Freudian work in Kollywood?

Marupiravi (Reincarnation, மறுபிறவி, Tamil; 1973)
Cases studies in psychology are fertile stories for the silver screens. What is more credible than when there is plausible and scientific (or pseudoscientific, if you are from the Church of Scientology) explanation for all of human's follies and deficiencies. Many of Hitchcockian thrillers are of this nature.
This Tamil film boasts of being the first in the genre of 'erotic psychological thriller'. Unfortunately, it fell flat in its endeavour on the thriller part but ended up as a sort social drama with a social message to make public aware that there exist a branch of medicine which could solve marital problems and not to dwell in unproven mumbo jumbo like witchcraft and magic.

Dr Abraham Thomas Kovoor (1898-1978)

All psychologists must look like this?

The story was produced by Dr Abraham Thomas Kovoor from his case files and even makes a cameo appearance as the introducer and as a psychiatrist in the movie.  Dr Kuvoor is a Professor from Kerala who spent his post retirement age in newly indépendant Ceylon, teaching botany. He practised hypnotherapy and applied psychology. He was an active member in a movement of realists. He had a bone to pick with God-men of India, especially Satya Sri Satya Baba. He repeatedly confronted him on his ability to materialise vibhuti from thin air. Unfortunately, Sai Baba had dodged his direct confrontations. A reward for Rs 100,000 by him in 1963 to anybody who could perform an unexplainable supernatural act is still unclaimed.
This story is a remake of a Malayalam version and in keeping its audience happy, the director had decided to put a family feel to it. Hence, the crux of the subject matter of the story only happens to the third quarter of the movie.
A lecturer, Elango, (Muthuraman) is smitten by his student (Manjula) as he starts teaching Tamil Literature in a new college. The students starts heckling their relationship. They decide to tie the knot with the approval of her father, a single parent Asokan. After many love duets and running around the parks and beaches, 4 years pass and the father and relatives long for a heir.
Then start the work of religious men and prayers to appease the stars and spirits.
Only later do the couple make it clear that consummation was never possible as the Elango just freezes out after being aroused. Things becomes more complicated when he is caught in bed with his maid!
Slowly the couple make it to Dr Kuvoor's clinic. Only then it is discovered that the lecturer grew up morbidly attached to his mother. He lost his father at an extremely young age. Even though his mother had passed away, he still chose a girl remarkably similar in features to his mother to be eternally close to his mother! Unfortunately when it came to conjugal activities, his unconscious mind just could live up to having sexual relations with that figure!
With the help of the psychologist, the couple managed to have a successful married life.

“He who does not allow his miracles to be investigated is a crook; he who does not have the courage to investigate a miracle is gullible; and he who is prepared to believe without verification is a fool.” A. T. Kovoor

In search of...Utopian society?

Animal Farm (1954 animated film)
Based on George Orwell's 1945 book


Human beings are forever trying to evolve and trying very hard to device a full proof system that tries to be fair to most, if not everyone. Unfortunately, every conceivable system seem to have failed them miserably. We are still in search of an utopian society and land of milk and honey but dystopia is what we have. Monarchy, feudalism, communism, socialism and capitalism have breed nothing but loop holes for man to fulfil their greed.
The present system appears to glorify greed and ruthless suppression of the underprivileged. Paradoxically, this is system that people of the communist block, who were suffering under the former suppressive regimes, opted for.
Every new system, at first, looks all rosy with its pledges and just core values. In time many of its shortcomings come affront and the goal post is shifted to satisfy the masses.
An initially successful system, over time would turn corrupt. The regime in power would try all means to justify their power to lead.

Orwell's post WW2 satire of Russian's autocratic system of hoodwinking the masses into believing that they are getting a good deal met many resistance before publication as Soviet Union was an important ally to the Western world. Its message, however, stays true even to today. What goes on in this fictitious farm is reminiscent of what goes on in many countries, communist, capitalistic or autocratic.

Manor Farm had seen better times, all because of its drunkard owner's inactivities. The animals in the farm, led by a pig, Old Major, starts a revolt. They successfully drove the owner out and took charge of the running of the farm. They changed its name to Animal Farm and devices a new set of rules for everyone to follow. With everybody's hard work, especially, the horse (Boxer) and the donkey (Benjamin), there is a system in the farm and yields improve. The leaders, the pigs, try to educate the animals. After the demise of Old Major, there is a power struggle between Snowball and Napoleon (both pigs). Snowball is actually sincere with progress. He proposes the erection of a windmill.Over time, the pigs become the ruling class with special privileges. Napoleon, training his dogs, takes over the realm of leadership.
The initial 7 Commandments change over time. The workers' class feel shortchanged. They work relentlessly whilst the rulers living decadent and leisurely lives. The pigs, too, act more human like. They walk upright and indulge in alcohol bought in exchange for the produce from the farm.
In spite of their poor living conditions, Napoleon, their de-facto leader is feted for being a competent leader.
The animals, upon realising that the pigs were actually worse of then their human owners stage another revolution!
Interestingly, this is Britain's first theatrical animation film. It was financed by the CIA to counter the effect of communist influence in Continental Europe. The financiers took the liberty to modify the ending to suit the sensitivity of the times.

If it makes you happy!

A sane person would not accept that what he is doing will amount to anything. How is his suffering and sacrifice is any way going to change the course of the universe? Are the forces of Nature going to melted by his predicament and be moved by his pain? The realist will say that the apparently chaotic and sometimes cruel turn of events is choreographed to maintain law and order in the universe!
But... That is not going to stop him.
Three years ago, his conjugal union with his loved one produced an equally charming offspring. Perfect by every sense and too good to be true. He started thinking he must have something right in his life to beget something so right. His son was well liked by everyone including The Maker that The Maker decided to keep his handiwork to himself. It was all so sudden and the flashbacks are so vivid and surreal. Like a bizarre dream sequence where things happened right under your nose and you are too paralysed to react, his loved one, at one instant was playing with his toy and was lifeless on the floor the next. Reeling forward, there was mention of brain anomaly and abnormal vasculature but what he was left with were only memories of his first born and a garlanded portrayed image of him to remind the family that he is in a better place.
At about the time that the deceased was supposed to be two years of age, his wife announced of an imminent addition to the clan. Jubilant he was but what the meaning of all of this, he thought. What the Gods give, they also take leaving him high and dry.
He embarked on a spiritual journey of fasting and hunger pangs. He sacrificed simple pleasures of life. He control his gustatory desires and got the best of medical advice for his wife and newborn. He suffered along with prayers hoping to appease the Divine forces that give and take lives. 9 months progressed at snail's pace.
Alas, when the recipient of half DNA popped out with much pomp and excitement, he was overjoyed. What he saw in the eyes of the newborn is the very same eyes that fizzled out a years previously. The Gods have spoken, he thought and he promised to renew his belief and would forever surrender his life and soul to his master of universe. He is in ecstasy.
A realist or practical person would probably scorn at the act of the subject of the story. He would accuse him of belittling the intelligence of an average man. Like as if his prayers somehow worked out for his favour because the Forces took pity on his rumblings. Like it is so easy to change the course of nature by just enduring some sacrifices.
Well, that is how, from time immemorial, people have been seeking blessings from the Divine. Bearing pain, abstinence, shunning material wealth and choosing to live amongst the deprived, the underprivileged and downcast seem to surest and shortest way to reach God.
If it makes him happy, what's wrong? If it gives him a steady rock to anchor his confidence whilst he fights the high winds, what wrong?

Probably that is what Sheryl Crow told Lance Armstrong while he was transfusing those secret concoctions, blood and performance-enhancing drugs!

Murphy's Law: A variant

There is an unwritten rule. If ever anything is destined to go wrong, it would. No matter where you are and what you do, if it is to, it definitely would. Some would call it 'Murphy's law' which dictates that if anything that can go wrong, it will go wrong.

On the other hand, on the anti-pessimistic stance of things, there is also a softer side of Murphy's law where nature is kind and not so vengeful. I have not found a name for it yet. Sometimes, a potentially explosive situation does not flare up until the situation is ripe. If destiny is on your side, even the most heroic one in a million kind of desperate ditch in helpless of times may appear fruitful. In a way, it is reverse 'Murphy's Law'!

A Professor in Obstetric told the class of a particular Bedouin gipsy lady who travelled all through the Sahara desert only to collapse right in front of a district hospital to be operated for a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. In the worse of times, in battlefields, grossly contaminated open wounds heals miraculously. FG had a similar experience during a tour of duty to be faced with a mother with prolonged labour in the middle of nowhere. Cutting corners, bending the rules and taking risks in the name of medical emergency, with limited resources available then, he managed to save the day.


Even in the best of centres, with the best of facilities at their disposal, things can get horribly wrong. And that is a fact.

Seen that, heard that!

A most wanted man (2014)
Even though it had been hailed as a smart spy thriller, I thought it was so predictable.  I had seen many movies with such a theme and possible outcome. From the onset, one can predict that somebody is going to be conned. And sure enough, it happened.

Instead of the Cold War being the background for film, here it is the Muslim-West front set in Hamburg, the central of sleeper cells.

A Chechnyan, Essa Karpov, lands in Hamburg illegally. He has to get his father's ill-gotten monies to a non-profit Muslim organisation through a philanthropist. Gunther Bachmann (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a German espionage who identifies the intruder as a dangerous terrorist. He, together with an American agent and interior security minister, tries to intercept the transaction. They know the money will be used for terrorist activities. Gunther cuts a deal to trap the philanthropist and free passage for the illegal immigrant but is sabotaged at the last minute.

One movie where you just run through and get it done and over with! 6/10.

Last Kiss

What do you tell a full grown man who is wailing? How do you console him for his loss? The loss of the apple of his eye, upon whose shoulders of all his unrelinquished dream, rested on. The loss of a 31 years young son who just reached the pinnacle of his youth with a whole brand new life laid downed before him to savour. The loss of a son who was just an anecdotal statistic in the doctor's file as an atypical presentation of cancer.

What do you tell a man who went beyond the call of duty as a parent to scout for the best of the proven and unproven modalities of treatment to annihilate the tentacles of the spreading crab? And spent his lifetime and retirement savings doing it...

Just when the tides were turning in his favour, the enemy struck back in vengeance in full throttle. He fought a good fight but lost the war and the battle.
What do you tell his parents to soothe the pain? That their son is now free of pain in a better place? That their son is so good that the Maker wants the whole of him? That the Maker likes him more? That the Maker knows best? That it is fate? That whatever happened for a good reason!#*@? That he would want a good farewell, rather than doom and gloom surrounding his departure?

"Why did it happen," the father asks. "Where did I go wrong? Did I not do something right? Have I not been a good person? Have I not paid my dues in alms? Have I not did my penance? Is it a punishment? What about my regular prostrations at the lotus feet of the Almighty for pleas of continued blessings and peace on Earth and my family? Is it a curse or is it karma?"
There seem to be more questions than answers. The departed may not be around in person. The memories of his existence on Earth would linger on forever. His physical body may be gone but not the moments that were spent with the loved ones.

With so many unanswered questions, he bends down to kiss the cheeks of his beloved son for the last time before the cortege leaves... on a long journey back...

Trust and Conviction?

The Quiet Duel (静かなる決闘, Shizukanaru Kettō, 1949)
Director: Akira Kurosawa

Fancy seeing a scrubbed up surgeon
with a cigarette on his lip?

If Toshiro Mifune is usually seen as rash hotblooded gangster or samurai in most movies, this Kurosawa's regular star is seen portraying a quiet tight-lipped conscientious doctor. His co-star is another regular, Takashi Shimura as his father.

The quiet duel in the title refers to the constant struggle within one's self whether to satisfy his own desires versus the moral codes set up by the society or conscience. And sometimes the price to pay can be enormous. 

The story starts in a rundown military hole-ridden leaking hospital where an overworked sleep-deprived surgeon who is fighting against his biological needs of sleep and rest tries desperately to save his war-stricken patients. With limited helping hand, he somehow pulls through. In one of these stressful situations, he injures himself with an open scalpel.
Fearing for the worse, he gets himself and the patient's blood tested for syphilis.
Apparently, syphilis was reputed as a death sentence then. When young men with raging hormones were left wondering away in stressful situations, these soldiers were expected to patronise comfort women for conjugal pleasures.
The blood tests returned as favourable to a truly devasted Dr Kyoji Fujisaki (Toshiro Mifune). His fate was sealed. Treatment was protracted and not readily available. His plans to wed his sweetheart all came crashing down.

Doing good does not make you
immune from misery!

Fast forward...post-war Japan...
Dr Kyoji is still working as a dedicated doctor, now in a rural small private hospital run by his father, a gynaecologist, Dr Konosuke Fujisaki (the versatile Takashi Shimura) and himself. His sweetheart still hangs around the hospital as an assistant nurse hoping that Dr Kyoji would change his mind to marry her. The good doctor, fearing of spreading the disease to his future and child had decided to be celibate until the condition is hopefully adequately treated in a few years' time. As her biological clock was ticking away, he advised her to marry someone else without telling her the real reason. A simple answer like 'the war had changed him', he thought would suffice.

Do the stars determine your fate?

Maybe, at this time and age, with women's empowerment and such, such a statement may not be politically correct. But then, we have to understand the social contract in that era where the society was patriarchal and women docile (or is it woman like?).
Pretty soon when the medicine used to treat syphilis repeatedly went missing, the doctor's little secret comes to the knowledge of his father and another assistant nurse. After learning the real manner how he was infected, they only give him the utmost respect. The assistant nurse has her own issue of being an unwed mother as a result of her stint as a nightclub dancer in her previous vocation. She is indebted to Dr Kyoji for giving her a new lease on life when she had attempted suicide when she was pregnant and abandoned.
As fate had it, the initial patient (Nakada) who had transmitted the disease to Dr Kyoji is met by chance in the course of his work. Unlike Kyoji who is living in constant fear and sorrow, the patient is entirely indifferent to his disease. He is enjoying his life, drinking, is married and his wife is pregnant. Dr Kyoji tries to warn Nakada, but it is met with resistance.
Eventually, Nakada and his wife land up at their hospital with a deformed stillbirth. Upon seeing this, Nakada becomes insane, unsure whether it is insanity or progression of syphilis.
Dr Kyoji's ex-sweetheart comes to the clinic for the last time before her marriage to say her farewell hoping for a last minute change of hearts on the part of the good doctor. He just sends her away without revealing the real reason.

The final farewell

After her departure, Kyoji's nurse confronts him on his course of action. That erupts the monologue that defines the title of the movie - the quiet duel! The duel within oneself of the correct decision one has to do if life. A person who thinks and is emphatic to others would practice self-sacrifice for others. A lackadaisical would literally bury his head in the ground and hope for the trouble to just disappear. It is akin to the two ways one can encounter physical pain - create a ruckus or grimace in silence. Kyoji narrates the battles that he had to endure between fulfilling his physical needs as a man versus the moral obligations of a doctor to thwart the spread of the disease. It’s an extended, tearful scene where Mifune fully reveals the depths of his feelings and his battles. This scene is something new for the oft tough appearing star!
We all encounter constant duels within ourselves to do what is only natural for our immediate gratifications against what is better in the long term, good from the perspective of a bigger picture. We take the first step in making that painful decision to do what we do on every Sunday morning hoping that it is a right decision that we would not live t regret later. It is all just trust. That's all. Trust that we are doing the right thing.