Finding wisdom where others find pleasure!

Sila ay Akin (They are Mine, Tagalog; 2023)
Director: McArthur C. Alejandre

Amongst the members of the lowest heap of the pecking order, it is said that the community self-regulates itself. These guidelines, called social mores or morality, are allegedly laid down to steer the community to a virtuous way of living. This would appease the Gods as it is the correct thing to do. Its payback can be experienced in the afterlife or the next birth.

Paradoxically, the masters' perceptions of good and evil are different. In the eyes of the slaves, their aim in life was to usurp as much wealth as possible and immerse themselves in hedonistic activities.

The slaves scorn their master's attitude towards acquiring wealth and their aissez-faire outlook to morality but justify their own fastidiousness as a decree from the divine forces.

The unabashed desire for wealth is ostracised as greed. To yearn for the sumptuous spread of delicacies is labelled gluttony, and unsanctioned wanting of sexual pleasures without societal approval is termed sin. The fear of God is imposed upon them to toe the line. Curiously, these laws do not apply to the master class. It is said that because of this, the master class can thumb down their slaves to stay in power and assert dominance.

What we realise is that the social norms that the slave community imposed upon themselves are potentially self-defeating. It stifles their personal development but ensures that the masters have a constant labour force supply. Slaves remain slaves.

So, if the social mores are removed from the equation, would the society prosper? Perhaps not.

In a way, this film asks the same question. The film could draw audiences more for its explicit nature rather than the theme and storyline; yours truly tries to find wisdom where others find pleasure. t is the curse of the profession.

The setting is in the slumps of Manila. A son, JC, returns home to his widowed mother's home. JC is returning after years of being away. This time, he returns after getting into trouble with a gang in Baguio. JC has a girlfriend of three years with him. At home, the mother lives with her first son, Pao, and his wife. She had adopted a mute girl, a rape victim whom she picked up from the streets.

The theme around the household is about earning money. The aged mother is a street vendor, and the adopted girl helps her. The elder brother is a male exotic dancer and moonshines as a gigolo by the side. His wife used to be an exotic dancer but stopped after coming into the family. JC is slowly inducted into the same profession. Money is trickling in. Everyone is happy.

The apparent thing around the household is their lax attitude towards morality surrounding sex. The mother curtained off a small part of the bedroom for JC and his girlfriend to sleep together, knowing very well they are not married. The family is okay with the job everyone is doing. When Pao's rich client, a boyfriend, promises him a free pass to the USA in lieu of employment and residence there, everybody is happy.

So with all the restrictions against wealth acquisition and sexual freedom lifted off the agenda, everything should be hunky dory, right? Perhaps not, as is subsequently seen as the story goes. Anger, violence, and the desire to dominate and control ensure the member stays put. Like crabs in a pail, each will pull the other down to ensure it is status quo for everyone. The loser will be content to get stuck in the slime and censure the occasional budding sprout from escaping the muck.

Can money really be the panacea to solving all problems? In the immediate future, it could be. Only when one reaches his destination and lets a sigh of relief would he realise that life is no park in the walk. Something would saunter in the name of the black dog, waiting to pounce upon the generation next! We are advised to stick to routines and follow religiously proscribed guidelines or cookbook recipes. We need the occasional outlier to push mankind to a higher level.

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A philosopher's stone?

The Vaccine War (Hindi, 2023)

Written, Directed by Vivek Agnihotri

This is a sort of victory lap, a valedictorian dance to celebrate their success, a pat on the back for a job well done. It is also a proud moment to have stayed resilient when no one had any confidence that India would survive the COVID-19 pandemic. It gives them the bragging rights to flaunt their success story in thumping the virus that took the world by storm. They persevered when the rest of the world shook their heads, disapproving and sneering at their moves. When everyone, including their own people, mocked their actions and shamed them via media and toolkits, they stood their ground. 

Even though India had an excellent track record in the pharmaceutical industry, its experience in making vaccines was in its infancy at best. With the pressures of impending doom and possible annihilation of mankind, Big Pharma had all to lose by not selling its vaccines to the most populous country on the planet. 

Maybe it was politics or national pride, but the powers that be decided to put their trust in science and local scientists. India became one track in wanting to roll out its own home-researched vaccine. 

This film narrates the trials and tribulations that the Government of India, the researchers and the scientists of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) endured from the time they worked on the virus and finally rolled out to vaccinate the entire nation in record times. Along the way, they had to fight the lobbyists calling for the entry of foreign vaccines, primarily from Pfizer and the paid local babus; they spoke people. Pressures from the Fourth and even Fifth Estates, who merely fulfilled their roles in check and balance, appear unpatriotic during this exercise. 

Finally, after a few ups and downs, the ICMR managed to churn out their indigenous vaccine with inactivated whole-virion, which elicits a neutralising antibody response. They upheld their stance that it is superior to the mRNA vaccine. History has proven them right in retrospect, as India was the first country to put the ghost of the Wuhan virus behind them and move forward economy-wise. The whole pandemic had improved their standing in the eyes of the world as they went to donate their Covaxin to the world like a big brother would. 

Despite WHO's initial hesitation to allow India's COVID-19 vaccines to be approved for mass utilisation, it later relented. Unlike Pfizer, which only provided its vaccines to the highest bidders, India decided to portray itself as a saviour to mankind by sending its vaccines to the remotest and poorest regions of the world.

It is a feel-good film for the right-wing-leaning supporters of the current government. The left-leaning liberals label it as a self-aggrandisement exercise and are quick to point out everything that is imprecise in this presentation. The proof of the pudding is that India swiftly recovered from the COVID lockdown and has gone on to 'business-as-usual' mode in record time.

P.S. A philosopher's stone is actually a metaphor for the enlightenment experience. When we obtain the Philosophers' Stone, we achieve what the Buddha achieved. We find what was lost when we fell. We recover who and what we truly are.

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What is a MacGuffin?

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
Director: James Mangold

It is nostalgia that drew us, who were lucky enough to be blown away by the very first offering of the Indiana Jones franchise, i.e., before it was a trilogy and is now in its fifth instalment. Intriguingly, the same actor appears in all five films over 42 years. 

It is not fun seeing an 80-year-old man swashbuckling and manoeuvring his way through the busy streets, dodging baddies and bullets. As we know the story's outcome, where the crooks will lose, and the truth will prevail, there is nothing more to look forward to.

The idea of a Time Machine dating back to the time of Archimedes is refreshing, though. The backstory behind the 'Dial of Destiny' is more fascinating than how Indy and his side kicks, as always, outwink his nemesis. This time around, part of an ancient find piqued the interest of remnant Nazis, now, in 1969, is in NASA. While the whole of the USA is rejoicing in the return of its first trio of astronauts from the Moon, Indy has to don his signature hat and whip to hunt part of an ancient Greek dial, fabled to have existed since Archimedes. 

The Dial is found to have been found in ship wreckage off the shores of a Mediterranean island named Antikythera in the early 1900s, hence its name, Antikythera Dial. It is said to be the world's first hand-held analogue computer. It is a device to calculate solar position and predict solar eclipses. 

Harping on the mystery surrounding its time of invention, which, by all accounts, was way ahead of its time, the moviemakers decided to bend the facts a bit. Even though most studies date the Dial as being invented around 100-150 BCE, newer research dates it at maybe 200-250 BCE, coinciding with Archimedes (of the Eureka and the nude run from the bathtub fame!). The scriptwriters also tweaked the power of the Dial to enable time travel. The ex-Nazis wanted to go back to WW2 to alter the outcome of the war. Archimedes had allegedly wanted help from the future to fight the Romans. It said Archimedes died during the Roman Siege of Syracuse in 212 BC.

P.S. Another new word learnt -MacGuffin. A MacGuffin is an object, idea, person, or goal that the characters are either in pursuit of or which serves as motivation for their actions. In this film, the Antikythera Dial is the MacGuffin.

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If there is a God...

Godland (Vanskabte Land, Volaða land, Icelandic, Danish; 2022)

Written & Directed: Hlynur Pálmason

The colonial masters must have thought they were doing the natives a favour by coming to their country and 'civilising' them. The religious people of the colonising race thought bringing religion to their shores would 'save' the natives from the eternal damnation of hellfire as well as earn them a few brownie points in the eyes of God.

Actually, the primary aim of the invaders was to get manpower. Europe had awoken from a great slumber. They had improved their weapons and were on a rampage. They had devised a way to mass-produce agricultural produce. For that, they needed manpower, and slavery was found to be a convenient way. After all, the African leaders would bend over backwards to capture their kind and enemies from opposing villages for this trade.

When people from the West heard of the abysmal conditions in which slaves lived and worked, a boycott of slave-produced products was mooted. Coincidentally, the Industrial Revolution exploded then. The masters ditched the slave trade, but in place came bonded labourers and overworked factory workers to extract natural resources for invaders to usurp for a song.

Perhaps religion is the soothing elixir to soothe the hurt caused by the rapacious abuse of the natives. Whilst the left hand cheats them blind, the right hand gives the analgesic opiate to alleviate the pain. The colonialists diverted the natives from their traditional belief, which had served them well, to an alien one, which only served the perpetrators well. The host were made to look down on their own religion.

This extremely slow-moving movie narrates the tale of a Danish priest, Lucas, who is sent to the interiors of Iceland through a rugged sea and overland journey to spread the good news of Christianity to the Danish pioneers. Lucas also has a side interest. He enjoys taking outdoor photographs with his spanking-new device called a camera. 

It was the harsh journey, the near-death experience or the inability to grasp the new tongue Lucas could not fit in. He questions his whole purpose of being there. Due to the complex Icelandic language, he cannot mingle in the community's conversations. He queries God's purpose in sending him there. He cannot even perform his priestly duties of leading a prayer and listening to his parish's woes. If there were a God, would he make his servants endure such difficulties to spread His words?

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For bringing the horse to water!

A lady, visibly struggling with her gravid tummy, was heard conversing with a fellow attendee at a maternity clinic. Excerpts from her conversing, which were anything but discrete, were soon made known to others. She was complaining about how she still had to go to school carrying a pair of twins in utero with just less than one month from her due date. This year alone, five teachers had gone on maternity leave, leaving a large vacuum for others to fill up. 

It does not help that her school had 80% of the teachers as ladies and that recently, maternity leaves had been extended from 60 days a few years previously to 98 days now. 

"I am just wasting my time teaching children who are not interested in learning, anyway," she was lamenting. 

Thanks, Mr Khoo!

I remember when a teacher motivated me to push my boundaries beyond my imagination, reaching for the unthinkable. I was just an average student trying to sponge whatever little knowledge my teachers were trying to impart. One thing I never did throughout my schooling life was to fail a test. Be it a public examination or a quiz, I may not excel, but I definitely will not falter. I did fail my motorbike licence test, though. I wanted to save the money spent on riding school but used my old bone shaker instead.

So, I was devastated when the monthly test result for physics was out. I found that I had scored 16%. I stared at big red-inked scribblings on the test paper with disbelief. I should not be surprised as the questions were based on the exact topics my Physics teacher had assured us we would not be drilled. Still, heartbreaking it sure was. 

Pensive mood, are we?

The subsequent examination would be the mid-term test, which would have some bearing on the school testimonials. This cannot be, I told myself. I had to pull myself with my own bootstraps. Frankly, I found it extremely difficult to understand what my Physics master was trying to teach. I felt we were in different lingos, like how a dog and a cat or a hen would talk to a duck. Sometimes, I thought he was the manifestation of an oracle of Delphi. He managed to create a sense of mysticism around the subject matter. At the end of the lesson, we, the students, will stay as ignorant as before. 

Penang Sunrise

The falter at the monthly test pushed me to learn everything covered in the syllabus. I burned the midnight oil in all barrels, leaving no stones unturned. So when the midterm examinations were out, not only did I come out with flying colours, but as the top scorer of the form, I went on to win a book prize. 

Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought of winning an academic award like that. If not for the direct or indirect prodding from my Physics teacher, Mr Khoo, I would have just been another student who passed through the school corridors, leaving nothing behind. Now, I have at least tasted the sweet, succulent taste of victory and personal satisfaction. 'Ain't no mountain high enough!' is no longer just a passing statement or a line in a song.

The recent secondary school reunion was a gesture to show our appreciation to our grand old school teachers who still remember us or at least put up a convincing front to tell us they do. Seriously, just as they made an impression on us, we did not know how much observation they made about us and live to tell us. 

Memorial for the founder, RS Hutchings

One for the album

N.B. Thank you, Teik Hock, Sow Wu, Guan Chiang, et al for the pictures.

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Everything is out of order!

And Justice for All (1979)

Director: Norman Jewison

During one of those festivities gatherings, we managed to pin down one of our old schoolmates. That was quite an achievement, for he was and still is a senior partner in one of KL's outstanding law firms. We created a hypothetical situation. What if he, as a lawyer, either gets a client who admits his crime at the onset or, along the course of the trial, would he still continue to defend his client?

In so many words, with mentions of the right to proper legal representation and duty to the client, our layman's minds understood that he would still continue defending his client. His task was to ensure that his client was free of his charge. Of course, he would not purposely make his opponent win, knowing pretty well that his client committed the offence. Nowhere in the conversation was justice and seeking the truth uttered. Justice is what the court determines, and the truth is what is argued out. 

This must have been what the Sophists of the Greek tradition would have wanted - a skill in public speaking so convincing that one is able to sell ice to the Eskimo.

Recent events in this country prove that the legal arm is not there to seek the truth or dispense justice. It is just a question of who is holding the mantle of power. Seeing how often we see the arm of the Law bending backwards to the tunes of the members occupying the corridor of power is nauseating.

Arthur Kirkland (Al Pacino) sees all these in force in the courts. Haughty judges throw their weights around, suspects are treated like dirt, and the system has no time for the common man. Around him, he sees many dysfunctional attorneys move around like zombies playing to the tune of the system. Kirkland punches a judge when the judge repeatedly makes it difficult for his case to be put forward. For that, Kirkland spends a day in jail.

So Kirkland is perplexed when he is called to defend the judge he punched. The judge is charged with assault. The system feels that hiring a lawyer who abhors the judge would strengthen his case. He sees the system as existing to take of each other's interests. The last of their concerns is to improve the dispensing of justice, the welfare of the accused or reduce the number of those wrongly accused. 

Kirkland is threatened about his long-forgotten breach of client-attorney confidentiality case. He has no choice but to accept the offer. Along the way, he discovers more dirty secrets about the judge and rots about the system.

7.5/10. Good watch.

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