Any which way but loose.

The Mule (2018)
Director: Clint Eastwood

It may not score high in the dramatic storytelling department. Neither would it be of high octane action nor of unpredictability tally. Nevertheless, the viewers are left pondering on the subtle message that it questions.

Clint Eastwood, now at almost 90 years young, after donning his rugged cowboy persona and uncompromising cop images at the height of his acting career, understandably assumes a more sedate role here. 'The Mule' is a straightforward tale of a Korean War Veteran, Earl Stone, who, after having put his work way ahead of his family all his life, to go back to his family upon foreclosure of his horticulture farm. In his heydays, he had won many awards in flower shows. 

Toughie of spaghetti westerns

His business went out of flavour after the internet business became popular. He is scorned by his family members, including his ex-wife and daughter. His granddaughter, with whom Earl is close, is getting married, and Earl has to help out. A chance meeting of her granddaughter's guest draws Earl to smuggle drugs across states. Somehow the pull to perform more trips just keeping on mounting as every turn of events becomes a reason to get more money - his dilapidated truck needed changing, the War Veteran Centre needed repair and so forth. His luck finally ran out, and Earl is apprehended. What does he have to do in prison - do his favourite pastime, gardening!

It makes one wonder what is actually the role of the father here. If he spends too much time outside the family circle working, i.e. to provide for the family, can he be blamed for missing all the so-called family time and skipping 'memorable events'? Conversely, if the parent decides that spending quality time with family rather than raking moolah for their wellbeing is more important, will the rest be happy? Can strengthening familial bonding be a substitute for wealth to prosper in life? 

@ 90 years old.

Either way, the father is going to be at the receiving end of it all. He may be accused of being an absent parent if he is not around and be taken for granted if he is seen everywhere in the household while not providing the bacon. Amidst all these, one wonders where the needs of the father go to? Is he supposed to quash all his happiness, immerse himself in providing for the family and find joy within the ambit of his familial achievements? Is his fate sealed once he utters 'I do'?

Nursing a dying tiger back to health is no guarantee that it would not pounce on you at the height of its hunger pangs. With the empowerment and wisdom imbibed upon the downlines, they use the very same new-found knowledge to attack the hand that fed them. They blame all their misgivings and failures in their lives on their perceived sub-optimal parenting. 

(P.S. 'Any which way but loose' is the title of Eastwood's 1978 movie. The title soundtrack was sung by Eddie Rabbitt. The title is an abstraction from the phrase 'you turn on any which way but loose'. The girl turns him on but cannot turn (cut) him loose, i.e., release him or give him back his freedom.)

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

The problem of information overload!

Crime Scene: The Vanishing at Cecil Hotel (S1 E1-4; 2021)
Netflix Docu-series.

This case shows how information in the wrong hands can create a lot of unnecessary tension and can sometimes be potentially dangerous. With the ease of access to an ocean of information literally at their fingertips, everyone goes around with a halo thinking that they are better than the professionals who spent half their lifetime learning and doing the things they are trained to do.

In 2013, a 22-year-old Canadian girl, Elisa Lam, goes missing in Los Angeles (LA), where she went for a short holiday all by herself. The police were alerted when the girl failed to call home daily as promised. Three days into the investigation but the police were at a dead end. They knew she stayed in Cecil Hotel, and the hotel had a CCTV recording of her acting bizarrely as she was entering a lift. Even the sniffer dog could not locate her. All investigations revealed was that she had a personal blog on Tumblr, where she poured all her inner feeling. Her parents and sister revealed that Elisa suffered from bipolar disease.

At this stage, the police decided to release the CCTV footage to the public to obtain more about the missing person. That started an avalanche of input from internet sleuths from the world over. Many self-appointed armchair investigators and You-tubers spent many many man-hours scrutinising and dissecting the recording with a fine toothcomb coming up with many theories; some were quite outrageous. A group of them accused the hotel staff of tampering with the CCTV tape as the video flow was not smooth and the time recordings were smudged. There was the insinuation of the hotel covering up for its personnel, and police corruption was mentioned. At the time of Elisa Lam's disappearance, there was a tuberculosis outbreak among the homeless community in Skid Row in LA, where Cecil Hotel was located. Healthcare workers were doing random testing on potential victims using a kit named LAM-ELISA. This sparked a conspiracy theory that somewhat Elisa Lam was a biological weapon in a secret governmental project!

Cecil Hotel had indeed seen better times. Built during the heady times of the swinging 20s, it fell into hard times after the Great Depression and never really recovered. It drew in seedy characters and was the venue for murders, drugs, prostitution and many more. It housed vagabonds and serial killers. Against this background, that part of LA, known as Skid Row, became the USA's poorest part, probably the world. Because of its location and local housing rules, Cecil Hotel developed part of the building to house in the society's disadvantaged segment. It was the same building but with clear demarcations except for the elevators. Hence, there is a certain level of interaction of the hotel guests with the hapless long-staying renters.

Another idea floated around was that Elisa was on recreational drugs, hence, the abnormal gestures seen in the lift footage.

About 19 days after her disappearance, hotel guests complained of plumbing issues. The janitor who inspected the water tanks found Elisa's body in one of four water tanks, naked and decomposed. The police, in their press statement, in narrating the find, described how the janitor had to open the hatch to discover Elisa. (It was later corrected).

The coroners' report classified the cause of death as indeterminate awaiting toxicological findings. As the authorities dragged on with the final report, the internet sleuths became more restless. There was a lot of yoyoing between suicide and homicide. It was Youtubers from the four corners of the world who wanted to have their say. The whole scenario mirrored that of the Korean paranormal blockbuster 'Dark Water'.

Around that time, a Death Punk artiste named Morbid (aka Pablo Vergara) stayed at the hotel. As his song describes death and murders, some eerily similar to Lam's death, the social media vilified him as the possible murderer. He took it so badly that he developed suicidal thoughts and had to be institutionalised.

Elisa Lam

The coroner's office finally issued the cause of death as accidental drowning with bipolar disorder as a precipitating factor. Her psychiatric drugs levels were almost non-existent, indicating that she had not been compliant with her treatment. Elisa had had another similar a couple of years previously.

This unfortunate case shows how a simple, straight-forward tragedy with a simple explanation ends up with various other equally compelling arguments. There is no such thing as beyond reasonable doubt. The element of suspicion can be conjectured by creative minds to escape conviction. There must have been so many wrongful convictions based on compelling circumstantial evidence aided by our tunnel visions and laissez-faire attitude of people commissioned to perform specific tasks. It must be the cruel twist of fate that made the innocent pay time for crimes they did not commit. Some call it the misalignment of his stars; others call it paying dues of past karma.

Sometimes unrelated events change the course of the trial and subsequent fate of the accused. I think the shut hatch of the water tank can be explained like this. I guess the opened hatch must have been noticed by the hotel workers who frequently hung out at the roof. They must have inspected the tank and did not find anything as Elisa could have had submerged. He must have shut it thinking that it was an oversight by the plumber. How one action can change the narrative?

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

Just a file number?

Liar's Dice (Hindi; 2013)
Netflix

A good 10 years ago, as the mass rail transit tracts were being constructed, amidst all the chaos of redirection of traffic, a restless driver overtook me as I was carefully manoeuvring my vehicle through the diversions. He barged into a blockade and collided head-on with a general worker who happened to just minding his own business, clearing some debris. I saw him being flung into mid-air, landing on his back after doing a full-body somersault. From my rear mirror, I could see the victim lie motionless as the driver alight his car to attend to the victim.

That incident left an uneasy feeling within me the next few days that followed. I often wondered what thoughts went through his mind just before he was hit. Was he thinking of his young daughter, whom he had not seen or wondered how she would react to the present that he had bought? Maybe he was just going back home for Eid? Or was he thinking of pleasant memories of his childhood?  I also wondered what things would be found in his body when he brought to the hospital; maybe his wife's portrait, his child's father, his dream house. 

Imagine, after all the debt, sacrifices, sweat and tears, he is just to return home in a body bag, with shattered dreams, broken bones and fractured bonds. Is it all worth it? Did his sacrifices alter the path of the family? Did all the penances push his family up the ladder of affluence? Or is he just another file number in the statistics of human casualties in the chase to make Malaysia a developed nation?

In a way, this film may give an account of the aggrieved family members of the above example. Kamala has not heard from her husband for the last five months. Her husband had gone off to work in town previously. Kamala lives in the interiors of India, bordering China, with her three-year-old daughter.

The daily phone calls just stopped abruptly, and her calls went into voicemail. Despite reassurances from friends and neighbours, she had a gut feeling that something was not right. One day Kamala took the bold move to go out to town to search for her husband herself. With a little money, her daughter and a kid (a young goat), she embarked on a long journey searching for her husband at the last given address. 

The trip appears to be not as straight forward as she thought. Encountering shady characters at every corner and conman at every turn, she wonders if Nawazuddin, a dice-throwing gambler, is just another fraud with tricks up his sleeves? 

A slow-moving intense low budget drama that brings out human emotions and transports the viewers into a breathtaking spectacle of the outdoors and the scrutiny of the back lanes, as well as the not so savoury glimpse of India that most visitors would give a miss.

(P.S. The running around looking for the missing husband reminds me of a Japanese cartoon that my sisters and I use to enjoy in our childhood - 3000 Leagues in search of Mother, where an Italian boy goes on a long journey to find his mother in Argentina.)

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

Blinded!

A Billion Colour Story (2016)

History tells us that India used to be a welcoming land to any weary sojourner. It is proud of being the only country in the world where its people did not persecute anyone based on physical appearances or personal convictions. It stands proud of not harassing Jews. It ushered in visitors with such warmth, sharing their knowledge in the hope of finding meanings of life, so much so that they decided to overstay their welcome and so much as a rule over the roost.

Did the last of the visitors leave such a scar of conquest that can never heal? To ease their administration, the British, initially a band of looters in the form of East India Company and then later for the Crown, divided and subdivided their subjects by breed, colour, occupation, religion, etc., drilled in the idea that they were different. They mastered the craft of 'divide and rule' to its finest.

The divide became so pronounced that it carved out the limbs out of the tripartite sub-continent. The conquerors were happy to leave with such an arrangement that became cumbersome. It fitted very well with their intentions to destabilise the region by instigating brotherly skirmishes. As the Cold War was developing, political influence over the area was maintained. Destabilisation ensured the petroleum supply was kept in check with British aspirations.

The world was achanging. Ideas were spreading like wildfire. People became loyal not to the flag but to a belief of an invisible pink unicorn that was an oxymoron, but who dare ask. The representation transcended all rational thought and called for blood. A once peaceful existence has turned hostile. How do you expect the hosts to take things lying down? An eye for an eye, and I will instead be blind than do the blasphemous something, says one party. A tit for tat says the other in reply. The combatants are mired so deep in muck that they had forgotten who drew first blood and for what they are fighting for.

We encounter this award-winning film with this background that showcases an eternally optimistic trained in Australia movie-making couple who believes that the old India is very much alive. Despite the adverse publicity churned daily on the media, they believe that a billion colours that beautify India are there for taking. Reality sinks when they discover that their mixed marriage (Hindu and Muslim) is a big issue in modern India. They find dead end at every turn as they struggle to complete their movie. In the midst of all this is their son, Hari Aziz, trying to find his place in society.

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

No Brain, No Pain.

There was a time when I developed a compulsion of wanting to know everything about Bhagavadgita. I was told that the holy book had all the recipe for a meaningful life. And I heard about a volunteer at a local temple who was conducting a series of lectures on that subject. My acquaintances were all praises about the speaker and the contents of his classes.  

I was drawn in. I decided to give it a try. In the first lecture, all that I heard was that I was nothing. I was smaller than the smallest of the speck in the Universe. I did not matter to the greater scheme of things. Hence, the last thing I needed was my ego. I had to crack my hardshell called ego, following which enlightenment would flow in like an eternal fountain of knowledge. Like how Arjuna had to clear his head of all his doubts to receive the unlimited erudition from the Lord himself.

I thought to myself, "I do not need these people to tell me that I am nothing; my wife tells me all the time that my ego is bigger than my head! These people are asking me to be a zombie - to operate like a non-functional lump of protoplasm working in a reflex arc at the spinal level. I did not like to be another statistic along the line of a cult member of the Branch Davidian who perished in the Waco massacre smiling in anticipation of the bliss of entropy.

The little bit of sense that prevailed within me told me that these just will not do. Echoes of my mother's childhood stories of Socrates in his death bed murmured somewhere in the nook of my mind. Even though she barely scraped through primary schooling at a time when discrimination against girls was rife, she managed to sponge whatever she could from radio dramas, movies, storybooks and periodicals. Her words reverberated, "don't listen just because this fellow or that fellow said so; enquire and investigate and be enlightened!" or something to that effect.

Hence, I recoiled to the company of me, myself and I to indulge in a little soul searching and introspection. 

Ego, a sense of self-importance and self-esteem, cannot be all so bad. It is the trait to make one so embarrassed to hold out his hand for alms as his pride tells him that he can fend for himself in this big wide world. It prods that if a lame or a blind can survive, why can't he? 

It is the thing that pushes him to be better than his neighbour. It is that satisfying, gloated feeling that propels him to go beyond boundaries that no man has ever been before. Many individuals are addicted to immersion in the sea of endorphins as they become successful in their outlandish endeavours. Some fail, but that also inspires them to try harder to succeed. Well, that is how the human race progresses. It is the hard work of mad minds of the insane with a never say die attitude, not the complacent bumpkin who thinks very lowly of himself and no self-pride but just follows the herd. Beware, the shepherd, despite all the seemingly cordial and charming smiles, has only one thing on his mind - to fatten the flock and to prepare for the slaughter! He has a vested interest. For vegetarians, there is the proverbial cash cow to milk. 

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

Life always finds a way

 Oru Pakka Kathai (ஒரு பக்க கதை, One-page Story @One-sided Story, Tamil;  2020)

If I learnt anything from Jurassic Park, and specifically fictional scientist Ian Malcolm, I remember a dialogue about how Nature has a way to deal with survival. When the mad scientist in the park only bred female dinosaurs to control the population, Malcolm warned that when species are on the brink of extinction, Nature makes necessary changes for an organism become a hermaphrodite! Reproduction may occur by asexual means.

These observations have been reproduced in laboratory conditions in certain snakes, fishes and rats. Parthenogenesis happens regularly in plants, where an unfertilised egg combines with the haploid polar body to produce a diploid offspring that is not a clone. The offspring should be a female if I understand well, since there are no Y chromosomes to go around.

The scriptures are bountiful with tales of virgin births and immaculate conceptions. Kunti is said to have been impregnated by Surya after her great worship of the Sun God. Then there are Zoroaster, Christ, and some say Plato too.

Is it not funny that there was a time when people accepted these phenomena readily. Try doing that now and see what happens.

I remember a friend telling me of his experience working at the A&E department of a hospital on the east coast. A schoolgirl was wheeled in with much drama and hullabaloo. Her teacher and two of her friends came in, accompanying wiping her brow and massaging her hand. The patient complained of debilitating gastric pains. Upon clearing the yards of garment draping her torso, my friend found a contracting gravid uterus and a fetal head was seen squeezing through her perineum. After settling down, the student father was summoned. The father, a religious leader, refused to believe that his daughter could be pregnant. He started talking about divine intervention. The daughter suddenly remembered a day, some nine months previously, when she heard some rustling noises on her roof. She wondered if some elements of the netherworld were up to some tricks. While putting on a serious face, my friend could hear the staff's muffled laugh in the background. The last my friend heard is that the father was still in denial that any wrongdoings occurred.

This film took a long time to complete. Production started way back in 2014 but got stalled along the way. The movie's outcome is quite telling as one can see that the first part of the film develops nicely to a climax only to fizzle out afterwards. Maybe the movie makers just wanted to finish it off.

Meera, a university student, going steady with her soon-to-wed beau, Saravanan, feels weak. It turns out that she is pregnant. After much accusations of a pre-marital union, which she denied, the doctors (just by history taking) and professors confirmed that the conception is actually an asexual one. This medical miracle gets media coverage, and when the baby turns three, it is abducted by priests in a temple. The priest and, in fact, other religious institutions lay claim on the divine child conceived by unconventional methods.

The story is fresh, but sadly, as the crisis develops towards the later part of the movie, one notices that the actors are annoyingly timid and unemotional when their innocent child is kept hostage in the temple. Their demeanour is so nonchalant. They do not give a fight but quietly recede to seek legal redress instead. 

One nagging question that kept playing in mind is why none of the attending doctors tested the child's DNA to ascertain whether the child indeed carried part of Saravanan's genetic material to prove or disprove Meera's claim!

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

Uncomfortably numbed...

Des (TV Mini-series; 3 episodes, 2020)

This dramatisation of a 1983 real case from the police files of a seemingly boring man who carried out gruesome murders of equally unimpressive men in a most deliberate manner. He is credited to have killed at least 12 men. An ex-army cook with a short stint as a policeman and a civil servant invites young men to his apartment, makes them inebriated, kills them in various manners, and disposes of them in equally grisly ways. His activities came to light when a drain was blocked. Police were called in when human remains were discovered. The suspect, Dennis Nilson, is quite nonchalant about all his pursuits. He boasts about his crimes and even speaks to an author in the hope of publicising his feats. 

The murders and the investigations were later described in a best-seller titled 'Killing for Company'. The TV series shows how all the police investigations and this case, in particular, left a bitter after-taste in his mouth in the chief investigator, Detective Chief Investigator Peter Jay. Two years after Nilson was sentenced, he quit for force. In one of the closing scenes, Jay returns to the crime scene with the biographer, Brian Masters, where some of the victims were buried under the floorboard. The case never really left much resolution the many of the victim's families. Many of Des' victims were never identified. Masters quipped, "I can still smell the stench." implying the purifying bodies once hidden under the floor. To this detective, Jay replied, "Funny, I don't smell it anymore!"

It made my mind go asunder.

We are the company we keep with. My wise mother used to tell us when we were young about choosing the right friends. We became the persons that we befriend. She often quoted a famous somewhat brash proverb, "a calf, when it wanders with piglets, will soon be scavenging around dumpsites!" Cows, revered by Hindus, are given divine status. Pigs, on the other hand, are looked upon as dirty and shunned by most societies. By the association one keeps, he is lured to venture into the majority's habits as we, human beings, are social animals.

I feel for the many of the frontliners, the health and police personnel,  who have to deal with many of the unsavoury characters they have to deal with daily. Their clients come in as helpless, broken souls needing fixing. Once they regain strength, they bite the hand that fed them. The frontliners know that they should not be their own yardsticks to judge their clients. But with constant exposure to the nerve-numbing tragedies daily, are they at risk of becoming numb to the very struggles they are trained to handle. Are they at risk of becoming another file in the statistics in the annals of time?

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