Platonic relationship?

L'Amour l'apres-midi (Love in the Afternoon) 1972; French

This French language offering by master filmmaker Éric Rohmer is another one of those intelligent movies that questions love, sex and platonic relationships between man and woman. It is done in non-melodramatic and judgmental fashion.

Frédéric, a successful lawyer, with an English language lecturer wife, a daughter and another child on the way appears like a bourgeoisie who had his life all paved in front of him. 

He likes women watching and reminisce the carefree days before his marriage. He is just a fantasiser and is a basically monogamous and doting father.

One day, a female friend from his past, Chloé, an ex-girlfriend of his best friend appears in his office. She seems like an ambitionless, living for the moment, happy go lucky kind of a girl who was fun material rather than wife material. She goes in and out of jobs, disappearing and emerging like a plunging hippopotamus every now and then; sometimes happy, sometimes in dire straits needing help. He helps her to settle in a new place and new job.

Their relationship becomes stronger. He lies to his wife, sometimes to be with Chloé on some afternoons (hence the title). It was initially nothing romantic, just that he could relate some things better to her than his wife.

The carefree Chloé kept tempting him to indulge in an extramarital affair even though she was not the marrying kind. At his weak moment, Frédéric almost gave himself to temptation until he saw himself in the mirror and remembered a time horsing around with his family. He came to his senses and returned immediately to his wife to mend this relationship with his wife and family.

This movie is the sixth and final offering by Éric Rohmer on moral tales. A good show with practical issues that people in modern societies have to endure in everyday living. In a contemporary thinking society, the question of morality is blurred by the ability to justify actions and critical thinking. The community cannot impose a uniform code of living by creating the fear of God and damnation on them to toe the line.

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Effect of too much restriction?

The Silence (Tystnaden, Swedish; 1963)

Written and Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Concluding Bergman's trilogy of faith is this movie about two sisters and a 10 year old boy. Again, this is another movie which would make you wonder the direction the film is taking, initially. Unlike its predecessors, this one does not question religious faith, but rather the faith on how we should lead our lives.

It starts with Ester, a sickly lady with paroxysms of cough and breathlessness, her sister Anna who is stylish but appears to be irritated with her sister. There is Anna's son, Johan, who seems to be in his own world looking and learning all the  things around him. They seem to be travelling in a train in a foreign country.

At a hotel, Ester is still ill but she still refuses to see a doctor but instead buries her sorrows in vodka and cigarette. Anna is busy with self immersion, immersed in a bath and getting dressed for a piece of action in the new town. The town is in brinks of war with sounds of shell blasting being heard. Johan is happy absorbing things around him like a sponge. He makes acquaintance with a group of Spanish dwarfs who are staying in the same hotel. Then there is a old butler who takes a liking to Johan, even though they do not understand each other and do not speak each other's language.

On and off, Ester, does her work of translating documents. Anna goes on her walk about and makes contact with a waiter in a brasserie. Then, the stories starts making sense. Anna comes back to the room to boast to her sister on her sexual escapades!

The way I make of the story is that Ester who is the elder of the two had been taking care of Anna and had been set in her ways and how life should be lived. Anna, the rebel, had to follow unwillingly. She lived by Ester's rules which were as methodical as her line of work, a translator. Now that Ester is weak and powerless, it is her time of revenge. We start to wonder Anna's child is illegitimate.
Ester, I think, also has aversion to men.
After a big showdown between the sisters over a Anna's casual sexual contact, Anna and Johan leaves the hotel heading home, leaving Ester alone in the room.

What the story teller is trying to say is that we can only impart our values so much to the our wards. Everyone have their own values and eventually choose their place of comfort.

Would we run like headless chickens?

There is always someone in the crowd who is an inborn leader who somehow brings out his leadership quality in when the situation demands. It is not always a good thing as one man's action may not necessarily bring the best for all under his lead. The leader's desire to mold his subjects to conform them to his desires to toe the line is probably because the leader thinks he is one step more intelligent than the rest and that he should do the thinking, is apparently not  working out well as we can see from the state of the world today. Do the leaders have a grand sense of grandiosity that they have been given the special powers by the Divine to cross the Red Sea in the Big Blue Marble?
An ant colony is known to have a complex societal system with sophisticated duties for all ants. All the 'brainless' ants are destined to their job without any guidance. The queen ants are not 'monarchs' in the real sense. They do not decree anything. They just provide the subjects, the ovaries of the community. The labourer ants just move around stupidly by chance without a boss, guided only by pheromones found on their fellow ants.  They explore by accident, by chance, to discover the sweet water that is lying about there.
It is something like a new bakery shop that draws more and more customers by word of mouth which was only discovered by chance. As more people start going to the row of shops, the area becomes a hotbed for business. Then the real estate value increases, the neighbourhood becomes a township just like that. There will be order and everything will go on at its own pace. Having a leader who dictates what and how it should be done will only create resentment and retaliation. Just a thought... Life without a leader!
In the bee kingdom, certain bees are fed the royal jelly to be a queen bee, a procreator, rather than a leader. But then, unlike homosapien, you do not have good ants and bad ants. In human kingdom, everybody wants to be king and you always have bad hats who are out to spoil a good thing.
http://www.radiolab.org/2007/aug/14/

Cubed by belief

Winter Lights (Nattvardsgästerna, Communicants, Swedish; 1962)
Written and Directed by: Ingmar Bergman

This offering by the Swedish master filmmaker dwells on the topic God and our belief, particularly that of the Christian faith. It is his second instalment in his trilogy of 'Trilogy of Faith'. Bergman allegedly based this story on happenings in his life. His father was a clergyman who had to fill in once for a sick pastor.
It is a highly intellectual movie that must be viewed with an open mind as it questions the concept of God and religion. In a developed culture/society, this type of intellectual discourse is allowed and encouraged. In fact, during the heights of many civilizations, these type of inter and intra-faith discussions were revered (e.g. Asoka's reign, Akbar of Mogul Empire, Ottoman Empire). Sadly, now people view it as blasphemous and are up in arms at the mention of contradiction to the scriptures.
It narrates the day's event of a man of God who is ambivalent of the purpose of his work and whether he is actually doing any good. There is his church with hardly any attendance, his members of his congregation who he thinks are sneering at him for illicit liaison with a teacher and the Pastor's inability to avert his member from suicide.

The whole movie is set in the chilling cold winters of a Swedish country side. If the slow pace of action does not drag you down, definitely the Nordic climate setting would. What more if you are watching it after a long hard day's work or run. I watched it a second time to savour the message it is trying to discuss. 

Pastor Tomas Ericksson is an anxious man of God who leads a local church which is attended by only a handful of worshippers. Amongst the crowd is his girlfriend, Marta, a nonbeliever who is just there because she loves him desperately and Mr & Mrs Jonas Persson. After the service, the couple approach Tomas to discuss Jonas' mental anguish and suicidal thoughts!

Tomas and Marta, even though are a couple, they do not seem to communicate very well. Tomas likes the attention that he gets from her and things that she does for him, bending over backwards but feels uncomfortable being with her, fearing what people would say about a man in his stature. He is generally unpleasant and berating to her. Hence, Marta expresses her feelings in a long letter. 

Meanwhile, the reverend, though being under the weather, has to run another service in a nearby village. 

Jonas, with whom Tomas had a disastrous counseling session, where the pastor ended up telling the mentally anguish listener about all his reservations about God, is found dead after an apparent suicide. 

In the counseling session, Tomas related to Jonas about the atrocities that he saw during The Spanish War and his inability to explain the silence of God in protecting the weak. Perhaps, people could be more accountable to their actions if they were no God!

After informing the widow of her husband's demise, he has a heart to heart showdown with his mistress. It appears that Tomas had not got over his wife's death and is still living in her memories. He likes Martha's care but keep comparing her to his wife and the good he had when she was around. He does not appreciate the baggage that came with Martha's acquaintance. On the other hand, he does not want to marry her as he still loves his dead wife. They finally just decided to just continue the status quo and the love-hate relationship. They drive together to the other church.

There, Rev. Ericksson engages in another discussion with the sexton (caretaker), Algot. Algot, who moves around with an abnormal gait and a bad spine after an accident in the railways, suggested that perhaps people were emphasizing on the pain suffered by Jesus. As far as he was concerned, Algot, after his accident had been suffering much more pain and longer than the 4hours that He had stayed on the cross. The real suffering of Jesus would have been the uncertainty and silence of God. The fact that He is the Son of God and had been advocating his teachings with his supposedly faithful disciples who had all disappeared. The uncertainty that he had been abandoned by God and that his teachings would all be a lie. That is the real suffering. 

After all that soul searching and renouncement from his work, Tomas Ericksson just continued his service to an empty church...

Junkies sprawling the streets

30th June 2013, Kuala Lumpur.
It was supposed to be the day when the streets of KL were supposed to be sprawling with junkies of the high octane adrenaline seeking kind, like a scene from Michael Jackson's Thriller music video.
Imagine a foreigner arriving in KL on Thursday for his long awaited tropical marathon just to be told that all his dream had dematerialized into thin air like a soap bubble. "The race had been postponed due to haze", he would have been told. "What haze, where is the haze?" He would be asking himself. "The skyline looks anytime clearer than any city I have seen and the air is fresher than the New England countryside!"

So the runners were downgraded to tourists. Instead of roaming the streets with the ATPs generating muscle power, they were ushered around with unroofed double decker buses!

Though not as sinister as the day the music died (February 3, 1959, when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and others died in a plane crash), this day is bad enough for us to be embarrassed. To blemish the embarrassment, some running enthusiasts organized an ad-hoc no-frills, no-medals, 21km fun run for them around the usual site of KL's running buffs.

Where is the haze? What haze!

Masterly inactivity may be superior, sometimes!

Chinatown (1974)
Director: Roman Polanski
This movie sounds like a police drama set in Chinatown with all its vice activities and subversive elements. Well, it is nothing like that. 'Chinatown' is a red herring, actually. It can be summarized as a film with the typical noir elements, set in the 50s, convoluted story line, a lone investigator against the establishment and a neither black nor white kind of morality and ending. The 2 1/2 hour story is based on a tragic water dam controversy that happened in the early 20th century. This film also strengthened Jack Nicholson as a reputable star.
JJ Gittes (Nicholson) is a private investigator handling domestic issues. He is approached by a lady who hires Gittes to investigate her cheating husband, who is a senior engineer with the LA Water Department.
After finding proof of his infidelity and pictures of which later made it to the dailies, Gittes is confronted by a foxy lady, the real Mrs Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), with a lawyer's notice!
And Mr Mulwray is soon found dead in a dam. That starts a cat and mouse scramble in search of the real killer. The police is hot on Gittes trail as he is a suspect. The promiscuous Mrs Mulwray appears to hiding something up her..., sleeves. Her father, Noah Cross, was once Mulwray's partner could also got his hands soiled in his mess.

The initial impersonator is later found but dead. Then comes a young girl under Mrs Mulwray's care who could be her sister or her daughter. The plot becomes more convulated with accusations of incest and murder in the family. The all powerful Cross turns out to be the bad guy but poetic justice escapes him at the end of the movie in the typical fashion of a noir movie. 

An entertaining flick. Why does Chinatown come to the picture? The film ends with a shoot out at the venue but not with Chinamen gangsters. Bullets fly from the police to a fleeing car driven by Mrs Mulwray with her sister/daughter. It refers to a symbolic conversation between the screenwriter and a policeman who was working in Chinatown. In his line of work, a lot of confusion and resistance happened because of the array of dialects used there. He felt sometimes better to do as little as possible. 

In his own way perhaps the screenwriter is telling us that not all problems can solved. Sometimes it is better not to do anything at all....

An egocentric narrator?

La Collectionneuse (The Collector, French;1967)
Director and Writer: Eric Rohmer
The 4th offering of the 'Moral Tales' by Eric Rohmer is again another film about love and morality involved.
Here, the protagonist who is the narrator is telling his point of view about his uppity moral values and degrading of a fellow tenant of a bungalow in a French countryside.
The story with the introduction of the three main character - Haydée  (a curvaceous body perfect 20 young lass, carefree and impulsive); Daniel (a painter who has his own high thoughts about himself); Adrien (the protagonist is introduced engaged in a tête-à-tête with his girlfriend and her girlfriend about beauty and attraction).
Adrien is a antique collector who goes to the country side for a getaway. The painter Daniel is also there. The serenity of the bungalow is somewhat disturbed by the presence of a carefree easygoing Haydée. The presence of different men to take her out every evening gives the impression to Adrien, who is narrating, that she is of loose morals. He gives the impression that he is of irresistible charm that Haydée is captivated by him and going through extents to seduce him.
This cat and mouse of a game goes on until it leads to animosity between the trio.
The contradiction of the narrator's action is seen when he actually tries to force himself on her and accuses her of teasing her.
Adrien finds a buyer for his prized china. As a bonus for the sale, Adrien actually sends Haydée to the buyer's house for companionship!
Surprisingly, Haydée just follows without any resistance. Probably, her bohemian outlook of life embraced anything that came along the way. Suddenly, Adrien felt empty in the bungalow. He returned to the buyer's house to bring her back. Along the way back, she contemplates following her fellow bohemian friends to Rome. Adrien just leaves and fly of to London.
As in all the moral stories, the conclusion and the interpretation of the contents is left hanging. For a change, the narrators viewpoint does not resonant well with the audience, probably as I did not agree with his views and demeaning judgmental assumptions of loose morals on the part of  Haydée. He appears very conceited with his appearance and assumes that she has a conniving way to seduce him and leave him high and dry!