Of brutal architecture...

The Brutalists (2024)

https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2025/01/the-
brutalist-on-art-capitalism-and-the-immigrant-experience

Written, Directed: Brady Corbet

It serves as Hollywood's occasional reminder of the plight of Jews in Europe during World War II. Cast with Adrien Brody, who has a personal connection to the Holocaust, what does he get? Ten Oscar nominations and multiple accolades, including a second Best Actor Academy Award for Brody. 

If the plot evokes Brody's character in 'The Pianist' (2002), don't fret. He is also an Eastern European Jewish refugee here and a remarkably gifted individual displaced by the malevolence that humanity inflicts in the name of nationalism, race, and religion. 

A Hungarian Jew, László Tóth, an architect who designed significant buildings in Budapest, finds himself penniless and homeless in the United States. He reaches out to his friend and assists in his furniture business. Tóth becomes acquainted with a wealthy man when the friend is commissioned to build a personal library on the estate. 

J Edgar Hoover building

In summary, Tóth impresses the wealthy man enough to be entrusted with the honour of designing and constructing a massive community hall in the city. 

The remainder of the 3.5-hour story chronicles the ups and downs of their relationship, his troubled friendship with his former boss, how his wife is brought to America, the challenges Tóth faces in bringing his design to life, and ultimately witnessing his creation come to fruition, only to be celebrated some 50 years later. It is all rather predictable. The acting and cinematography are exemplary, nonetheless, deserving of their Oscar wins.

Ryugyong Hotel

The lesson I learnt from watching this movie is that the word 'brutalist' has another meaning. Brutalist architecture is an imposing building style, often characterised by unappealing construction, which became popular after the Second World War in major European and American cities. It is also characteristic of many Eastern Bloc countries, which were predominantly communist. It features raw, monochromatic concrete blocks, creating a linear, geometric appearance both outside and inside. This style is typically used for public institutions, such as courts, universities, libraries, and public works. 

The Brutalists employed linear, monolithic blocks in contrast to older architectural styles, which featured domes, curves, and sculptures. The free world regarded them as imposing and emphasised their grandiosity. The communists believed that their unimaginative design was anti-bourgeois, exactly what they aimed to present to the world. The liberal use of concrete, along with playful variations, somehow signified equality. 

Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh.

Over the years, people have frequently lamented their ugliness. Although these brutalist buildings were initially considered low-maintenance, this proved to be a misconception. The buildings became visually unappealing once moss began to grow. They attempted to circumvent this issue by integrating greenery into the structures. Rust stains around the steel reinforcing bars were also problematic. Three notorious brutalist buildings around the world have at one time or another been voted the ugliest. These are the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, and the Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh. Many are being rapidly demolished, but the aforementioned three have so far staved off the wrecking ball.

https://www.buildworld.co.uk/blog/archives/the-ugliest-buildings-in-the-world

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How to normalise free sex?

Anora (2024)
Director: Sean Baker

https://thefutureoftheforce.com/2024/10/31/review-anora-2024/

I was nearly knocked off my socks when I heard that 'Anora' won five Academy Awards, including Best Film, Best Actress, and Best Director. However, receiving the Best Film award is beyond any rational justification.  

My first impression of it when I viewed it was that it seemed like rubbish. It reminded me of the numerous B-grade films that excited teenagers in the 1980s when they gathered around their friends' VHS players to watch Koo Stark in 'Emily'.

The plot is thin and predictable, and the storytelling fails to present anything new. The storyline has been told and retold in numerous other films, though it serves more as a subplot. For context, this narrative follows a pole dancer who also works as a prostitute and finds herself infatuated with the debauched son of a Russian oligarch. According to her, the correct job title is exotic dancer. They dive into a whirlwind of romance filled with plenty of sex, drink, and other intoxicants. The allure of a grand mansion, a yacht lifestyle, and casino living proves too tempting. So, what is the next logical step? Get married in Vegas, of course, where the chapel can wed anyone 24/7.

This astonished his bodyguard, who was unaware of what was unfolding despite being in charge of his safety. His guardian was notified, and the oligarch parents arrived, eager to resolve the commotion. Next came the amusing part, as they dashed about attempting to annul the wedding. 

The film prides itself on not depicting Russians as mere mobs but rather imbuing them with personalities and emotions, particularly the henchmen, who are not shown as bumbling Russian nincompoops (albeit slightly).

I believe the entire premise of the film is to normalise prostitution as a profession. It is entirely acceptable to be high three-quarters of the time. One can still function normally after perpetually drowning oneself in casual sex, cocaine, and alcohol. Sex workers are portrayed as having their own agency, leaving their 'professions' whenever they choose. Perhaps they neglect to mention the pimps and human trafficking associated with the sex trade. Or is it women empowerment to choose to be a sex worker?

It is an award not for acting, but for how much drapery one can shed and how convincingly one can simulate coital activity. Nothing more, nothing less!

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Now, 'trans' can compete with 'cis'?

Emilia Pérez (2025)

Director: Jacques Audiard

mvtimes.com/es/2024/10/29/emilia-
perez-film-musical-genre-bender/

This musical offering would not have garnered as much airtime if it had not been for an openly transgender individual who won the Best Actress awards at both the Cannes and the Oscars. Interestingly, a female actor (a cis woman) insists on being referred to strictly as an 'actor', not an 'actress'. They are particularly keen on this, demanding to be addressed as 'actors'. I suppose this does not apply to transgender actors. A quick glance at Karla Sofía Gascón's Wikipedia page states her occupation as an actress. For a transgender person, being addressed as female represents the ultimate victory of her transition. 

It continues to be one of the most nominated films of the year and the most nominated non-English language film in the Academy's history.

When it comes to the basics, this is a gangster film with a twist. The twist is that one can never conceive of a mob film as a musical. What's more, it makes the feared mobster, Manitas, want to leave it all behind to transition into becoming a woman after abandoning his wife and two children. To facilitate this, he hires an aspiring and desperate lawyer, Rita, to arrange all the medical and legal matters for him to disappear. After months of painful gender reassignment surgery and cosmetic procedures in Thailand and Israel, Manitas becomes Emilia Pérez. His wife and children are relocated to Switzerland. Manitas' death is staged.

Four years later, Manitas, now Emilia, must long for her family. She meets the family and introduces herself as Manitas' distant cousin. With the assistance of Rita, the lawyer, they relocate to Mexico City and live as one large, happy family. Trouble arises when Manitas' widowed wife rekindles her romance with an old flame. Emilia also runs a non-profit organisation that seeks justice for individuals killed by gangsters in Mexico.

Interspersed and woven into the story are actors bursting into song, occasionally with quite catchy tunes.

 

It's amusing that we used to laugh at Indian films when actors broke into song and dance back in the day. A 1932 Hindi film, Indersabha, along with its Tamil counterpart, Indrasabha, featured 70 songs. Now, Hollywood musicals are receiving awards—garnering all the nominations for highlighting the LGBTQ agenda, which is currently in vogue, though not so much for their artistic merit.

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Love overcomes?

May December (2023)
Director: Todd Haynes

A May-December marriage is between two people with a wide age gap. May refers to the proverbial spring (of life), while December refers to late autumn or winter.

The story is based on the 1997 infamous case of Mary Kay Letourneau, an elementary school teacher in Washington, aged 34, who had sexual relations with her 12-year-old student, Villi Fualaau. She was charged with rape. She delivered a love child during the trials. She was later imprisoned for breaking a plea agreement. After her release, the teacher and student married in 2005 and went on to have a set of twins. Mary already had four children when she was teaching Villi. She was having troubles in her marriage and was diagnosed as having bipolar disease. Both Villi and Mary justified their actions as acts of love.

This film revisits the Mary Kay-Fualaau family in 2015. The timeline is out here. The couple has three kids, including a pair of twins. An actress, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), who is to play Mary's part (Gracie in the film, Julianne Moore), drops in the household to get a feel of things to play the role. At the end of the day, the viewers get more than what they bargained for. It tries to dive into the family dynamics as their second born (the twins) graduates from high school. Elizabeth tries to do more than is needed. She tries to interview Gracie's immediate family and ex-husband to get a composite picture of what made Gracie and Joe (Villi's part) get together. She also tries to evaluate the family dynamics.

What we gather is a domineering, control-freak kind of a wife who wants to have the final say in everything. She creates an aura of calmness and a business-as-usual atmosphere at home. In reality, at best, she is passive-aggressive in getting things done. She is disliked by many and is a registered sex offender. She continues receiving hate mail. People boycott her. Joe, on the other hand, appears unsure about everything. He is a passive member of the family. It seems like he has had arrested development, missing all the late teenager's years of exposure. If we remember, he was burdened with father's duty at 13. As the movie progresses, we can see that Joe has second thoughts about the arrangement but lingers on for the children's sake, not wanting to be the cause of their psychological well-being. In real life, Villi and Mary Kay divorced in 2019.

The actress Elizabeth, on the other hand, is no saint either. She uses her unique position and feminine charm to extract all she needs from people around here, including bedding Joe, for her career advancement.

An interview with a Tamil actor still at the height of his career and has a late teenage son comes to mind. When asked about the pros of marrying early, he replied that one's life is more malleable when young. Marrying young gets one to mould himself to fit the demands of the new family. Delaying one's marriage to a later makes one develop routines and idiosyncrasies that are challenging to shake off, quickly creating friction. I disagree with that statement. Getting committed at a tender age to the whims and fancies of the raging hormones, ill-prepared for the challenges of family life can be disastrous, too. The appreciation of the wedding institution and the willingness to uphold it at all expense would ensure success. 

Bending the minds towards one particular narrative would ensure the continuity of the status quo. Some call this 'Peace on Earth'; others call it the domination of the elitists. When the mind becomes inquisitive and screams to break free, they call it a revolution, which can be 'Hell on Earth'!

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The schizophrenic society...

Das Lehrerzimmer (The Teacher's Lounge, German; 2023)
Director: Ilker Çatak

I feel lucky to have been born at the time I was born. If I were born to be a young adult at the present time, living in a 'so-called' developed nation, there is no absolute reason why I should not be a raving lunatic. The society is broken. Nobody respects anybody anymore. Power is too democratised. People with the most miniature brains are given on a silver platter the right to manage something they cannot handle - their rights. People think they know what they want, but they know diddly-squat. The individual is more important than the community. Personal liberty is more important than the common good of the community. Everyone demands the right to know about everything, but at the same time, there is a compulsion to protect information and privacy.

This schizophrenic environment of today makes eccentricity the default mode of people's response. For every move perceived as offensive by the other, the whole extent of legal jargon is employed. The long arm of the law is utilised for what will make everyone more miserable than they already are. The lawyers are the only ones who seem happy in the process, laughing all the way to the bank.

The society members immerse themselves in a pool of paranoia, low-esteeming and suspicious of their neighbours, and high-strung in a cesspool of siege mentality. 

The movie takes us to a German secondary school where somebody notices money goes missing in the teachers' lounge. The disciplinary teacher decides to run a spot check on students. A student of immigrant background is found to have a lot of money. The student's parents insist that the money was his allowance and accuse the school of racial profiling. Carla, a newbie class teacher of the student, decides to conduct her own investigations. 

She leaves her laptop camera on to record the possible thief. She thinks she possibly recorded a probable offender and confronts that person, Kuhn. Unfortunately, the accused denies everything and turns against her, accusing Carla of invading her colleagues' privacy. Carla reports the situation to her principal, who worsens the problem. She decides to report the case to the police. Kuhn is suspended. 

That soon develops into a living hell for Carla. Kuhn's son, who studies in Carla's class, demands to know what is happening? As investigations are ongoing, the school board decided to keep it under wraps. Soon, all the students' parents insisted on knowing what was happening. The student editorial board demands to know the whole truth. They publish truths and half-truths under the banner of freedom of expression. The school is in mayhem, doing everything except teachers' teaching and students' learning. 

In this modern generation, schools are doing everything except learning. They try to pinpoint scapegoats for all their failures and bring down others for making the level field lopsided, in their minds, of course. 

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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? 

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N is the new 30?

Nyad (2023)
Director: Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

When do we pack everything up and call it a day? Is there a time frame within which we are expected to pursue our dreams, complete our bucket list and prepare our souls and minds to meet the Maker? Should there be limits to our wants, and is there a limit to the number of attempts one should give to an endeavour before calling it quits? Is age ever a deterrent to our effort to succeed? Should we give up and give it a go on another day when the going gets tough? Or surrender to let your descendants do it, or attempt it at the next birth?

Most societies advise individuals to cool off after a certain age. Setting ambitions and fulfilling personal aspirations is left to when they are younger. Just how old is old?

Things have changed drastically over the years. With increased longevity and the general well-being of the populace, we can live to push our bodies and minds beyond societal-sanctioned limits.

Some expertise only comes with experience and time spent in the School of Hard Knocks.

Many prolific writers and participants in extreme sports are usually in the older spectrum of society. Still, when is it then the faculties give up on the person? The logical guess would be multifactorial, ranging from genetics to lifestyles.

We should continue executing our plans like we will live forever while planning our future like there is no tomorrow.

Fauja Singh

Octogenarian Fauja Singh must have thought this when he retired from farming. Burdened with the loss of his wife and son, he was forced to migrate to the U.K. Rather than waiting till the end of days when the Grimm Reaper would do his rounds, Fauja Singh worked towards the debut at his first full marathon at 89 in the London Marathon. After becoming a beacon of hope to many, being featured as Adidas' mascot and PETA's poster boy (as he was a vegetarian), Singh hanged his boots at the ripe age of almost 102.

Diana Nyad was a distance swimmer who failed to swim the 180 km between Cuba and Florida. Thirty years after immersing herself deep into her daytime job of journalism and motivational speaking, someone toyed with the idea of revisiting her 'Cuba to Florida' challenge. She was told she was mentally more robust than her 28-year-old self when she attempted the first swim.

The movie is basically about the preparation, execution, frustrations, and failures that she had to slay as she challenged the marine life-laden hostile sea unaided by a shark cage. 33 years after her first failed attempt, with three further tries, at the age of 64, Nyat successfully swam across the Florida Straits in 53 hours. Unfortunately, the governing bodies did not recognise her feat because no independent observers could ratify her swim.

(P.S. Note: Many of these super achievers who live to tell the stories of feats at mature ages are outliers. Even if one is in the pink of health, or seemingly so, a word of caution is deemed necessary. Of course, one should do the appropriate due diligence. Sure, even after dotting the i's and crossing the t's, the naysayers around you will bring you down to the extent that you start doubting yourself. Their intentions may be innocent, but the damage is done. You begin imagining imaginary conditions. Of course, these outliers can be the yardsticks we hope to attain. "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars," they say; a good adage to remember.

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