A Bad Honeymoon?

Bitter Moon (1992)

Director: Roman Polanski

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bitter-Moon-DVD-Peter-Coyote
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I have been reading about Polanski's brush with the law for years. In 1977, he was charged with multiple charges of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. Even though he made a plea bargain, upon hearing that he might be receiving a jail sentence, he absconded from the US, and till now, he has lived as a fugitive in France. He rarely travels for fear of extradition. 

Even before this case, he made headlines in 1969 when the deviant followers of Marilyn Manson embarked on a violent spree, killing Polanski's wife, Sharon Tate, who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant.

Polanski's 2002 film 'The Pianist' was well-received by the showbiz world. It went on to win multiple awards, including the Academy Award for Best Director (Polanski) and Best Actor (Adrian Brody). In 2008, a documentary was created about the life and times of Roman Polanski, receiving much acclaim from the showbiz community. Perhaps because of this, 100 Hollywood actors signed a petition calling for his charges to be dropped and for him to be allowed to return. His legal troubles persisted, with many new cases and counter-suits. He remains a fugitive, as the US courts require him to appear in person before making decisions. 

Rosemary Baby and Pianist are amongst the many great movies that he has made. 

'Bitter Moon' is a sarcastic reference to what we commonly refer to as a honeymoon. Nigel and Fiona Dobson, an English couple, are on a Mediterranean cruise heading to India. After seven years of marriage, they need to rediscover the meaning of life. Their reasoning appears quite comical to Mr Singh, a fellow passenger and widower, who is escaping India with his young daughter. The Dobsons' lives seem insignificant compared to the tumultuous and sexually fulfilling relationship of another couple on the same cruise, the sultry Mimi and her wheelchair-bound husband, Oscar. Even though Nigel feels uncomfortable listening to Oscar and Mimi's intimate personal lives, Oscar is determined to recount his story in great detail. To complicate matters further, the sexually deprived Mimi is making advances towards Nigel, exacerbating the Dobsons' already strained marriage.

Responses to this film are mixed. On the one hand, film connoisseurs have praised it highly for being engaging and delightfully entertaining; on the other hand, some label it as disturbing, asserting that Polanski has hit rock bottom. The movie was a commercial failure.

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Jury on Trial?

Juror #2
Director: Clint Eastwood

Yet another big one from Clint Eastwood. This 94-year-old may have directed his last movie, but one can never say never. This one makes us think, as did his previous offerings, like 'Letters from Iwo Jima', 'Flags of Our Fathers', and 'Gran Torino'.

It is a courtroom drama along the lines of '12 Angry Men', where the moral decision of convicting a person of a serious crime is the mainstay. This film, however, goes one step further. One of the jurors, Juror #2, may have committed the murder in the case he is judging. On the day of the incident, the Juror witnessed the tussle between the accused and his girlfriend at a bar. The girlfriend was found dead later that night by a creek beside a road. The accused was seen following his girlfriend in his car. With his destructive anger management issues, he was naturally accused of having mortally wounded his girlfriend. 

The trouble is Juror #2 is a recovering alcoholic and was nursing the pain of losing a pair of twins a year previously. He was fighting his inner demons to resist the bottle again. Self-restraint allegedly won the day. As he left the bar, he drove the same country road as the other two. Just as the Juror bent to pick up his phone to answer a call from his wife, he felt a thud. He looked up and saw nothing except for a deer crossing sign. He checked his car for damage and moved on, assuming he had hit a running deer. 

Juror #2 slowly realises, as he sits through the case, and with sudden flashes of his accident from the same night in his mind, that he could be the killer instead of the accused. What was he to do? Resign from his post, which may turn investigations towards him. At a time when he is looking forward to being sober for so long and ushering in his soon-to-be-born child, the last thing he needs is to go to prison.

With all the evidence stacked against the accused, argued by a DA with political ambitions, the accused is sure to be incarcerated for the crime he did not commit. A moral dilemma ensues within the Juror. Should he ensure that the jury delivers a unanimous decision of guilty so he (the Juror) is off the hook? If a mistrial is declared when the jury cannot convict him, the police may have to investigate again, and the Juror's name may crop up.

Does the truth reveal itself in the end? If the truth is so powerful and can maintain balance, why must we defend it? Is it everyone's moral duty to protect the truth no matter what it may do to them and the people around them? In the same breath, we insist that many versions of the truth exist. Who determines which is true, anyway? Many versions of it seem right from their perspective. Have they not heard of the Rashomon effect? Sometimes, truth is watered down to preserve peace.

Still, we insist on a fair hearing and that everyone deserves to be adequately represented. And we realise that many guilty criminals, with the power of the best legal minds that money can buy behind them, get away scot-free through technicalities. The innocent, too, can be punished with overwhelming circumstantial evidence. When a notoriously bad person who had escaped convictions before is penalised for a crime he did not commit, we say that his crimes have finally caught up with him. We justify the wrongful conviction akin to a person who lives by the sword and dies by it. Are the lawyers less enthusiastic about defending such criminals, or is wealth the determinant?

Are you being dishonest by putting your self-interest above doing the right thing? After all, no man is an island. On the other hand, no innocent man should be punished for something he did not do. Some feel pressured to mete out instant justice. We take shortcuts and cut down on paperwork. We don blinkers to confirm our biases and refuse to see beyond our scope of vision.

When a miscarriage of justice happens right in front of your eyes, just how far would you go to right the wrong, especially when it involves an admission of guilt? With the admission of error, you must bear the brunt of losing face and position. 

There are no answers, only questions. The film ends on a cliffhanger, probably on purpose, so viewers can ponder it and draw conclusions. It brings viewers into serious discussions on truth, justice, morality, and guilt.

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#MenToo?

The pendulum has swung. Not too long ago, the members of the fairer sex had a raw deal. They were placed as second-class citizens. They were discriminated against, received less salary and failed to capture high-ranking posts. They were assumed to think with their heart, not their brain, more emotional and less rational. Social restrictions were imposed in the familial hierarchy. They had to play second fiddle to a father figure in the family unit. Even when it came to passport applications for children, the father's consent used to be mandatory, but the mother's. 

There was a time when having a 'Y' chromosome was synonymous with masculine toxicity. Activists screamed of discrimination. They quickly illustrated how far behind they were in achievements compared to the others. They demanded legislative changes to correct the inequality. It did not matter that many females were actually more interested in other delicate stuff like fitting into their gendered roles than sweating it out in the rat race. They tried to show their presence through their romantic, creative writings in the early years, followed by the satiety of feeling of a blowing breeze when they indulged in cycling, symbolic of feeling freedom.

With the availability of education and mobility, everyone thought equality and empowerment would be the natural sequelae. But not really! Just as we thought everyone would have their place in the sun, chunks of the population think we should go more conservative. The female populace takes it upon themselves to take a back seat. Some used ancient scriptures to stunt women's development. 

Not all laws initiated by society end up serving the real needs of the masses. The #MeToo movement has shown us this. In this day and age, all one has to do to defame and defile a male is to allege that he had touched her inappropriately or acted without her consent. The truth, whether the action was consensual or did actually happen, is immaterial. The intended damage will happen like clockwork. 

Atul Subash

When Cupid misfires, and love turns sour, the feuding couple will start hurling accusations against each other. In India, the estranged wife has multiple secret weapons to deploy. She can accuse him of dowry harassment, sexual misconduct and domestic violence.

The recent suicide of Atul Subash, a tech professional from Bengaluru, had too much to deal with during his divorce proceedings. He alleged that his wife kept adding false accusations against him to the umpteenth cases already there. He added that the legal system is against men in every way it turns. Even though women can earn and stand on their feet, the system still expects the husband to pay alimony. The wives scorned have mastered the art of using the law to entrap and bankrupt the husbands dry. Atul clearly mentioned these in a 40-page confession and 80-minute presentation just before he hung himself.

Even though everyone is equal in the eye of the law, it cannot be denied that it is sympathetic to expressive and emotive victimhood-displaying females. In the eye of the law, by default, the male gender is the aggressor. They do not see males as the silent sufferers or the abused. There is a need to have gender-neutral laws. As is quite apparent, there can be aggressors on either side of the fence; there are gentle males and combative females, too. And there are passive-aggressive ones, too. 

Ironically, a law created to defend the vulnerable had spinned on its own head. The vulnerable have mastered the nuances and loopholes of law that they have wrapped around their fingers to give the accused violators.

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Even the Universe does not bother!

The New Indian Lady Justice
Note the saree, absence of blindfold and sword.
(knowledge replaces brutal force)

I have been naive all through my formative and even adult life. I had thought that Truth or the Universe would put everything in order. In the end, Dharma will rule. No matter how deviant, conniving, or evil humans may be, Nature has a way of tipping things back to equilibrium. 

Little things convinced me of this. When Man thought pests needed to be eradicated to increase their harvest yield, he introduced DDT. Little did he know it disrupted the food chain, from insects to birds and pollination of flowers and back to less yield. The spring of 1962 fell silent. When environmentalists were screaming, 'Save the Tigers on Sundarbans', little did they know that they had later to give protection to the people of that region when the tiger population doubled.

People equate the Courts with holding the balance of Justice. The courts are supposed to be independent, not swayed by emotion or power. We were convinced that everyone is equal in the eyes of the Law.

Increasingly, I think the Law has squinted eyes. One may argue that squinting does not equal altered vision. Neither does it refer to poverty of thought or vision. To the observer, however, it will always appear skewed to a particular side. After all, perception is vital in Law. Justice must be seen to be done.

It is apparent to my lay mind that the verdict of court cases, especially involving senior political leaders, go whichever way the current political wind blows. At the discretion of the learned justices, cases can go into cold storage, be fast-tracked or simply acquitted. When the evidence is too compelling, the accused may be off the hook awaiting temporarily, their cases seeing daylight at a later date (discharged not amounting to acquittal; DNAA), the wisdom of which is only known to the learned justices and the sycophants of the accused.

It is evident that the legal and judiciary systems pander to the might of those in power and bow to the general public's sentiments. The take-home message is that there is no right or wrong. Everything is contextual, including the direction of the public sentiments. Like a flower dependent on the elements of Nature to be pollinated, mere mortals get shoved and pushed around. 

Read the fascinating history of the coming of power of China's first Empress, Wu Zeitan. Her ascent to the throne was spectacularly bizarre. Starting off as a concubine, not even the favourite but sixth in line, she wrangled her way to be the Empress by killing her own daughter and blaming it on the reigning Emperor's consort. Her melodrama paid off. Even as the Empress, she called the shots of how the kingdom must be ruled. Her assertiveness and charisma made all the officials follow her line. She even paraded herself as a reincarnation of one of Buddha's female disciples. That regularised her demigod status and spread Buddhism to sell the religion to justify her maleficences. All the checks and balances were under her thumb. The learned court officers just toed the line in unison. The government machinery followed her tailcoat (or regal royal attire). The economy prospered, and peace was palpable. 

Maybe prosperity and peace of mind are all that matter at the end of the day, not righting all wrongs. One has to see the bigger picture, perhaps.) It is the economy, stupid, as uttered by a fornicator who went on to be the President and got away scot-free. In his mind, he did not have a sexual relationship with Lewinsky as, unlike others, he did think oral sex was sex. He was acquitted of impeachment charges by the US Senate. He is a respected speaker who earns millions around the world. The world no longer expects a leader to be virtuous. As long there is money. In Clinton's immortal words, 'It is the economy stupid!'

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Danger of swift justice!

We Want Justice!

A thing or two came up on my radar recently. Firstly, yet again, the unending saga of 1MDB took another court postponement. The deposed Malaysian PM has not finished disposing of his cases. This time, he has excruciating knee pain that needs hospitalisation. When told to be wheeled into the courtroom, the defence lawyers quipped that since he would be on opioid painkillers, he would not be in the correct frame of mind to follow the proceeding. They said their client must be seen to be given a fair trial. So be it, said the judges. 

Across the Straits of Malacca and Bay of Bengal, over in Kalkota, demonstrators are screaming that new legislation must be passed to expedite trials on rapists and impose the death penalty on them. The West Bengal Legislative Assembly even stipulated that investigations into sexual assault and rape must be concluded in 21 days.

Are we overdoing it in the haste to right the wrong, punish the wrongdoers, and set an example to potential offenders? 

The story of Kannagi, which was written by Illango in Silapathikaram in the Sangam epoch, probably in the 2nd century CE, comes to mind. Even though it is generally accepted as a literary work, some insist the likes of Kannagi walked as flesh and blood in the lands of Madurai. There is evidence that a big fire actually engulfed Madurai around that time. There is even a temple commemorating Kanagi as a symbol of chastity. To this day, people in Northern Sri Lanka still have a commemorative celebration on a particular day of her ascension to the heavens. Kannagi is said to have arrived in Sri Lanka after leaving Madurai and stopping at Kerala.

What does Kannagi's story have to do with dispensing justice? Everything!

Kannagi, a wealthy merchant's daughter, married Kovalan, a trader. During his business trips, Kovalan met a dancer, Madhavi. Kovalan started an affair with Madhavi, spending way too much time and money on her. When he realised his coffers were dry, Kovalan finally came to his senses and returned to his faithful wife. 

Kannagi and Kovalan decide to start all over again. They left their hometown, Perompahar, to settle in Madurai. For money, Kovalan left to sell Kannagi's anklet. 

Coincidentally, the news was that the Queen had lost her anklet. The royal goldsmith, who had stolen the anklet, accused Kovalan of being the thief. Kovalan was apprehended, given a half-hearted trial, and beheaded for being caught red-handed with the anklet.

Chera-Chola-Pandya kingdoms
300BCE - 300 CE

Kannagi charged into the royal court after hearing what had befallen her husband. She demanded justice from the King who had erred. She threw in her other anklet, similar to the confiscated one. It had rubies implanted into it, unlike the Queen's, which had pearls. Pandya King Nedilcharan had a heart attack and died on the spot. The Queen followed suit. The raged Kannagi started burning the curtains, and fires spread rapidly. She is said to have sliced off her breast in a fit of rage and fled the town. Fable has it that Meenachi, the city's guardian Goddess, had to come down to pacify her.

The event highlighted the trouble with hasty trials without proper detailed investigations and adequate representations. One innocent life lost is one life too many.

No matter how enraged society is, due process of the law must continue. Striking the iron when it is hot may burn one's fingers.

Silapathigaram is one of the five great epics said to have come from South India in the Sangam era, the golden era of Tamil literature. The epics of the Sangam period, which lasted between 300 BCE and 300 CE, are Seevaka-Kintamani, Silappathigaram, Manimegalai, Kundalakesi and Valayapathi. Tolkappiam is said to be the oldest scripture available from this era. In this period, different parts of this region were ruled by three major Empires, Chera, Chola and Pandya, with Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism with various popularity over time. Some staunch Tamil literary figures insist that scriptures of the Sangam period are of higher literary value than even epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata. It is less cluttered and gives a vivid description of life and culture in ancient Tamil lands without involving too many characters. Works emanating from this era gave valuable South religious, sociopolitical and economic conditions. They were written in poetry and sometimes prose form in Tamil script.

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Escaping the glance of Lady Justice?

Taxi Driver (Miniseries, S1E1-16; Korean; 2021)

With the wisdom proffered by age and experiences learned from the School of Hard Knocks, I am convinced that life is convoluted. Nothing one does is 100% right or good; conversely, not doing is not always wrong. If one can justify his actions and give convincing rhetoric, he can be considered a do-gooder. 

The miniseries is about this in sixteen episodes and more than 16 hours altogether. In the crooks-filled metropolitan city of Seoul, there is no shortage of murderers and serial killers. After the tedious process of investigating, collecting evidence and prosecuting, the victims and their relatives find that the courts are pretty docile. More often than not, the accused go scot-free. Sometimes, they get away with a slap on the wrist or technical issues. The feeling is that the perpetrators never feel the pain that the victims and their families endured. To add injury to insult, the wrongdoers mock the system, police and the accusers and carry on the things they do best with impunity. 

With increasingly intelligent lawyers with crooked minds to catch the obscure loophole in the law, more wrongdoers escape the glance of Lady Justice (because she is blindfolded?). Because law practitioners find better remuneration defending the accused than prosecuting them, the best ones bend over backwards to get them off the hook. Forensic sciences have improved by leaps and bounds, and so have the ways to create the element of doubt. The fear of punishing a single innocent person over letting a guilty person for free is always there. The need to convict someone beyond a reasonable doubt is always the mantra.

Victims of serial killers get together to apprehend to mete their own brand of punishment under the guise of running a taxi company. To help out in their endeavour, they get the help of a local mafia lady boss. Hot on their trail is a young prosecutor who senses something fishy going on under the hood of the taxi company.

The season tackles many societal issues that often go unnoticed. A mentally challenged lady is abused at a factory that was supposedly set up for the specially-abled. The culture of workplace bullying to achieve better sales hits the roof when someone is beaten up. A high school boy is bullied because he is poor. The protagonist of the show, an ex-army, had his mother killed by a mad killer and has set his life mission to save victims of the evil elements of society. He passes his name card to the person he thinks needs his help. In this vigilante group are the CEO of an NGO, a hacker and two mechanics.

In the later episodes, the vigilante group realise that they have been cheated by the Mafia, who opt to monetise the prisoners by harvesting their organs! A three-cornered pursuit starts, with the police and public prosecutor's office on one side, the other being the Mafia and the vigilante group.

Playing by the book may not be the best; neither is taking the law into your own hands. What if the situation and circumstances squarely put the wrong person as guilty? It happened in this miniseries. A man was wrongly jailed for 20 years only to be released later after the real killer confessed. Who will return the 20 years of loss of respect, job, love, family life, seeing the world change, and living the one life he had been sent to Earth for?

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Police, leave them people alone?!

Naalu Policeum Nalla Irundha Oorum (4 Policemen and a peaceful town, Tamil; 2015)

Directed by N. J. Srikrishna

This full-length comedy came and went without creating much of a storm. Naturally, it received little rave review. All the actors were very green, except for Yogi Babu, who did not play a vital role here, anyway.

The story is a comedy of errors, poking fun at how the police's assertion of their importance screws up the peace of an already peaceful village.

The small township of Porpandhal is so peaceful that it has received Best Village awards for years. There is no crime, and the police station sees no need to open on Sunday. The four policemen there lead cushy lives, working from 9 to 5 and playing board games all day.

The police HQ takes notice. It plans to shut down the station and transfer its staff to Ramnath, an area notorious for serious crimes. The policemen panic. They try to justify their presence by creating petty issues here and there.

Little did they expect what would finally pander with their little tweaking. They send out a petty thief to steal the village committee's collection monies, making the police appear as heroes when they retrieve the loot later. They hoped this would prevent the police station from closing and allow them to maintain their leisurely lives.

Unfortunately. the money that the thief stole got burnt in a fire. The committee chairman accuses the shopkeeper whose shop was razed by fire as the thief and of lying by purposely burning down his shop to hide evidence.

When the police tried to intervene by making the temple priests as mediators, a stash of dirty magazines was found planted in the temple grounds instead, angering the temple committee members. They, too, go ballistic against the rest of the villagers.

At the end of the day, the once exemplary peaceful village now becomes a war zone. Everyone ends up in arms against one another. The policemen, though, get their wishes fulfilled. They stay put.

Everyone is trying to prove their worth. A doctor is worth his degree only if people fall sick. A mechanic will be out of a job if everyone's vehicle is maintenance-free and immune from breakdowns. In the same way, lawyers will be jobless if no one runs afoul of the law. Lawyers may also turn a non-issue into a national crisis; leave it to them. The same goes for the police, too; so much power and nowhere to flaunt it can be pretty intimidating.

Respect is earned. People are free to respect each other if they think their existence is respected. Try greeting a random guy on the street. Invariably, he would reciprocate your salutations unless he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia or believes there is a catch.

The moment the other party thinks that he is taken for a fool and feels cheated or discriminated against, that is when all human decencies end. The experiment was done by a third-grade school teacher, Jane Elliott, in 1968 after Martin Luther King's assassination highlighted this effect. She wanted to show how it felt to be discriminated against. The all-white class was divided into two groups- the blue-eyed and the brown-eyed. The blue-eyed students were given preferential treatment and compliments. The experiment was reversed but only lasted two days. From the short experiment, she found how easily people deemed 'inferior' fitted into the role so quickly and saw how fast the mild-mannered students in the 'superior' 'group became devils.

The lesson learnt here is that everything is honky dory when each other's liberty is respected. He flips when one's position is threatened or feels he is taken for a pushover. The suppressed reptilian mind awakens, and like Pandora's Box, evil thoughts and actions will be unleashed. All shields will be up to ward off anything that resembles hostility. The societal-imposed social inhibitions go out of the window!

May not! The Wokes and BLM sympathisers seem to scream from the depths of their lungs to de-fund the police. They argue that having a police squad is damaging to the existence of the minorities in the country. Alternative? Let looters have a field day, businesses finding it not cost-effective to apprehend or persecute offenders with minor thefts or simply close their retail stores and opt for online businesses only. 

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