Convincing enough for a conviction?

The Staircase (Documentary, 13 episodes; 2018)
Netflix

No, the truth does not somehow mysteriously appears out of thin air and settles the score. Often, the perpetrator goes scot-free. It is not unusual for fall guys to carry the burden. Innocent bystanders who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time sometimes get suckered in. Tonnes of news of the incarcerated getting reprieve with newer modern scientific revelations, e.g. when DNA evidence comes to fore, is evidence of this. Truth does not manifest on its own. We have to make it appear. At the end of the day, the determinant is money. With ever-increasing legal fees and protracted trials that last forever, proving innocence is the domain of the well-heeled. The impoverished are just left to the spiralling uncertainty of time and divine intervention. 

It is a game of poker. It is a question of how long can one hold his card. Court cases can run till the money runs out or the accused is out of breath, metaphorically and biologically. Anyway, at the end of it all, the court does not give a bill of innocence. It merely states that the accused is 'not guilty' when it acquits someone. It does not say 'innocent'. It is saying, "damn, you managed to defend yourselves with good legal representation that money can buy. It is no match against our prosecutors and the evidence that the State had collected!" Justice does not fall in the equation.

'The Staircase' is a documentary presentation of the trial of a fiction writer, Michael Peterson. The Durham, North Carolina 911 helpline, in December 2001, received a call from a near-hysterical Michael asking for help after his wife's apparent fall of the stairs. A week later, Michael is charged for the murder of his wife, Kathleen. Kathleen had broken thyroid cartilage but died primarily of blood loss from seven laceration wounds on her scalp.

Citing disproportionate blood loss for a simple fall from stairs and the unaccountable scalp wounds moved the prosecutor to charge Michael for murder. Then the bag of worms came out. Michael's desktop hard drive showed him entertaining gay porn sites and liaison with a particular gay prostitute. The prosecutor surmised that the discovery's of Michael's sexuality probably inspired an argument, and in the heat of emotions, Michael could have struck Kathleen on the head and subsequent fall. 

Michael, an ex-Marine, was once stationed in Germany. He was married with two kids then. His neighbour, Elizabeth, an American and a close family friend, also died after falling off a flight of stairs. Even though her death was certified as an intracranial haemorrhage, her case was linked to somehow to Kathleen's. Elizabeth's body was excavated for re-autopsy, but nothing incriminating was found.

The trial went on and on. Michael's family was fragmented. On his side were his sons from his first marriage, his two adopted daughters (Elizabeth's daughters) and Patricia, his first wife. The deceased, Kathleen, was Michael's second wife.

Kathleen's sister and Kathleen's daughter, Caitlin, from her first wedding, were ferociously working with the prosecution to get a conviction for Michael after initially rooting for Michael!

The jury found Michael guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment. After repeated appeals, 8 years into incarceration, Michael finally had his appeal heard. In an unrelated case, a vital defence witness who appeared in Michael's trial had falsified evidence. Michael was put on house arrest awaiting retrial. By then, money had run out for the lawyers. David Rudolf, who was doing an excellent job representing Michael, excused himself but later appeared pro bono.

In 2017, 16 years after the nightmare started, Michael Peterson finally took an Alford plea to voluntary manslaughter to end it all. He vehemently maintains his innocence till today, but on paper, he is guilty.

People are divided on Michael's guilt. The police have a bone to pick with him. As an editor in a local newspaper, Michael has often highlighted the police shortcomings and inefficiencies. 

Another theory that had been floating around is the 'rogue owl theory'. Batted owls are known inhabitants of the woods around Michael and Kathleen's habitat. Owls have been reported to attack people unprovoked. This could have happened to Kathleen. Feeling tipsy with wine and startled by an owl clutching her scalp, she could have run and tripped down the flight of stairs. The peculiar scalp laceration, extensive blood loss and absence of skull fracture and brain injury could be due to the talons of a barred owl. In retrospect, micro-feather fibre and bird feathers were found on the body.

The justice system is flawed. It metes different justice to different people. A starving person is imprisoned for stealing, whilst a politician who embezzled billions is still gallivanting around because he has not exhausted all the legal avenues available to prove his innocence. It should be read as he still has enough money to hire cunning legal eagles to look for a loophole in the system or get the bench members convinced with some kind of junk science or sly sleight of hand. Period.

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Beatles always fly!

Yesterday (2019)
Director: Danny Boyle

Growing up in the late 70s and 80s, popular music formed like soundtrack music of our lives. It was always in the background as we, my schoolmates and I, went on living and doing stuff we needed to as we ventured into adulthood. Of course, there was a time and place to listen to music. Technology had not developed for us to enjoy it on the go. Listening to neighbours blaring their cassette player is not counted. 

Then there was the excitement of listening to new songs on the radio and recording them on cassette tapes as the music played. Once a week, the newspapers would display the Top 10 songs and albums in different cities. The slightly affluent ones amongst us would get their fix of the latest songs recorded at record shops for a fee. Of course, it was not legal, but what the heck, we were and still are in a third world country. 

Bee Gees and Saturday Night Fever essentially filled up most of our pubescent lives. Sporadic input came from the Second British Invasion Bands and the New Wave music. The country was excited in 1983 when RTM decided to be liberal by choosing to screen music videos nominated for the MTV awards that year. That was probably when the terrestrial station had the most viewers glued to the idiot box, excluding the live sports telecasts, of course. I remember watching 'Karma Chameleon', 'Sweet Dreams (are made of this)', 'Let's Dance', 'Every breath you take, 'Uptown Girl', 'What a feeling' and 'Maniac' by Michael Sembello. After an initial screening, the moral guardians of the station decreed that the music video of 'Maniac' was too raunchy for public viewing. A lady training in her yoga doing stretching, ballet-like dancing, doing the splits and running in her leotard was X-rated.

The Beatles was not part of our coming of age process, it was for a generation before us, but they did appear in our consciousness after Lennon's assassination in 1980.

Imagine that that one day, you get up and realise that the legendary bands and their music that formed part of your character suddenly get wiped out. What would you do if you are an aspiring musician and all your attempts at getting your first break has all gone down the tubes?

In 'Yesterday', a light British rom-com, Jack Malik, a struggling artist, finds himself in such a predicament after a minor accident following a brief global power outage. Jack realises that in his post-outage alternate reality, 'The Beatles' music does not exist. Neither do other things like Coca Cola, the band Oasis and Harry Potter franchise. Even Google search repeatedly brings him to beetle the bug or Beetle VW!

In his rapacious desire to reach greater heights in his deadpan musical career, Jack presents the Beatles' songs as his. He almost becomes rich and famous when Ed Sheeran introduces him to bigwig producers in the US of A. Jack feels guilty of his plagiarising ways and is about to lose the love of his love when common sense prevails. He won over his girl, gives up his nearly international stardom to be a music teacher and lives happily forever and ever.

This movie is like a treasure trove for diehard Beatles' fans to identify their song lyrics in the dialogue. There are many insider jokes about the Beatles' background here and there. A little knowledge about how a particular song came to be written would help, e.g. the story behind Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane. So when somebody put out a yellow oblong toy, a Beatles fan would quickly know it is not a rubber ducky but a yellow toy submarine! It is an excellent guessing game to which of their song they would include next.

Perusing online, one would notice that this film is not highly rated. Reviewers lamented that the writer did not explore many loose ends associated with the sudden missing of specific icons from the world record. Everybody just accepted it matter-of-factly. Many also felt that the storyline is so predictable, a copy of generic rom-com. Maybe these people were expected a biopic.

There is a reason why it is called rom-com or romantic comedy. And it is an oxymoron. Romance is not about being funny unless one has a warped sense of humour. A wise man once said, "At the end of the day, romance is just a Greek tragedy with plenty of melodrama with a few rings entangled with it, engagement ring, wedding ring and suffer-ring!

(P.S. The proponents of critical race theory and woke culture sympathisers seem ecstatic with the ample representation of the minority group in this picture. The main character is of Indian descent, and his love interest is white!)

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Just another day at work?

Court (Hindi, Marathi, Gujerati, English; 2014)
Screenplay, Director: Chaitanya Tamhane

I remember a joke someone told recently. 

There was once a 75-year-old man who was brought to a magistrate. The spreadsheet showed that the accused was charged with molesting a 17-year-old girl.

The magistrate looked at the 75-year-old and asked, "Why? At this age, why all these? A 17-year-old?"

The accused replied, "Sir, I was also 17 when the incident happened!"

That pretty much explains how slow the legal machinery works and how farcical some of the red tapes are.

Sorry to keep you waiting!
Doctors are humans too, they need to eat.

The men in robes (and women) argue about the most frivolous point and drag their feet to put an end to the misery that the legal system places on the Joe Public.  For them, it is another day in paradise, appearing important and flaunting their verbosity. It is another day of loss of income and the uncertainty of the unknown for the average Joe.

The public looks upon the members of the legal system as someone larger than life, living true to the tenets of life and holding 'the truth' close to their hearts in everything they do. Lest we forget, they are also human beings crumbling to the trappings of life.

If songs can kill

This Marathi movie is said to be one of the best made Indian movies ever made, as described by big movie stars and filmmakers. Unfortunately, if the proof of the success of a movie is in its box-office collection, it did miserably despite receiving multiple international accolades. It was made by a debutante director who received inspiration after spending a day in an Indian court. It was a world of difference from the usual melodrama-filled court drama often depicted on the silver screen. And that is what this film is all about. He tried to illustrate the sombre mood at the courts and how the wheel of justice moves ever so slowly. He goes on to show how the officers of the court, including the judge, the public prosecutor and the defence lawyer, just go on with their lives, seemingly detached from the devasting effects their actions or inactions can have on the fate of people they are entrusted with trying. The lawyers are not as passionate, assertive or demonstrative as police dramas show us.

In reality, the worker did not commit suicide. There are

simply not enough protective gears to go around. The

blame goes back to workers and others in the vulnerable

groups. 

'Court' centres around a 65-year-old folk singer-teacher-social worker who is charged for enticing a sanitation worker to commit suicide via his songs. An archaic law still in force, making it a crime to sing inciteful songs, is probably a colonial legacy. A sanitation worker apparently entered a manhole without any protective apparatus with the suicide in his mind, it is alleged.


The folk singer denies everything. He did not know his songs had such effects on his listeners. He is defended by a well-heeled activist and defence lawyer who is well versed in English, Hindi and Gujerati but not Marathi, in which the whole court proceeding is conducted. Then there is the feisty prosecutor who morphs into a housewife and a mother outside the courts. The judge, we soon learn, believes in numerology and can also be impulsive when challenged outside the courts. The filmmakers humanise all the characters. They are never overtly good or bad, but just products of the space and social construct they grow.

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He who controls timeline, controls the Universe.

 Loki (Season1, E1-E6; 2021)
Marvel Cinematic Universe

When Loki was apprehended and transported after Avengers: Endgame, in the confusion of Hulk creating a tantrum for needing to use the stairs and Iron Man faking a heart attack, Loki escapes captivity through a Tesseract and enter a different realm. He lands in the headquarters of Time Variance Authority (TVA). 

Here, the narcissistic Norse God of Mischief Loki learns of variants of himself floating in the multiple timelines creating havoc. The Time-Keepers had set a Scared Timeline for events to happen, but somehow variants have made branches from the main timeline. The TVA's job is to ensure that the correct path of the Sacred Timeline is followed. Some of the variants are evil alter-egos and are hellbent on creating chaos. As he is charged against the 'Sacred Timeline', Loki's plea bargain is to hunt down another Loki variant who had killed TVA officers and stolen the time resetting devices.

Time, as we perceive, is a one-way single linear motion. In reality, it is a composite of multiple minor diversions which, from someone from a different dimension, sees it as one, much like we see a slithering snake past us by part by part in a twisting motion but on a straight path, with the present, past and future.

Since a Sacred Timeline is being followed, does it not mean that the characters in the timeline have no free will but have their path determined? No amount of willpower can change anything if everything is predetermined. If the variants have a free hand in doing things, then the whole balance would collapse. 

That brings us to the philosophical dilemma about battles and battleships in the context of free will and determinism. Who decides whether the war starts tomorrow? If it is predetermined that there is a battle tomorrow, what is the commander's decision-making role? If he chose not to go to war, is it his decision, or can we say that not having a battle was predetermined?

Loki and alter ego

Loki soon discovers a few disturbing revelations. The Time Keepers are mere androids but are controlled by someone else.

The rogue variant of himself that Loki was hunting for turned out to be a female, Sylvie. This must be a comforting story plot for those who look at gender as something quite fluid, yoyoing from one end to another and changing with time. The thing that takes the cake is that Loki, the narcissist, is so in love that he develops feelings for Sylvie! What do you call that? Love thyself?

TVA itself, the Lokis realised, is made up of variants. It turned out that it is not an authority to kerb variants after all. The need to find the real person who controls TVA becomes a necessity. This leads them to a new villain comparable to Thanos, 'He who remains' who is created in the mould of Kang the Conqueror.

The tenet of the storyline, which we will learn, is that branches from the Timeline would create variants. Some of them are evil and may overpower another variant on another timeline and exert their authority on the turn of subsequent events. It gets more complicated than in the final finale. A decision has to be made at the Citadel at the End of Time - whether 'He who remains' is the good variant trying to bring stability to the timeline or not. 

A wrong move... and a segue to the next season and the opening of a bag of worms where the evil 'He-who-remains' takes control of TVA, as Loki soon discovers...

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The future is bleak!

Love, Death & Robot ❤️☠️🤖  (Adult Scifi Animation; 2019)
Season 1-2 (2019-2021)

It used to be that animation (called cartoons back in the days) were for children. It was an outlet for mindless personification of cute animals doing impossible stunts in gravity-defying postures. It was quite acceptable if a bomb explodes right in front of the character's face. It would just get off with a bandaid on its forehead. Or it could be thrown off into a mile-long deep ravine just to would crawl back up to fight in another snippet. That was entertainment back then.

Those days are over. Now animation productions are of big budgets and delve into difficult life questions. No, adult content is left to manga series for the Japanese to deal with their men's fixations in wanting their sexual partners or dolls to have round big blue eyes like their favourite manga heroines. We are talking philosophy, the future of mankind and armageddon. Since much of the presentation is animated, the storyteller and digital artists took the liberty to expose more skin than being allowed when real actors acted. Herein lies the confusion. The animation styles are varied; some are simple 2D drawings with disproportionate body parts, some use fantastic graphic designs that viewers are confused about. We are left to wonder whether the characters are played by real actors whose appearance is pixelated to appear sci-fi.

On average, the 26 short episodes, on average lasting 20 minutes, narrate a plethora of topics that carry multiple veiled messages. 

Some of the teachings that seem apparent to me, I have tried to enlist.

If consciousness and memory can be decoded and digitalised, they can theoretically be transferred. Hence, personal desires and ambitions can continue indefinitely just by changing body parts. We do not have to leave behind a legacy or need our offspring to continue our struggle. We can become bio-engineered gladiator beasts with infinite power for infinity. 

We can see that humans show more compassion to their pets than the neighbour next door. They buy the best for their pet animals and care for them as they would their child. So, it is not outlandish if they would genetically modify their cats. In one episode, the human penchant for nuking each other left a desolate world populated with cats with opposing thumbs (genetically modified so that they could sit at dinner with my masters, I suppose), menacing three robot visitors.

History has the nasty habit of trying to repeat itself. If a particular event is twisted, the sequence of events may vary, but the endpoint will be the same, albeit within a different timeframe. One episode asks, "What if Hitler was killed not in 1945, but in 1908 when his application to Vienna Academy of Art was rejected. The Hindu concept of time moving in a cyclical manner, rather than a linear fashion, is evident in the History of Man. Man becomes an aggressor at one time, and the same person becomes the victim. The aggressor becomes the aggressed and vice versa, indefinitely, in an episode titled 'Witness'.

We like to think that we are the legitimate inhabitants of Earth by default. The planet was made for us. Well, I got news for us. We just may be the invaders upsetting the equilibrium set by others who prevailed long before us.

Ever wondered why the mammoth structures that occupy this planet exist. We are awed how the Pyramids, Easter Island statues and Stonehenge came to be. And we still do not understand their functions. Well, the episode 'When yoghurt took over' may have explained all these. A mutated yoghurt solves all of the world's problems and leaves Earthlings with all their great inventions. This must ring a bell with fans of 'Ancient Alien', which posits that we were visited by aliens who try to impart wisdom, gave up on us and went off.

A subtle message goes out to sympathisers of immigrants in the episode 'The Dump'. Local council officers after officers who go to the illegal dumpster to repossess it for development goes missing. Apparently, all the long-standing rubbish has developed a brain of their own to claim their place. Settlers who had entered our country illegally will soon have their whole life earnings and memories invested here. Their base would grow roots so deep that uprooting will be a Herculean task. 

We talk about preserving nature but not giving two hoots to people living in constant fear of wildlife. We glamourise a time when animals roamed free. Yes, in a flick of a moment, we can be snacks to predators. The wild is not kind. (Episode: Fish Night) 

Like the message from 'Citizen Kane', the character in 'Zima Blue' realises the hard way, after working all his life to unattainable heights, that the things that really matter at the end of the day are the simple things in life.

We are all so dependent on our digital devices and sometimes feel paralysed without them. Every so often, we have been locked out of possessions. With so many safety protective features added to our machines, it is not unthinkable that there will come a day that the AI inserted in them that will treat us as the perpetrator. We may be hunted down like dogs.

With the advancement in our medical treatment modalities and fixation with healthy living, immortality is theoretically possible. If no one dies anymore, overpopulation would be a problem. In one episode, having children is illegal, and there is a special police squad to hunt and shoot down children.

In one of the last episodes, like a scene from 'Gulliver travels', a giant has swept ashore. People get all excited about this new find. As expected, the curious probe, prod, pose and want a piece of momento of the beached body. Their interest wane with time as nature takes its course. The body decomposes and slowly is swept away. The only thing that is left is memory.

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When is it enough?

The Disciple (Marathi, 2021)
Netflix

Life is easy with eyes closed, accepting whatever we 'see'. However, for someone who questions, examines and introspects his every move or feeling, life can be a very tedious affair. The indecisiveness and guilt are just too much to bear. The answers available to us are just too ambivalent and can be interpreted however we want to. The more one thinks about it, the more confused he becomes in choosing the desired path.

Probably that is why we all look for shortcuts. We look upon those who have been there and done that with reverence. We hope we can use their wisdom to manoeuvre through the options available to us. It is easier this way, leaving life's big decisions to what the elders preach. If only there were a 'to do' list that answers all our queries. Even then, the answers will be not so forthcoming.

See how 'man made' law need regular amendments all the time? So how is it that the 'divine decrees' stands the test of time without considering the ambiguity of societal changes and 'modernity'? 

From the viewpoint of career, most of us have to answer at one point in our lives whether to what actually gives us satisfaction in our professional duties. Is financial gain the be-all and end-all of all professions? Is being a purist and sticking to doing the right thing adhering to the profession's rules the end goal? Is financial gain the final yardstick to determine success? 

Our tutors showed us the wisdom in performing our tasks following rules and regulations set out by the doyens of our respective fields. Working in the dark, they discovered groundbreaking finds and help to enlist the dos and don'ts. We learnt and promise to uphold the 'truth' of the respective fields. We gave these truths divine statuses.

After being thrown to the deep end of the marketplace, we soon realised that the societal demands are a world of difference from what we thought. We would be caught in a conundrum whether to stay faithful to the teachings or take shortcuts to meet the customer demands? Should we be purists or pragmatists? With the passage of time and the need to perform filial piety, the pressures for monetary fulfilment supersedes that of personal vocational gratifications. Individual satisfaction takes a back seat. We crumble and fall prey to doing what is perceived as the intelligent thing.

This Marathi film reminds me of two other movies I have seen before - Satyajit Ray's Jalsaghar  (Music Room, 1958) and Inside Llewyn Jones (2013). Like in 'Jalsaghar', viewers can truly appreciate the nuances, intricacies, and various voice modulation ranges that makes classical Indian singing so unique. As in all fields of knowledge known to Indians, music is given an esteemed place as a gift from God. Singing and music are provided respectable positions in society. People submit a lifelong commitment to trying to learn music. They believe one lifetime is not enough.

Like in 'Inside Llewyn Jones', the protagonist spends a big chunk of his life thinking he is gifted musically. Only after many disappointments does he realise that he may never be good enough. Is it because his masters have set their standard too high, unattainable by his students? Or is it that the Master himself is unsure what it is to excel and what is perfection?

This movie almost made it as India's entry to the Oscars but lost out to Jallikattu. It tells the story of a young man who is in pursuit of being somebody in the field of classical Indian singing. He wants to stay true to the teachings of his Gurus, who treated the art form not as a field of knowledge but as something akin to divinity.  They looked upon music and singing as the part of Goddess Saraswati herself to master it! Thus are the intricacies and the things it is capable and we, human beings, have not even scratched its surface. One life is definitely not enough to master it. His gurus advised him to safeguard its purity. There should not be any shortcuts or selling out for commercial interests.

All these may sound romantic, but romanticism does not fill up an empty stomach. Neither does it meet the realistic challenges of modern life. Modern societies are not interested in immersing themselves intoxicated with ragas, talas and the melodic and voice control of Indian classical singing. They yearn for musical intoxication but the headbanging and lyrics with sexual innuendos, not in praise of Nature and Divinity. As one cannot sing on an empty stomach and money is essential for survival, preservation of life seems more urgent than conservation on age-old traditional music.

Slow-moving, but after all the fanfare, it makes you think. What do we actually want? How far would we go to maintain the purity of the field of our expertise? Is it alright to cut enough to meet the demand of the marketplace? Is upholding tradition at all costs worth the sacrifice, and what expense?

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Hard times, like good times won't last!

Milestone (Meel Patthar, Hindi/Punjabi; 2021)
Director: Ivan Ayr.

It has been ingrained upon us that we are what we can contribute back to society. In philosophical terms, that is the tithe we pay back to the community for providing the security of numbers and the helping hands from the herd. So, as long as we have something to offer, we will not be looked upon as a burden. It sounds simple enough to prevent sluggards from hogging on the society for alms. And we also assume life will be the same forever and the Universe will be kind to us till the end of time.

With the progressive lengthening of our life spans but incongruous to the available economic opportunities, there is a continual fight for the struggle for the young blood to fill in for the slowing older bodies. 

The average worker will give his life, breath and blood to perform his job to the best of his abilities. He does that not necessarily due to his undying passion for his job. It may be the only thing he is good at. It may be the only thing he has control over; perhaps the scene at the homefront is too depressing with constant harassment or a tone of overbearing melancholy. His job could be his escapism. Over the years, he would be comfortable in his position and start thinking that he is indispensable to the establishment. Slowly he will realise that his service may be replaced by the younger generation. Reality will strike hard.

In this movie, Ghalib, who had just clocked 500,000km on his lorry trips, is respected by his fellow lorry drivers and employers. He has been working in a father-and-son run transportation company. After seeing his colleague dismissed for deteriorating eyesight, Ghalib realises he could be next. Hanging like a dark cloud over his head is the sad memory of his wife, who had just committed suicide. On top of that, his wife's family demands compensation for Ghalib's alleged neglected duties as a husband. Ghalib's wife had suspected that her husband was having an affair which Ghalib vehemently denies. She attributed his constant absence from home due to that. 

Meanwhile, Ghalib's employers ask him to train a young apprentice. Ghalib can see his pink slip coming...

The exciting thing that is apparent in this movie is how senescence may vary according to one's economic strata. A blue worker has an exact shelf life; after that, he has to fend for himself. On the other hand, the professional or managerial groups can continue working till health permits. In the movie, we can see Ghalib living in fear of being replaced at any time. His boss, an old Sadarji, carries on life, delegating the complicated work to his son whilst still holding the right to make crucial decisions. He does not have to worry about retrenchment. He is the boss. 

This is a very slow-moving movie but is heart-wrenching in showcasing the hard knocks of life and how we have to deal with them.

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