A lie is a lie.

About Elly (Iranian; 2009)
Director: Asghar Farhadi

Sometimes, we think a white lie would not hurt. Along with the lie, we squeeze in a little mischief. We justify our lying by convincing ourselves that it is all good in the grander scheme of things.

Little do realise of its repercussions. To cover the embarrassment of one's untruth being discovered and maybe to uphold the white lie, there is a need for more untruths. The trouble with truth is that it has a funny way of showing up at all the wrong times.

The lattice of lies will eventually crumble. Unless the individual has perfected the art of the sleigh of hands, the bluff will fall flat.

To add insult to injury, God forbid if anything untoward happened, all the blame would fall squarely on the person who initiated the white lie and the good intentions!

This is precisely what happens in this story. Old classmates, three couples with their kids and another divorced classmate decided to spend a few days by the beach. Sepideh, who organised the rushed trip, decided to include her daughter's kindergarten teacher. She was hoping to match her to the divorced friend. As conservative as the society was, Sepireh chose to tell the caretaker of the beach bungalow as four couples, the fourth being the kindergarten teacher and the divorced classmate who were on their honeymoon.

With all the confusion of the children being all over the place and the adults running around organising things, a child runs to his father, trying to say that one of the kids is drowning. Panic ensues. Everyone goes looking for the child and is saved from drowning. The kindergarten teacher, the adult caring for the kids, cannot be found anywhere. Did she drown in trying to save the child? Did she run away from them after discovering that she is suited to the divorcee? Then, a man appears in the picture as the teacher's fiancé.

Sepideh soon realises her mistake when her bluff falls flat, especially when the police get involved, and the caretaker learns that the fourth couple is unmarried.

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

Tell the story right!

Basic (2003)

This is a John Travolta - Samuel L Jackson collaborated movie that did not stir much of attention and did not hit it big at the box office. Their first one was of course Pulp Fiction (1994).

The story is told in such a complicated way, in a Rashomon manner but with characters changing names that most viewers lost it. The story finally makes sense at the end but by then it appeared too far-fetched.

It tells the story of US Army Rangers who are training in Panama. A hard talking strict trainer is killed. Tom Hardy, a DEA Agent with a shady past, is called in to help out to get to the bottom of the problem. Two Rangers, who are rescued from the hurricane hit jungles of Panama where the crime took place, have different versions of what happened.

Further investigation opens the can of worms of racial discrimination, camaraderie, back-biting, factions, conspiracy and smuggling of illicit drugs into the US using army vehicles. Despite the confusion, the storyteller manages to keep the element of suspense until the end with a twist to the story at the end.

The message learnt from his movie is reminiscent of what we acquired in the history of humankind. There is no such thing as the real unabashed truth. It is what the collective group agrees on.  If somebody says that an event happened in a particular way and everybody else vouches for it, so be it. It will be down in the history books as such. The voice of the minority and those not speaking the same language are muffled. Like Goebbels (and perhaps Lenin too) is said to have mentioned, "A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth".