RIFLE RANGE BOY

Irrational Man (2015)  Screenplay & Direction: Woody Allen  https://moviesanywhere.com/movie/irrational-man It is irrefutable that life on Earth unfolds as we desire it to. It commences with the pain of birth, followed by a sinusoidal wave of joy and heartaches, ultimately culminating in death. Death is a sorrow not for the newly departed but for the connections formed throughout existence. One can choose to dwell on the nihilistic end of it all and brood over it throughout a miserable life, or alternatively focus on the good one can achieve while life still ticks away.  Others make life on Earth an opportune time to sing praises to their Maker. It is unfortunate that their fellow Earthlings require assistance. They are more interested in seeking divine powers for a better afterlife or improved standings in their subsequent births. Those who regard service to their fellow mankind as their raison d'être reap unmentionable rewards by witnessing the joy on the faces of t...

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea Novella, Author: Yukio Mashima(1963) Film version: 1976 Thanks to MEV for introducing this novella to me. A little bit of background on the Nobel Prize-nominated writer opens a different perspective to the story altogether. Yukio Mashima had an illustrious life; born to a samurai family, living with an eccentric grandmother and later a disciplinarian father, failure to be drafted into the Imperial Army, his involvement in the performing arts and literary work, his fascination with the spirit of Japanese bravery and right-wing movement, a failed coup at overthrowing the Japanese Government and subsequent committing of seppuku in 1970. In summary, this tale is about a 13-year-old boy, Noboru, whose father had died five years previously. He lives with his mother, Fusako, and a helper. Fusako has a novelty shop that deals with chic Western/modern haute culture. During Noboru's visit to a ship, a sailor, Ryuji, meets Fusako and gets close. Lon...

Harold and Maude (1971) Some look at life as full of doom and gloom, as a purposeless one. Whichever path one takes, we know what the final destination is, and the path leading to it can be paved with shrapnel and pain. Nietzschean and many existentialist philosophers perpetuate this idea. On the other end of the spectrum, others whose sole purpose of life is to savour the joy of being born as a human being push it to the tilt. They view the boon of birth as a gift on a platter to enjoy with no boundaries. The truth must be lying somewhere in between - between nihilism and hedonism. There must be a purpose in our existence, perhaps to somehow leave a tiny mark of legacy, no matter how small, in a small way to propel our loved ones, family or community forward. A community, hence a country, is, after all, is made of subunits of families. So, improvements in families will sequentially propel the human race forward.  We should probably  get our cues about life from the words of t...

Waiting for Godot (play, book) Writer: Samuel Beckett Thanks to MEV for the suggestion; for helping me in my journey to crack open my hard shell of ignorance.  Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett fall into the same category of philosophers-writers who lived through World War 2-ravaged France to build a very nihilistic view of life's purpose. Samuel Beckett, an Irishman, who spent a good portion of his life in France, can be credited to have started the 'theatre of absurdism' and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969 for his books and drama. The life that is laid in front of us is apparently meaningless. In this tragi-comic play, we are shown as headless chickens running, not knowing what to do and not knowing what is expected of us. We are so fickle, always losing track of our purpose and get swooned over easily by events around us. We eagerly await instructions from people in authority without an iota of a clue about the right thing to do. But we wait and follow like...

Just the other day, a discussion brewed in our WhatsApp group. This group was started with the intention of educating ourselves and understanding the nuances of the world. We discussed politics, world events, philosophy, religion, ancient history, epistemology, Trump, Vedanta and almost anything under the sun with the hope of peeling open the sleeping inner eye within us to see the bigger picture of things around us. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: असतो मा साद गमय, तमसो मा ज्योतिर् गमय, मृत्योर मा अमृतम् गमय (Asato Ma Sad Gamaya, Tamaso Ma Jyotir Gamaya, Mrityor Ma Amritam Gamaya) Lead us from ignorance to truth, Lead us from darkness to light, Lead us from death to deathlessness. ( recited at the end of the climatic end of arthi, Hindu prayers, when the Jyothi, fire, is shown to the deity. If only the congregation appreciates the true meaning of the verse and put it into practice. ) On one hand, we see some who perceive the world as one going through a 'dystopian age' of ...

Moon (2009) You work day in and day out with the conviction that your purpose in life is to do your job. You perform at your best from 9 to 5 or 24/7 or as and when you are required to do. You give your 101%'s effort with the gumption that you are the man for the job; with the motto, to serve is divine. Hold behold. At the blink of an eye, it dawns on you that you are indeed not indispensable. You are made to just to serve as a cog in the wheel of time. When your time is up, the task will still go on, with or without you, upon somebody else purview! You are just a pawn in the master plan of existence. That is how life is. You give your life and soul. You think the system would collapse without you. Believe it or not, everything just goes on, with or without you! This 2009 sci-fi nihilistic drama was directed by debutante Duncan Jones (son of David Bowie). It was set in an unspecified time in the future when the world's energy crisis is a thing of the past. Man has dev...

High-Rise (2015) Where are those happy days, they seem so hard to find I tried to reach for you, but you have closed your mind Whatever happened to our love I wish I understood It used to be so nice, it used to be so good ABBA's 1975 SOS Continuing into the saga of nihilistic movies, this is one that fits the bill perfectly. When we were young, we always thought that the future would be so bright that we would need shades. Unfortunately, when we are here, in the future, it is still doom and gloom. The only vision that is clear to us is that of hindsight! And the ability to savour the memory till that too gives up on us! In our formative years, we also thought that ABBA's songs were full of love and hope. Only now do we realise that the lyrics are dark and screams of melancholy. Even though this movie is set in the early 70's the director decide to use ABBA's music score of 'SOS'  (of the mid-70s) in the background in a few instances to subtly remind t...

Unforgiven (1992) Produced & Directed by: Clint Eastwood This depressing Western is not your typical swashbuckling gunslinging escapade that one would expect. It instead, looks at nihilistic look at life through the eyes of a reformed bandit in late 1800s of the Wild West. Bill Munny (Clint Eastwood), a reformed professional gunfighter, is now a struggling hog farmer. His pigs are sick, he is poor and has two kids (children) to feed. He gave up his wayward ways after his wife changed him into becoming a new man, giving up his whiskey and the senseless killings. Sadly, his wife succumbed to smallpox. Mundy lives a broken man, pledging not to go to his old ways ever again. But when a young punk (Schofield Kid) turns up at his home with the news of two crooks with a bounty on their head for mutilating a lady’s face, at a time when he was in dire straits, the temptation was too much. For his children’s future, he joined forces with his ex-partner, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) to...

True Detectives (2013) This TV detective show has been quite a hit the world over. Its story paints a bleak outlook on humanity. Its dialogue is so profound and tears up the fabric of the type of society that man immemorial have tried to develop over the generations. Its nihilistic message is uttered week over week as the detectives go on to detect a series of ritualistic murders involving young children. Whilst they were at it, they also took a jibe at the evangelical Christians who have ulterior motives behind the supposed spreading of God words. The word white thrash repeatedly rings in this show, which uses the backdrop of the eerie countryside of Louisiana in its setting. The story is told in two timeframes (1995 and 2012, also 2002 when they split) as Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) and Rustin Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) investigate some gruesome murders as cops initially and later as private investigators. Woody Harrelson whom most of us came to know the bartender in...