Delon, the clothing moghul?

Plein Soleil (Purple Noon, French; 1960)
Director: René Clément

Malaysians are more familiar with Alain Delon as a stylish clothing brand than as an accomplished actor. He was definitely an accomplished person, and he is synonymous with French cinema in the vein of Gérard Depardieu and Bridgette Bardot. Like his career, his personal life was colourful, with criminal investigations, multiple affairs, and offspring.

He died at the age of 88 in 2024.

In his heyday, he was a prolific actor with sex appeal who toured between French cinema and Hollywood. 

This is one of his early movies, which launched his career. It is a dark tale about two buddies who have a strange relationship. Delon, the poorer of the duo, is constantly bullied and ridiculed by his wealthy friend. Actually, they are not friends at all. Delon is just a messenger passing a message from his father for a fee. The rich guy has a yacht and a pretty girlfriend. 

Long story short, Delon kills the rich guy and assumes his identity. He then tries to woo his girlfriend by spinning a tale that the boyfriend left her for another. Meanwhile, the police are hot on his trail because they smell a rat. The rest of the story is a cat-and-mouse game, with Delon running from the police and the girlfriend finding her lover. It has excellent entertainment value.

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The lonely road to success?

Le Samourai (The Samurai; 1967)

Director: Jean-Pierre Melville

The film title card starts with a fabricated quote from Bushido, the moral code of the samurai. It says, "There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai, unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle… perhaps". Miyamoto Musashi, probably Japan's foremost samurai swordsman of the late 16th century, is said to have said this, among other things. He describes the solitary path to success as being filled with loneliness. Solitude accompanies the path to success. He further goes on to say, in one of the books that he had written, that solitude shapes, moulds, and builds character all along our journey to success.

Does this go against the grain of what we have been taught? We had been told that we are social animals and that a man is not an island. Social interaction is essential for mental health, and a child turns out to be developmentally stunted without the tactile stimulation of his loved ones.

On the other hand, we know how lousy companies and wrong associations often derail our ambitions to attain greater heights. There is a reason why high-level athletes and sportsmen train in isolation before a major event. In the same vein, I suppose seekers of greater knowledge should focus on the quest rather than be swayed by the white noise surrounding them. Is this the detachment Buddha mentions in his teachings, with attachment being the root of all misery?

In the Samurai code, there are guidelines that they have to follow. Their allegiance and loyalty are laid out clearly. His loyalty to his Lord is paramount. But when a samurai loses his master, he drifts around aimlessly like a leaf on moving water, swaying at random to forces of nature. Yet, he is still alone but without any direction in life, clutching on straws for direction and strength. 

'Le Samourai' is a classic French noir that stood the test of time. Combining the elements of art in filmmaking while maintaining its suspense in storytelling, it narrates the tale of a paid assassin who works alone. He laboriously details his every job to perfection. His last job, even though successful, hits a snag. He had been targeted as a possible suspect by the French police. The hiring party, naturally, gets hot under their collar. 

The assassin now has to run to save his own skin, not only from the police who want to pin him down but also from his hirers, who would rather have him eliminated than squeal to the police for their involvement. The assassin, now no longer a samurai but a ronin, has to use his survival skills and judgement to be alive. The silver lining of all is that there is a pretty pianist who was an eyewitness to the murder and can identify the killer but prefers to stay mum. 

It's a good watch—4.3/5—and one of Alain Delon's best movies, which skyrocketed him to the international market.

P.S. Freud and Nietzsche found wisdom through silence found in nature walks and roaming the wilderness. Hardcore criminals are placed in solitary confinement, hoping that they will find meaning of life through self-reflection. Unfortunately, this approach of living in a silo may not be applicable to all. Men of the robe have to flaunt the gift of their gab to showcase themselves as the saviours of mankind. Politicians meet an audience to cheat them blind. Businessmen need people interaction to patronise their premises. Solitude brings these people nothing.

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End of the line...

Le Cercle Rouge (French, The Red Circle; 1970)
Written & Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville

The 'Red Circle' referenced in the title is from a fabricated quotation allegedly uttered by Siddhartha Gautama. The Buddha had apparently drawn a circle with a piece of red chalk and said: "When men, even unknowingly, are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever the diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle." 

That red circle is where we will all converge to be judged after all our shenanigans here on Earth. We can aggrandise ourselves all we want, follow the path that we think is true, pray to the God we believe is the true God, and label others as lost causes. When we reach the end of the line, it will all be the same.

This French heist film is set in Paris and boasts an intense, suspense-filled, nearly 30-minute silent heist sequence that is the climax. Silence and intense focus create a riveting experience. 

Most people revisited this film after its leading actor, Alain Delon, passed away recently. Delon was a prolific French actor who acted in over 100 films. He became the symbol of the French New Wave movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Director John Woo was inspired by this film.

It is the story of a petty thief who is tipped off of a jewellery shop he could rob after his release from prison. At the same time, a prisoner escapes police custody and joins the thief. Together with a crooked cop, they plan the jewel theft. Hot on their trail is a dedicated police officer. A good cat-and-mouse movie. We know what will happen in the end - all will sprawl in the red circle.

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Hatred breeds hatred

La Haine (Hatred, French, 1995)
Screenplay, Direction: Mathieu Kassovitz

This hint has been present throughout our history. Contended people make peaceful nations. Peaceful regions bring prosperity, meaning wealth. When people have money jingling in their pockets, they can fill their stomachs and are happy. They are kind to each other and respect each other.

I still remember my history teacher, Mr LKK, in his theatrical manner, describing the scene in France in 1789 before the Bastille invasion. The peasants were hungry, while King Louis XVI and Mary Antonette were busy enjoying their cakes. This resentment eventually, as we know it, changed world history.

This film tries to highlight the same point: Resentment among the people brings hate, and hate begets more hate. The people in the lower socioeconomic strata will always get the raw end of the bargain. Any new legislation or taxation will affect the poor more than the affluent. Understandably, they are the community with the lowest threshold for dissatisfaction.

The hate that brews in the suburbia and the poorer side of town is dangerous. When people are helpless, violence remains the last bastion of expression. This film was hailed for highlighting the slow cancer growing in the banlieues (troubled French suburbs) that needed government attention before it became a national catastrophe. Sadly, the result of that warning is reality. Frequent rioting in French, German and Belgian suburbs is common.

The film tells the story of a broken suburbia. There is no economic activity, and the young have no future to plan for. They identify themselves with gangs. Three young lads, a Franco-African, a Jew and a Muslim, are close friends. There is a semblance of a school but hardly any teaching. Children are not interested, and the outdoors is dangerous, with frequent rioting and police raids.

One gang member is seriously injured by the police. It angers one of the two teenagers in the story. The rest of the tale is about their wasteful wandering, doing seemingly unproductive things, and getting into the wrong side of the law in the next 24 hours.

It is about a society in free fall, the nightmare that no nation leader would want to see in his tenure. The responsible citizens must read the writing on the wall and act accordingly. When the domino wall starts falling, there is no stopping. The dialogue at the end of the movie tells it all. When the society is going down, it tells itself, 'so far so good, so far so good'. It does not matter how it falls; all that matters is how it ends!

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To Money God, with love.

Traditional Vietnamese stone
carving at Ba Na Hill cable car station.

 

They led peaceful lives by their standards. They were ruled by little kingdoms with their own belief systems and mode of administration. There were little skirmishes here and there, but the subjects were contended, breaking their backs and building mammoth structures for their kings and the divine forces that protected them. They had a sense of belonging to the land that served them. In their own way, they developed their high culture for the present and the world after.

Then came the foreign invaders. With their imposing figures, strange hues, smell, and conducts, they bulldozed their ideology. They handed us the book of love with the pretext of friendship and commerce. Whilst we closed our eyes in prayer, they took our land deeds unbeknownst to us, and we were stuck with their books.

No more a godless society?

They looked down at our living and called it uncultured. The French colonist proclaimed our land theirs and decimated our structures just to replace them and build buildings in French designs. They introduced French haute culture, theatre and the French way of living. 

We fought tooth and nail to assert our dominance. Fought we did, only to be a pawn in world politics afterwards. After sending the French packing, we had to fight our brothers over political leanings beset by the superpowers beyond our control. Many had to flee the country as the Americans experimented with cocktails of chemicals on us. We again sent the foreigners again, packing in a rush for good this time. 

With a new pack of friends from the North, we again started going places. Maybe because they share a common heritage and a love for the Money God, we have set the wheel of progress. My people have what it takes and have no qualms going the whole nine yards to see us through to recreate a kingdom so prosperous so long ago. We have the tenacity to work our way all the way to the top.

Entrance to My Son, Champa heritage.
Ruins of a glorious Hindu civilisation.

View atop Marble Mountain Da Nang.

Indo-Chinese fusion: the hirsute monk and dragons.

China's marvel at engineering is on full display.
Entrance to the world's largest cable car service.
5km long in Da Nang, the 3rd biggest city in Vietnam.

Chinese architecture in Indo-China!

Not a rafflesia. 

The might of Chinese engineering Ba Na Hills.

Was the tiger awoken?
40 years ago, the US bombed Vietnam to smithereens.

Too sanitised for sanitation?

A mock French village in Vietnam? Da Nang

Is slave mentality on display? The colonised trying to mimic the colonisers?

The French left them with beer culture and a sense of dressing up.
Most Vietnamese women were dressed to the nines.
The culture of 'slutty dressing' has not permeated yet, as for now.

A peacock in a French garden?

The invisible hands that control us all?

To keep up with the Joneses?

Can we build, or ‘copy and paste’?!

Seafood galore!

We will sing for you; we will dance for you. At your service!

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The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Lost Illusion (Illusions Perdues, French, 2022)
Director: Xavier Giannoli
(Based on 'Illusions perdues' by Honoré de Balzac)

The distinction between the left and the right side of politics is said to have had its origin at the time of King Louis XVI. Those seated to the right were royalties and the nobilities who were quite contented with the status quo, that is, authoritarianism and the church's excessive meddling. The feudalistic method of wealth distribution works just fine for them, thanks to their linkages to the monarch. Those on the left of the King earned their every penny through hard work and hard-sell. Naturally, they abhor cronyism and want level playing fields.

The French revolution jolted this arrangement at its core. The peasants did not want to be reminded of their past anymore. People with surnames that had an association with the royalties and aristocrats were hunted down and guillotined. By the post-Napoleonic era, things had resorted back to how it was before the time the French broke down the gates of bastille. French society had been divided again by class. Money, wealth and ancestor became important again.

Against this background, Balzac wrote this classic. It is the story of a talented young 20-year-old man from the countryside who lands in 1821 Paris to be a somebody. Lucien, a man embarrassed by his heritage, comes armed with poetry and the zest to be a famous poet. He earlier is caught having an affair with a high society woman, somebody's wife. He soon discovers a world full of fake news and a press willing to prostitute itself to the highest bidder. His dream to be a poet crumbles as his writings hurt the sentiments of a certain section of society. Nobody writes the truth anymore. It all depends on who is their paymaster. The more things seem to change, the more they seem to recoil back to how it was previously. He falls in love with a budding actress, but her career is also cut short by these critics who shoot down talent with scathing jeers and paid negative reviews. Lucien comes home an empty man.

The kudos we read in the newsreels are because the reporters were told to do so. Publishers publish articles that meet their agendas. They realise that a lie often repeated becomes the unassailable truth.

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We are innately racists

He Even Has Your Eyes.

(Il a déjà tes yeux , French; 2016)

Netflix

It is used to be that bringing u a child was 'child play'. My maternal grandfather's philosophy was thus. Mother Nature has it all for us. Like the trees in the forests and God's creations in the wild, somebody will sow the seeds, and someone else will come to water or feed them. In times of crisis, every man (and child) is on his own, scavenging and struggling towards sustenance. They soon learn survival skills and street smartness.

It used to be that families with way too many mouths to feed willingly give their barren relatives their child to take care. The offspring would grow, knowing very well who the biological and adoptive parents are. Issues of abandonment or neglect and psychological scarring attached to this were unheard of. The whole village would nurture a child.

Such a set up seem so alien now, like almost happening in an alternative universe. We are living in a hostile environment, Man being Man's greatest predator. It is almost like the world will be a better place with its population all wiped out. Child molesters, adults with pedophilic tendencies and cannibals make adoption almost like human trafficking. The agencies assume that adopters are up to something no good unless proven otherwise. The complicated labyrinth of bureaucracy decides who is fit to be a parent and who is not.

It is almost like choosing the correct earring for a lady's attire. Both the couple's biodata is screened with a fine-tooth comb, financial security, criminal records, medical conditions, mental stability, household preparations and colour. It does not matter if the orphan child is deprived in the wilderness in slums in an abusive family elsewhere. Everything needs to be mixed and matched, especially race!

The public is quick to judge when a child appears different from their parents. It does not make sense, but generally, people are okay with fair-skinned people adopting dark-skinned kids. Conversely, if the parents were dark-skinned and the child light-skinned, they feel hot under the colour. Are they not good enough to care for a pale child? Paradoxically, even within the coloured, a white-skinned is viewed upon as not good enough to be adopted. Are their DNA inferior to carry the burden of their adopted tradition? Assumptions on the liberal attitudes of the biological mother are hurled.

In Malaysia, I have noticed that it is acceptable for an Indian couple to take in Chinese kids as their own. We have seen these much here over the years. Typical children with Oriental features uttering immaculate Tamil complete with eye and hand gestures. When it is an Indian child is raised by a Chinese family, society becomes curious. We are all inherently racists.

This French comedy looks at this cruel behaviour. A black couple who is an adoption list receives a call that their application is successful. The child is a 4 month-old blue-eyed blond white baby. The parents are over the moon on seeing their baby, but not so with one of the social workers who is hellbent on proving that the new parents of their white child.

The new mother's family is also shocked by the latest addition to the family. Together with the young couple's friends, the movie tries to highlight the farce behind adoption protocols and unsavoury societal perception of interracial adoption.

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Trapped in the long shadow of the past!

Inventing South East Asia (Documentary; 2016)
Written and Presented by Dr Farish Noor

It is always interesting to listen to or read Dr Farish Noor's rendition of history as we were never taught.  In this documentary series, he dons khakis and ventures deep into the heart of South East Asia. He tells us how the colonialist masters carved out boundaries amongst the borderless Malay archipelago to invent race, identity, cause destruction and pillage, all in the name of bringing 'modernisation' to the 'primitive' natives. What they did not realise or refuse to admit is that the area that they thought were doing a great humanity service, already had a stable civilisation and were already cultured in their own way. They created a smokescreen to do their job, to pilfer enormous wealth and precious natural resources.

#1. Conquerors and Merchants
We are seldom told of the British invasion of Indonesia. In fact, they had interfered in Indonesia's affairs twice, albeit a short while, once after the Napoleonic wars and after WW2.
Capt Gillespie and an unknown officer Stamford Raffles invaded Java and destroyed the Jogjakarta Sultanate. Raffles then reinvented himself as a curator of conservation of the traditional Java relics to self-promote himself. His promotion of Java as an entity gives them their identity. Some old Javanese are still sore with the British till this day for their carnage. However, they are also eternally grateful to Raffles and his men for rediscovering Borobudur and the Javanese heritage.
Jambi City, Sumatra, where the Malay language is said to have originated had an illustrious Hindu-Buddhist past. In the 19th century, John Anderson, a British merchant was sent by the East Indian Company to explore Jambi which was fabled to be filled with cannibals and pirates. He was pleasantly surprised with the hive of trades happening there and the hard-working and friendly people selling a myriad of exotic produce. His book which showcased the rich natural resources there lured the Dutch to reap its natural resources and denude the greenery leading to various environmental damage. Commerce which was supposed to improve the general livelihood of people of Indonesia failed to do so. Wealth just changed hands from one master to another. For the poor, it is just business as usual.

#2. Kings and Pirates
In the second episode, Associate Prof Farish Noor travels to Borneo to discuss the shadow-play of the British in the island to justify their actions of gaining power to bring law and order. As is well known, in the 19th Century there was a blurred line between piracy and privateering. When done by the British against their enemies it was privateering, and it was legitimate and rewarded at the highest level. Sir Walter Raleigh was one such character. His actions, in reality, were no different than that of a pirate.
James Brooke was a soldier in the Anglo-Burmese war, but he ventured to the exotic Borneo Island for adventure and excitement. He came here, not as a representative of the East Indian Company or of the British Government but on his own accord. By a twist of fate, when he arrived in Sarawak in 1839, there was a local outbreak between Muda Hashim, a relative of the Brunei royalty, and some rebels. In return for helping Muda Hashim, Brooke was rewarded a piece of land. In the pretext of controlling piracy, he expanded his control over the rest of Sarawak and appointed himself as the White Rajah of Sarawak. He justified his nefarious actions of killing natives indiscriminately by concocting stories of pirates and headhunters as the bogeymen.

He also attacked Kampong Ayer, Brunei's busiest port and centre of commerce, with his comrades, Mundy and Keppel. They pointed a cannon at the Sultan's palace and arm-twisted him to give Labuan to the British. All in the name of combating piracy and to make commerce safe but for whom?
The community in Sabah has always been varied, complex and mobile. The whole landscape was fluid, borderless, porous and people, especially boat people (Bajau Laut) were a nomadic lot. The British conveniently labelled them as pirates to legitimise their treacherous actions.

#3. Shadow of the Guillotine

Louis Delaporte

It all started with the French wanting to compete with the British Raj to find an alternative route to China. Louis Delaporte, an explorer-artist, led an expedition up Mekong River in a failed mission. What he found was gems of ruins of ancient archaeological finds of Angkor Wat. Being the artist that he is, he returned with realistic and colourful drawings of an abandoned but advanced civilisation. 

To be fair, Delaporte had very high regards to the Khmer culture. He viewed the Indo-Chinese as descendants of an advanced race. His country, however, did not want to hear any of that. As far as they were concerned, a race that had forgotten its roots is lost. The ruins denote that the Asian Civilisation is on the decline, and the French took it as their moral duty to educate and bring culture (modernisation) to the natives, correct this fall from grace while looting of its treasures. They created French Indo-China.

Khmer sculpture on display at l'Exposition 
Universelle de 1878, an engraving 
by Louis Delaporte

They brought French culture wholesale into Indochina. Colonisation is not just limited to canons and military might. Colonisation also encompasses control of the mind, thinking and faith. Catholicism crept in. Students were educated in Paris. The advanced culture of the South East Asians went on a decline.

European education also brought in nationalism in the form of Ho Chi Min and Pol Pot. Both of them were members of the French Marxist Party.

Independence did not bring freedom but was fraught with wars, terror and genocide. The Vietnamese and the Cambodians have all got heart-wrenching stories of war, loss of loved ones and torture. Ironically, memories of these atrocities draw visitors to their land to dwell a bit of torture porn in the War Museums, Genocide Museum and Killing Fields.

The narrator ends the series with the message for us to question the myths of the past and live beyond the long shadow of our 19th century colonial past.