It is pre-determined!

Merku Thodarchi Malai (Westward Continuing Hills, Tamil-Malayalam; 2018)
மேற்க்கு தொடர்ச்சி மலை 


Vedantha teachings told us we are all the same, part of a bigger consciousness that is the Universe itself. We were told to treat each other as brothers as indeed our Athma (souls) are all part of the Paramathma which is Brahman itself, the Creator and the Created.

We have all been sold a broken dream. We were told that the path to happiness is through economic improvement. Like in Martin Luther King's cheque in 'I am a dream' speech, we were all given a bounced cheque. A cheque took naively at face value only to discover a little too late the stamp 'Return to drawer'! When we improve our socioeconomic standing amidst a life long struggle of sacrifice, we realise that the goal post has been lifted. We find that the separation between the haves and have nots had widened many folds over. We are to be, still, the mouth-agape child that once was yearning to be like his rich neighbours one day.

The farmers in India are having it bad these days. For centuries, they had had their own way of farming which kept with the local demands. With their meagre income, they led their simple lives, contended with the peace that they had. For recreation, they had Nature games, folk music and songs. Bullfighting was their way of promoting strong bulls to impregnate cows to produce resilient farm animals suited to their environment. Recycling was practised even before it became fashionable in the modern world. Fertilisers were eco-friendly. They did not need the Haber process to increase the nitrogen content in their soil. The sun grows the rice, rice is harvested, stalk in fed to cows, excrement goes back to nature to start the cycle.
Modernisation spoiled all that. Multinational companies, using local businesses as their proxies, moved in to press for sky-high yields, mixed crops, genetically modified seeds and introduction of foreign cows. Using their influence and lobbying skills the world has been hoodwinked that their way is the way to go.

The joy of acquiring a property.

Colonialism never really left our shores. It has come back in economic colonialism. With new rhetorics like environmental pollutions and the need to conform to new legislation, farming is no more profitable.

The recent air pollution over Delhi recently that cancelled flights in and out of the city was partly blamed open residue crop burning in Haryana. On the farmer's side, they complain that their animals do not want to eat the genetically modified stalks as they are unpalatable.

This award-winning artsy film is reminiscent of the 80s Tamil movies where an outdoor shooting was the norm and day-to-day living of common man was the theme. It tells its story slowly, setting the mood for viewers to grow fond of the characters, until... WHAM! the movie hits high gear. Renga is a porter who transports cardamom over the hills bordering Tamil Nadu and Kerala. He is a nice person whose life-long ambition is to do what his father failed in his lifetime, that is to own a piece of land. He is an affable chap who gets around with people and go out of his way to help people. A day in his line of work shows us the miles that we walk, the breathtaking paths that he takes daily and the mountain people. On the other side, we see estates, workers' exploitation, the union movement and the communist party of Kerala.

We are not all the same.

The world clearly favours some and discriminate others.

All under the watchful eyes of the Maker? Are we accidents

of Nature or made in handpicked to assume His mould?

To cut the long story short, he acquires a piece of land, becomes a farmer but his first harvest is damaged by torrential rains. Meanwhile, Renga gets entangled helping retrenched workers who were sold out by the Communist Party leaders. He is implicated in the leader's murder and is imprisoned. His wife and young son are left to fend for themselves. Due to financial difficulties, he has to sell off his land to a conglomerate.

The last scene of the film, which was executed so poetically says it all. Renga is employed as a security guard by the same company to guard his land. Coincidentally, his land is used as the site for a giant windmill, not farming.

Renga was seen dressed in a guard's uniform. In sociology, the uniform is viewed by a sign for exploitation and enslavement. A person in uniform has no identity. He is just an extension of his employer, doing things for the benefit of the State or MNC in this case. A human is just a tool of the system; a dehumanised coolie dancing to the tune of others.

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Dharma is doing what is necessary

Aaranya Kaandam (ஆரண்ய காண்டம், Tamil, Jungle Chapter; 2011)
Story and Direction: Thyagarajan Kumaraja

The Jungle Chapter refers to the third chapter in the epic Ramayana where Raavana deceptively uses a deer into tricking and kidnapping Sita. Here, the storyteller uses characters with animal names to symbolically represent our animal-like behaviours in a world that has jungle rules. 

It starts with a purported dialogue between Chanakya, the Mauryan master strategist, a kind of ancient Machiavelli, and a student in 400 BC.

Student: "What is dharma?"
Chanakya: "Dharma is doing what is necessary."

With that one line, I was hooked. The film is a gangster fare, but not the usual gory senseless machete-branding South Indian style. It is the characterisation and storytelling that kills. It is labelled as the first neo-noir Tamil film.

In life, we are faced with many obstacles. What is the determinant that decides the right course of action? Do we use society-determined code of conduct as the yardstick? Is it about survival and self-interest? As it is a noir movie where poetic justice takes a backseat, the story is quite revolutionary, and the ending is entirely unexpected.

People follow the rules not because it is a noble thing to do. They do it because of the shame of being caught. Given a choice, people want to be left to their own devices. Jungle law will take over. The mighty, the brave, the cunning and the heartless would prevail. This must be the hidden message behind the movie -the jungle as the title and how the character names resemble that of animals. (Singaperumal-lion, Pasupathy-cow, Gajendran-elephant, Subbu-fox, Sappai-rat, Kasturi-deer). Guilt is momentary and forgotten when they experience pleasure. The end-results justify the means.

The Lion and the Rat

The plot revolves around an insecure ageing don, Singaperumal (Jackie Shroff), whose erectile dysfunction is an open secret. His lieutenant, Pasupathy, is itching for a lucrative but dangerous cocaine deal despite the boss' disapproval. Don tries to trap him and kidnap his wife. In an error of chaos, the cocaine gets into the hand of a destitute and his precocious son. He tries to blackmail Don for the return of stash.

Don's abused young mistress has an affair with Don's helper boy whom everyone thinks is an idiot. In reality, he is bedding the mistress and plans to elope with her.

Things get really complicated with everybody killing everybody either through brute violence and through wit. There is no right or wrong. The correct thing to do seem to be one that benefits oneself at the point of reference. One cannot shed off the idea the director must be a Tarantino fan. Nobody else uses a piece of merry Spanish music as background score as two rivals rush towards each other brandishing machetes. Again in a pure noir finishing the characters engage in soliloquy and a femme fatale rides into the sunset as the final victor. In this film, Subbu turns up as the winner. She utters, "the best thing about being a woman is that it is a man's world." She had outwitted the dumb helper, killed him and was the final benefactor of the loot. The Don was shot dead by Sappai. In her last dialogue, she said, "Sappai was, after all, a man, and all men are Sapppai."

Sappai also could mean limp/impotent. Hence, denoting that Men, despite the machoism that they seem to portray, are actually weak and can be manipulated by the fairer sex with wit and their sexuality.

The film had to undergo 52 cuts for profanity and unPC jokes about Kamal Haasan and Rajnikanth.

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Will go on, with or without you!

Marriage Story (2019)

You start a family appointing yourselves as the nucleus and the other appendages as equal partners and essential requirements of the cells. You do your part thinking that they would do the same. You assume that even though the nucleus is the first pre-requisite, the others would take their place and do their part for a balanced multifunctional cell. 

You think that everything is fine until it hits you one day. The nucleolus, which is an integral part of you starts telling you that you are evil. That you are gaslighting her. That you think that you are the only one that matters. 

Before you can realise what hit you, you are bamboozled with examples of your so-called ‘misdemeanours’ as if you did it for your own selfish reasons. You thought it was for a harmonious internal milieu, but it did not appear so. You thought every organelle was in concert with that - to maintain zen. Suddenly your every action is against you like you are some kind of evil bacteriophage that takes the bejesus out of every living organism. 

You relent. You think of other occupants amongst the cytoplasm. Is it a temporary hiccough in the differentiation process? You procrastinate. You assume everything will revert to normalcy. 

It does not. You find out that every member to pointing accusing fingers at you. You try to fight, but you would not want to hurt your own fluid and membrane. You relent. Everything changes. The dynamics that you had dreamt are now but a terrible nightmare. You do not matter anymore. You are redundant. The cell can still function without you, apparently.

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More than meets the eye!

Nothing seems like what we hear, read or see. We will never know what is real from fake. We can surely, learn from the experience of others. 

People are left in high esteem when they leave the building sooner than expected. On the other end, if they linger longer than their shelf-life, the legacy they leave behind is not entirely pleasant. The sorry state of the flailing body and declining function of the body is all that is remembered. If all else does not fail, the mental capacity eventually would, and the elder will go by many titles; screwball being one.

That brings us to the case above. Samy Vellu used to be the de facto head of Indian community in Malaysia. Passionately referred to as 'Uncle Sam', he was the darling of the Malaysian media of the 1990s and the butt of many of the political jokes of the day. His awkward pronunciations and his recurrent attributing many of his department's follies to 'act of God' still rings a bell. He had also sarcastically accused many Malaysians of being mentally deranged and need to be hospitalised.

Now it looks like the joke is on him. His son is trying to get an injunction to declare him of unsound mind. Or is it?

Oh, how the general public scorn at the ungrateful son who chose to chose to wash dirty linen in public. The dharma loving generation expresses contempt at the conduct of bringing family secrets to the public eye. All the caring and nurturing by the elders gave him the strength to bite the hand that fed him, they say.

The sceptics, however, would not buy such a story. They assert that it is all part of elaborate legal wrangling to offset certain unaccounted transactions to balance the books. There is a lot more to it than meets the eye.

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Thick as thieves?

The Post (2017)

The ongoing saga involving the former seemingly unassailable Prime Minister of Malaysia and its sovereign fund is a stark reminder that the world is ruled by an unholy union of politicians who conned the public, bankers who finance the whole fiasco, lawmakers who put a legal jargon to all these. Trailing them are a thick band of thieves, yeomen, hyenas and a slew of servants who would die or kill for their cause under the banner of nationalism. Depending on the setting, servants of God would get their hands dirty in the cookie jar to give a divine seal to all these shenanigans. 

In an environment of each wanting to fend for himself, in a world where 'The Truth' does not always prevail, and victors decide justice, the losers are the general public. Repeatedly the laypeople fall prey to the 'powers' of the day's sweet promises. In pursuit of happiness, they sacrifice my sweat, blood and tears.

They say we, the people, choose our leaders and the fate of our country. The politicians are at our mercy and not the other way around. But, increasingly, opposers to the status quo are cowed into submission by fear of harm and lost opportunities. The ongoing 1MDB trial opened the putrid cane of worms where civil servants are treated as lapdogs and rubber stamps for the ruling party. Amongst all these traitors emerge a lowly administrative officer, Nor Salwani Muhammad, who had the foresight to slip a recording device in her superior's pencil box to record certain vital proceedings.

I don't know him!

In a civil society, the last bastion of hope seems to be the media, the third force of resistance. Even that is a threat in many authoritarian societies. Press is no longer the purveyor of the truth but increasingly become mouthpieces of their financial masters.

The Washington Post is usually associated with the Watergate Scandal and Nixon's subsequent resignation as the US President. In 1966, an American State Department military analyst felt that the USA was misleading the public by convincing them that the war in Vietnam was proceeding well when, in reality, things were pretty bleak. The thought of the unassuming public sending their youngsters to be slaughtered in tropics pricked his conscience. The analyst decided to go public with documents that would prove the hypocrisy of three decades of US administration (post WW2) that had been hoodwinking the American public.

Even though it was first exposed to the New York Times, the filmmakers decided to tell the story from the viewpoint of the Washington Post who was struggling with a lady leading the helm as its publisher. The Post was the second newspaper that was approached to publish after the AG office shut down publications of the New York Times for articles deemed threatening national security.

The Post, a political thriller, shows the trials and tribulations of the journalists trying to fight for free speech, The First Amendment. After the mumbo-jumbo of legal threat and repercussions from the Nixon administration, the Supreme Court decided to allow printing of the controversial news. Its justification was that the papers worked for the governed, not the governor!

Lesson learnt: The citizens decide the path of the country. Its leaders should lead their subjects towards this end. They serve the public, not themselves or some uncertain promise of the future. It is difficult, however, when the people are lulled and stupefied by years of indoctrination and self-aggrandisement.

https://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/503023

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Daddy loves you! It is what it is.

Irishman (2019)
Director: Martin Scorsese

This movie received brickbats even before it came to the screens (or rather Netflix). Scorsese, maybe on purpose, stirred the hornet's nest by making a statement about the genre that seems to captivate the imaginations of the Millenials - the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). He asserted that the MCU world is not cinema but mere theme parks. To quote Scorsese, "cinema is about revelation — aesthetic, emotional and spiritual revelation. It is about characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves. Marvel movies don't encapsulate those criteria."

To be fair, even Alfred Hitchcock's and P Ramlee's movies were criticised in their days. There were said to be gruesome or too violent (Psycho) or crossing the social norms (Ramlee's Gelora). Even though the new franchises are said to be final products of market-researched and audience-tested, as well as a matter of supply and demand and giving people what they want, there is still place for good old storytelling set in reality.

'Irishman' is based on by Charles Brandt's book 'I heard you paint houses'. It is supposed to be a confession by the protagonist of the tale, Frank Sheeran. He admitted having killed Jimmy Hoffa, a unionist and a mobster. In real life, Hoffa is said to have disappeared since 1975 without a trace. Since then, many have come forward to vouch that they had killed Hoffa and had their versions too. Sceptics have accused Sheeran of making the last kill (money wise) for the family as he struggled in the nursing home counting his end of days.

It said to be a presentation of septuagenarians trying the reminisce the good old times of the genre they are familiar with - Scorsese, De Niro and Joe Pesci and mob movies like 'Goodfellas' and 'Casino'. For good measure, they roped in Al Pacino, Don Corleone himself. 

As the story spans over almost 30 years, and they were utilising aged actors, the filmmakers had to use digitally de-ageing technology on them. MCU fans had a field day attacking Scorsese as it was in one of MCU films that this science was initially introduced - Michael Douglas in 'Ant-Man'.

This three-and-a-half offering tells about Sheeran, a WW2 veteran, who gets entangled with the mafia. He finds it rewarding to support his family. In the course and subsequent to this line of duty, he has to make many life-altering decisions. There is only so much of Mafia-related movies one can watch, the loyalty, the killing and all the coded talk. But still, there are some valuable points to ponder while watching the movie.

People can make a living or make a killing for a living. Ultimately we all work hard to ensure that the generation after us is not deprived of the things that we yearned and never got. We do not want them to go through the similar 'hardships' that we went through. But no, the offsprings will never appreciate this. They would look at the actions of their elders through a different prism quite contradictory to what the adults value. They (the youngsters) fail to appreciate the environment upon which their elders made the decisions they made.

Morality and kindness do not matter in desperate situations. When your next meal is not a given thing, your yardstick of what is right and what is not is malleable. This type of innovation can be seen in slumps and refugee camps. People become imaginative on how to survive, to fulfil their primal desires and acquire money. Somehow, money still remains the panacea of all woes.

This must probably be what Sheeran must have been thinking when he was sending his last few days in a home. All his friends and mentors were dead. He was the only person who would probably carry all his secrets to the grave. He was alone. His wife was dead, and his daughters shunned him for his association with the mafioso.

The question remains. Did he concoct the whole story for his children to savour the fruit of the returns of the royalty of his story? Even though Sheeran admitted in the book to have made the difficult decision of putting a bullet in the head of his mentor Jimmy Hoffa, many others claim to have done the same. Sheeran's story, it seems, did not collaborate with police records. Was the tale spiced up to show Sheeran making the difficult decision of following the orders of Russel Buffolini, his guru, versus killing Hoffa who was a thorn for the mafia? Haffa was possibly going to leak the secret of unionists monies being used to finance Mafia’s Las Vegas casinos.

The movie also suggests that JFK's assassination may have been arranged by the Mafia.

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Passed its sell-by date?

Contestants: Vartika Singh (India), Mohana Prabha (Singapore),

Mehr Elieser (Panama), Priya Serrao (Australia), 
Shweta Sekhon (Malaysia).

The female members of the clan were ecstatic to learn that they possibly shared the same forefathers of five of finalists who have been shortlisted at the 2019 Miss Universe contest. I did not want to be a spoilsport to dampen the spirit of achievement; they had no role at all. If anything, it only shows their hypocrisy.

On one end, they want to be assessed on their mental ability and tenacity. They feel slighted when referred to as the weaker sex or given leeway for under achievements. They would like to believe that their successes in life were purely via merit, not by merely being the fairer sex. They raise their gaze when the female gender is condescended upon or depicted in a negative light.

But it is quite puzzling that the parading of scantily clad females like livestock raises no concern at all to them. Sure, intellectual capacity, wit, personality and social consciousness all are tested to pick the fairest of them all. Physical attributes must surely give the window of opportunity for other subsequent successes to follow soon.

Have we not seen enough instances of how beauty queens being puppets of businesses and government acting under the guise of being a brand ambassador for a novel cause?

Ms Reita Faria, Ms World 1966.

Offhand, the story of Asia's first Ms World contestant and the 1966 winner comes to mind. Reita Faria, then a 23-year-old medical student from Bombay, went on to win the crown. (Note: Ms World and Ms Universe are different events). Her problems started after that. As part of her contract, she had to appear for the organisers, Mecca. She had to accompany Bob Hope to entertain GIs in the Vietnam War. As India opposed the Vietnam War, her passport was impounded by her Government, and she was stuck in the UK for a year, unable to continue her medical studies. Her happy ending came about when she secured a place in King's College to continue her studies. She now resides in Ireland married to her mentor in 1971 and moved to Dublin.

Many years later, in an interview, Dr Reita Faria Powell opined that beauty pageants had probably passed their shelf life. She thinks that there is no more a fairy tale ending.

Have you noticed that over the years how the selection of finalists is overtly biased toward the turn of events in the world political arena? And more contestants from the developing countries seem to capture the limelight. Probably that is where the target audience is and where the sponsors want to tap their resources from. Maybe their counterparts in the first world are over with burning bras and have nothing more to prove. They are more than mere eye candies or trophy toys to demand recognition. Points to ponder.

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