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? 

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

Forgive for peace?

Rubaru Roshni (Where the Light Comes In)

Directed by Svati Chakravarthy Bhatkal

 The general order of things in the Universe is such. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. An eye for an eye, a tit for a tad, and 'you do the crime, you do the time'. Even the karmic rule dictates that we pay our dues. We have been taught to take responsibility for our actions with no recourse. The others will jump at the slightest chance to pounce and breathe down on the perpetrator as if he, in the wise words of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, is eligible to cast the first stone.

Rumi once wrote, 'The wound is the place where the Light enters you'. A person who is heartbroken but remorseful after a regrettable act is open to amends. Unfortunately, it is not as easy as swiping the slate clean and turning over a new leaf. As practised by Roman Catholics, confessions may offer solace to the perpetrator but not to the victim. The aggrieving party will also have to deal with their own heartaches and trauma. A face-to-face meeting is a logical choice to reach conciliation, but is it really the solution? Can it even happen in this day and age?

This whole exercise of vis-à-vis intervention is, as solicitors would term, perverse to natural justice. In a world where nobody turns the other cheek anymore but slaps back instead, resolution and forgiveness are unthinkable. In an environment where one seeks 'justice' that all the money can buy or the highest court they can go to, it is terrible for business. Unless, of course, you are a nobody. Then, God is your witness, judge and executor of the 'other' party.

Rumi

A wound is where Light goes in. Light heals. Like that, cracks can be filled up, as is done in the Japanese pottery craft of Kintsugi. Defects repaired with powdered gold or silver dust end up being more robust than before.

All these sound nice and easy, forgiving and moving up. In reality, it takes a lot of courage and patience. Courage to accept the tragedy affected both parties, the perpetrator and those close to the victim. Patience to hear out what either party has to say to each other. On top of it all, both parties must have suffered enough. The offender must have done time and must have remorse to descend the throne of grandiosity.

That brings us to the case of commuting pardon to Najib, whose innumerable cases are still ongoing. First, he must have been comprehensively grilled and laid bare of any other possible crimes, lived to have paid his dues as decided by Law and be remorseful of his actions, as he is deemed to have committed the crime by Law. Otherwise, it is putting the cart before the horse.

Forgiveness is what we see in the three real-life events that are shown here. Forgiveness only comes after deliberation when both parties realise that carrying the burden or guilt is self-defeating. Tackling it head-on with empathy and humility goes a long way.

Avatika Maken and her father's 
assassin, forgiven.

In the first case story, following the 1984 Operation Blue Star, after the alleged desecration of the Golden Temple, there was nationwide resentment against the Indian Government. Never mind that weapons were stored there and anti-nationalist activities were in full swing. PM Indra Gandhi was assassinated later. A riot broke out between the Sikhs and Hindus, claiming 17,000 Sikh lives in three days. A neutral report on the riot blamed the Congress Party M.P.s for the mayhem. Sikh separatist groups noted that and put Delhi Congressmen on their hit list. By chance, they shot Lalit Maken. His wife, Geethanjali, was collateral damage. Their only daughter, Avantika, then 6, grew up an angry orphan. Of the assassins, two were apprehended, charged and sentenced to death, while the third, Ranjit Singh Gill, escaped to the USA. Ranjit was arrested and spent a good 13 years in the U.S. prison before being expedited to India. In India, he received a life sentence. He appeared for parole three years later only to be opposed by Avantika.

Sr Selmy and her sister's murderer, forgiven.

The rest of the tale is about how Avantika and Ranjit, both feeling drained out because of the turn of events, met each other by chance. This led to reconciliation, with both starting a rejuvenated new life. It takes someone extraordinary to forgive and guts to admit mistakes and make amends. Ranjit realised he had been used as a pawn by power brokers who just scooted when things went south.

The second case study involved the brutal stabbing of a Malayali Catholic nun, Sr Rani Maria, in Udainagar, Madhya Pradesh, in 1995. The talk around town was that the Christian missionaries were busy converting tribal and Dalit communities. Riled by this, Samandar Singh, a farmer, with many landowners, stopped the bus Sr Rani was travelling and stabbed her more than 50 times in broad daylight. Cooped in prison for more than 11 years for his crime, Samandar felt remorse after seeing his accomplices go free.

Kia Scherr

Meanwhile, Sr Rani has a sister who is also a nun. The sister, Sr Selmy, and their mother did a lot of soul-searching and concluded that it was all God's plan. God and Sr. Rani would have forgiven Rani's killer. So when a Swamiji contacted the family about Samandar's regret, Sr Selmy made a trip to the prison where Samandar was imprisoned to tie Rakhi on Raksha Bandhan. From then on, it was raw emotion all the way. After his release, he makes a trip to Kerala to the mother. The family adopts him as another sibling.

Kia Scherr's husband and daughter had come to Mumbai for a meditation retreat. Unfortunately, the Oberoi Hotel where they stayed was in the way of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack in 2008. Rather than hating India as she lost her whole family there, she has resorted to making annual trips to India as a peace entrepreneur and co-founding a global peace initiative that works to bring tools of peace to education, business and government.


P.S. I struggle to comprehend why some forgive their aggressors while others go all out to throw the heaviest weight of the Law at them to get the maximum of incarceration for them. They would insist that no form of punishment is adequate enough.

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

Before and After...

Dear Zoe (2022)
Director: Gren Wells

Just the other day, my wife wanted to get some prayer stuff to commemorate Vinayar Sathurthi, a day dedicated to Lord Ganesha, the elephantine one and remover of all obstacles. I was shocked by seeing so many people buying things like there is no tomorrow. The streets around Little India were swarming with activities. The traffic was at a standstill with people double parking. The footpaths were blocked by shopkeepers stocking their premises with goods, overflowing to the streets. The loudspeakers were up blaring devotional songs in keeping with the spirit of festivities. The shop owners are sure they are going for a kill this time around because they know the masses have been suckered into believing that God needs these condiments and that it is the worshippers' divine duty to fulfil His needs. Their desire to outdo their neighbour is good for the National economy.

I do not remember Vinayakar Sathurthi creating such a rave when I was a kid. It used to be a non-event in most households. Nobody wished each other Sathurthi salutations or publicised the day. It was something personal confined to the four walls and entrance to the abode. Now, even those non-celebrants who quite nonchalantly label them as heathens and devil worshipers go out of their way to wish Sathurthi wishes. Is that a recognition or respect? 

All that changed, in my guess, after 9/11. When the world was sliced into two halves - 'those with us and those against us - essentially demarcated by the desert religion, people started wearing their religiosity on their sleeves. It was a survival strategy to delineate themselves from perceived suicide bombers. Through their algorithms, social media further helped create exclusive zones where birds began cherrypicking their own kind till the last barb of the feather.

The world we live in is the sum of all these. Just like how a single eruption of Mount Tempora in 1815 transformed the summer of 1816 to cause crop failure, famine and poverty, the 9/11 episode changed how people looked at each other forever. On the cultural front, however, the Lost Summer bred the horror genre Frankenstein and later Dracula. 

The film is centred around the 9/11 incident. Drawn by the hullabaloo of jet planes crashing into the Twin Towers, the protagonist could not take her eyes off the TV. That single action changed her life and her family's forever. Her younger sister was playing in the yard, and she was supposed to keep an eye on her. Amid that mayhem, the sister was run over by a passing vehicle. She died. 

This sort of coming-of-age movie describes how the 16-year-old protagonist comes to terms with tragedy. Her strained relationship with her mother and her stepfather adds to her misery. She moves in with her estranged father, who leads a too-laid-back life in the not-so-affluent part of Chicago. Love blossoms with a neighbour who is not a parent's idea of a son-in-law. 

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

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.

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

People kill people, not guns?

If anything happens I love you! (2020)
Animated Short Film

This 11-minutes short film won itself an Academy Award in the Best Short Animated film category. In a concise graphic representation, the storytellers managed to capture the essence of emotions surrounding the loss of a young child. This emotional turmoil can make or break a family unit. The gamut of blaming, what-ifs, guilt and fault finding missions would eventually lead to a brick wall among the living but definitely not bring back the dead.

The death of a member of a family who has not lived his full potential, however, may invoke a myriad of responses. They say an addition to the family, especially the first-born, unites families. The sight of a newborn will make everyone all jello but strong enough to cement whatever minor frictions that may have been present in day-to-day dealings. It may make or break the bonds between the close relatives, especially parents, in the case of a young child.

This short film with no dialogue but a single song, 1950 by King Princess, tells the pain that a couple of parents endure when their pre-teen is killed in a random school shooting. The couple gradually grows apart with overpowering grief. All the while, their genuine emotions, feeling for each other and worries about each other are depicted by their shadows. When the door of their daughter's room, which they refuse to open all this while, suddenly opens, both parents enter the room to the sound of their daughter's favourite song. They reminisce about all the joyful times that they had together through a series of flashbacks. Finally, they shed their tears and reached a resolution.

The film highlights the problem of random shootings in the American public space, especially schools. Over the years, the interval between these types of shooting is getting shorter, and the types of weapons used are getting complex. It is no more pistols or hunting rifles. Instead, we are talking about assault rifles and semi-automatics. Pretty soon, the general public may be walking around with bazookas as it is their right to bear arms to protect themselves as permitted by the second amendment of the American Constitution. 

So many Presidents have come and gone promising to put a stop to all this gun violence. Even though many countries, the UK and Australia included, are testimony that this is indeed possible with very tight regulation of weapons ownership, such a situation will never happen in the US. The gun lobbying groups hold the purse string to the political parties. Being the central capital of weapon provider for the whole world to fight each other to maintain American interest and sustain despotic regimes worldwide, it will bad for business to put an all right ban on guns. 

Anti guns will continue doing their thing.  Aggrieved parties will pour their heartfelt disappointments, and the world will light an occasional candle at shooting sights, but the stock owners of Smith & Wesson and Colt's Defence will continue run laughing all the way to the bank. And they justify their rights by saying, "People kill people, not guns!" But, what they do not understand is that people just get a bruised face, dented ego or at most a broken rib with physical might. A gun has only one mission, to cause severe damage to the victim with minimal effort of its user.

All the loving feelings wither over the years. A child may make or break, not only by what turns out of them but in wanting to give the best for them. Differing parenting approaches and domineering-type of parenting accentuates drift. You ask yourself, "Is this the same woman that I married? "You coax yourself telling, "No, these are just battle wounds traversing the journey of life!"

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