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. 

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

Which is real and unreal?

Bliss (2021)

Director: Mike Cahill

This is one of the movies that one will either love or hate; get it, or it just passes by! I thought it was good. It helps the rest of the population not be affected by the complexities of a confused mind. 

Quite often than that, to the lucky ones unaffected by the hardship of modern living, it is sometimes how certain decisions should be made. And we cannot understand why the mentally ill repeatedly make wrong life decisions. They plunge continually into states of helplessness and hopelessness. 

Greg (Owen Wilson) is a staff in a call centre-like office. Even though his superior keeps calling him to the office, Greg is immersed in his own pencil drawing of his dream holiday villa. We gather that he is divorced. Even though everybody else is huffing and puffing, busy answering calls, Greg is in bliss, adding details to his drawing. 

When Greg finally meets his boss, he is shocked to find out he has been fired. Greg shoves his boss aside, and in a freak accident, the boss hits his head and dies. That is, everything became a blur. Greg finds his life going into a tailspin. He is confused. He does not know what is real, what is drug-induced, and what is hallucination. Who is that mysterious lady who keeps appearing and disappearing with yet another concoction to try? Why is the Universe keeps changing? At one moment, they are homeless and hunted like dogs in one instance and, in another, feted as great scientists.

To the uninitiated, this whole exercise is too confusing. If we scrutinise keenly, this entire imbroglio of severe mental illness could be akin to one floating around in a dream. Just like we become the leading player in our dreams and tend to do invincible outlandish feats, the sufferer is convinced that he writes the script of his role. There are no rules there; no holds barred. The trouble is that the audience and co-players do not share the same script. Hence, the clash.

Mental illness causes distortions of the mind. And the modalities to treat the sickness also bring in the same distortion to the mind, sometimes worse, bringing in disastrous outcomes. Sometimes, it makes us wonder. Is the illness worse, or is the treatment worse?

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

Into the twisted mind

Hour of the Wolf (1968)
Director: Ingmar Bergman

 "Hour of the Wolf," : "It is the hour when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are more real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fear, when ghosts and demons are most powerful. The Hour of the Wolf is also the hour when most children are born."

This must be a difficult film for the masses to grasp. A complicated movie which makes its audience wonder which one of it is real and of which is fantasy. Well, that is, I suppose the blurred margins of the reality of a patient afflicted with schizophrenia.

The film narrates the perspective of the wife of a man down with this dreaded disease. She feels that perhaps she is partially to be blamed for his pull into this wilderness of the mind. She thinks, if her love for him, if it had been more substantial or if she had been more expressive, would have saved him.

An artist moves to a deserted island with his pregnant wife. In their mundane daily life, we see excerpts of his diary, his secrets of his childhood and the mysterious neighbours on the island.
 The story is told in a sophisticated manner that we are left wondering what is real and what is not.

Liv Ullman and Max von Sydow, Bergman's regular star appear in this supposed horror presentation.

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