Serenity exemplified in Auschwitz!

The Zone of Interest (2023)
Director: Jonathan Glazer

Even though this is about something that happened more than 80 years ago, put in a similar situation, I foresee we humans do the exact thing that we did during World War 2 Nazi rule of Germany. We justify our actions and inaction through the dog-whistle call of the majority without taking a step back and asking ourselves, "Am I doing the right thing?"

Even during peacetime in Malaysia, a section of people is trying to steamroll their agenda to the rest of the country. Any sane person of reasonable intellectual capacity would understand this is not how democracy works. The majority chooses, and the rest would follow suit. Changes are made via constructive discourses at the appropriate forums. This renegade group is trying to change all these. The might of high decibels in the confines of an echo chamber cannot be underestimated.

Like Grobbels, who thought that the propaganda machines of the State could steer the thinking of the majority, small-minded fascists in this country are using mob power backed by their own interpretation of the scriptures to gain political power and to cow the minority into submission.

The thinking majority should be aware of this and not just that. They should also have the gumption to call the bluff. Otherwise, the outcome will be what we see in this movie—the country's machinery used to carry out a dastardly activity for future generations to curse us.

This movie won many accolades for its gruesome (not in graphic representation with gore, violence and blood) depiction of events that may have happened at Auschwitz concentration camp. All the violence, killings and death are only depicted in sounds and indirect visuals.

Serene living beside a concentration camp
in Auschwitz.

It tells the story of the Commandant of Auschwitz and his family as they live in a lovely double-storey bungalow immediately beside the camp. Amidst the background hum of the incinerator, screams of prisoners as they are led to their death and the occasional gunshots, the family leads a happy life. Oblivious to the happenings at the camp, the family grow attached to the bungalow, beautifying it and even refuses to move when the Commandant is transferred elsewhere. The air is filled with bellowing smoke of burning flesh. The river occasionally has fragments of bones discarded after incineration. The compound is strewn with ashes. Still, life goes on happily.

The irony is that the family lives without a care in the world. They conveniently overlook the carnage that happens behind the camp walls. They even have grand plans for the future.

This must be the true meaning of the word banality of evil that Hannah Arendt popularised after the 1948 Adolf Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem. People perform the cruellest of evils, not because they are sociopaths or inherently evil. They do it because the system expects them to behave in a particular way. For them, it is business as usual. It becomes the list of duties that must be completed to qualify for remunerations and promotions.

The mind shuts down. Mindfulness is lost. The higher thinking centres get bypassed. Everyone goes into zombie mode under the hypnosis of the supreme leader. 

(P.S. The director's acceptance speech at the Oscars ceremony has started a storm and could possibly be outcasted by Hollywood. His speech essentially can be interpreted as all that seen in the film was the effect of dehumanisation. His mention of the October 7th incident begs further clarification. Are the Jews, after surviving their aggressors, repeating the dehumanisation policy to the Gaza people? There is no easy answer. Remember, the state of Israel is located amongst neighbours who yearn for its annihilation. Can one practice no violence at the end of the barrel of a gun? 'We stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people,' he said.)

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A legacy to leave behind?

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Writer & Director: Martin McDonagh

Different people would interpret this movie differently. As all movies based in Ireland tend to be based on the Irish Rebellion, naturally, it could be construed as a veiled depiction of the clash between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. It could be an allegorical reference to a futile feud between brothers which had lost all relevance and had no meaning in modern Ireland. The police, representing England, could be the ruling coalition and may benefit from continued chaos.

Someone proposed that the storyteller is trying to imply that hope had died in the region, and another character is pushing for the other to get out of the place to start a new life.

To put the plot straight, the story happens on an island, Inisherin, during the tail-end of the Irish Civil War, around the 1920s, just across the straits on the mainland. Nothing much is happening on the island. The protagonist, Pádraic, milks his cow and spends much time at the local pub. One day, his usual drinking buddy, Colm, says he does not want anything to do with him anymore. The movie's whole point is to guess why Colm's sudden change of heart. To make it more dramatic, Colm, a violinist, threatens that if Padraic does not stay away, he will amputate his fingers one by one with each meeting. 

Pádriac is actually not the sharpest tool in the shed. On the other hand, Colm plays the violin, tries to compose new tunes, and teaches youngsters his skill. He is a great sport at the local pub. Meanwhile, Pádriac's sister, who is reasonably well-read, cooks and cares for him, calls it quits. She leaves the island.

I think the film's cryptic message is the existential crisis question. We start adulthood thinking that the world is an oyster for us to scoop. With the 'never say die' attitude, we can mould a utopia of peace and understanding. When reality sinks in and mortality almost stares into our faces, we start reassessing our achievements. We wonder what our legacy is going to be. We wish we had things differently if we were to do things all over again. This knowledge, a life lesson, is what we want to leave for the young to learn. Sometimes life lessons need to be drilled in a not so pleasant. Mollycoddling does not always work. Sometimes it is kind to be unkind. 

A third person would label all these as depression, a reaction to chronic exposure to uncertainty.

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A full circle?

Women Talking (2022)

(Based on a novel by Miriam Toews)
Director: Sarah Polley

"What's new?" said DA. "Women can talk; they sure do." He started talking about the male and female brain and how their connexions differ and such... One is action-orientated, whilst the other talks!" But that is not the point. It is about women's empowerment and talking back against a system that subjugated them to stereotypical roles. Every civilisation and religious path must have started with novel intentions of giving everyone a place in the sun and a right to pursue certain rights in life. Along the way, the leaders found it easier to rule by decree, and certain obscure divine ordains showed their presence.

Even though they are built tough and resilient on the inside, women lost out on many physical day-to-day duties and worked in tandem with their male counterparts to complete their tasks. Manual labour in the good old days was intensive. Mechanisation and industrialisation of the Sufferage era made work less labour-intensive. And finally, the sexual revolution of the 60s, for once, gave women, for the first time in aeons, a chance to control their fertility. All these while, parturition and child-rearing were their most significant hurdle in reaching greater heights. Maternal hormones and societal expectations prevented them from pursuing their worldly desires. 

With equal education and job opportunities, the past fifty years saw the fairer sex coming to par with their male counterparts. Their journey was no walk in the park. Their presence in education, economy and politics is beyond compare. Now, there is a re-look into their combative stance to be at par with men. Some have started asking questions. 

With all advances in contraceptive methods, failure is a real thing. Unfortunately, the by-product of all the sexual merriment is borne by the female gender. The maternal hormones circulating in their veins draw affection to the newborn or the soon-to-be-born. It is just simply impossible to detach oneself from this. A mother cannot just stand idle at the sound of a wailing baby. Neither can she prioritise her sleep over nursing her offspring at o'clock in the morning. Anyway, all the deferment of fertility to concentrate on career prospects in endangering childbirth at a mature age. With age, with wisdom, choosing a life partner becomes much more problematic. Single parenthood has its own problem. 

Again, some ask whether the biological differences in sex are for deservedly different reasons. Both perform various duties towards a unified front. One need not compete but rather complement the journey of life.

This film is based on a novel by Miriam Toews referring to what happened in a Mennonite colony named Manitoba Colony in Bolivia between 2005 and 2009. The Mennonites arose from the Anabaptist movement that emerged from the Reformation era. The Anabaptists believe baptism should be voluntary at a mature age, not infancy. 

The colony's 151 women and young girls were mass-sedated with cow tranquilisers and were sexually assaulted. More than seven were charged with rape, and so was the veterinarian who supplied the drug. The novel is a fictional account of what the affected women would have discussed before taking their next course of action.

This type of discussion going back and forth is what our forefathers must have had before leaving their lands and family in India, China or elsewhere. Even longer before that, when our first ancestor took his first step out of Africa. Quite recently, my daughter had to decide this before moving lock, stock and barrel to uproot from Malaysia and work under the NHS as a skilled immigrant labourer. They all must have considered the three choices - do nothing but forgive, forget and hope for the best, stay and fight, or leave.

With depleting national coffers while keeping the vote banks happy with race politics, civil service has taken a drastic deep in quality, efficacy and integrity.

[P.S. On another note... In the story, the ladies noticed that on the nights someone kept vigil, the said molestations did not occur. Gruesome assaults happened when everybody slept soundly. This reminded me of the double-slid experiments in quantum mechanics - results obtained with and without an observer, suggesting that everything is unreal.]

[P.S.S. Realising that humans need to live in a community and be herded to the correct path, which religion seems to offer, individuals prey on gullible victims to fulfil their desires.]

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Treating animals better than people?

All that Breathes (Documentary; 2022)

Director: Shaunak Sen

In a man-eat-man world, two brothers find their purpose in life, rescuing injured birds. Against a background of opposing groups fighting against the abrogation of article 370, of brothers of the same nation, hurting each other, we see two brothers going all out to rescue various birds and nursing them back to health, all voluntarily on their own accord with no training whatsoever. Within the confines of a dinghy house which they have converted into a bird clinic in Wazirabad in South Delhi, they have been rehabilitating small animals since the 1990s. 

The brothers, Nadeem Shehzad and Mohammad Saud, even had referrals from other veterinarian clinics to treat these feathered animals. One of the reasons these raptors were sent away is that these clinics could not feed them non-vegetarian meals. 

The brothers' efforts, even though they received minimal local financial support, garnered international recognition and the attention of a documentary maker and his team to immortalise their efforts.

What started as their late mother's teaching to be kind to fellow beings and all that breathe had snowballed to this. In an environment that is quite hostile, with all the Delhi pollution, their job is endless.

This documentary is a moving presentation with many artistically captured moments when and where fellow beings breathe the same airspace. Many reels show the many 'wild' animals that share our spaces in modern cities. A good documentary, India's nomination to the Oscars.

A cynic wonders whether the filmmakers are trying to portray India as a place so vile that even animals find it smothering to live. Not to forget the toxic environment that minorities have to put up with. And are we talking about pollution or societal pressures? And, of course, another group would lament that people's priorities are twisted - animals taking precedence over humans.  

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Only you can save yourself!

The Whale (2022)
Director: Darren Aronofsky

We all carry on our lives, deluding ourselves that we can save others. We are convinced we can cajole the divine forces into changing the universe's trajectory to accommodate our easy passage. We think we can indeed influence others to engineer their own future path. We naively believe our hard work certainly will make them fight their inner demons and move towards the right direction. As if we, ourselves, are so cocksure of the right road to happiness as if we have traversed them before. And our current journey is akin to a trip 'Back to the Future'!

Using the allegory of the 1851 classic 'Moby Dick' by Hermann Melville or alternatively titled 'The Whale' in which the main character, Captain Abad, is fixated on hunting down an albino whale, the story tells us how we fill up our lives with so many unnecessary things that bring most minor benefits. The whaling ship's Captain is hellbent on avenging a whale that crippled him, forgetting his real purpose of going to sea, for whaling and making a profit.

The author of the book went on tangential writing about all the various places, people and species of animals that the Captain failed to appreciate, blinded by his emotion. Are these the real reason for our existence? To learn and enjoy all the beauty and experiences around us that completes us?

This highly emotionally charged movie tells the story of a morbidly Charlie who left his alcoholic wife and his 8-year-old daughter to start life anew with his newfound sexuality and a student boyfriend. The boyfriend is a preacher's son whose father vehemently opposed the unholy union. Unable to handle the pressures from his preacher and the retribution of the wrath of God as depicted in the Bible, he becomes depressed, anorexic and finally takes his own life. Charlie, on the other hand, indulged in binge eating after the loss. He becomes a recluse and becoming a morbidly obese individual. Charlie is seriously ill with congestive cardiac failure at the verandah of death but refuses any treatment. He wants to save his money to pass it to his daughter.

The mainstay of the story involves his ex-wife, who pays a visit to discuss their uncontrollable daughter, who is not doing well in school and Charlie trying to reconcile with his daughter. The other two characters are his boyfriend's sister, a nurse, who is the only person he is in touch with daily and a part-time evangelist who tries to convert him.  

The clear take-home message is that nobody can save another person in trouble. Getting out of trouble is the onus of the affected party alone. He has to realise his predicament, get his posterior out of his chair and wriggle himself out of his mess. There is no shortcut. People react differently to the same stress (like anorexia and binge eating, as in this film). No one solution fits all.

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Nobody's child, growing wild!

THE ROOST

There was once, many years ago, there was a spate when many of my relatives had given up on their motherland, turned their back on Malaysia and started looking around for greener pastures. I wondered how Mother Malaysia would feel to see one by one, her children, after years of nurturing them, after growing so big and strong, feel compelled to fly away from their roost. Like a proud mother seeing her kids having a mind of their own, she must be immersed in a bitter-sweet feeling.

Like a flight of swallows,

you came stocks and barrels,

from Swatow, Coimbatore, Minangkabau,

Looking for peace of mind,piece of pie,

for that,

you scaled the high seas and brine.

You were hungry; I fed your soul,

you had shivers; I showed you warmth.

you were homeless; I gave you home.

you were stateless; I was your hope.

Under the yellow umbrella,

and a piece of cloth,

you had dignity, camaraderie,

a history, a legacy,

an emblem, an anthem.

The colours to spill your crimson.

Now that you have wings,

you can expand your span,

once an ugly duckling,

majestically now a swan,

I remain your dodo,

Flightless, lifeless, brainless, valueless,

And cared less.

I am not up to your mark

not up to your spark,

you want to fly,

to reach high up in the sky.

you peacocked to new horizons,

no future, you cite as reasons,

you curse me,you betray me

still, I don't call it treason.

A summer love, a puppy love,

the morning after, the hangover,

a one-night stand,

a nightmare to be got over?

I have my desires too,

to progress like the red dot,

to shine like the rising sun too.

a tiger, not a chicken to the rot.

I stay regal, guarding,

patient, majestic,

hawking over the nest

providing a haven for the swallow for the summer.

What do Ke Huy Quan and Michelle Yeoh have in common? Besides standing tall and hoisting their Oscars in the recent Academy Award ceremony, both spent a brief time in Malaysia. For the ignoramus, a little Ke Huy Quan appeared as 'Short Round', Indiana Jones' fast-talking sidekick in the 1984 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'. 

Now Ke is all big and strong and appeared in the supporting role in 'Everywhere everything all at once!'.

Michelle Yeoh, as we already know, hails from Ipoh. She wanted to be a ballerina, but an injury prevented her progress. Like most Malaysians of that era (and now, too), many qualified Malaysians who lost out on the New Economic Policy are left with Hobson's choice but to pursue their ambitions outside the country. Malaysia is no place for a ballerina to prosper too. A place in a beauty pageant, sure, as it is forbidden to the majority. So, Hong Kong and Holywood were where Ms Yeah had to be to shine. Now, this country wants to bask in glory for the accolade as if it had everything  to do. Maybe it was the main push factor for millions to explore green pastures and hence, attributed to a massive brain drain.

Ke Huy Quan probably had multiple brushes with death before fame and fortune finally made their much-anticipated appearance. Once, at his birthplace in Vietnam when the family had to split up. The father left with half of the family, and the mother with the other half towards Malaysia, possibly aboard Hai Hong. Defying death again from rough seas and the risk of being shot at by the then Prime Minister, the family reunited in the USA a year later. 

It is not that citizens do not want to contribute to the nation. It is not that they do not want to be part of the nation. Paradoxically, it is the nation that does want intelligent citizens. They do not fit into their social engineering programme. They want obedient subjects who would dance to their drum beats and the fiddle of the ruling party. There is no place for slaves to question their masters! Michelle Yeoh and Quan should thank Malaysia for being inhospitable and help them to push to the limit and explore what they truly are made of.

A clip from 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.'

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... and that's how the cookie crumbles.

Belfast (2021)
Director: Kenneth Branagh.

In the mid-70s, as a secondary school student, I saw some of my classmates leave the country. Their parents were affluent and had lost confidence in the Malaysian education system. They thought that the New Education Policy after the May 13 riot with Malay as the medium of instruction was doomed to fail. And the New Economic Policy, which emphasises affirmative action, will only produce a nation of mediocres at best.

Affluence could make them picky on their choices in life, whereas the rest of us, the mere mortals, could only make do with what is available to us. We took everything in a stride with the sentimentality of nationalism thrown in and the conviction that the divine forces would help those who help themselves. Still, we were grateful that opportunities unavailable to our parents were there for our taking, so we thought. 

Then came the early 80s. Suddenly, we saw another section of our classmates disappear. They had been offered national scholarships to study overseas. Some were pinched by our neighbour. In contrast, the rest of us were thrown into the deep end of the pool of cramping 2-years' of studies into an 18-month extensive course which is viewed as the most difficult examination in the world, equivalent to the A-levels, the Higher School Certificate. The added problem was that they were no books in Malay, but we were to use older English books and do our mental translations as we answered the questions! We soldiered on.

Then came university, the ridiculous bi-peaked academic performances of its students and the apparent push to pass sub-standard 'scholars' came to light. As if like magic, mediocre students miraculously perform well in final examinations. We turned a blind eye.

Fast forward to the present era. We now realise that the bubble of a dream that we had all this while had just popped on our faces. We wake up rubbing our eyes, trying to make sense of the time of the night. Then it dawns upon us. We realise the master plan of social engineering. The bus has left. Now, our children feel unwelcomed to serve the nation. They have a funny feeling that we threw them under the bus. They now have to seek greener pastures elsewhere, much like what the millions had doing the same over the last century. It is just our predecessors marched into the country, not out.  Only migrants of a particular religion are welcomed, not the rest. This, my friend, is modern religious cleansing.

This film is about the tumultuous time of the Northern Ireland conflict in August 1969 when a riot broke out in a Catholic neighbourhood in Belfast. The story is told from the point of view of a 9-year old boy. It is a coming of age tale of the boy who has to grow up fast to face the challenging times as unrest spread in the housing estate, and his family, being a closet Protestant, are forced to choose sides. His parents have to decide whether to stay on despite the uncertainty or flee to more peaceful environments. With them are the grandparents who feel sentimental about their Irish identity and the good old days.

Between the push and pull factors, everybody has to make life-altering decisions to face their futures. Even though events in life are by chance, mere coincidences, altered by simple things like just a flutter of a butterfly, our actions and inactions are in the equation that changes the course of destiny.

(P.S. I write this as I witness ridiculous things happen around me. Pea-brained people argue about trivialities as the elephant in the room goes on a rampage. Young larks fly off the roost seeking newer terrains as their nests become toxic cesspools. The cacophony of small minds in big numbers is mind-blowing.)

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