What goes through the synapses?

Queen of Hearts (Dronnigen, Swedish; 2019)

Director: May el-Toukhy

https://www.filmaffinity.com/en/film115292.html

This tale reveals two truths: defenders of justice are not exempt from breaching the very laws they ardently uphold, and one cannot put a price on the matters of the heart.

A lawyer, Anne, who champions the plight of an abused teenager, is herself embroiled in an affair with her young adult stepson. Anne is married to a physician, Peter, and has twin daughters. Peter's troubled son, Gustav, from his first marriage, appears at their doorstep. Gustav has never liked Anne for taking his father away from his mother. The relationship between Gustav and Peter is not fantastic, and his academic performance appears poor. For amusement, Gustav stages a break-in at Peter and Anne's house.

Although the police could not identify the culprit, Anne confronted Gustav to reveal his recklessness.

Anne and Peter's marriage had lost its spark over the years due to their respective work commitments.

The sexually deprived Anne starts a clandestine incestual relationship with Gustav, threatening to squeal to Peter about the fake burglary if he tells his father about their affair.

There comes a time when Anne wants out, but Gustav is too vested. This is the part of the movie at the height of suspense. The tension between Gustav informing the father and Anne threatening her stepson is intense.

When Gustav finally opens up to his father, Anne displays an emotional outburst that is so convincing, denying that an affair happened at all and that Peter accepts Anne's innocence. Using her feminine charm and passive-aggressive methods, Anne gets Peter to think that Gustav just creates stories out of the air. Anne assumes that everything will die down as it is time for Gustav to return to college.

Unbeknownst to everyone, Gustav goes missing and is found dead, presumably after a suicide.

Matters of the heart are intricate. Unlike other worldly exchanges, they do not operate on a quid pro quo basis. It is not as straightforward as "I do this, and you do that, and we're even." Sometimes, the other party may perceive it differently, and the outcome could be heartbreakingly devastating. The signs of depression can be pretty subtle and easily masked. No one truly knows what goes on in the synapses.

P.S. In addition to meaning someone's sweetheart, the title 'The Queen of Hearts' could also be a subtle reference to the character of the same name in Lewis Carroll's 1865 book 'Alice in Wonderland'. The Queen is foul-tempered and quick to sentence her subjects to death for the slightest offence. At one point, Carroll admitted that the character was loosely based on Queen Victoria. With her majestic and nurturing aura, she embodies the force of unconditional love and the nurturing spirit. In psychological terms, the 'Queen of Hearts' is egoistic and narcissistic. She possesses a cold heart and shows no qualms about beheading her enemies or anyone who refuses to obey her commands. She is a bully.

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The reality of addiction

Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Director: Darren Aronofsky

The President of India, a rocket scientist and an overall good soul, once told his audience, "Dream is not that which you see while you sleep, but is that something that does not allow you to sleep." Don't jump about it; put it in action!

They also discuss the American dream, which states everyone has equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.

Yes, we can convince ourselves that we can do it. We should go for it, putting our minds and souls into it. However, the fact is that people win and people lose. Only some people are cut for it. A thin line exists between having the mojo to do it and not. One should recognise their shortcomings and jump on to Plan B, not forever flogging a dead horse.

Worse still, when one fails to pick up the telltale signs, one buries oneself deeper and deeper into a cesspool of self-defeating habits, hoping for a miracle to happen. When the going gets tough, one should know when it is time to get the tough going, when to retreat and live to fight another day. Failure to discern will spell disaster.

But how do we know our capability if we do not know ourselves to the limit? How do we know our breaking point unless we are stretched to the limit? The telltale sign must be when pharmacological agents get involved. Where does the concoction of ayahuasca with active ingredients like DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) and MAOIs (Monoamine oxidase inhibitors) fit in? Ayahuasca is a potent hallucinogen used to open portals inaccessible to human minds to explore one's true potential. Many ultra-marathoners in the desert of Mexico consume it to push their bodies to the possible human limits. 

Some have labelled this movie as one of the most disturbing films ever produced. It is not so much of the gore factor at play here; it is much the depiction of hopelessness one experiences when one is trapped in an addiction.

Loneliness, depersonalisation and self-prescribing are the greatest bane of modern living. Human interaction is so superficial. 

A widow, Sara, lives alone in her apartment. Her young adult son, a drug addict, occasionally goes AWOL, only to sell off his mother's goods for a bit of cash and a quick fix. The mother's constant companion is a TV, and her fixation with a particular game show keeps her going. Her only other human contact is when her neighbours sunbathe along the walkway.

One day, Sara receives a call that she will be a guest in a game show. She and her friends are all so excited. Sara plans to appear in a dashing red dress that she appeared in during her prom. For that, she goes on a diet spree and later gets prescription drugs. Sara loses weight, albeit slowly. So, she increases her dosage on her own, causing hallucinations and insomnia. She is finally institutionalised. 

Sara's son, Harry, tries to make money by reselling heroin at an inflated cost. He and his girlfriend have big plans of starting a boutique. Things do not go as planned. Harry, his girlfriend and his business partner are all heroin addicts. They decided to test out the merchandise that they sell. Things go spiralling down from then on. Harry even pimps his girlfriend to make ends meet.

A compelling story on the reality of addiction. 

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Our past controls the present?

Bhoothakaalam (The Past / Ghost Time, Malayalam; 2022)

Director: Rahul Sadasivan

There is a little wordplay with the title. With the prefix ’Bhooth’, one may wonder whether it is a horror movie. When one starts watching the film, one would wonder whether it is about the ghost of the past. That is what it is all about—how the ghost of the past comes haunting if it is not exorcised head-on. The ugly demonic head of the past has a self-defeating habit of repeating itself, making one go through the malady repeatedly.

No one will take kindly to others’ advice on how one’s life should be lived. No one will be flattered when told his head should be checked. That is what it is. Individuals should take a step back, access their mental health occasionally, and take preventive measures or make amends. Be the change. Change comes with realisation and from the inside. No one can make the horse drink water. The horse must first feel thirsty. The need to change comes from within.

Viewers wonder whether it is a horror film or if there is a more prosaic explanation for all the weird happenings around the house.

Is the recently departed grandmother’s soul returning with a vengeance to express her dissatisfaction? Is the house displaying poltergeist activities? Why do tenants after tenants die in the same house? Is the mother’s overt depression or the son’s indulgence in intoxicants the culprit?

The family had gone a lot. The son lost his father at a young age. He grew up without a father figure. The mother had to struggle with her unsatisfying teaching job at a nursery and later caring for her stroke-stricken paraplegic mother.

The son carries a heavy cloud of resentment after being forced to do medicine, which he had to quit and failing to secure a job with his pharmacy degree. He smokes heavily and drinks himself drunk frequently. His relationship with his girlfriend could be much better. When funny things start happening in the house, he flips. Soon enough, even his mother sees the abnormal activities in the house.

In a very clever manner of storytelling and filmmaking, the director takes us through a roller coaster ride to keep us guessing whether the whole point of the movie is to impress the viewers on the need to treat mental illness correctly or whether there is such a thing as ghosts?!

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As you see it!

Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d'une chute, French; 2023)
Director: Justine Triet

We reassure ourselves by telling lies. We are so cock sure that truth will win. It would somehow emerge from the crack to balance the equilibrium of the Universe. One of the half-truths we convince ourselves is that there is a balance of two opposing but sometimes complementary forces; the good and bad, the truth and the lie, the masculine and feminine forces, chaos and order and so forth. The 'truth' wins every time, we con ourselves.

It is all a perspective of the now and the glaring presence of the evidence of the present. No caped sorcerer will ride the high horse of justice to right the wrong. 

That, in my opinion, is the essence of this story. A husband is found dead in his frosted front yard, presumably after a fall from his balcony three storeys up. He was discovered by his blind son, returning from a walk with his guide dog. The wife was alone in the house with blaring music playing on the speaker. Their relationship had seen better times.

The physical fall brings out the metaphorical fall out of love, the fall of status for the husband, and the possible fall into depression of the husband. 

Initial police investigations suggest it could be a suicide, but a recording of the couple's conversation throws a spanner into the works. The wife, an established author, is arrested as the possible suspect of the murderer of her husband. 

The court trials tease out the family dynamics. What starts as the couple falling in love, having a child, and juggling their careers turns murky. In an accident possibly caused by the husband's lackadaisical delay, the son is caught in an accident that causes him to lose his eyesight. The guilt-stricken writer-husband, compounded by the mother's veiled accusations, becomes a wreck. His writing juices dry up, and love falls off the cliff.

The wife is questioned as a possible perpetrator of the crime or maybe accidental death on a possible domestic tussle. Her previous blemishes are exposed. The animosity that arose as she prospered as a prolific writer at the expense of her husband's creative impotence is laid bare. 

The son takes the heaviest brunt of it all. His testimony at the stand may determine how the case turns out for the mother. He is unsure how to look at all of the events. Did his father kill himself? Did his mother kill his husband? These conundrums seem to put a lot of burden on the shoulders of a young early teenager. Everything is confusing. He is pressured to do the right thing, but what is right anymore? 

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Loneliness, death and loss...

The Eternal Daughter (2022)
Director: Joanna Hogg

This is not your usual horror movie, but it has a Gothic feel to it. It is a dark, slow movie with nostalgia, old age and loneliness hanging over it like a theatre drape. 

In the formative when the rebel in us tries to surface, we tend to look at our parents as the worse examples of how parents should bring up their kids. We look at other people's parents and yearn for lost childhood. We blame them for all our not-so-fancy physical attributes and life failures. We could not wait to grow up and get the hell out of their supervision. 

Fast forward in time and space. The hard dents of life knock us back to realisation. We look at our parents through a different lens. We realise that life as adults are neither a walk in the park nor a pleasure cruise. Every corner has a brick wall to give us concussions as we rush through life's journey. 

We look at our parents and see that the springiness of youth and headiness of being young has passed them by. We try to recreate the happy moments of the era that we all shared. We fail to realise that our minds only preserve the pleasant ones. Stirring nostalgic memories is like opening the proverbial Pandora's Box. Intertwined within its webs are a dark forgotten, painful cache of bitter moments, death and pain. Invoking one evokes another spontaneously. 

We look at our parents, and for a moment, it hit us. They are no spring chickens anymore. They are old. With old age comes the question of mortality. Are you ready to let them go? If there were a time when we hated the sight of their shadow, we now want to know all about them. We long to understand how they steered adulthood in one piece. The same journey that they had traversed was easier than we did many years ago. Why is it so complicated now?

We see their old photos. Hold behold, we see our images as adults as carbon copies of theirs. Have we grown to morph as spitting images of them, and their present appearances will be the prototype of our old age? A scary thought! And our demeanour and mannerism, is that why they say the apple does not fall far from the tree?

This movie is a melancholic one. It tells about the life of a middle-aged filmmaker who decided to spend time with her elderly mother in a hotel that was the mother's childhood home. There is a suspicion that their whole hotel stay could be a fragment of the filmmaker's imagination. The hotel is deserted and dark. Nobody other tenants are seen, save for the receptionist and a caretaker. Slowly we realise that both mother and daughter are painfully not different from each other. Each feels irritated and sometimes empathises with the other. Incidentally, both characters are acted by the same actor. This film's recurring themes are loneliness, loss of relationships, and fear of death.

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A legacy to leave behind?

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Writer & Director: Martin McDonagh

Different people would interpret this movie differently. As all movies based in Ireland tend to be based on the Irish Rebellion, naturally, it could be construed as a veiled depiction of the clash between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. It could be an allegorical reference to a futile feud between brothers which had lost all relevance and had no meaning in modern Ireland. The police, representing England, could be the ruling coalition and may benefit from continued chaos.

Someone proposed that the storyteller is trying to imply that hope had died in the region, and another character is pushing for the other to get out of the place to start a new life.

To put the plot straight, the story happens on an island, Inisherin, during the tail-end of the Irish Civil War, around the 1920s, just across the straits on the mainland. Nothing much is happening on the island. The protagonist, Pádraic, milks his cow and spends much time at the local pub. One day, his usual drinking buddy, Colm, says he does not want anything to do with him anymore. The movie's whole point is to guess why Colm's sudden change of heart. To make it more dramatic, Colm, a violinist, threatens that if Padraic does not stay away, he will amputate his fingers one by one with each meeting. 

Pádriac is actually not the sharpest tool in the shed. On the other hand, Colm plays the violin, tries to compose new tunes, and teaches youngsters his skill. He is a great sport at the local pub. Meanwhile, Pádriac's sister, who is reasonably well-read, cooks and cares for him, calls it quits. She leaves the island.

I think the film's cryptic message is the existential crisis question. We start adulthood thinking that the world is an oyster for us to scoop. With the 'never say die' attitude, we can mould a utopia of peace and understanding. When reality sinks in and mortality almost stares into our faces, we start reassessing our achievements. We wonder what our legacy is going to be. We wish we had things differently if we were to do things all over again. This knowledge, a life lesson, is what we want to leave for the young to learn. Sometimes life lessons need to be drilled in a not so pleasant. Mollycoddling does not always work. Sometimes it is kind to be unkind. 

A third person would label all these as depression, a reaction to chronic exposure to uncertainty.

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Message clearer when unsaid!

Aftersun(2022)

Director, Writer: Charlotte Wells

From the time of the Big Bang, the Universe is said to be moving at a pace of low entropy to one of high entropy. At low entropy, things seem harmonious, orderly and balanced. On the contrary, chaos rules on the other. Is that why our childhood was so serene, whereas our adult life is fraught with mayhem? Could it also be that 'Time', the essence of our existence, seemed longer when we were young? Imagine the time we had to wait for our next long school holiday when we had just finished one. It felt like aeons away, like forever. But then, now, a solar circle just whizzes by. We are heading towards total chaos!

Our memory of the past comes in flashes, like rays of light from a stroboscope. It is cluttered. It comes in flares and disappears just as quickly. The problem with memory is that it can be deceptive. It suppresses painful ones and glamourises pleasant ones.

When we were young, we were restless to grow older. We envy seeing all the things that were second nature to adults. We thought adults had it all under their control. Our parents were the pinnacle of perfection. They were role models, at least before we became teenagers. We begin not to see eye to eye. 

Time is a cruel teacher. Only when we are in our parents' shoes do we realise that our parents were not perfect. They were fighting their own demons. They did what they did was right, within their means. We long to embrace them and show appreciation for what they have done. But sometimes, it is too late. The bridge to our past is our memory, photographs and videos. 

The bond between a daughter and a father
need no overt dramatisation.

The mindless zillions of smartphone pictures we take without batting an eyelid may have its uses. Like in this movie, the grainy home movies with a camcorder in the 1990s have rekindled the nostalgia and the innocence of birthday parties and family holidays.

This slow-moving BBC Scotland production is an emotionally charged, highly tears-inducing movie that deserves all the accolades it received.

A 30-something mother of a young baby views her father's video recording of their last holiday in Turkey 20 years previously. It was a time when her parents were separated, and she went to spend her school holiday with her father. That was probably their last meeting, as the storyline suggested he was emotionally or financially going through a rough patch. There were glimpses of him being emotionally labile. Perhaps he committed suicide later.

That outing was also a coming-of-age event for that 11-year-old girl, and she emotionally connected with her father. Mature as she was at that time, as she was, she knew he had financial troubles and understood that the parents' separation was amicable with no malice; she regrets not being able to identify and help her father's depression.

A must-watch for those wanting to know how one can say so much without uttering a word at all. The camera, the environment, the lighting and body language do the talking. The message is more apparent when things are unsaid.

[PS Gives the vibes of the famous 1980's coming-of-age sitcom 'The Wonder Years'.]

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

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