a citizen, a detective and a thief

the lovely word bathos (a fall from the sublime to the ridiculous, Gk depth) comes to mind when describing this egyptian comedy, apparently a big hit in the arab world, despite its depictions of sexuality and criticism of censorship and police inefficiency. it opens with a soulful number by the thief (also a poet-singer) who is serving time and ends in a ludicrous macarena number by the three eponymous characters. citizen selim, a handsome young writer with western sensibilities (opera, ballet, impressionist art), bumps into an old family friend detective gefour, now a bumbling police sergeant, when he goes to the police station to report a stolen car. gefour, the human fly is drawn to selim, the flypaper and to thank selim for a favour, foists hayat, a beautiful young woman (shown on the movie cover) as a housekeeper. selim, while in love with the sultry madiha, is increasingly attracted to hayat, unaware that she is the thief's lover. their worlds collide when hayat steals the manuscript of the novel selim is working on and gives it to the thief who has since been released. the thief appears to have his own worldview on books and morality (his favourite fuel for making tea is a book or two, preferably lacking in morals). things get hopelessly entwined when the thief burns selim's manuscript for its paucity of "good" characters and in a shocking scene selim puts out the thief's eye in a fit of anger. from here on, the movie's descent into banality is swift. the detective brokers a truce whereby selim is exonerated of the crime in return for a tidy sum of money. in a inexplicable turn of events, the three start a publishing house with the thief publishing selim's works, selim lands up marrying hayat and the thief falls for madiha, everyone enters middle age and the detective becomes a politician.

early on, in a voiceover, it is pointed out that selim (the rich, bourgeoisie) and the thief inhabit vastly different worlds and it is the detective who can straddle both worlds. however, these worlds become absurdly united in the end. except for the last macarena number, the songs were actually enjoyable, despite some of them having the look and feel of bollywood item numbers (replete with generously bosomed, scantily clad women). any message- police inefficiency (when selim tries to lodge a complaint), censorship (when the thief presents an italian nude fitted with egyptian clothes), class issues, sexuality- is drowned out by the noisy, absurd latter half of the movie. characters seem to change overnight- selim slips into middle age and mediocrity, ghefour, who brutally kicks hayat many times in the stomach becomes a close family friend and the thief seems to have ditched his religious past although he continues to sing. the movie is definitely worth watching for its songs, the earlier half and for the fact that it is rare to come across movies from this part.

white sun of the desert

russian literature and cinema can be depressing. a few wintry minesottan days will tell you why. and of course pg wodehouse and woody allen have joked about it often.

white sun of the desert is a genre bending 1969 movie from the USSR at the height of the cold war that combines humour, adventure, and gunfights with a few drops of good old soviet ideology and apparently made following an order that came from the top bosses and the "movie committee" to make a western that will outdo the americans. it is most appropriately an "eastern", USSR's reply to sergio leone, as one of the script writer yezhov says in an interview. shot in the desert region of turkmenstan, it chronicles the adventures of comrade sukhov, a character right out of the mir-publisher folk tales we read growing up in indira's india. comrade sukhov, dressed in his dirty army jacket, is returning back to his village through a desert landscape after fighting for the red army in far flung corners of the soviet empire, his thoughts dwelling on his rather matronly sweetheart katerina matveyevna when his attention is drawn to a head looming in the sand. it turns out to be a peasant who has been punished by a local bandit. he frees him and is on his way when greatness is thrust upon him in the form of protecting the harem of a local warrior adbudllah to safety. abullah himself is fleeing the red army and has abandoned the harem as they hinder his movement. as yezhov recounts, this is the crux of the movie around which other threads are woven and is apparently based on a real incident recounted to him by one of the red army commanders in a bar. the movie is about sukhov's often hilarious attempts to protect the harem who now considers him to be their husband and master (despite his day dreaming about katerina, who is depicted in a red skirt and pastoral backdrop) and ends in an inevitable climactic gun battle with comrade sukhov firing a few seconds earlier than his adversary. he is helped by the peasant he rescues earlier and a hilarious, inebriated former customs inspector vereschagin who also sings the theme song your excellency lady luck. there are wonderful red oneliners like 'the east is a delicate matter', 'customs has given approval' but not much of ideology per se which is one of the reasons why it had trouble getting the thumbs-up from the party bosses, according to yezhov again who says they approved it as it had cost quite a packet of rubles to make.

this cult film is traditionally watched by cosmonauts prior to space launches. it is easy to see why and was a different experience than watching tarkovsky or sokurov.

the river

it started flurrying yesterday but it was warm and the flurries melted before any accumulation. i can now see the house across from the yard from my kitchen window, now that the ash and walnuts have dropped their leaves. there are still a few trees with golden yellow leaves remaining in the lower branches, mostly maples, but it is a matter of time (wind, actually).

vinu and i watched jean renoir's le fleuve (the river) today. a lot of directors ascribe formative influences to this documentary like adaptation of rumer godden's novel. today, it seems ordinary and the dialogues especially by the indian characters a bit stilted and school-dramaish. i can see it making an extraordinary impression on a westerner in 1951. for one, it was the first colour film to be shot in india and renoir's first colour film as well and it does a lot of justice to it. the story is about the coming of age of harriet (the narrator) in india, where she lives with her 4 sisters and brother, parents and an indian nanny (nan) in a village by the ganges, her father being the owner of a jute mill. she is immediately infatuated (in an awkward way that only a teenager can) with capt. john, an american war veteran who is visiting his cousin an englishman who lives next door to harriet. equally smitten but in a more composed, obvious manner is valerie, the more beautiful, older redhead although there doesn't seem to be any tension between harriet and her because of this. adding to the confusion is melanie her neighbour's daughter from his marriage to a local woman. her feelings for jack are characteristically indian- unexpressed and confused. there is one lovely scene where they are all chasing him in a banana grove like gopis chasing krishna (and valerie is the lucky one to be kissed). as the movie progresses, love cools, harriet's brother gets bitten by a cobra and dies, capt. john returns back to the us, another baby sister is born, life continues, the river flows.

the narrative structure is like a documentary and the portrayal of india is a bit romantic but there is no trace of condescension or colonialism in the treatment of india. sometimes, there is overt emphasis of the mysterious, peaceful life of the hindoo on the riverbank but it is no different from the feelings i have when i visit a quiet village today in india. it seems like an idyll. and there are no elephants, tigers or bengal lancers as renoir says in an interview. the music is a mix of hindustani sitar and carnatic veena and vocal with a bharatanatyam tillana sequence thrown in but it does not seem jarring or artificial at any point. in fact, if anything flows smoothly besides the river, it is the music.

views of love

today, i watched two movies on love- truffaut's love on the run and edward yang's yi-yi. the first is a slightly soppy final episode of the antoine doinel series starting with the unforgettable the 400 blows. the latter is less a conventional love story than a peep (ok a prolonged stare lasting 3 hours) into the life of a taiwanese family comprising of the grumpy looking nj who is in a floundering computer firm, his wife who is on the edge, his adorable 8-year old son yang-yang who is forever harassed by older girls, his cute adolescent doll of a daughter ting-ting who is just discovering love and loss and most importantly his wife's mother who is in a coma after falling in her apartment on the day when her son a-di (nj's chubby brother-in-law) gets married to a girl who is very pregnant much to his mother's disapproval. all the family members (except yang-tang) take turns speaking to her and that is the only way their emotions are expressed, an interesting artifice. the contrast between truffaut's flamboyant, at times adolescent antoine doinel whose impulsive quirks and neurotic pace and nj's repressed emotions and outwardly calm demeanour are striking. there is something about not expressing things explicitly that is at once the bane and beauty of asian culture. nj runs into his childhood sweetheart after 30 years and there is a possibility of romance (and adultery, as both of them are married albeit not in intimate terms with their spouses) when she visits him in tokyo where he is on business. they embrace warmly, recollect their first dates and even hold hands but nothing more is said. the inevitable kiss and the bedroom sequence never happens. never shown, a western critic might argue, missing the point. the deft handling is very reminiscent of in the mood for love although lacking the texture and tone of wong kar-wai. antoine on the other hand is living a carefree life, only occasionally living in the past recollecting his loves and upsetting his current lover sabine, whom he first meets in a situation that can only happen in a french movie- unknown angry man (lover?) rips a photo of his wife(lover?) into bits in a phone booth, our hero finds it, puts it together, roams all over paris and finds her and of course he has already fallen in love with her. voila !. antoine is believably passionate and lives in the moment as much as nj is sadly passive and resigned. love on the run makes use of wonderful flashbacks from 400 blows, colette, and stolen kisses- previous doinel movies. yi-yi is firmly grounded in the present and is an unsparing portrait of every one in the flat and their violent neighbours and their quotidian problems.

there is also a nice buddhism connection in yi-yi. nj's wife is advised by her friend nancy to take refuge in a mountain (chin?) temple and told that the master would find a solution to all her problems (sounds familiar eh?). both nj (and his wife who only says so later) are skeptical of talking to the gods and asking for solutions. i will ask the gods to help only for my major troubles, quips nj when the master visits his and ask him to come to the temple. they all spoke to me like we spoke to my mother, says nj's wife after the funeral. here is an example where buddhists are shown praying rather than meditating. this is probably the norm in asia for laypeople. meditating laypeople is a very american thing albeit not necessarily a bad thing. in fact it might be the unique thing about the american flavour of buddhism.

the darjeeling limited

the premise might seem cliched- three brothers, who are from NY and whose father has just died in a traffic accident, travelling in north india in a train and having zany adventures with the natives. of course, as expected, they argue, fight, brawl over silly things like a pair of outrageous sun glasses owned by their father, a painted leather belt, an old school shaving razor. except for a little stretch towards the end where the story seems to be lost and slows down to almost a stop like their train does, there is never a dull moment- just like india itself which ram guha aptly called the most interesting place on earth. other things can be disputed but not this. something chaotic, wild, unpredictable always happens in india and in this movie too- whether it is a cobra escaping or a quickie in the western style toilet with the sweet-lime bearing stewardess or attendance at a funeral of a boy who drowns, his brothers having been saved or for that matter the cunning artifice of using a short film screened prior to the main feature, introducing the past life of one of the brothers. of course there are quintessentially indian elements- cows on the road, swigging of cough syrups and sleeping pills easily procured at the local pharmacy, tilaks and marigold garlands, gawking natives, rajasthanis in their colourful turbans and beautifully painted and clean houses, quaint signs like 'ticket window' and 'station tempel [sic]'. it does lose steam in the end and it is not exactly clear why they are in india- supposedly to take their mother, who has become a nun in the NE, back to NY. what is clear is that all three of them are trying to escape their past and looking for salvation but are hopelessly attached to their baggage including the funky hand painted brick red suitcases they lug around or rather have porters lugging around everywhere which they finally symbolically get rid off in trying to get on the train.

the music interestingly enough is a pastiche notably using music from satyajit ray's films- jalshagar, apu trilogy.. overall it was enjoyable and probably more so if you have travelled in india and on indian trains.

the burmese harp

this was my second viewing of kon ichikawa's timeless antiwar statement and it was interesting to contrast it with resnais' hiroshima, mon amour which i also watched again after this. the burmese harp is about a soldier, mizushima, in the imperial japanese army during the final days of the war in burma. he and his regiment, led my a sensitive, musician-captain who is forever making his company practise choral music, have surrendered to the anglo-aussie forces and are sent to a camp in mudon. meanwhile mizushima, who we are told has become adept at playing the burmese harp and is never seen without it and even uses it to signal to his regiment on scouting missions, volunteers to go on another mission to convince a small band of renegade, never-say-die japanese soldiers holed in a nearby mountain hideout to give up their arms and turn in. they inevitably refuse to and get killed in the ensuing battle. mizushima himself is wounded and nursed to health to by a buddhist monk whose robe, we are shown in a flashback, he steals and proceeds to go to mudon dressed as a monk in hopes of reuniting with his regiment. en route, he sees hundreds of japanese soldiers dead, their bodies decomposing and being eaten by vultures and decides to stay back to give them a decent burial. in the meantime, the regiment in mudon get their release orders and are preparing to go back to japan, still concerned about mizushima's whereabouts. they hear his harp, they even see him carrying the funeral ashes in a box (a Japanese custom, says the sergeant) but are still not sure if it is a burmese monk who happens to look like mizushima. if mizushima can look like a burmese, then there could be burmese who can look like him, reasons one of the soldiers. in a moving final scene on the ship back to japan, the emotional captain reads out mizushima's letter to his brothers-in-arms where he states his reasons for not returning with them and that he has been accepted into priesthood. the narrator, who we have, until then, only heard, is revealed to be a nondescript solider in the regiment.

the horror and uselessness of war is almost in-your-face throughout the movie- the decaying corpses, the morale of the soldiers themselves and their insecurities of going back to a post-war japan whose horrors they cannot or do not want to comprehend, contrasting with the massive, reclining buddha statues, the elegant pagodas, the impassive burmese who just seem to watch everything around them with a calm detachment, the serene monks, in short burma itself. the black and white photography is stunning especially when exploiting these contrasts (of attitudes and light). the sometimes stark sometimes lush landscape of burma is always creeping in.

if at all there are any flaws, it is the clumsy portrayal of supposedly sikh soldiers who are basically english guys with blackened faces, white turbans and fake accents. one could easily accuse ichikawa of not portraying the brutality of the japanese army. in this case, they are shown to be sensitive and feeling human beings but i think that is the point. in bringing out the humanity and buddha nature even during war and in the victors and the losers, the essential universality of buddha nature is brought out. i also feel that for ichikawa, war is inherently a destructive and pointless act, whether it is a righteous one or not and the horrors of war need to be discussed and kept alive so that collective amnesia does not permit the repetition of mistakes, each one exceeding the previous in enormity.

resnais also uses horrifying images from the hiroshima aftermath but only in the overture. the tragedy is viewed at a closer, personal level- nevers and hiroshima merge and he brilliantly uses imagery to bring about this transference- the survivors in bed with riva in bed, the survivors whose hair falls out with riva who is shorn, and finally the german lover with the japanese lover. but there is a certain mysterious almost ominous note when she says it will all happen again. it is far more subtle than his wry comment that they might perhaps meet if there is another war. there is also a tension between memory and forgetting, a tightrope walked by all the characters including the cities of hiroshima and nevers.

the monk who tends to mizushima says burma is buddha's country. i can see why monks are the frontline in opposing the burmese junta and also bear/bore the brunt of the recent brutal crackdowns. i cannot help go back to the opening and closing lines of the film- "the soil of burma is red, so are its rocks". red-with the blood of the soldiers who died and now red with the blood of the monks who were shot. there is still hope- hope like the red rubies that red soils produce, hope that the junta will pass and peace will return.

hiroshima, mon amour

yesterday, i watched alain resnais' masterpiece of a movie, his first feature film- a love story set in the most unlikely of places- hi-ro-shi-ma. as the movie progresses, we understand that it is a perfect place to fall in love, especially of the hopeless, doomed kind and any personal tragedy is outshadowed by the tragedy that befell the city in 1945, one that continues to exist despite the city having been resurrected. the opening shot of the arms of entwined lovers covered with a layer of ash that continues to fall slowly and softly like snow finally gives way to a documentary like walk through the events of hiroshima narrated by the film's unnamed heroine. we are shown impassive faces in spotlessly clean hospitals, legs of zombie like hordes of japanese people walking the aisles of a museum and viewing almost surreal objects (a bicycle melted into a pretzel, a bouquet of caps), images of horror- of peeled skin and vaporized bodies and mutilated faces and also signs of life- ants and earthworms crawling out of the earth on day 2. alain was asked to originally make a documentary but after having watched the ones the japanese had made commented that there was nothing left for him to make and asked marguerite duras to write a script with a love story set in hiroshima, a script he would strictly adhere to. in many ways, hiroshima mon amour is a story about remembrance and forgetting, of the unraveling of time, of transference and of catharsis. along with rashomon and citizen kane, it brilliantly uses flashbacks (something which is so obvious and banal today but was relatively uncommon then) to reconstruct the heroine's past which we learn was another tragic love story, l'amour premiere, that most powerful of loves, to a german officer who is killed by a sniper minutes before they meet and dies in her arms.

where the green ants dream

the clash between old and new, paleolithic and computer age, black and white, pastoral and nomadic are millenia-old and controversial and prone to polemics. this compelling film (which could easily be mistaken for a documentary if not for direct conversation and some herzogian touches almost bordering on the absurd) covers the clash between aboriginals and a (white) mining company over a land the aboriginals hold sacred- the place where the green ants dream. in the voice over, Herzog claims he made up the green ant dreamtime but in reality such a thing (not sure if it is green) exists but elsewhere in NE Australia. Based on an early legal battle which was ongoing when Herzog was visiting Australia between an opal mining company and aboriginal people of Central Australia, the movie is filled with beautiful, stark and sometimes bizarre imagery starting from an almost eerie, speckled movie of a tornado shot in Oklahoma which strangely enough sets the tone for this very quiet movie. The aboriginals lose the case but the sympathetic judge laments that he is merely following the law of the land even though it is not very fair to the aboriginal people. Later cases were apparently overwhelmingly in favour of the aboriginal people. There are classical Herzogian touches and images- the poignant scene where the 'mute' goes up to the witness box and speaks in a language which no one can translate as he is the sole surviving speaker, the rest of his tribe having died out, reminiscent of the melancholic beauty of Ray Bradbury's short story The Foghorn; the courtroom scene where the two watches worn by the tribe elder goes off; the harrowed search for Mrs Strelow's dog lost in the underground mine chambers; the two elders (mala-mata pair?) sitting in the airplane which is green and almost insect like staring at the East where the green ants fly to; the final scene where the geologist decides to quit mainstream life and science and go live in the outback and walks amidst conical piles of earth dug by the opal boring drills. Oh and there are snatches of a South American futbol commentator orgasming like a fire engine siren on a goal (Argentina scored i believe) played out on a radio, something Herzog claims he listens to whenever he is disturbed !! And there are a couple of mesmerising didgeridoo tracks played by the elder himself.

There is a bit of a "we are natives, so we are in tune with the land, you white people know only to destroy" tone running through the movie which Herzog expresses regret for in the voice over (done many years later) but it is never overdone or sentimental or overly moralizing. Herzog has since challenged the relationship between man and nature, most recently in Grizzly man.

Not surprisingly, i immediately linked it to Chatwin's songlines and it turns out Chatwin and Herzog did meet and talked 24 hours nonstop about everything on earth (Chatwin did 2/3rd of it). Herzog also inherited Chatwin's leather rucksack after his death.

late spring

watching late spring last night.

no other movies are as meditative and capture the passage of time and the nostalgia as subtly and beautifully as those of Yasujiro Ozu. the unmistakable stamp of ozu is writ all over- the lack of jump cuts or fades, the pillow shots, the tatami-level camera work, lack of irrelevant details and most importantly the camera that just observes still life and motion, unmoving- characters come in and out of its field of view, it keeps recording.


the plotline is very simple and a familiar one- an aging widower and his just_over_the_conventional_marriageable_age daughter and the natural, unaffected love they have for each other, played by ozu favourites Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara. Setsuko is in full bloom in the movie, especially in the first half- she is radiant with joy, just like spring itself. As the movie progresses and the separation (due to her marriage) inevitable, the sorrow or more precisely mono no aware is captured beautifully evoking the feeling associated with the approach of autumn as spring progresses- the imminent cold balanced by the prospect of beautiful colours. there is considerable use of zen imagery in the movie- the tea ceremony with which the movie opens, the Noh performance, the visit to the temples in Kyoto including the famous rock garden of Ryoanji. However, they are all used as backdrops and juxtaposed with secular and material situations perhaps hinting at the changes already happening in post-war Japan. The characters are shown indulging in seemingly trivial pursuits during these solemn occasions (talk of mending trousers, making eyes at a marriage prospect, debating about marriage). It is only in the beautiful final scene when the aging professor returns to an empty nest after his daughter's marriage ceremony and starts peeling an apple that he openly expresses his sorrow, albeit with restraint. throughout the film, ozu's camera is a detached observer cataloging changes in Japanese society without praise or blame- coca cola signs, baseball games, stenography jobs, divorce, remarriage ...


i discovered Ozu serendipitously in a large store selling rip-off DVDs and CDs in Colombo, oddly on the island of Serendip. It was a double bill of Floating Weeds, a silent version he made in the 30s and a brilliant colour remake of the same story in 1959. it was immediate seduction and continues. in my view, his films typify the japanese aesthetic and sensibilities far more than any other director (Kurosawa and Mizoguchi included). to be continued later.