It is not a bed time story!

Sampoorna Ramayanam (Complete Ramayana, Tamil;1956)
(சம்பூர்ண ராமாயணம்)


The epic of Ramayana has fascinated people for ages. It has been narrated for generations via oral traditions, print media, stage performances and the silver screen. As early as 1922, a silent film on Ramayana came out in cinemas. Before this 1956 Tamil version, Hindi and Telegu versions of Ramayana can be found. Many other editions since then, and now, at the time of cable TV, Ramayana has permeated into households regularly.

There are many versions of Ramayana. Valmiki wrote the earliest one. Even Hanuman was concurrently writing his view on the occurrences of the day. With time, it evolved to Buddhist, Jain and South East Asian adaptations. 

Valmiki's Ramayana is said to be the authentic text of Rama's life, but it ends with his coronation at the throne after his banishment to the jungles for 14 years and capturing Sita from Ravana. Other additions of vilification of Ravana as the classical evil bad guy and exile of a pregnant Sita after overhearing the murmur of a washerman remains folklore at best.  Scholars who analysed these Sanskrit scripts agree that these were written in a slightly less refined language.

Sivaji Ganesan had already established himself as a reputable artiste by then, but due to his spirited way of acting, he was naturally not cast as Rama. Lord Rama, an avatar of Vishnu, the pillar of stoicism was played by the sombre, perhaps apathetic NT Rama Rao who later went on to have a very successful career in politics. Maybe, his casting in divine roles made the general public see him in a different light.

The first part of the film was very slow moving with most of the storytelling done through songs. This was the old way of economising time, to give value for money. The actor cast as Kaikeyi, the second wife of King Dasaratha, played a convincing role as a jealous mother worried about her position after her biological son is sidelined for the throne. She transforms well from a loving stepmother to Rama to a witch after being influenced by her foster mother.

Generally, people do not name their daughters Kaikeyi as she is perceived as the earliest villain of Ramayana. If not for her, demanding for her boons from the King, the whole hullabaloo of Rama going to the woods and the fight with Lanka would not have arisen. Lately, there is a reinterpretation of Kaikeyi's role in the whole saga. Her character was vital in Rama's development into a figure than himself. His dharma was plentiful in the jungle. There were many boons and work to be done there; not cooped in Ayuthia and rule a kingdom. For good things to happen, we need a jolt on the status quo. King Dasaratha is described as a smothering father who arrested Rama's development!

A cursory knowledge of Ramayana is mandatory to appreciate this movie.

As expected Sivaji who assumes the role of Barathan is at ease to display a melodramatic portrayal of a very loving brother of hearing that his thoughtful brother had been dethroned and banished. He rejuvenates the later part of the show with his presence.

Unlike the sermons in temples where Ravana is portrayed as a ten-headed fiery hot asura, in this movie, he is shown as a very decent human monarch. He is learned and is kind to all his family members, the royal court staff and his subjects. It is his sister, Shurpanakha, who fanned the fire of fury. It is his love of his sister that clouded his judgment. He went ahead to kidnap Sita. This was atypical of him; a scholar of many arts and sciences kidnapping somebody else's wife.

The film illustrates the turmoil that he goes through as he takes stock of his situation on the eve of his defeat. He regrets the destruction of his kingdom, the pain caused and the dilemma of whether to conceit defeat or to end his life in shame. To fight was sure failure but to commit suicide was cowardice. Bhagavathi plays the role of Ravana.

The song 'Indru Poi Naalai Vaarai' (Go today, Come tomorrow) is rendered in the film by C. S. Jayaraman. Here, Bhagavathi, playing Ravana, is in a dilemma. It was a day before the final kill. Ravana, having lost his army, meets eye-to-eye with Rama. Instead of giving the coup de grace, Rama tells him to go and return to fight the next day. This song has become an immortal melody. Composed in 'Thilang' raaga, an import from Sufi music, this song was successfully adapted by Guru Nanak and his disciples who composed several hymns. It was extremely popular with musical geniuses like Ravishankar, Bhimsen Joshi, violin maestro Lalgudi Jayaraman and musicologist G. S. Mani. The great Carnatic musician D. K. Pattammal recorded a song, ‘Shanthi Nilava Vendum,’ in this raaga on the occasion of the shocking death of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.

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Social mores move with the times...

Port of Call (Hamnstad, Swedish; 1948)

Director: Ingrid Bergman

The reason I thought that this movie is of value is that it depicts how much our society has changed in just about seventy years. Even though Sweden was regarded as a liberal country then, we realise that they still held many conservative values which by today's standards would be considered archaic.

Probably, for the first time, taboo topics like suicides, promiscuity and abortions are openly discussed. This must be something new for the post-World War 2 modern world.

Berit is seen jumping off a wharf, to be rescued by a sailor, Gösta, who had decided to call his sailing days quits. They develop a relationship. Slowly, we are told of Bertha's past. She is a disturbed young lady who had a troubled childhood. Growing with a strict mother and frequently quarrelling parents, she yearned to find freedom. One day, a teenage Berit is locked outside her apartment when she returns late from an outing. She runs away from home, lives in with a man and is rescued by social service. That starts the cascade of reform school, associated as a 'bad' girl, exposure to other girls with bohemian ideas about life and a few bad relationships that she later regrets. Her past reputation haunts her work as a machine operator in a factory. Colleagues are not precisely polite with their conversations and conduct.

Soon, she opens her heart to Gösta about her checkered past. With such a tainted history, the question is whether he is able to accept her as she is?

Only then do we, citizens of the 21st century, realise how the world has changed. From a time when chastity and virginity were held in such esteem, the society now views maidenhood something like a trade transaction in a garage sale, with its errors and omissions.

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Easier to go with the flow...

The Conformist (Italian, 1970)

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

With rhetoric like "you're either with us or against us!", there is a pressure for most of us to conform. The daily bombardment of an overdose of information in the social media puts its followers in a quandary. The urgency to submit to the flavour of the moment and to be on the right side of history is quite confusing.   

No man is an island. Living in a society, we are all interdependent. When one's own survival is dependent on goodwill and patronage of the others,  he would not want to offend the others' sensitivity; he would just conform or at least appear to. 

In the current world climate and the country's political scenario, the need to follow the majority is very real. Merely following the tide is, of course, less tiring. Fighting back and arguing your stand may sometimes be an act of futility. Arguing with stupid and zombies is never easy. It takes a certain kind of resilient to debate with people who set with their beliefs and are not ready to accept other opinions. Perhaps, they are fearful of losing the favour of the majority. 

Go with the flow...

This timepiece flick from 1970 is set in the trying times of the 1930s Italy when Benito Mussolini and his Fascist Party members were overrunning the country. It tells of a disturbed man from the upper crust of society trying to be 'normal' in society. He tries to conform to the trend of the times without for a moment, taking a step back to ponder whether the action that he is about to do is the right thing to do. 

As in the observation of Plato in the Cave Allegory, people create their own perception of the world and are hellbent on living on that conviction. They resist any challenge to that belief because reassessing their stand merely is too taxing. It is easier to go with the flow...

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Some sacrifices are mandatory?

Tokyo Twilight (Tōkyō Boshoku, Japanese; 1957)
Written and Directed by Yasujirō Ozu.


Parents usually try to sugar-coat the family environment and cushion their every fall so as not to ensure their childhood era is normal. They try to shield them from bad news and hide unsavoury situations from their views.

The children still find out, and if they do not perform well, they blame it all on their far-from-perfect childhood. Sometimes the single parent tries to fulfil the missing parent's role and mostly fail miserably.

Perhaps for the sake of the children, most parents bite the bullet, try the sort out their differences and make their family stay intact.

Yasujirō Ozu is widely touted as the most Japanese of Japanese film directors of his era. In this flick, he tells the story of a middle-aged bank officer and his two daughters (Takako and Akiko). The mother is not in the picture, whom we later discover had eloped with her lover. She left with the father three children, the son was killed in a hiking accident. The elder daughter, Takako, with her daughter, had left her alcoholic husband. The younger sister, Akiko, grows up a troubled girl, described by the town folks as a wild girl. Akiko is stuck with an unwanted pregnancy and an uncommitted boyfriend and no one to share her predicament.

The pleasant-faced Setsuko Hara who
had appeared in many of Ozu's films.

Along the way, the two girls discover that their estranged mother had somehow landed in the same town. Akiko was only three when her mother left. Hence, she has no recollection of her mother. Both the girls are sore with their mother for abandoning them to grow up alone. The father, on his part, had tried to play his role by being an adequate provider and a disciplinarian.

Akiko goes for a termination of pregnancy. After a row with her mother and her aloof boyfriend, she storms out of a shop to be hit by a moving train either accidentally or in an apparent bid to suicide. She succumbs to her injuries.

After seeing how Akiko turned out as a troubled growing without a parent, Takako takes the bold step to go back to her husband to give their marriage another chance for the sake of her daughter.

Despite the differences the adults may face, perhaps for the sake of the children, some parents sacrifice the worldly pleasures of their youth for the sake of their young. They tell themselves that it is their God-given duty to ensure only the best for their offspring. Just like how the world only favours the young!

At the end, there is only love...

Odd Man Out (1947)
Produced and Directed: Carol Reed

This film, the first of Carol Reed's trilogy (the other two being 'The Fallen Idol' of 1948 and 'The Third Man' of 1949), is described by Roman Polanski as being his favourite film of all time, even better than 'The Third Man'.

This movie has been praised to high heavens for many reasons, mainly for its cinematography and narration. I thought its story was highly symbolic of life itself. That, people come and go in our lives, some join in merriment,  some to achieve some kind of endeavour and some motivate. There would be people who would promise to stay through thick and thin but scoot off at first sight of trouble. There would be some who would betray or make a buck or two out of you. At the end of the day, only a couple of people would be with you until the end. In this flick, the loyal souls who stay till the end seem the love of the protagonist's life and the man of God.

Set in Northern Ireland and at a time of civil unrest, Johnny McQueen (James Mason) robs a bank to support his political party activities. As Johnny had been completely homebound six months before this event, the excitement of the whole exercise and the outdoors made him lose balance. In the scuffle after the robbery, he shoots a man, gets shot himself and falls off the escape vehicle. The rest of the story deals with his escape on foot around town as the police are hot on his trail. There are complete strangers who would go all out to help him whilst there are others who would rather keep clear at the sight of his gunshot wound. Johnny drags himself around town to safety; his fellow accomplices abandon him, strangers are after him for the reward, a mad painter wants to capture the look of a dying man on canvas and so on. A pastor wants to pray with him for salvation, and his girlfriend wants to start a new life together away from all the fiasco. If only life could be so simple.

Interestingly, the film was given an adult rating by the British censors for its violent ending which was just suggested, not shown. It is surprising that even the gunshot wound is not shown and neither is the brutal end. 

One Woman One Man?

Bandini (The Female Prisoner, Hindi; 1963)

This must surely be one of the early female-centric Hindi movies with Nutan taking the leading role. It is a subtle movie without the overt melodrama usually associated with Bollywood films. The black and white print set the tone for sombre nature of the subject the story is trying to tell.

Set in the 1930s Bengal, at the height of Independence movement, Kalyani (Nutan), a poem loving lass with a sad life in her past, losing her brother and mother, falls in love with a freedom fighter, Bikash. He promises to return to marry her but never does. Unable to tolerate the vicious bad mouthing of the villagers, she leaves home.

She eventually works a nurse to care for a very demanding mentally disturbed patient who happens to be Bikash's wife. In the fit of rage, Kalyani poisons her and is imprisoned.

It is at the prison that the movie actually starts and the rest are told in flashbacks. The prison doctor (Dharmendra) falls in love with her. Kalyani's dilemma here is two-fold. First, in the prison, it is whether a tainted person like her is good enough a match for an honourable doctor. Next, when she realises that Bikash was put in a spot to marry his wife and that he is indeed quite sick, she has to make a decision whether to start a new life for herself or to sacrifice it to serve the one she had hopelessly surrendered her heart and soul.

At the end of the day, (spoiler alert), the dictum, one man to one woman till death do them apart, prevail. It could have been a feminist or women-empowerment movie but to keep with the sensitivities of the time and to preserve what is expected of an Indian wife, she pushes aside her desires to be the self-sacrificing subservient that the member of the fairer sex is expected to do!

The question now is whether the adage, one man to one woman, still holds true even if the other party does not hold to the promise. In this self-centred society, is it alright to put aside all empathy and duties as one holds the duty to take care of himself before surrendering his whole life to some else just because at one time in their life, a promise was made? Unlike the thinking in the modern living, traditional matrimonial bonds are made in the witness of the elements of Nature and are held in the premise that only Nature can make or break these nuptial bonds!

Future as we make it or is predestined?

Macbeth (2015)


It is amazing that a writer in the 16th century can pen out such a play so intricate in its emotional interplay. This is, of course, the work of a particular man of commoner stock from Stratford-upon-Avon. Playing the main character of this play seem to the lifetime ambitions of many an actor including Orson Welles, Patrick Stewart, Sean Connery, Richard Burton and Lawrence Olivier. Michael Fassbender reprises the role of Macbeth in this 2015 production.

Perhaps the only people in the world who do not have a sense of guilt are the psychopath. Otherwise, most of us are drilled upon us to build a wall of guilt within us that sometimes makes us lose our balance. The guilt that we are made to feel eventually eats us up. Despite the urge to survive and need to outdo and overrun others to succeed is there, most of our upbringing makes it mandatory for us to fell guilty. Sometimes, we dig our own graves, and our actions themselves push us in. 

The evil that lurks that compels us are not necessarily imbibed within us. They sometimes come to us by association. Despite the claim of many major religions of the world, the perception that one about them is one of misogynistic. The fairer sex is always portrayed as conniving or at least appear to think by emotion rather than by volition. They are also painted to act partial, incapable of meting justice.

Victorious soldiers Macbeth and Banquo return home after defeating Nordic soldiers. In the twilight of confusion, three witches with a child and an infant appear before them. They prophesied that Macbeth would be Thador of Cawdor and future King while Banquo would be the father of Kings. They passed it off with giving much attention until he receives news that he indeed had been appointed as the new Thador after the previous one was executed for treason. Macbeth narrates the prophecy to his wife. 

When King Duncan decides to visit Macbeth, Lady Macbeth instigates her husband to grab his chance for the throne. Macbeth kills the King. The guilt of the killing and subsequent crimes drives Macbeth to paranoia. Lady Macbeth, upon seeing her husband's brutality in burning women and children at the stake drove her to suicide.

Sure enough, the predictions of witches do come true when Macbeth, who thought, had the invincibility of having the boon of not being killed by a "no man born of woman" is killed by Macduff. Macduff was probably delivered by Caesarean Section (from his mother's womb / untimely ripp'd).

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
— To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

— Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)

Based on an old classic

Anna Karenina (2012)


Leo Tolstoy is considered the greatest novelist of all time and his novel 'Anna Karenina', the greatest novel ever written. His earlier work, 'War and Peace' does not qualify as a story as it is classified as a philosophical discussion. Tolstoy is one who believes that stories should not just have their entertainment value but need to stimulate the mind to think. His other story, 'The Death of Ivan Ilych' is about a dying magistrate as he evaluates his life on earth trapped on his deathbed as his family care for him as if he is just recovering from a minor ailment.

Tolstoy can be said to be the spark that became the hero of non-violent movements of MK Gandhi and Rev Martin Luther King Jr.
The novel 'Anna Karenina' had been adapted to the silver screen many times. This 2012 version is a British one with Kiera Knightley brilliantly cast as Anna. The scenes were quite peculiar in that they appear to move from one set to another in a giant multi-tiered and sometimes revolving stage. The essence of the story is same. The characterisation may differ according to what you perceived the characters to be.

Anna is a bored aristocrat married to a politician Minister, Alexei, and is quite at ease with the Moscow and St Petersburg's socialite circles. She is bestowed with an 8-year-old son. Her life seems deprived emotionally as her husband is too preoccupied with his work. A chance meeting with a cavalry officer, Vronsky, at a railway station, changed her life forever. This sexually deprived lady is lovestruck and starts a love affair with this young officer. They keep their liaison no secret and is quite an embarrassment to everyone, including the husband, Alexis, who feels guilty for giving her too much freedom.

Leo Tolstoy

A love child comes to the picture and a strongly determined Anna demands for a divorce. Vronsky, however, is still not monogamous as he is still seen flirting with another beau, much to the insecurity of Anna.

A complication and a near-death situation at around the time of delivery draws Alexis to his wife and he forgives Anna for her actions. Anna's relationship with her lover gets worse over the days with Anna overcasts Vronsky every contact with a person of the opposite sex. The stress proves too overbearing for Anna to stomach. She commits suicide by jumping in front of a speeding train.

In the last scene, Alexis sees, his son and the love child, Anya run playfully in the meadows. He must be probably be looking into the horizon pondering, if children can accept each other for what they are, why can't we adults do the same?

In the story, there are also other subplots. Anna's brother's free-spirited friend, Stiva, is a wanderer who spends a lot of his time with gipsies and peasants, much like what Tolstoy eventually advocates against aristocracy and private land ownership. Stiva is initially disheartened when the love of his life has only eyes for Vronsky. Vronsky is, of course, Anna's lover. Not a love triangle but a parallelogram!

That all men are equal?

Shadows (1959)
Director: John Cassevetes

Another John Cassevetes' direction. This is his early effort at an independent un-main stream production. This is actually a remake of his own film which he had earlier made in 1957 which was unscripted and did poorly at the box office. The remake, however, became a legend.
On the exterior, it appears that the US of A, the land of opportunity is the land of dream where everyman is born equal and free. They have a legislation to prove the effect to. In practice, however, the issue of race is not so black or white. The problem which reared its ugly head and let the nation into a gruesome civil war fail to settle the score even today.
It is evident from the the turn of events when a certain whiter than white lady, Rachael Dolezal, was exposed recently to be passing off as a black to head an association to help coloured people in America.

Racheal Dolezal

So when this issue came to fore, the usually issue frenzy US media stations went a spree to discuss the issue. Even Obama's name came up. Many half blacks are categorised as blacks to benefit from the affirmative actions to uplift the black.

Coming back to the story of 'Shadows'...

It is set in among the Beat Generation in the 50s who were shunning materialism and were engaged in literary and spiritual enlightenment. Lelia is a 20 year old girl who could pass out a white walking aimlessly through her life. She has three other elder brothers. Two of them were struggling musicians. and one is still trying to find his grapple in life.
Lelia meets an interesting guy to bring her home. Sparks flare up when he discovers that Lelia is actually black when he sees her brothers. After that it is self discovery and finally, from the way the movie went, they must have hooked up again.
The different way the director approaches the story is interesting. It lets the story flow without creating much melodrama, climax or resolution.

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Life, told in many words

La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life, Italian; 1961)

This is not your typical film with a beginning, build-up, climax, resolution and ending. This Italian flick is actually a sort of a diary of a week in the life of gossip journalist @paparazzi, Marcello. It narrates day to day account of his life.

In between all that, we, the audience, are shown the decadent lifestyle of the the post WW2 1960s Italy with its outwardly religious outlook with wayward lifestyle being the order of the day. Poverty is rife amidst the lure and glorification of the lifestyle of the rich and famous.

The opening scene of the film starts with a helicopter hoisting a statue of Jesus across an effluent neighbourhood mocking the second coming. Slowly we are shown Marcello's hectic schedule. He has to put up with a possessive and obsessive fiancé who keep on demanding attention from him. He has to divide his time between the demanding job and near suicidal girlfriend. The hero is no angel either. His roving eyes seeks out one beauty after another, hoping to find that elusive love. On the first night, it was a beautiful heiress, Maddalena.

His job introduces him to an alluring bosomy Swedish-American actress, Sylvia, who visits Rome. He starts to chaperone her around after she is abandoned by her forever drunk boyfriend, fellow actor. Marcello is attracted to her physical appearance but the end of the night, he realises that it is all just tease!

This oft repeated classic fountain scene

The following day, it was a whole day affair for Marcello and his crew. The media people were all drawn in to an urban poor housing area by the sighting of an apparition of Mother Mary near a tree. Obviously, many are trying to benefit from the fame that it brought. Unfortunately, the stampede that ensued also trampled a child whose mother pleads for God to heal.
Marcello also has a meeting with an old friend, Steiner. He seems to be a man of philosophy, theology and sense. He is also a loving father of two beautiful kids.
Hold behold, even this man of sane mind, unexpectedly, kills himself after shooting his kids. And Marcello is at the scene trying to make sense of all these.

On another day, Marcello has a surprise visit from his father - a man whom he never knew as he was growing up. He discovers that his father is a lady's man and a lady killer too! The short visit ended with the senior having a mild heart attack and returning home.
Marcello also has literary ambitions but the lure of the high life, the parties and the girls are just too much for him to keep away. He has a final violent and abusive showdown with his unstable fiancé but in the end, they make up and make out.
This classic offering by a legendary director, Federico Fellini, is often emulated by young directors again and again. It is also mentioned in popular culture.

What lurks beneath?

Bal el Hadid (@ Cairo Station @ Iron Gate, Egypt 1958)
Director: Youssef Chahine

Surprisingly, Egypt has a vibrant movie industry that dates back to 1896! Its golden era is between the 1940s and 1960s. Despite the changing of guards and political outlook, it stood the test of time. President Gamel Abdel Naseer's planned nationalisation had irreparable damage to its heydays and never really recovered after that.
The director of this movie is also credited for introducing Omar Sharif to Hollywood, although not through this movie.

This 1958 release is an Egyptian noir film depicting small people in a busy railway station. Even though the story is a simple one of which we have seen many by now, it must have been revolutionary at its time. The movie's lovely thing is how the various strata of society are depicted to intermingle at an economic level. It also shows the difference in people's outlook in metropolitan Cairo, the modern outgoing Western viewpoints and conservative ones who frown upon the antics of the so-called 'immoral' ones. It is a meeting place of many characters; some make a living there.

With this background, the story starts with a newsstand owner adopting a young man, Qinawi, who has a deformed leg and lies idle on the platform. He is sent off vending newspaper. He soon realises that Qinawi is not right in the mind. His shack is filled with newspaper cuttings of scantily clad models.
Qinawi fancies (obsessed) Hanoumma, a flirtatious soft drink vendor. He has big plans for a wedding and settling down by the seaside. Unfortunately, Hanoumma has her eyes set tightly on Abu Sirieh, a hunky porter at the station.

Inserted into the subplot is how Hanoumma and her friends are always on the run from the railway security as their business is illegal and hurts the legitimate shop owners. A couple of love birds secretly wish each other farewell as the boy leaves for overseas, and their relationship is unknown to the family. Then, there is a feud among the porters. A group wants to form a union to fight for their alleged unfair wages. Abu Sirieh is supportive of the old system of patronage. There is looming a story of a murderer in the newspaper.

The filmography is interesting because it has many closeups of the steam train and sets the mood of the humid and explosive set of the scenes.

Qinawi, after being rejected by Hanoumma, recoils into a rage and systematically plans to kill Qinawi. The wrong girl is stabbed in the confusion of darkness, put in a trunk and packed off in a train. The remaining shows the truth surfaces and how Qinawi is tricked into a straightjacket by his adopted father.

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It is about how you earn them!

Public Enemy (1931)

The first time I watched James Cagney was when RTM screened 1942 'Yankee Doodle Dandy'. It narrated the biography of George M. Cohen, an American musical composer who in his later part of his life remained unknown. I vividly remember a scene where he stood incognito amongst the crowd looking at the band march by to the ecstatic youngsters singing to the tune. Little did the crowd know who was standing among them - the composer of the song, until he tells them his life story! That was another movie...

Well, this 1931 action movie is one of the early action movies which talks about the glamorous life of gangland and the downside too. From the outset, the director had warned viewers that the film does not glamorise hoodlums. Even though proclaiming to be of the contrary, the story was supposedly based on lifetimes of many baddies of that era.

James Cagney

The story starts in 1909 with the tale of two young boys grow up doing pranks and soon graduating to bigger crimes in life. Being in the Prohibition Era and all, they get drafted into smuggling booze and enjoying the high life. Everything has a price and it costs dearly. In between comes a family, a doting mother and a righteous brother who follows the virtuous road.

An interesting trivia that developed during the course of filming is that they director decided to switch the main two lead actors. The child actors who represent them were not switched, so you have the young actors with mannerisms and physique of the other at childhood. Another trivia is the famous grapefruit scene. It is supposed to mimic a gangster who threw an omelette at his girlfriend at breakfast table. In this film, the scene was unrehearsed and gave the actress a shock. It was meant to be that way!

The Grapefruit scene!

A memorable line from the flick, when two brothers are arguing on the money that Tom (the gangster brother, James Cagney) that he gives their mother. Mike, the elder one is a war veteran of WW1, is sceptical of the origin of Tom's wealth which is not from politics as he claimed but from bootleg. His success is from beer and blood. Tom, ridiculing his soldier brother says, "Your hands ain't so clean. You killed and liked it. You didn't get them medals for holding hands with them Germans."

In search of...Utopian society?

Animal Farm (1954 animated film)
Based on George Orwell's 1945 book


Human beings are forever trying to evolve and trying very hard to device a full proof system that tries to be fair to most, if not everyone. Unfortunately, every conceivable system seem to have failed them miserably. We are still in search of an utopian society and land of milk and honey but dystopia is what we have. Monarchy, feudalism, communism, socialism and capitalism have breed nothing but loop holes for man to fulfil their greed.
The present system appears to glorify greed and ruthless suppression of the underprivileged. Paradoxically, this is system that people of the communist block, who were suffering under the former suppressive regimes, opted for.
Every new system, at first, looks all rosy with its pledges and just core values. In time many of its shortcomings come affront and the goal post is shifted to satisfy the masses.
An initially successful system, over time would turn corrupt. The regime in power would try all means to justify their power to lead.

Orwell's post WW2 satire of Russian's autocratic system of hoodwinking the masses into believing that they are getting a good deal met many resistance before publication as Soviet Union was an important ally to the Western world. Its message, however, stays true even to today. What goes on in this fictitious farm is reminiscent of what goes on in many countries, communist, capitalistic or autocratic.

Manor Farm had seen better times, all because of its drunkard owner's inactivities. The animals in the farm, led by a pig, Old Major, starts a revolt. They successfully drove the owner out and took charge of the running of the farm. They changed its name to Animal Farm and devices a new set of rules for everyone to follow. With everybody's hard work, especially, the horse (Boxer) and the donkey (Benjamin), there is a system in the farm and yields improve. The leaders, the pigs, try to educate the animals. After the demise of Old Major, there is a power struggle between Snowball and Napoleon (both pigs). Snowball is actually sincere with progress. He proposes the erection of a windmill.Over time, the pigs become the ruling class with special privileges. Napoleon, training his dogs, takes over the realm of leadership.
The initial 7 Commandments change over time. The workers' class feel shortchanged. They work relentlessly whilst the rulers living decadent and leisurely lives. The pigs, too, act more human like. They walk upright and indulge in alcohol bought in exchange for the produce from the farm.
In spite of their poor living conditions, Napoleon, their de-facto leader is feted for being a competent leader.
The animals, upon realising that the pigs were actually worse of then their human owners stage another revolution!
Interestingly, this is Britain's first theatrical animation film. It was financed by the CIA to counter the effect of communist influence in Continental Europe. The financiers took the liberty to modify the ending to suit the sensitivity of the times.

Money rules

The Bad Sleep Well (Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru, Japanese; 1960)
Director: Akira Kurosawa

Films are made day in and day out but a classics like Kurosawa's stays eternally in the minds of film lovers. This is another movie highlighting the evils that corporations do to syphon off public funds for their own interest but what makes it an evergreen is the depth of the plot. It is supposed to have elements of Shakespeare's Hamlet in its narrative.

The movie starts with journalists waiting patiently passing sarcastic remarks of a wealthy tycoon, the Vice President of a public listed company which develops public land, daughter's wedding reception. They are hoping to pick up a scoop to report. Their moment of truth comes when one of his assistants get arrested for corruption during the reception through some embarrassing moments for the guests.

The story gets very complicated but becomes crystal clear at the end. Nishi (Toshiro Mifune), a dashing young man who is the Vice President's secretary, is sniggered for marrying the crippled daughter, Yoshiko. They accuse him of marrying for money. Another embarrassing moment happens when a cake is ushered in announced in the shape of a building where one of the directors, Furuya, is said to have jumped off!

The plot thickens when suspects associated with corruption case and money goes missing. And apparitions of dead people start manifesting.

You see, Nishi is Furuya's illegitimate son who is out to avenge his father's death by exposing the corrupt practices to the authorities. He marries into the family incognito to this end. Part of the story involves the soliloquy of his wanderings about playing with the heart of the innocent like Yoshiko. He realises that he is slowly falling in love with his wife even though his sole intention initially was revenge.

At the end of the day, Nishi's slick manoeuvres are discovered by his father in law. An automobile accident is staged to kill off Nishi, leaving Yoshiko to lose her mind! In spite of all these, the Vice President continues on with his money making mission without batting an eyelid.

The film tries to highlight the feudalistic mindset that prevailed in Japan at the time of the movie was made. It showcases the extent people would go to show their loyalty to their paymasters. Truth and justice take a back seat, and money shows its muscle. Hey, 50 years on, the exact thing is happening in Malaysia. People do not know what constitutes being faithful to the nation and what is being a racist!

You are made to think that you are free!

Easy Rider (1969)

This classic of the late 60s glorifies the counterculture spirit of that era. Even though it seem to showcase a decadent lifestyle with hedonistic desires away from the usual requirements of society like working and following the law, herein lies the philosophical outlook on life. The message is imparted via the travelogues of two hippie bikers as the they span the USA from Los Angeles to St Louis to attend Mardi Gras before they retire in style in Florida with the ill-gotten stash of cash obtain by drug trafficking big time.

The riders (Wyatt@Captain America, Peter Fonda, the producer; Billy, Dennis Hopper, the director) pick up a hitchhiker and spend a night in a commune. In the 60s, people who were disillusioned with the way the capitalistic industrial world was heading, with war and nuclear threat, decide to give it all up to live the simple life with simple desires with lots of love and hallucinogens. The riders could see that the members of the commune, even though they think they are free, they are actually having a very hard time trying to grow their own grain in a hostile environment, bad soil, bad weather without the proper tools and know how. They seem to get detachment from their troubles through the performing arts. So, they are close to nature and away from modernity but are they truly happy and free?

They continue their journey only to find themselves arrested for 'parading without a permit' when they rode through a street parade. In the lock-up, they get the good acquaintance of a drunken lawyer in the same cell, George Hanson (the most talented actor, Jack Nicholson) who got them out and followed them en route to attend the Mardi Gras. Another bashing at free American, people need to get a permit to parade in public!
Jack Nicholson's presence really livens up the whole movie after that.
They stop at a diner. Their presence in the squeaky clean town is not welcomed. The diners would not take their orders and the sheriff's men gave condescending looks on their gruffly unkempt appearances. The older townsfolk made disparaging remarks about their lifestyles and even sexual orientations. The young girls at the place are all starry eyed about them and would die to ride with them, so they say. To avert trouble, they leave. The message here is that, even though America is a free country, people are frowned upon for being different and vilified for that.

The hostility of the local men continued. They turned up at their camping site under the cloak of the darkness of the night to bash the living daylights out of the three bikers. George succumbed to his injuries.

Wyatt and Billy, obviously referring to Earp Wyatt and Billy the Kid of the Wild West, continue their journey. They symbolise the old America. Wyatt is dressed in a leather jacket emblazoned with the logo of American Eagle. Billy looks like he is draped in Indian garb, minus the headgear.

As they were riding along dreaming of their retirement in Florida, they passed by two farmers travelling in a pick up truck. Just for the heck of it, they shot both of them down! That is how the Old America was brought down. The New America and its inhabitants think they have the right formula to be free. Real freedom is a fallacy. The people is power, over time again and again, gave is the elusive idea that we are free while keeping us tight under their rein. By the way, what are we free from? Free from the evil that lurks around us? Free from the hardship of life? Free from our worldly obligations? Free from the cycle of Life? What are we free from?

NB. The film comes with an array of beautiful rock ballad from The Byrds, Steffanwolf, Bob Dylan and others. Film was shot exclusively outdoors depicting the picturesque landscape of the American wild.

A case most unusual

Close up (Persian, 1989)
Director Abbas Kiarostami

This film opened the highly high quality Iranian cinematic scene to the Western world. In fact this drama-documentary like offering is hailed by some as the best Iranian film ever made. It uses the Italian type of neo-realism technique of film making and the French way of self expressionism to get its message across.
The director heard of an unusual case of impersonation in a magazine and decided to cease his shooting and to cover the events. A jobless make stand accused of impersonating as a famous director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, to lure a middle class man into acting.
The accused is a self professed crazed fan of Makhmalbaf, who whilst travelling in a bus, told a white lie to the lady of the Ahankhah family and pretty soon befriended the family. One lie after another, the accused, Hossein Sabzian, managed to obtain some money for his alleged filming.
The family became suspicious when he was not aware of 'his' recent conferment of a prestigious award. The police were informed and the film starts with the event of his apprehension. Slowly his misdemeanor is told in the proceedings of the trial.
The film portrays a very humanistic picture of the accused without vilifying him. It is a joy to follow the trial which is carried out in a very civilized manner without lawyers screaming for blood.
Perhaps after this I will try to watch more Iranian films.

Humanised cop drama

Tengoku to Jigoku (Japanese, High and Low, a.k.a. Heaven and Hell; 1963)

Director: Akira Kurosawa

This suspense-filled police procedural film must be well ahead of its time. Because Kurosawa directed it, the suspense and investigations were painstakingly detailed. On top of all that, the director usually highlights the differences in the social classes.

High and low in the title probably denotes the two halves of the offering -the first half in the relaxed ambience of the quiet high-class home of the protagonist, Kingo Gondo, a self-made shoemaker who had climbed the rank and files to an enviable status in the National Shoe Company; the second half among the decadent life forms of the night, drug addicts and drunken revellers of the night scene of town.

Gondo shoots down the idea by fellow company shareowners to cut costs and compromise the quality of their shoes. He passionately says that shoes have to be respected as they support the whole body's weight. Furious, his detractors storm out, vowing vengeance. Secretly, Gondo had mortgaged his entire life savings to take over the company.

Almost immediately after their exit, Gondo receives a phone call that his only preteen son has been kidnapped. Even though the ransom demanded is exorbitant by any standards, he decides to pay it off with the money that was supposed to be used for business, basically making him a pauper all over again - just like it was when he started working years ago!

Just then, his son walks in. Apparently, the kidnappers had taken Gondo's chauffeur's son by mistake. The caller calls in to insist that the ransom money is still the same and has to be paid. Then, the dilemma comes. Is he still going to pay? If before, Gondo refused to call the police on the kidnapper's insistence, he immediately did that. A soul-searching moment happens. Should he give up all his savings to act as a human or give up all that he worked for all his life? His wife cannot understand as she was born with a silver spoon and had it good all her life.

Gondo relented. He chose the path of humanity.

What follows next is an ingenious cat-and-mouse story of rescuing the child, paying the ransom and the speeding electric train done professionally, belying the fact that it was made in 1963. The boy is saved, but the culprit gets the cash.

The second half of the film, a bit draggy, focuses on police investigative procedures comparable to Frittz Lang's 1931 'M'. From the comforts of the highly perched Gondos' air-conditioned villa, the scene shifts to the low level lifeforms of drug addicts, decadent midnight party revelers, back alleys and drug dens. The kidnapper is finally apprehended. He turned out to be a medical student who did it just because he felt that life was not fair as he gazed at Gondo's aesthetically pleasing bungalow from the slum of a house that he called home.

It is a gripping film that only a maestro like Kurosawa can do. It is not the typical cop-robber-rescue scenario. The story builds up gradually to highlight why certain things can be done the way they are. Gondo, who appears like a rash businessman, has a human side. His deeds go beyond the boardroom. His passion for the art of shoemaking, his concern for his subordinates, and his humility in not forgetting the roots at the time of his apprenticeship are told gradually without being preachy or over-glorifying.

I have a funny feeling that the 'low' that is mentioned in the title could also refer to the foreign culture that is creeping into the city, as evidenced by the inclusion of many multi-ethnic extras in the drunken bar and dance club scenes.

Pssst., our GLCs and DaddyKasi's can learn a thing or two about how to build up a business or a career - through hard work, diligence and hard work, not just on paper and with subsidy!