Corrupted to the core?

Nile Hilton Incident (Arabic/Egyptian; 2017)
Written/Directed: Tarik Saleh

Every time a new law comes into force, guess who the happy people are. No, not the law-abiding citizens or the patriots who want to see rule and order respected in this country. It is the lowly local enforcers - the front-liners who are there to ensure that the law is respected. There are the first to detect any wrongdoing at the ground level and could squash a ticket, at a nominal fee, of course. 

Everyone is happy. The poorly paid constables and local council employees get on by tying up loose ends - maybe a child's birthday present or that emergency trip to the hometown. 

The problem is that this kind of 'closing an eye' or 'I scratch your back, you scratch mine' attitude has infiltrated all strata of the civil service. What we see now are the accusations of so-and-so of the higher pecking order being charged for siphoning off funds and dishonestly performing their civil duties. Invariably, these events will merely turn up to be a storm in a teacup.

Fearing a backlash to the whole government machinery, the powers-that-be would hush everything. After all, the foxes appointed to guard the coop feel it is the ordained right to benefit from their post after years of hard work and sacrifice. With the increasing cost of living and exposure to the high life, they have only a few more years to ensure continued prosperity in their retired life and their offspring. Whatever is said and done, the rot is across the board. The words integrity, efficiency and civil service cannot be strung in the same sentence.

If we remember the early years of the 21st century in the Middle East, this catalysed the Arab Spring movement. What started as a jobless graduate failing to secure a hawker site in Libya and immolating himself in protest, the governments raised up to get their acts together. So, for a short while, at least.

In Egypt, in 2011, in Tahrir Square specifically, the people's power managed to oust Hosni Mubarak, the undisputed strongman of Egypt. Using this event as a build to the climax, this film showcases the widespread corruption and culture of protecting the high-heeled and politicians in the law enforcement units in Egypt.

Noredin, a police officer obviously not at the highest of the virtue scale, is called to investigate the death of a singer at Nile Hilton. Noredin has no qualms about pocketing extra cash from his dead victims and looking the other way if offenders are willing to dole out a little spare money. 

Slowly he realises that the whole force is corrupt to the core. Many of his superiors are on the take. Many high-level politicians are linked to the crime he is investigating, and he is helpless in completing his investigations. Vice is widespread, and pimps are kings. 

A Sudanese housekeeping assistant who witnessed the murder, meanwhile, is on the run from the corrupt police and colluding thugs. The film climaxes at the Tahrir Square demonstrations. The whole debacle leaves a horrible aftertaste. The demonstration gives the image as if all the slime brewing in the trenches just bubbles over.

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Of introverts, intellect and talking...

The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin, Irish: 2022)
Written and Directed: Colm Bairéad

My sisters and I were brought up to believe that only empty vessels make a lot of noise. Through Aesop's fables, we were told to keep our mouths shut. The story of three good friends, a tortoise and two wild geese, comes to mind. In the tale, the three friends planned a guided flight away from their habitat, a drying-up pond. The problem was that the tortoise could not fly. So the geese held either end of a long stick, and the tortoise bit the middle portion with its mouth with strict instructions never to open its mouth when they were cruising at a high altitude. And that is precisely what the tortoise did, opening its gap to praise the beauty of a 'bird's eyes view' of Earth. The end could have been more pleasant.

Children were expected to be seen and admired afar but not heard. But no says techniques of modern parenting. Children are encouraged to express their feelings. They advocate a Socratic type of learning, not to be fed with knowledge but to seek them instead. They participate in familial decision-making, perhaps visiting a gynaecologist's practice too. 

Now I also have learned that more intelligent people are less talkative. Since their basal arousal to know is high, they are said to constantly learn from the stimuli around them. Further stimulation in the form of incessant banter, overwhelming extrovert interactions and music may be offputting. Hence, many recoil into their introvert's cocoon. Arthur Schopenhauer posited that a high intellect tends to make a man unsocial'. That says little about lawyers, businessmen and politicians who source their potential clients mainly through social interactions and social functions. Persuasion via vocalisation forms a crucial crux of their reason for existence.

This Irish nomination to the Oscars is a poignant coming-of-age drama of a 9-year-old girl, Cáit, who grows up in an impoverished family. Day-to-day living is hard with a lazy unemployed father with hardly any money to go around to feed too many mouths. To top it up, her mother is pregnant with her fifth pregnancy. Obviously, there is hardly any love to go around. Cáit is sent off to spend her summer with a distant middle-aged relative to ease the burden of caring for another child. 

Cáit, the quiet girl, is received well by the middle-aged couple who themselves had lost their young child earlier. After a frosty start, Cáit becomes close to them. For the first time, she finds the love of a family and the comfort and security of a home. Then it is time to return...

An engaging movie with superb acting and retro cinematography, sending viewers back in time to 1981 Ireland. Recommended, 4.5/5.

(PS. Somebody once told me that every word we utter reverberates in the Universe forever. Like the flutter of a butterfly and the start of a typhoon, the sound waves emitted from our vocal cords definitely affect the course of Earth and the things around us. Just because we all have a mouth each, it is no excuse to yak and yak for no reason. Talk only when needed. No more and no less.)

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Is love jihad even a thing?

The Kerala Story (Hindi, 2023)

Written & Directed by Sudipto Sen

 This movie is kicking a storm in India right now. It is outrightly banned in West Bengal by the ruling party. In Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the courts have allowed screening for the time being, but the case is due to be reviewed in the Supreme Court soon. 

Some cinema hall operators have voluntarily decided not to screen the film for fear of reprisal from angry mobs. They cite not wanting to offend Muslim sentiments and the possibility of property damage. This only shows the schizophrenic nature of society. On the one hand, people talk about freedom of expression; simultaneously, there is a need to control the narrative.

The controversy stems from the story's theme - love jihad and forced conversion. A Malayalee Hindu nursing student tells her life story. A bubbly student dabbles with Islam and is lured into marrying a Muslim man after inadvertently getting pregnant. She is brainwashed to hate her roots and family, is forcibly converted, given a new identity and packed off to ISIS-controlled areas to be a sex slave. The film suggests a concerted plan by Muslim groups to identify pretty Christian and Hindu girls and lure them into Islam. The protagonist lives to tell her ordeal after she escapes one of these ISIS hell holes. 

So what is the controversy all about?

Muslims have repeatedly asserted that jihad in Islam refers to the internal striving to improve oneself and fight inner demons, not a crusade to convert the world or assert dominance over others. They insist that ISIS' brand of Islam does not follow the teachings of the mainstream Islamic schools of thought. It represents a warped understanding of the religion. Unfortunately, practising Muslims are wary of outrightly condemning their antics to protect the sanctity of Islam. They feel it is not their position to judge and condemn for fear of being labelled a heretic. The punishment for apostasy is quite unnerving. This gives the religion a bad reputation among non-believers and widens the fissure between the ummah and kaffirs. 

Does love jihad exist? Is there a concerted effort to proselytise non-Muslims? In certain tribal societies in Central Asia, a man proves his virility by kidnapping his bride. This practice was prevalent with Turks about the time of the inception of the Ottoman Empire. The Turks found the blonde, blue-eyed Caucasian girls easy targets. Within a few generations, the Turks, once with Mongoloid features, became indistinguishable from Europeans. This practice worked perfectly well for the Empire to spread its influence and faith, as the conversion was assumed to be a one-way ticket. One can check out anytime but can never leave. 

Reports of girls leaving the comfort of their cushy lives to don purdahs and carry rifles heading for ISIS suicide missions in the name of love of religion (and beau) are not unheard of. The story of Shamima Begum and her application to reinstate her British citizenship comes to mind. 

This love jihad business is often portrayed as an RSS and BJP's political propaganda and an Islamophobic Trobe to polarise society for political gains. Interestingly, this phenomenon was first highlighted by a Bishop in Kerala way back in 2009. The presiding High Court judge in a forced conversion case that ensued later agreed that there was a well-known movement known as Love Jihad or Romeo Jihad. The official figures for this are elusive, but one finding put 1,400 from diverse ethnic backgrounds in India as victims.

In many so-called 'right-wing' YouTube channels, there is much coverage of Hindu groups supposedly rescuing Hindu and Christian girls from such ordeals. 

Even though accusations of sexual grooming of societies have been making their rounds for some time now, it is only of late that people in power have woken up to the idea that many communities in the U.K. and Sweden, particularly of Pakistani descent, have been slowly building a web of emotional and hierarchical connections with their young to intentionally manipulate, exploit and abuse them. Investigations into this gained momentum after the 2010 Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal in the U.K. The Prime Minister of the U.K. even admitted threats imposed by such groups and is under their scrutiny.

Finally, all the parties that hurl accusations and counter-accusations at each other have only one agenda. It is a numbers game. The endpoint is usurping power and control. Using victim card to garner sympathy and invoking God's name in their actions, the ultimate aim is to win elections. It is not about doing the right thing or being fair. The end justifies the means.

Meanwhile, the film's financiers are laughing all the way to the bank as the film smashes the box office and grosses unprecedented returns on investment. So far, in such a short duration since its release, it is said to be the fifth highest-grossing Hindi film of 2023.  

(P.S. The events portrayed in the film were reportedly inspired by the accounts of four women from Kerala who converted to Islam and travelled with their husbands to Afghanistan to join ISIS between 2016 and 2018. They were interviewed by a news website in 2019. They were part of a 21-member group from Kerala to join ISIS in 2016 and have remained incarcerated in Afghanistan since surrendering in 2019. The figure of 32,000 victims of love jihad mentioned in their trailer (later withdrawn) may have been exaggerated.)

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Heads you win, tails I lose?

At Charles III Coronation @ London

BBC is in the limelight again. All for the wrong reasons.

When the Bersih movement was on a roll in the streets of Kuala Lumpur and painting the town yellow, BBC was on a rampage screening the sea of yellow flood hourly, painting the idea that the whole country is in tatters. In reality, the following day, it was business as usual for Malaysians.

When interest parties protested against the cut in Indian farmer subsidies in Delhi, BBC again had a field day. They were lamenting that the Indian public was prevented from expressing their democratic rights. Even though India's internal politics did not affect the British or the rest of the world one tiny bit, it took itself as the vanguard of the oppressed and the champion of the downtrodden. It did not matter that the protestors were not farmers but middlemen who tended to lose from the Government's move.

Bersih Protest @ Kuala Lumpur

But now, despite all the austerity measures taken in the UK to combat recession following Brexit and Covid, the British Exchequer thought it made perfect economic sense to spend between £50 and £100 million of taxpayers' money to finance the coronation of their next monarch, King Charles III. Buckingham Place says that the events' festivities and tourism would finance themselves.

Many beg to differ. With the hashtag #NotMyKing, many express discontentments through peaceful demonstrations. We are told they had earlier informed the Metropolitan Police of their intentions. Still, the Police arrested them anyway as a threat to public peace and conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.

Nowhere their rights as citizens of a democracy to express themselves come out, surprisingly.
In the meantime, leaders of their former colonies shamelessly feted the monarch, who is no Prince Charming by any figment of imagination, whose ancestors brutally looted the colonies' national treasures and turned the native into subservient slaves.

Delhi Farmers' Protest

The world has moved on from a feudal system. Even the substitute for an authoritarian rule is found to be deficient, and we are still on the journey in pursuit of an ideological way to rule over humankind. Many empty promises had come their way and made equally quick exits.

 
To imagine that a King is ordained by God Himself with special powers by birth to rule legitimately over a piece of land is laughable. Even God is losing his shine in this increasingly Godless world. So, to accept a King as God's representative on God does not make sense. But we smirk when told that the Egyptian pharaohs were the mediators between the gods and men. Spot any difference?

Points to ponder. @RajivMessage (twitter)
The coronation of King Charles III is:
- a ritual (as distinct from something 'rational'),
- filled with idolatry,
- symbol of supremacy,
- birth-based privilege,
- built on centuries of loot/oppression of 100s of millions worldwide.
Yet, the millions of royal fans in the West have the hypocrisy to accuse my culture of having irrationality, idolatry, birth-based hierarchy, human rights violations, etc.
I respect their right to celebrate their tradition. But they ought to get off their high horses and respect others' traditions. And Wokeists sucking up to the limelight. Money & prestige can buy a lot. (And former colonies are sucking up to their slave owners under the Commonwealth. Err, the wealth is is not common. It is theirs!)

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Nothing is as it seems.

A Chiara (Italian; 2022)
Director: Jonas Carpignano

That is what coming-of-age means. Growing up, we are imbibed with teachings of what is right and wrong. Our perception of the world is made, and we want to lead a life full of good virtues and abstain from negativities. Our first teachers about life, the future and the outside get a special honorarium in my mind. We placed them on a pedestal and became a reference point in our future decision-making.

Then we are slowly exposed to the outside world. We make friends. We become aware that life is not so straightforward after all. People do wrong things and are still cool about it. Our eyes are open to the reality of life. Suddenly our parents are not so saintly anymore. They have their gross shortcomings. The ideal world that we wanted to build becomes an unfulfilled dream.   We become another spoke in the world of misfortune. Did the parents do what they did for the family's well-being, for a better life, fully aware that it was wrong? Is it the responsibility of the rest to be complicit in the cover-up? Or should be just squeal, as it is the right thing to do.

This long-burn drama uses many non-professional actors to tell that exact story. The story of Chiara starts with a boisterous 18th birthday party of her sister's. Many family members and friends attend. Intimacy is apparent amongst the many close-knit relatives. The father is shown as a sensitive, loving father. 

The next morning Chiara's father goes missing after a car blast. Chiara is 15. Her mother, her elder sister as well as other members seem not too concerned about his disappearance. On her phone, Chiara learns that her father is a fugitive and is on the run for Mafia-related activities. In the meantime, Chiara beats up a fellow student at school. In view of her exposure to the Mafia, the social service decides to send her off to a foster family. Chiara has to grow up fast to make a decision about which way she wants her future to be - a brand one away from all the current trappings or one intertwined with the Mafia.

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Are you happy?

The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
Director: Clint Eastwood

With all the hype surrounding finding the perfect love and that love is forever with persuasions like 'listen to your heart' and 'you'll know when the right one comes along', this one is a wet blanket.

This film may be one of the best love stories ever made, not because it was directed by one of Hollywood's best directors but because it deals with a mature theme. Is the whole idea of marriage to complete the cycle of childbearing and childrearing as well as dotting the 'i's and crossing the 't's to ensure the institution of marriage continues unhinged, to pass the baton to generations next or is it to savour all the senses that complete a human being?

Is sex a privilege accorded only between a society-sanctioned couple and not with anybody else? Is it true that some people are just not wired to stay monogamous, or is it just an excuse to play truant, to savour the forbidden fruit?

Did society criminalise extramarital sex to give a face to paternity before a time when paternity testing was mainstream? At a time when most sexually transmitted infections were viewed as God's wrath on fornicators and adulterers and antibiotics were not discussed, it does not make sense for little children to run around without their mothers. What contraception? Coitus is a divine act sanctioned for procreation and nothing else, say the Judeo-Christian traditions. Now that our contraceptive options have improved, is this still applicable? 

Detractors of the above will cite the emotional (or lack of) reasons for keeping everything within the family unit, the good, bad, warts and all. Sex is just one component of married life. There are more experiences to achieve in this union called matrimony. 

This film gently deals with this touchy topic without condescending thoughts or resolution. It is what it is. We just have to deal with it.

Two siblings return to their farmhouse to have their mother's will read. They are shocked that her mother wants her remains to be cremated and ashes scattered over a bridge nearby. The children are puzzled as the family already has a cemetery plot. Looking through her journals, the children get access to the mother's well-kept secret. The mother, Francesca, was a war bride when she met her love in Italy at the tail end of WW2. Excited about the idea of marrying an America and migrating to the USA, her hopes are dashed when she is stuck in Iowa, on a farm where nothing happened - no neon lights, no Disneyland. In the summer of 1965, when Francesca's husband and her two teenage kids were away attending a fair over four days, she had a brief affair with a National Geographic photographer. Francesca lived the rest of her married life in memory of those four days, still performing her motherly and wifely duties.

In the spring of youth, with raging hormones, we plunge into relationships. Soon the magic died out. The ember of passion fizzles out. We reach a crossroads - to cave in to bodily needs or to look at the whole exercise as a higher calling and persevere.

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Follo

A legacy to leave behind?

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Writer & Director: Martin McDonagh

Different people would interpret this movie differently. As all movies based in Ireland tend to be based on the Irish Rebellion, naturally, it could be construed as a veiled depiction of the clash between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. It could be an allegorical reference to a futile feud between brothers which had lost all relevance and had no meaning in modern Ireland. The police, representing England, could be the ruling coalition and may benefit from continued chaos.

Someone proposed that the storyteller is trying to imply that hope had died in the region, and another character is pushing for the other to get out of the place to start a new life.

To put the plot straight, the story happens on an island, Inisherin, during the tail-end of the Irish Civil War, around the 1920s, just across the straits on the mainland. Nothing much is happening on the island. The protagonist, Pádraic, milks his cow and spends much time at the local pub. One day, his usual drinking buddy, Colm, says he does not want anything to do with him anymore. The movie's whole point is to guess why Colm's sudden change of heart. To make it more dramatic, Colm, a violinist, threatens that if Padraic does not stay away, he will amputate his fingers one by one with each meeting. 

Pádriac is actually not the sharpest tool in the shed. On the other hand, Colm plays the violin, tries to compose new tunes, and teaches youngsters his skill. He is a great sport at the local pub. Meanwhile, Pádriac's sister, who is reasonably well-read, cooks and cares for him, calls it quits. She leaves the island.

I think the film's cryptic message is the existential crisis question. We start adulthood thinking that the world is an oyster for us to scoop. With the 'never say die' attitude, we can mould a utopia of peace and understanding. When reality sinks in and mortality almost stares into our faces, we start reassessing our achievements. We wonder what our legacy is going to be. We wish we had things differently if we were to do things all over again. This knowledge, a life lesson, is what we want to leave for the young to learn. Sometimes life lessons need to be drilled in a not so pleasant. Mollycoddling does not always work. Sometimes it is kind to be unkind. 

A third person would label all these as depression, a reaction to chronic exposure to uncertainty.

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