History made easy!

King's Man (2021)
Story and Direction: Matthew Vaughn

I am so happy that the history lessons I was exposed to in childhood were varied. Thanks to the old Malaysian syllabus, the people of my generation are exposed to the likes of Rasputin, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the events leading to World War 1.

At least I know the storytellers stretched their artistic licence too far to convince the viewers that a single organisation headed by 'The Shepherd' singlehandedly masterminded the genesis of WW1 and the collapse of the Romanov dynasty in Russia. Interestingly, Rasputin is portrayed as a member of this cult and works in cahoots with 'The Shepherd' and receives orders from him. 

Even Gavrilo Princip, Archduke Ferdinand's assassin, is said to be in the above group. In reality, we know he did not act alone but as a member of a secret society called 'Black Hand'. True, the first assassination attempt failed, but the fatal shooting was by sheer coincidence.

Rasputin -The Mad Monk

Rasputin is visualised here as I remember him from my textbooks - A tall, scrawny man with bad teeth, piercing eyes, and a bevvy of women trailing in his shadows. If my memory does not fail me, the Russian prince suffered from haemophilia. Rasputin garnered the monarch's admiration after treating the haemorrhaging prince following a bad fall, not after poisoning him. 

Margaretha MacLeod nee Zelle
aka Mata Hari

I know the 'Mata Hari' was a Dutch spy accused of working for the Nazis. I never heard of her landing in the USA, and having a secret film recording of her in a compromising position with Woodrow Wilson prevented the USA from entering WW1. It was the gunning of the ocean liner RMS 'Lusitania' by German U-boats. Of course, some say it carried weapons and ammunition to the Allied Forces.

History is made easy here. It seems that The Shephard and his Flock. Vladimir Lenin and even a young Hitler are portrayed to have their beginnings in this movement. In essence, one hand controls the world's direction.

Despite being the third in its series, this film is actually a prequel to its predecessors. It shows how this clandestine movement started with a pacifist, Orlando, the Duke of Oxford, losing his wife during Boer War. Orlando's son, Conrad, watches the whole drama and grows up to want to fight evil.

After Conrad dies, the movement goes gangbusters to get to the root of world problems. The invincible Shephard is located and is neutralised.

An enjoyable watch, only for its cross-reference to world history events.

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

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Blurred line between fact and fiction!

Inventing Anna (Miniseries, 2021)

Netflix

Believe it or not, this miniseries is based on actual events. Between 2013 and 2017, a young German heiress of Russian descent by the name of Anna Delvey was seen in the social circles of New York. She was moving around the company of who's who in the art scene and the rich and famous. Everybody was excited about her ambitious plan to create an ultra-exclusive club where the exceptionally wealthy clientele could partake. Soon every banker, lawyer, designer and leeches was dying to be in her company. The only perennial problem is that his apparently flamboyant young lady has problems mobilising her money from Germany. Her strict father is insistent that Anna earns her every single penny herself. 

People soon realise that Anna was spending way too much than she actually managed to show. Not wanting to be embarrassed, her many famous socialites and supporters of Anna's plan to build a foundation instead stay anonymous and would not like to be associated with her. This was discovered by a problematic journalist who decided to investigate Anna. She has to finish her investigations in record time as she is due to deliver her baby anytime now.

The story of Anna Delvey @ Anna Sorokin peels open the problems with modern living. Money begets money, and affluence pulls influence. Creating a persona is so important these days, and the ultimate tool to create a fake narrative is social media. It paints an illusion of prosperity and contentment when it is just a smokescreen for the ugly backdrop that lurks in the background. It is the gratifying playground of narcissists. The story is so hyperreal that it alters reality which is not so rosy.

Outstanding achievements are achieved from dreaming, but building sandcastles in the air does not hold water. One lie to cover another only gets one entangled in a web of deceit that will only reveal itself on its own finally.

Are parents really responsible for the mess that their offspring create? Can they be blamed if their children create mayhem in society? Do children come from parents or merely go through their parents? At a time when parenting is outsourced so much to nannies, schools and cyberspace, who knows who creates their personality and values? Nobody listens to their parents anymore. The children have a legitimate excuse for all their follies and failures - overbearing parenting!

It should be pretty apparent that it is a priority to save big conglomerates whenever there is an economic downturn. The justification for this is that the collapse of a large corporation has a spill down effect on the small people and the country's economy at large. The push is there to ensure their continuity at the expense of the rest of the country. The same things happen in the legal system. The average man-in-the-street will never be able to afford to appoint the shrewd legal eagles to seek justice arising from the inhumane and unscrupulous criminal antics of business concerns. The current turns of events in many high-profile cases are indeed proof that there is an invisible hand from above (definitely NOT the Hand of God!) that is controlling the narrative. By no means, beyond a shadow of a doubt, one can confidently assume that there are two sets of rules of law (not justice); one for the corporations and another for the little men (and women).

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

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... and that's how the cookie crumbles.

Belfast (2021)
Director: Kenneth Branagh.

In the mid-70s, as a secondary school student, I saw some of my classmates leave the country. Their parents were affluent and had lost confidence in the Malaysian education system. They thought that the New Education Policy after the May 13 riot with Malay as the medium of instruction was doomed to fail. And the New Economic Policy, which emphasises affirmative action, will only produce a nation of mediocres at best.

Affluence could make them picky on their choices in life, whereas the rest of us, the mere mortals, could only make do with what is available to us. We took everything in a stride with the sentimentality of nationalism thrown in and the conviction that the divine forces would help those who help themselves. Still, we were grateful that opportunities unavailable to our parents were there for our taking, so we thought. 

Then came the early 80s. Suddenly, we saw another section of our classmates disappear. They had been offered national scholarships to study overseas. Some were pinched by our neighbour. In contrast, the rest of us were thrown into the deep end of the pool of cramping 2-years' of studies into an 18-month extensive course which is viewed as the most difficult examination in the world, equivalent to the A-levels, the Higher School Certificate. The added problem was that they were no books in Malay, but we were to use older English books and do our mental translations as we answered the questions! We soldiered on.

Then came university, the ridiculous bi-peaked academic performances of its students and the apparent push to pass sub-standard 'scholars' came to light. As if like magic, mediocre students miraculously perform well in final examinations. We turned a blind eye.

Fast forward to the present era. We now realise that the bubble of a dream that we had all this while had just popped on our faces. We wake up rubbing our eyes, trying to make sense of the time of the night. Then it dawns upon us. We realise the master plan of social engineering. The bus has left. Now, our children feel unwelcomed to serve the nation. They have a funny feeling that we threw them under the bus. They now have to seek greener pastures elsewhere, much like what the millions had doing the same over the last century. It is just our predecessors marched into the country, not out.  Only migrants of a particular religion are welcomed, not the rest. This, my friend, is modern religious cleansing.

This film is about the tumultuous time of the Northern Ireland conflict in August 1969 when a riot broke out in a Catholic neighbourhood in Belfast. The story is told from the point of view of a 9-year old boy. It is a coming of age tale of the boy who has to grow up fast to face the challenging times as unrest spread in the housing estate, and his family, being a closet Protestant, are forced to choose sides. His parents have to decide whether to stay on despite the uncertainty or flee to more peaceful environments. With them are the grandparents who feel sentimental about their Irish identity and the good old days.

Between the push and pull factors, everybody has to make life-altering decisions to face their futures. Even though events in life are by chance, mere coincidences, altered by simple things like just a flutter of a butterfly, our actions and inactions are in the equation that changes the course of destiny.

(P.S. I write this as I witness ridiculous things happen around me. Pea-brained people argue about trivialities as the elephant in the room goes on a rampage. Young larks fly off the roost seeking newer terrains as their nests become toxic cesspools. The cacophony of small minds in big numbers is mind-blowing.)

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

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Then and now...

Somebody's here!

It is a piece of land right in the middle of the triangular subcontinent, a land so remote that King Dasavaratha thought it was apt for Ram, Sita and Laxman to spend 14 years in exile. A forest lush with various flora, deer, birds with psychedelic-hued feathers, the cursed stone of Ahalya, sages, tribes and demons used as their playground and workstations. It soon came to be non-existent with climate change and invading foreign invaders over the generations.

Locally made pistols

The farangs took a particular interest in this area when they were kings. The abundance of minerals in that area piqued their curiosity. Many mines sprung up, and the visitors thought it was an appropriate venue to host numerous factories specialising in gun manufacturing, ammunition and bombs.

There it was, Jabalpur of the central state of Madhya Pradesh with its gun factories, military barracks and related military training posts. 

What used to be a playing field for sages the like of Gautama who sought peace beyond the physical world is now a minefield for training warriors to shatter the living daylights of their enemies.

@India Coffee House

The invaders also brought in uniforms which impressed the locals. Somehow, this uniformed dressing gave authority to its wearers, and the natives were dying to put them on their skin. They did not mind that it would mean thrashing their own kind and playing subservient to the colonial masters.

The locals in foreign costumes were God-sent to the invaders. It made it much easier for the HQ some 7,000 km away to cow their subjects into submission. This is how British troops and officials about 20,000 ruled over the 300 million population in India.

It is a jungle out there!

Heading somewhere?

Renaissance in the pipeline?

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

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Is it because of Nature or nurture?

Badhaai Do (Congratulations Due, Hindi; 2022)
Netflix

Learnt a new word today, a lavender marriage. 

Sure, the law has accepted the third gender and various sexual orientations. But, mind you, it is not universal and definitely not freely tolerated by many conservative communities. 

To conform to societal expectations and pressures, many members of the LGBTQIA+ community get themselves involved in 'sham marriages'. Couples undergo lavender marriages to appease the family and conceal their socially stigmatised sexual orientations. This is not something new. Rock Hudson, Barbara Stanwyck, Tyrone Power and many more in Hollywood had made arrangements to save their careers. Lately, in Communist China, it has been revealed that gay men hook up with lesbian women through social media to show their 'wife' during the new year visits to prevent nagging from the family members. Same-sex unions are illegal in China. 

Slowly, we can see that OTT (Over-the-top) platforms are trying to override the prevailing societal norms as determined by the local cultures. Some may argue that these OTTs, being international in their outlook, may only have one goal - to push their boundary, provoke, start a conversation, and perhaps create a single narrative, a New World Order for everyone. They do all these while laughing all the way to the bank. These OTTs, media services that transmit directly to viewers, bypass traditional gatekeepers who keep a tab on what the public can consume. Rightly or wrongly, via this film, I get the vibe that they are trying to make LGBTQIA+ mainstream. 

The next burning question that needs to be answered is whether this LGBT tendency is ingrained in Nature or artificially created? Do we all have an inborn sexual attraction that gets suppressed due to social mores - as the woke generation implies, gender is fluid? Or is it because of society's openness and expressive nature that we can tell our wants and dislikes? 

Is the contamination of drinking water from our river polluted with hormones from contraceptives pills, making men more effeminate? Are plastic wastes and toxic hydrocarbon effluent screwing up our internals? Or is it just Nature's way to curb population explosion before the re-set button is ignited.

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

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