later life was a sad one riddled with court cases, depression, drugs, plastic surgeries and more surgeries. She spent her last few years as a recluse.

Her 'frequency hopping system' is the basis of GPS, Blue Tooth, Wi-Fi and military satellite technologies. In the later years, she was given due recognition for her discovery.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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.

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