Shadows of Norman Bates

Goodbye Again (Aimez-vous Brahms?, 1961)
A movie made in Paris, as someone described it as typical of a French movie starring the restaurants and automobiles, involving Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Perkins (yes! Mr Norman Bates himself). It is a romantic drama which showcases the dilemma of a love of a cougar and its prey! It exposed Perkins' acting ability to earn him the Best Actor's award in Cannes in 1961. Somehow, you cannot help but visualise him as an eccentric young man here too!
Paula (Bergman) is a 40 year old interior decorator who feels that her biological clock ticking away as her partner of 5 years continue life as a swinging bachelor jumping from bed to bed. Like a good partner, Paula turns a blind eye to his philandering ways as he continues with his 'business' trips and returns to her as he feels like it.
Paula gets an offer to decorate an American lady's apartment in Paris. Her son is a lazy spoilt brad who is in Paris for a short stint to learn French Law.
This eccentric 25 year old lawyer (Philip, Anthony Perkins) gets mesmerised with Paula's elegance and starts wooing her to the extent of stalking. A bored Paula eventually succumbs to his advances.
Meanwhile, Paula's partner, after being 'told off' by Paula, finds his liaison with an up-and-coming self proclaimed prima donna a tiring affair.
After an initial ecstasy, Paula and Philip get to reassess their relationship after frequent ridicule by friends. Philip's 'laissez-faire' attitude to work and life starts being an irritant.
Paula and former partner yearn for each other. Philip is dropped like a hot potato and they marry. Fin.

My look at feminism

Rosie Riveter -War time propaganda

poster girl to feminist icon

As Man started walking on the savanna plains of Africa, either after being banished from Garden of Eden or when their primate ancestors had to come down from the trees to look for food, they became gatherers and consumers of what nature had to provide for them.
Soon they explore themselves and each other to discover that the female counterpart was indeed a mysterious creature. The pre-historic men were indeed quite curious about life, energy and all the wonders that Mother Nature had to provide. The female gender had the special chalice, receptacle, that could generate life.
They were definitely awed by its ability. As it was their practice then to show their respect to mysterious energies around them, like the thunder, sky, fire, wind and water, they created goddesses who could control all the elements of nature. They even thought that nature and Earth must be matriarchal in origin.
Things were going fine. They rule their roost while the men went on long expeditions in search of food.
Then the society became farmers and stayed put in villages. About that time, monistic beliefs which was particularly patriarchal in outlook emerged. They imposed various restrictions and subjugated the weaker sex to be subservient to the so called laws of the Divine.
With the passage of time and availability of knowledge, the enslaved fought back with a vengeance. They came back strong and now have shown superiority in many fields.  The oppressors now continue their suppression with their cock and bull stories of divine decree. When the name of Almighty is invoked, the oppressed, fearing the wrath of Herculean proportions are left with Hobson's choice but to submit unconditionally.
After going through turmoils after turmoils, the fighters have now taken a 180 degree turn. The feminists feel that they do not need handouts but are able to fight on same level field with the aid of handicaps. Enters the anti-feminists movement...no,no, we want to be pampered....

Decisions, decisions...

Noah (2014)
The forbidden fruit always taste sweeter, they say. This film is banned in many Muslim countries as it is not acceptable for a human being to portray a prophet.
From a production viewpoint, I think the film is of high quality with complex computerised graphic imaging. The main character, i.e. Noah, is made to appear very human and complexed. Even prophets do not know why they were sent to Earth for and which is the best path that they should take to be the correct path. There is no direct guide but decisions have to be made on hunches and signs which they would like to think as a nod from the Creator.
I remember hearing about Noah during my days in Sunday School. Of course it was very simplistic and was not layered or convoluted. Noah had a dream, God told him to build an Ark through a dream, get all the animals, people around him laughed at him, it rained 40 days and 40 nights and the bad people perished. Then we would all break into a song... "The wise built his house upon the rock...."
In this one, it is complicated. After being banished from the Garden of Eden, man leads a brutal life on Earth. It starts with the mauling of sons of Adam, Cain and Abel. Cain's lineage squandered God's creations, raped Earth of its beauty and wealth and changed it a place not fit for living. The other son of Adam, Seth, and his descendants were more God fearing and the countering force of Man's evil. Noah was of Seth's descendant.
He was living in a time of turmoil. Resources were scarce, all plundered by Man. Land was barren and food was so limited that they had to resort to cannibalism. Noah and his people were vegetarian.
Noah, after witnessing the murder of his father by Tubal-Cain, the bloodline of Cain, grows up to have a family of his own with 3 sons and an adopted daughter.
A recurring dream of him submerged in water and a springing of flower suggests to Noah (Russell Crowe) that it was a sign of God that he had to do something. A visit to his grandfather (Methuselah acted by Anthony Hopkins) in the caves, who gives him a seed from Eden, which springs water from Earth and sprouts a forest in a seemingly barren land.
The Watches, who are fallen angels, were cursed together with Man after their original sin, appear as mobile stone structures with multiple appendages. The Watches are basically frustrated with Man for destroying God's creations and were considered as not trustworthy. Seeing, the qualities of Adam in Noah, the Watches decide to help Noah to build the Ark.
Like clock work, all animals saunter in, beast, creepy crawlies and bugs, all in pairs.
The dilemma on board is the middle son, Ham. Since, the elder brother, Shem has paired up with Ila, (Ema Watson), Ham feels that he will be left without a partner after the floods recedes. The youngest son, Jaspeth is too young to worry about these things. Ham goes out to pick out a girl from the village but she had to be left behind as the rains started pouring in. Ham cannot forgive his father for that.
Ila had been diagnosed to be barren due to her injuries in childhood. Hence, Noah thinks that that is God's plan - after his family is dead and gone, the Earth is to be inhabited by no man. He thought God's decision to make Man in his image was a mistake and the floods was to give fresh new start.
Unknown to Noah, his wife, Naameh, approaches Methusalleh, the mystic grandfather, to use his powers to cure Ila of her infertility and it worked. Unknown to Noah too was the fact that an injured Tubal-Cain managed to make it on board the Ark. The disgruntled Ham nurses Tubal-Cain to health and plots with him to kill Noah.
Meanwhile, Ila gets pregnant to a furious Noah. He feels that his wife is interfering with God's plan and vows to kill the offspring if it turns out to a female child. Tension on the Ark is all time high. The animals on board are all in slumber land thanks to incense filled hypnotic fumes.
At the climax, a duel occurs between Noah and Tubal-Cain but Ham decides to stab Tubal-Cain at the right moment. Ila deliver a pair of twins - both girls. In a dramatic attempt to kill his granddaughters, Noah succumbs to love. Rain stops and sun comes out.
In the next scene, Noah is living as a recluse drinking himself crazy. He is unwanted by his family for his wish to kill his grandchildren. He himself is disappointed for what he thinks as failing to carry out God's duty. He is also puzzled by the silence of God. After Ila made peace with him, saying maybe God actually wanted him to do all the things that he did because that is the plan after all. The family reunites except for Ham who moves away.
It seems that the story of Noah is patchy in the scriptures and the screenwriters decide to use their artistic licence to fill in the gap and paint a very humanistic Noah who underwent a stressful time deciding on the things he had to do. The scriptures do mention that Noah was indeed in an intoxicated condition and naked and his sons had to cover him up. There is hearsay of what actually happened here and how Ham was sent off with a curse. His descendants became slaves and coloured people.
Now, even that is disputed. The fact that only white actors appear in this film is a bone of contention for some.
Overall, an intense movie with the message that life decisions are difficult to make. One does not really knows whether he is making the right. Only time will tell. 

It is only natural...

The Immigrant (2013)

There is nothing refreshing about this film. The story of a poor Polish immigrant migrating to the land of possibilities, the trials and tribulations that she goes through and fighting the vultures of flesh in the newfound land. Then the love triangle and the guilt to stay true to heart and her religious belief.

The redeeming feature is the visually pleasing sepia hued recreation of 1920s New York City. The ambience created by the backdrop and props draws the audience back to the 20s as if they were actually there. The immigrant melodrama spells deja vu all around, too many stories with the same.

What struck me was the way we as a nation are treating our immigrants just like how they were treated in the 20s in the US during the Prohibition Era.

With development and affluence, works considered menial did not excite the locals. That drew a wave of immigration, escaping the tortures of tyranny and poverty. The leaders need the comfort for the people to win votes and the people were too  living in almost perfect bliss, pampered after being mollycoddled for years. Industrialisation and robotics were too capital intensive, the profit minded capitalists friendly to leaders did say. We still need to create jobs for the people, they say, forgetting that as the country progresses and the level of education improves, citizens want more challenging vocations. They are no longer contented working at spinal level and burn their wages over a weekend high and the stupor that follows.

The immigrants, being as human as anyone, also want to progress in life. They too would start thinking in the long term, thinking of their offspring. After being fed the good life, the last place that they would want to be is the dungeon that they came from. It is only natural that they set root in their newly discovered land of plenty.

As you noticed, this post has nothing to do with the movie.....

The heights of melancholia and hopelessness...

Thulabaram (Sacrifice, Tamil; 1968)

I do not know why but I keep watching this movie over and over again over the years. Maybe because it draws me back to the time of RRF and the time that steamed with hopelessness and helplessness. At the same time, I do not agree with the melodrama and the self pity that is exhibited in full glory in this flick. So, psychoanalyse me!
This was one of the first movies that Amma took me to watch back in the days. Perhaps, she needed to reminisce her trying times of early adulthood.
Even after all these years, its songs, especially 'Kaathrinile Perum Kaathrinile' sang beautifully by K.J. Yesudass, still makes my hairs at the back of my neck stand.
This movie skyrocketed in popularity in the South that remakes were made in Tamil, Telegu and Hindi using the same main actress, Sharadha. The original film was made in Malayalam based on stage show. Sharadha went on to receive the National Film Award for that year.

Sharadha

Coming from a stronghold communist state, the story has all the hallmarks of capitalistic bashing. Bleak picture of the workers clan bullied by businessmen and crooked supposedly upholders of justice and liberty is evident here. Human values are replaced with the greed of profit and need to fatten one's wallet. In the charade of human greediness, the victims are the downtrodden working class who are not appreciated for their sacrifice but are scorned upon as an annoyance! Of course, the story takes it to the other extreme.
The story starts in a court-room. Vijaya (Sharadha) is in the dock for mercilessly poisoning her three kids. Keeping mum, the Public Prosecutor,Vatsala, (the ever beautiful Indian ex-stewardess turned actress and turned priestess, Kanjana) has an easy time proving her case. Vijaya is defended by a bumbling lawyer, Samanthan (the ever versatile TS Ballaiah) and his crook of a secretary (Nagesh).
As the case almost comes to an end, Vijaya finally breaks her silence. She narrates her side of the story. And the credits roll in as we are transported to a time when Vatsala and Vijaya are easy going bharathanatyam dancing university students pursuing BA.
Vatsala's father is a crooked lawyer (TS Balliah) who is not very bright but strikes rich with his client's ignorance and naivety. His assistant, Nagesh, uses his position to con the gullible for a little tips here and there. Looks like between of these Brahmins, they try to outdo each other in getting bribes! Their antics on-screen are great to watch. (A bashing of the upper caste of society)
Vijaya's father (Major Sunderajan) had seen better times. A disciplinarian and a stickler to time, order and natural justice, he had helped his relatives just to be left in a lurch with a lawsuit on his property and his factory for ownership. Hold behold his lawyer is the incompetent Samanthan!

Tragedy strikes when Vijaya's father loses his case and is thrown out his own house. Left as a pauper with no means to support himself and his daughter and shunned by friends and relatives, the trauma proved too heavy on his ailing heart. He succumbs to a massive heart attack. The only loyal worker who stood by Vijaya and her father is Ramu (the melodrama king of tragedy, AVM Rajan).
As the cash kitty gets smaller and the hostility of the Indian environment on seeing a helpless innocent young pretty girl proved too much, Ramu brings Vijaya to stay in his ramshackle hut of a factory worker. Ramu's household personifies the epitome of melancholia with bare necessities and a ever complaining mother who openly expresses her discontent of life and she imagines a comfortable life with her daughter and husband, which never materialises.
Back in university, Vijaya was chased around by a fun loving jovial fellow student, Muthuraman. Seeing her hopeless states of affairs in Vijaya, her beau decides to confess that their relationship was based on friendship love, not the lover's kind!
Left hanging on a thread, Vijaya takes the bold step to nosedive into the web of poverty, to marry the sad faced Ramu. They had bliss in their humble abode. Testimony of their happiness were the three kids and the song which showcases the joy of celebration in a poor man's home.' " Come ponggal or diwali, there are only tears in our home...!" How more pathetic can you sound?
As if not enough, tragedy strikes yet again. Due to management-workers' dispute, the factory is closed indefinitely and Ramu and his co-worker are left to starve. Union disputes becomes intense and Ramu is finally knifed down, leaving Vijaya and the kids hungry and penniless. If fate is cruel, the society is also unkind. Relatives and neighbours soon start hurling various unsavoury accusation against this young widow. Hunger drives the children to beg, enraging Vijaya. Soon they start to steal food. All these proved too much for someone who at one time had her future all paved ahead of her. She opts for mass suicide. Unfortunately, she survives and is put on the dock.... The storyteller tries to justify the protagonist's actions and inactions to the cruelty of society and fate. She does not admonish the lack of  her initiative to uproot herself from misery but instead look for self pity. Perhaps if we had walked a mile in their shoes..
A timeless classic with melodious melodies to match the path of nostalgia. A reminder though...
Now, if only the children knew a soup kitchen they could go to....

Historical photos

Thanks RS for contribution.

Before clocks became popular, Mary Smith made a living waking workers by blowing peas against their windows. 

Old municipal library in Cincinnati (Ohio) before its demolition in 1955

Traffic jam in Berlin, Germany, on the first Saturday after the fall of the Wall.

Charlie Chaplin and a crowd of supporters in New York City, 1918.

Bar clients celebrating the end of Prohibition in December 1933.

Construction of a Zeppelin in 1923.

Dirigible over the Capital dome in Washington, DC.

Dresden, after the 1945 Allied Forces bombing.

Albert Einstein with an Einstein marionette in 1931.

A Russian physician in an Antarctic Expedition, removing his own appendix in 1961

Construction of the Christ The Redeemer status in Río de Janeiro, Brazil, 1930.

The first winner of the Tour de France in 1903.

Propellors of the Titanic in 1911

Following his release, a Jew of a German concentration camp points to a Nazi.

Playing golf high up on the Empire State Building in New York City during its 1932 construction.

Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Naples, Italy, 1944.

New York City’s Grand Central Station in 1929. Currently, skyscrapers around the site prevent this illuminating view

Construction of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France.

Niagara Falls (Ontario/New York), frozen in 1911.

Marilyn Monroe entertains American soldiers during the war in Korea, 1954.

Buddist monk immolation in Saigon, Vietnam, to protest religious persecution of the South Vietnamese government. Since then, this protest is called "self-immolation".

Nelson Mandela raising fists after being sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964.

Nikola Tesla in his laboratory.

London, England, children celebrating Christmas in a bomb shelter, 1940

Children suffering from polio are placed into iron lungs, which apply external air pressure and vacuum to allow their own lungs to work, 1937.

People from Baileys Circus, 1930

First publicity photo of the Rolling Stones, 1963.

Searchlights on the Gibraltar peninsula, protecting against Nazi air attacks in 1942.

Samuel Reshevsky, only 8 years old, simultaneously playing against multiple Chess Masters in France, 1920.

Three Chinese women accused of witchcraft in 1922

Final four couples of a marathon dance contest in Chicago, USA, in 1930.

A group of lumberjacks cutting down a giant Californa redwood tree, about 1900

Selling coats in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1936.

Clash of the classes!

Snowpiercer 2013

This is an exciting movie depicting the world we live in, which goes on with its class system and the ruling elite who masterminds the destiny of life. It uses a moving train as symbolism to our moving planet and its occupants at the tail end as the poor peasants who live life in hardship and misery. The occupants of the front portion live in abundance and decadence. They are the controlling elite who sometimes makes seemingly heartless decisions to sustain continuity of life as they knew it on the continuously moving trans-continental train, which is running at break-neck speed and is self-sufficient in supporting itself.

It is the year 2031. An unsuccessful experiment in 2014 at correcting global warming, the world becomes a tundra land. Life had been eradicated, save for some survivors aboard a self-sustaining always moving train that spans through the continents. Self-sustaining because it harvests water from the snow that the train crushes through, prepares food and lodging for its occupants/passengers. The order was set by hierarchy, the poorer passengers at the tail end and the affluent near the engine. The effluent one is the one who decides the day to day running of affairs with the orders coming directly from the genius who had invented the futuristic train, Wilford.

The separation between the classes can be described as draconian. The people from the back cannot move up forward. Law and order are maintained with guns and force. Interestingly the total population never increases. Punishment is meted in the most inhumane fashion, limbs maimed, and children are taken into the front for unspecified reasons.

Tolerance reached a breaking point. After an earlier failed attempt many years earlier, Curtis, the reluctant leader, heads a mutiny. After discovering that the enforcers were only carrying bulletless assault weapons, they marched forward. The bullets had all finished after the first mutiny.
Slowly, they discover the horrors that were going on under the cloak of maintaining order with the help of a dope addicted electronic genius, Minsu and his junkie daughter Yona.

Minsu and Yona were deliberately drugged to keep them obedient. They discover that the affluent were having a whale of a time with booze, leisure, music and a clean, bright environment, unlike the roach-infested dungeon that they lived. The children that had been taken away were actually made to work the train as some spare parts could be replaced! The supposed protein-enriched nutritious food that the lower class people were served was actually a paste of processed ground insects and roaches!
After finally meeting the elusive Wilfred and discovering the horrific secret of the train and plenty of hellbent fighting the train finally explodes essentially killing all its occupants, save two.

They move out of the train only to discover that there is actually life outside the train; unlike what they were taught to believe.

This film draws parallelism to what is actually happening in our world. The classes are separated using imaginary rules and regulations which do not hold water. Nothing can actually stop defiance and revolt. To keep things in check and balance, we are told that we are the chosen ones. Outside our planet, there is no life form. To sustain life, the elitists create an artificial situation to squeeze out even the last drop of the blood and sweat of the poor peasants. The comfort of the ruling elite is always of paramount importance. The rest of the mortals can just, well go to hell.

On the other hand, continuation and sustenance of a species and civilisation always falls on the shoulders of the selected few in any species who were essentially put there by natural selection to push the being to a different level so that the subsequent offspring would be better prepared to face and win over the endurance race to survival!