"Taxi Driver" (1976) - A Classic, A Cult.....A Dissection

The very membrane of the “Taxi Driver” which stood in itself during the first viewing for me is when Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle takes Betsy played by Cybill Shepherd to a porn film for their date. While porn as such depicts explicitness, the images Betsy and we see are quite explicit for that genre or Scorsese makes us feel so because we can then clearly see the shock Betsy goes through of this unexpected assault on her psychological comfort. And Bickle quite surprised by her shock while apologizing also is disappointed in the one he thought is different. Beyond that “Taxi Driver” in my memory resided as a good film, something stood out and appealed but I dusted it out without pursuing it. I remember this instance because I never verbally said or written about it until when a friend asked why would some one take their date for a porn film. That part existed out of reality in that per se was his argument or the point director tried to make which made no sense to him. At that instant I tried to express the purpose of it. It is similar to how I would suggest or like some one close to me witness something I enjoyed deeply and personally. Bickle expected the same to Betsy. Granted that his taste are beyond defined adhered normalcy and it does not seem usual but the plane of that sequence is to understand that nature in him, not to scrutinize his actions. And after couple of statements from each side, I forgot about it. Now after three to four years later, I found a special edition two disc DVD some days back. I bought it and it slept in the shelf for a while. Yesterday I saw the film. Obviously more impressed and tremendously wondered by it, today seeing all the special features and hearing the makers speak, I could not stop writing this piece.

What is the essence of “Taxi Driver”? Why are we bothered sharing the lonely surreal but very much real ride Travis Bickle goes through into this awful display of debauchery, corruption, violence and a much troubled frustration in the injustice and wrongness in the streets of New York? What gives the moral righteousness for Travis to carry out his missions? Do we like him or does the writer Paul Schrader with De Niro and Scorsese wants us to like him or may be not like him? This series of questions are not questions but an empathy arising watching the film. There is no justification in the reaction of Bickle nor does it resolve to a happy ending. It is a film of an emotion, a statement, an agony and more than the environment is the psychology of an young person trapped by his own loneliness. As said in the interviews, Scorsese wanted to make a film because he identified with Bickle and so did Schrader the creator of this man and so did De Niro who got absorbed into this film. They thought it was personal, unique and something they would be considered a freak or an outsider just as Bickle is thought to be. And many were touched because the pain is common, the frustration is universal and the terrible ordeal of the mind putting that through is uncanny in “Taxi Driver”.

The man enlists to drive the odd hour shift because he cannot sleep. We see him as a striking young man and he has come back from a war. Whether the reflection of his thoughts towards the society is something due to it is not mentioned but it should be a essential factor in moulding his opinions and perceptions and of course his sanity. He is disgusted by the roads he drives on. And I came to know through some real drives interview in the special features that the 70’s New York Streets were bad as the film says. Travis poses a calm face with a smile which charms, scares and worries us in various circumstances. He says he does not care about the customers he picks. It does not alter or weigh anything of a significance in his scale of balance towards right and wrong but deep within it does affect him. His bottled up anger only gets on worse day by day as the clock work gets to him. His treatment for insomnia has worsened his day life. He meanders inside his tiny apartment and works out in great detail in his journal of his encounters with his mind. He puts up plans for proving a point not to any one but himself. That in his laid down rules of morals, code and conduct, he is doing something. In that devilish stature he knows a little sense of reality around him but no one to look around for. And he desperately seeks out in a completely disconnected way to one of his colleague “Wizard” played by Peter Boyle. Wizard knows the unsettling feeling but without any clarity ball parks on tackling it for which Bickle response with sarcasm, defeat and disappointment. But Wizard does not take offense and as a defense and justification uses his limitations of being a cab driver and not knowing the worldly philosophies stopping him to correct and aid the distorting vision of him.

In this man’s life comes the angle of perfection, Betsy. She has arranged her hair wherein every string of the golden line is visible and moves in motion of dance step. And when the wind whirls through it, there is no definition and boundaries for that trance. Such is the beauty of a woman that our lead man sees a speciality in her. We see her as the lead woman for external appearances while Bickle uses that to judge her. We judge her with reservations. Yet Betsy is a lovely lady with an eye that can see and question you demanding the pristine nature of the inner self and also pose a charm and control over the opposite sex. Bickle mesmerizes her when he steps in to the campaign office she works and invites for a coffee and a pie. She asks Why? In other films wherein it would have been a formula of the most effective romantic liners, Scorsese chooses something else through this man. He translates himself towards her. The solitary aura that exists in him also exists in her as he says. She might not be that but gets interested and pulled in by this bold statement. She is mystified more than attracted.

While the film speaks unsound commentary on its audience, there is nothing to be concrete upon. This is not a film with a start and an end. Technically, yes it does have a beginning and an ending but the end is not really a way to finish off things or to close the coffin or leave the audience feel good. The ending is something for the limitation of the medium. The character’s one part of his enormous life is given for that period of time, that too in pieces with a care for visual and a great appreciation for art. With music and glows and shines and shadows, it becomes a cross section for that hundred minutes or so of a person’s life. What is the real experience is the post dissection and to hear the makers talk about it. Not that it explains a lot but we understand their stand to create this character as much as we identify our perception towards that in our kind of way. In that acknowledgment though in different perspectives and separate situations and opinions, it is good to be with company. Such is the pain and suffering that it can always use a friend or two to cope up. And this display of one’s solitude and vexation does not make us alone in the lonely journey. This unspoken conversation within ourself while reflected in hallucinations and multiple interpretations in many other films, puts a pin without any description and explanation in this film. While we cannot exactly say the experience, we know what ticked the writer, director and the actor. That is something unexpected for the makers and in a great way to its audience.

The whole film looked through the glasses of Bickle carries an honesty and truth in his perception. Not his opinions but on the veracity of his depiction as per the detail. He is constantly haunted and put in through the trauma of spending the days in his room alone while at nights go through the torment of witnessing the filth all over again. His desperation to seek out somebody is only partial attempt as he does not want to alter his view. His view towards this darkness and inconsolable condition of the city and his drive to do something. That drive he thinks might be stopped by reaching to some one. May be that is the reason he uses his loneliness as a shield on others. He wants to stay pure and continue his destiny and be in control of his actions and consequences.

His failure to continue with Betsy turns around to create some sort of angst towards the Senator she is campaigning for. Again the question of Why comes in. Why does he want to assassinate a man he does not know of? This is the part of his narration he does not talk about to the audience. May be he sees him as the corruptor of his relationship with Betsy or may be he thinks giving a jolt to the next man standing in line for presidency a state of the streets. Whatever it is he gathers so much ammunition which again forms a great scene with the arms dealer (Steven Prince). It could have been a simple gun transaction but how the dealer sells his stuff and while finishing off asks for other products he has to offer laying down the drugs no one heard of. Bickle is sickened by that too.

Like this he wants to save some one from some where and that next act becomes a runaway kid Iris (the young Jodie Foster) exploited as prostitute by a pimp named Sport played by Harvey Keitel. Sport and Iris of course have a strange relationship but luring a twelve year old who has left the family does not need big techniques. She has accepted this life and questions back what kind of righteousness does Bickle carries when he wants to save her. Bickle in the first scene tells in a sarcastic yet true note to his employer about his driving record, “as clean as my conscience”. A man with such a clarity on his state even if it is unstable gives it right back to Iris.

“Taxi Driver” has every scene having something to say. Either about its protagonist or about the strange passengers he takes on. The director Scorsese himself plays a spying husband finding out the affair his wife is having. His audience in that case is Travis but he converses for the most part because he is disappointed, angry and wants to keep him steady by talking. The film works on little suspense like how the character and their purpose is in the short while they come by.

This is that film which has everything complete, perfect and synchronous in all the departments. The music by Bernard Hermann, cinematography by Michael Chapman and editing by Tom Rolf and Melvin Shapiro are a wonderful piece of element in its places in the film. And the final shoot down carries a special mention to the special effects by Tony Parmelee. Which comes to that blood bath carrying so much intensity, gore and something of a performance this character needs playing it like a requiem. In its times, the colours of the blood were desaturated in order to pass the R-rating. That brought me a question on the violence, humiliation, torture and the extremities that goes through in showing in an art. Do we need such a revisit to the darkened places of humanity? Of course we do to either carry the energy of that situation or the gravity and fierce nature to that instant but more importantly for the emotion of the art to be in terms of its material. So how far one goes with it? The shots in “Taxi Driver” even to the current gorefest seems overboard yet powerful and needed. I guess it is up to the viewer to gauge it and there is a limit in which one can take it. The concern is for the crew especially the actors doing those. In the proceeds of depicting something inhuman to say how brutal it is, there is a severe possibility of the same happening to the people involved defeating its purpose. That line is not standard and can only goes with the self defined social or personal responsibility of the film maker. The art though is free and unrestricted. The viewers have the authority to view or not to view it.

This is a film which connects the solitary part of the system and in a person’s life or part of their life during this time frame of it. It definitely is not about taking sides or finding the path or offering solution. It is about the empathy it generates. The empathy on this man suffering from that and has developed a shunning mechanism to stay serene and truthful to himself. He continues that path of losing it and acts upon it. And the irony of his actions perceived by others like media in the end is a tragicomedy of its own. If he would have been caught in the attempt of assassinating the Senator, he would have been in the same headlines under different spectrum of title and the same thing followed as second mission earns him something else. He is still the same person with no solace and sleep. He still wanders around like a man on the edge. With the shoot outs and suicide bombers on various states and countries around the world in current times, my brother recently sent an article on CNN which seeing this film beckons to ask more on the futile question of “Why”. The existence of so many Bickle as such in characters are few but in the psychology of us are the same. The sanity to keep it in our control and move out of that phase to see something more beautiful and fulfilling in some form or other makes us reasonable human. In “Taxi Driver” we see that passed phase or a dangerous fantasy never carried out or to be rational and human about the consequence in this man. The only consolation in the story is not him named hero or his alive and well status in the end. The consolation is most of us do not act upon that and we feel a little sane and greatly relieved by it.

"Let the Right One In" (2008) - Movie Review

Movies like “Let the Right One In” triumphs because of the composure it brings along to a story which in reality would have so much flaw and plot holes in it. It is a calm, very calm film meditating on the unrelenting force of survival and incapability of control over it. It then takes its focus towards the society inbreeding the violence very early at the age when kids aggravate their bullying into something else. Then it plays an unusual tone of relationship between a twelve year old boy and another twelve year looking girl to mould into something else without a single bit of perversion or uncomfortableness. Staying still and unnerving, “Let the Right One In” is a film which entertains you purely on its making and mood than anything else.

This Swedish film focuses on a wintery town. A young tame boy, Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) lives with his mother. While he invades his anger alone in his room in an act of retaliation towards being humiliated and bullied by his classmate Conny (Patrik Rydmark) earlier at his school, he sees a neighbour move in. An old man (Per Ragnar) comes with a young girl (Lina Leandersson). Soon Oskar and the young girl meet at the apartment playing yard and begin to converse to defy their loneliness. Thus begins a strange journey for these two of them.

See the girl comes out only in the night and her caretaker goes out and tries to bring blood for her. All becomes clear without any explicit dialogues that she is not human. Only later in the film does the confirmation from Oskar towards her reveals that she is a vampire. She also says she is not a girl to Oskar. In the icy cold winter wherein the trees have given up their leaves to stay still and not perturb the eerie silence, the film is a movement in its essence of an unfazed image . Nothing sudden happens even with really tense moments when the young girl whose name is Eli hunts out of survival to quench her blood thirst.

It is not a film about horror or thriller as the immediate nature to connect vampire and blood to the genre usually does. It is a film of a surrounding wherein a vampire becomes a better friend than one’s human class mates. Despite being to kill and survive, Eli seem to not even try to resist in attacking Oskar. There seems to be a connection out there itself without any sense of affection in words and physicality. These two who are actually kids are posed as mature beings but in their little world of limited sensibility.

If Eli works with such an abnormal perfection, it is the casting of the little girl Lina Leandersson. She has grown up eyes but tiny in her appearance. She has eerie appearance but a subtle unusual beauty for her age. We see an aging and tired being but also a kid gave up trying to grow up. It is that which makes us like this blood seeking character. It is also because of that there is a complete cuteness when Eli and Oskar talk out of going steady and having a chance with each other.

What is also a little bit of downfall is the sense of the real to life depiction not suiting the material in hand. Is it because there is an absolute impossibility of a vampire film made to exist in the life we lead? Was there any super natural film which attempted to co-exist with our daily life? Thinking hard and wild, it is tough to recollect any film in that realm at all. I believe it is the inability to see this unknown and unseen pair of actuality with the fiction having to hold hands. And that appears a little out of place.

From the novel of same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist who also penned the screenplay for the film, it is a tale of untold rhythms. I was not enthralled but very silently entertained. In the music and pictures of this chilly weather and unique characters, we see humanity, inhumanity, animal instinct and a stretch of love which would have gone wrong in so many ways by stepping aside in tiniest proportion.

“Let the Right One In” does not have a purpose. It is a short story arriving at its will to its center line piece of these two beings finding solace with each other. Convincing plot, untied knots becomes unnecessary when there is a whole lot exploration and aesthetic beauty left to be seen in rest of the film. In that we forget the logic and are tickled by the sweetness of the script and the sympathy it creates on this tragic character of Eli. While we become to accept the nature of Eli in killing humans, we could not come to conclusion on these bullying kids going beyond imagination to cause trouble to their class mate. May be we are separating too much and placing and thinking too high of us to expect something brutal. May be we are all vampires inside ready to suck in the meager humanity residing in prospective weakened souls. May be we have become to find our Oskar and live with an understanding called love. It sounds too cheesy but it is the only connection with our sanity among beasts.

"Synecdoche, New York" (2008) - Movie Review

The confusing and often boring but weirdly intuitive Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” brought a question beyond his reality of screenplay, which is this “how in the hell did he manage to explain this script to his cast and crew to create and complete it?”. When some one sits to watch a film by Charlie Kaufman they can be assured to be inside a person’s head, literally. Into the words, creativity and bizarre world of metaphors and bundled inside an imaginative land of eccentricity exists an odd beat for profound meaning of life. It exemplifies paradox and deflowers the virginity of our shelled thoughts. And it also leaves you frustrated, clueless and in “Synecdoche, New York”, detached and non-emotional.

In the regular trends of the lead characters in Kaufman’s story, we see a below average Joe hating himself for his inability to be attractive while heightening his muse in arts and literature. The man here is Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman). He is with his artist wife Adele (Catherine Keener) and four year old daughter Olive (Sadie Goldstein). He is a play director and we can see how these two people fell in love and got married. We can also see how distant and deteriorating their relationship is getting. Both are losing each other but Adele is moving faster out of Cotard’s life. Cotard is constantly flirted by a box office ticket issuer Hazel (Samantha Morton) and his lead actress Claire (Michelle Williams) looks up to him which is only an inch away from infatuation. With that we enter into the story of Caden and soon as expected, the reality is kissed goodbye and the twisted and creative universe of Kaufman fills us.

The work of this man is a complex brainiac into the action with ease of moving characters and plots as he pleases without any trouble. He is an art geek. All his works are a puzzle waiting to be solved. Even if you do not solve it there is a pleasure of reading the puzzle and awed by a solution existing for it. In “Synecdoche, New York” I was often uninterested but there is a twitch in me wondering the complexity of this story. It is the same feeling I had for “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation.” only more related and attached than this film.

What exactly did this film lose in me that the other previous ventures struck me with a bold of lightning? The awe of the imagination was there in this film but there is a void in relating to the central character. Caden Cotard is a constantly changing persona with a consistent self pity and loneliness. He loathes his inability to act and when he wants to, it has long gone. Hence he screws up the current life and worsens the life which never cared for him. He does it again and again and again which becomes a painful exercise and we come to be annoyed by him. There is no need for sympathy as he himself does it uncontrollably.

As the initial sequences have some semblance to the reality and for a minute you wonder what happened to Kaufman, we are invited to the giant warehouse where Caden begins to recreate his master piece of a play. That play is the recreation of his life and that life begins to sprout into infinite pieces and representations of further world within world. End of it there has been enough characters created and in that exponential other characters are recreated. The process is cumbersome and thinking about solving only makes you more befuddled.
Given that the film is a disappointment from this favourite writer of mine, the film would leave its mark in melancholy and sadness. In the end as the lead man’s walk towards his life are changed by people and then he becomes a character in his own play, it is clear that everyone is everyone and everyone can also become no one in losing their identity. That feeling of solitary in a crowded house scares a bit in the little person hiding inside a door in us.

It is a visually imaginative exploration. It is another exercise of Kaufman’s test of sanity in an ever changing scenario. In “Being John Malovich”, “Adaptation.” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, the lead men are deeply in circle of thought process in figuring their life. Each are also disgusted about it and sympathize beyond imagination towards them being the sore loser. In those three there was a kind of connection you could make with them in a positive manner in the end. Caden Cotard becomes a man who seems to never die and gets on our nerves slowly but surely throughout the film. “Synecdoche, New York” is a wonderful creative failure. This is the kind of film which makes you go back and forth. I call it wonderful and creative but failure in some sort of a word I put myself to make it complete. A statement to suffice the purpose of this review. But the film as unreachable it seems has an invisible invitation for a second view. Whether I would take it or not would not be a failure of its content but a slacking from my side. Someday I might take that invitation, till then it remains an unsatisfied film.

"The Hidden Fortress" (Language - Japanese) (1958) - Movie Review

One of the most slowest and boring film I have seen of Akira Kurosawa is “The Hidden Fortress”. By the time it gets to the center piece of its story we are half asleep. With two most annoying and lifeless characters jumping out of the moral stories in our child hood books, it felt like there is no end. While it is the slowest of my favourite director’s film, it is also one of the most arduous effort put on by the actors and the crew to shoot it. With a continuous trekking on terrains with stones rolling and carrying weights of immense proportion and constantly falling over the rough roads, this would have taken a big toll on the whole crew of this film.

It follows two peasants (Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara) being unpropitious in the nook and corner they turn. They are navigating back to their hometown Hayakawa after they get mistaken as the enemy survivors by their own clan and then making them to bury the dead bodies. Tired and frustrated they travel back. With the soldiers of Yamana one of the three major forces in the area, they are again doubted as the enemies, Akizuki. Down by their luck and driven by greed, they run with their heels hitting their backs to the woods, mountains and rivers.

They see that there is a reward for finding the only remaining heir of the Akizuki Clan Princess Yuki and that makes them dream of getting her and claiming some money they have completely lost in coming to the war they missed. And their luck turns out a little bit to their favour. They find a gold being hidden in one of the stick they picked up for their cooking. They drool and break every stick around the vicinity with vain. Soon they are followed by a strange man from the woods and they are tricked into his schemes. That man turns out to be the General Rokurota Makabe (Toshirô Mifune) the guardian of the young and tom boyish Princess Yuki (Misa Uehara). The rest becomes their journey in crossing the border carrying 200 pieces of gold.

By the time the peasants meet Rokurota which is where the real story happens, it feels like ages have passed. The two peasants are basically greedy to the bone and their friendship toggles between risks and fights they face. Their bond purely is driven through the aggravation towards wealth. Now showing their greed does not require much effort but Kurosawa goes to great pains to show their fundamental character been corrupted. The reason for that looks like he wants to present the entire class of common people into those wherein the Princess gets chance to see it. They whine, cry, moan, scold and are sufficiently cunning to carry out their clandestine operations met with immediate failure followed by their shameless running back to the General for protection. The characters as expected to be annoying gets on your nerves and you do not want to see them anymore.

Now the slimiest character in the element of those are strengthened by General Rokurota Makabe and Princess Yuki. Not because they are valiant and prudent. It is purely due to their calmness (which the Princess is advised to be to escape notice) and not pester us. The adventure gets muddied with the slow movements and the manual labour they undertake brings strain to the audience on carrying that loads by themselves. But the disappointment personally would be the wise man attitude which does not get portrayed well in this film of Kurosawa.

Yet the technicality of the film is matchless. With great shots of wide spread landscape and the cross angled camera views of the steep slopes of the mountains with river of stones are some prime exemplifying techniques Kurosawa regularly does with his films. And the spear fight between the General and his favourite enemy from the opposition General Hyoe Tadokoro (Susumu Fujita) is a spectacular choreography to watch for.

“The Hidden Fortress” is a monumental disaster. It works with actors who have proven their skills in many other ventures of Kurosawa. The letdown is the screenplay which generally is the cornerstone of his films. It becomes an excruciating exercise to watch through the snail paced film which drags itself down and slow till we are completely given up to watch further at all.

"Bringing Out the Dead" (1999) - Movie Review

New York City, wet streets, insomniac, junkies, dirts from the ditches, surreal characters, blooming lights and Martin Scorsese, now you have the recipe for a beautiful film even if it parallels his other movies. This got a bonus with Nicolas Cage as the burning out paramedic Frank Pierce servicing the bodies of the destitute, careless and plainly irresponsible people in “Bringing Out the Dead”, movie adapted from the novel of the same name by Joe Connelly. Sweeten that deal with a screenplay by Paul Schrader. There are only next to nothing possibility of this film being even a little bit bad. This is umpteenth time Scorsese is giving something perfect.

In the three nights of marching into the roads of hell, Frank Pierce gathers himself to face his ghosts. One prominent face haunts him forever and it is getting very frequent. A while ago he was not able to save a girl named Rose (Cynthia Roman). Why of all many dying people does Rose stand out? It might be because that is where he questioned his competency for his job. He gets guilt get into him turning into fear. He is having a tough time sleeping, eating but not drinking though which is the only thing keeping him see the dark roads.

In this span of three nights he partners up with three colleagues. Larry (John Goodman), Marcus (Ving Rhames) and Tom (Tom Sizemore). All three projecting this job in different directions of their own but definitely adding the eccentricity driven by it. Each are on their heels trying to lighten up this cleaning job of dirty mess. The atmosphere of the ER is suffocating. The gates to the salvation i.e. treatment is guarded by a mean and hard man Griss (Afemo Omilami) while the hospital fills up like an open cup on a pouring solid rain. It is waiting to break loose any moment but somehow the ship sails through. How does one work in this place and go home for a nice meal and a sleep? There is the admitting nurse who makes it a definite point to ask why they should treat a drug addict, a suicide-monger, drunkard and every craziest thing one could get them into. When they openly attempt to abuse and annihilate their body and soul, what is the need for its retrieval from the mouths of death? Insensitive to ask this question, may be but wait till you see the film and you can empathize with their feeling.

Only Scorsese can admire the beauty of this wretched situations into a glimpse of aesthetics and art. Not that he glorifies it or exploits it but finds a rhythm to get disgusted by the situation but appreciative of what the director portrays out of it. In that hard line stands Scorsese wondering his perspective and how the audience perceive through it. Who better can play this trembling and destructing character Frank other than Nicolas Cage. He is droopy with the prominent dark circles below his eyes. Any moment he is ready to fall on his knees and hit the ground on his face accepting the force of gravity to lay him to rest. He carries the weight of the beings he has saved, lost and the one talks in front of him. He begins the day on the surface of the water and steps down towards slow and accepting drowning. Yet beyond this consideration we see him to be capable of handling himself. Any other character we would have wanted that person to get help but not Frank. Not because he is a medic but in those visions of calmness and chaos, there is an assurance of knowing everything and dealing it.

With the stamp on selection of songs and scores, “Bringing Out the Dead” of course runs parallel to the lonely cab nights by Robert De Niro in “Taxi Driver”. And from the same screen writer it sees the New York City’s neighbourhood seething agony, pain and frustration into many but cannot embody that control over it. They put that feeling through characters in their films. We laugh at the miseries of these body savers while laugh more when they refer patients with their way of jokes. Will I be thrilled to hear those when my loved ones or me being in the bed? Not before, but now, I guess I can and smile about it.

Frank Pierce begins to extend himself to a patient’s daughter Mary Burke (Patricia Arquette). She is the daughter who has not spoken with her father, the patient for three years. And her conflicts with the life and death towards altering views and situations is another dimension Frank seem to thoroughly know but likes to hear from her this time around. Amongst the surplus faces of Rose in the pedestrians and victims, Frank slowly but clearly seeing the brink of his sanity. We are so in sense of his ordeal that when a drug man offers a pill to help Frank relax, we want him to take it. We need him to get a sleep some how because he needs it and deserves it or may be we might not want him losing it over our cardiac arrest.

"Watchmen" (2009) - Movie Review

More and more as we near to the cynicism of our existence, there is a road away from the facade we have created and shelled for the daily sanity of livelihood. And the art forms taking their philosophical perspective on this complexity of the characters in human, the truth seems to be unbearable. May be the potency of that information might stall the steps we take in the day or may be we are not matured and in a constant denial to see through the facts and live with it. Whatever it is, the comic book films are no more comic and it has evolved in to a reality of fiction created by it. “Watchmen” is one such. While I was caught unguarded when the plot unfolds in the end, it took a long time to reach there and I mean a long time. I would have liked to see it in parts, sequel or as one of the early developmental suggestion of having a miniseries. Nevertheless director Zack Snyder takes upon the challenge and completes it despite that it barely reaches the scale of good in my mind.

It is the 80s and President Nixon (Robert Wisden) is there along with this clan of super heroes. There are many and they have generations. They have changed names and evolved through the time. The time where most of them have retired and the rest servicing openly and some finding peace in their normalcy. A veteran from the early generations of these super heroes is “The Comedian” (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and he gets thrown out of his apartment by a darkened face to meet his demise. This triggers another vigilante and cold hearted compadre Rorschach (Jackie Earl Haley) to investigate the murder and thus introducing us to the clan. Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson) a techie geek retired, the ultra super power Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) and his girl friend Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman) working for the US government in helping to stand tall in the face of Soviet’s threat and Adrian (Mathew Goode) a revealed super hero who has made a fortune for himself and works for alternate energy along with Dr. Manhattan.

What is unique about “Watchmen” is that it starts where the happy ending of super hero films leave. It begins with the failures of them in humans and their own struggle in giving a damn for a better world. They have lived long enough to see the atrocities in the streets hiding in the alleys with piled up sins oozing the venom in to the sewage of the city. It has disgusted them enough to retire or become the dark force. A force which does not believe in the defined law and the moral obligation for forgiveness. But that force has divided into psychopaths like The Comedian and the agonized blood seeker as Rorschach. Then of course there is Dr. Manhattan with the ability of being the god and wonders whether he really needs to care for the human kind.

This all sets up to be a nice and novel story to be listened and wondered upon. It does but then it begins to crawl in to the slow motions and makes us think unnecessarily. They lose the grip and falters into the attempt of poetically made scenes unmoving. Part of the problem are the numerous characters with each of their back stories going back couple of decades. Understandably every one needs their time but how much it is going to aid in making this film good? And in that they were not aware of the old saying “Be careful what you wish for”. They get complex situations and characters and they get them plethora of it to make them sweat.

I was of course interested in the developments of every character especially Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan. And the third view in the end makes it perfect. Rorschach while kills without hesitation when he sees a criminal is also conducted by his own rules of conscience. Dr. Manhattan on the other hand is a detached practical philosopher doing things without any single shred of purpose. He sees humans as spoiled brats and the kids who are always looking for some one to clean up their mess and console their guilty filled innocent face. He is not fed up but has seen that and does not want to waste his time on why because questioning nature is a one with no answer.

Before I went to the film, I have been hearing from couple of my colleagues who have read the comic book that the ending is “the” thing for “Watchmen”. They were worried that it would be bent, butchered and morphed for a wide audience under the hands of Hollywood business practices in its creativity. If there is a different ending than this, I sure would like to see that because this ending rescues a gloriously sinking film. And if something can top that, I will be in front of the line. Snyder has worked hard and words does not need to confirm that. Yet there is no way to reach across the aisle to hold hands with the “Watchmen”. I salute its uniqueness but projecting it all in one film is a poor choice of medium for such a wide story and characters.

"The Bad Sleep Well" (Language - Japanese) (1960) - Movie Classics

There is an absolute stillness of statement in Kurosawa’s films. He always is very certain about what he is about to present and is unflinchingly brutal about it. Does not blink and the film looks like as though the whole crew shot it without taking a single break. That is the clarity you get when you watch this historic movie icon in his works. “The Bad Sleep Well” may be the darkest film I have seen of Kurosawa. It does not even meander the territory of cynicism for its shadiness because it would then implicate a tinge of doubt of being proven otherwise. But no, he wants us to know in this film that his motive is to give a clinical and sterile truth of the existing reality. That is the existence of pure evil.

And talking of evil, what other place than to venture the tricky region of corporate arena to get its underlying origins. Trimmed haircut, cleanly shaven with suits, shoes and ties, the post war Japan in the sixties seem to be the evolving battleground of private business getting its hands dirty in complete coherence with their conscience in its purest nature of beast’s den. While it is unfair to generalize the corporate reign, it is a field of comfortable devilishness. If there is a way to do a bad deed with a complete understanding of the circumstances for something good of course to them, then there is a job title for it.

And it is mostly the head of the kingdom and they take pride in their decisions when such acts of unmerciful corruption takes place. Such is Iwobachi (Masayuki Mori), an old and seasoned corporate criminal. We are invited in to the wedding reception of Iwobachi’s daughter Yoshiko (for some reason the actor’s name is not mentioned in imdb’s casts list) with Koichi Nishi (Toshirō Mifune). It reeks of uncomfortableness as the press is piling up to see the corruption between Iwobachi’s Public Corporation and his bidding scandal scheme with Dairyu Construction stages by their arrest in the function. Adding to that is the judgment and prejudice upon Nishi’s marriage to Yoshiko who is physically disabled and Nishi’s intention seen as an ulterior motive to boost up his career in the corporation. Nishi does have an ulterior motive which becomes the axis of this story.

This time around Kurosawa has couple of classic shots and lets the bigger part of his film takes precedence over his aesthetic preference. But those shots are impeccable. The one being the disturbed and terrified accomplice in Public Corporation’s corruption Shirai (Kô Nishimura) walking down the street seeing Wada ( Kamatari Fujiwara) from the lights of a car behind him. Wada is the class of people the general public is. Wada is a loyal and good soul but does not stand for the conscience and goes along with the scheme in fear and obedience to his masters. While he sees his boss’s machinations and cruelty, he cannot see past that they are capable of worse things than that. He becomes the man standing in the middle as of us between the worst of the kind in human, Iwobachi and a man seeking justice employing tactics of his own, Nishi.

Every single day and every single moment there happens the most horrific inhumane things in this world. Blasts, shootings, slicing people off and when violence is not enough, there is always humiliation and mutilation of human souls. But in the personal daily life of one, there is a momentary grievance and we continue the chores of the minutes we pass. I am not here for the inaction of those because honestly that is all can be done when we have far away detached ourselves physically from those situations. But the worst part about it is the failure to acknowledge of that part of us existing in its purest form in many others, evil. Evil to me is not the opposite of good but a characteristic of an animal. Nature’s work in action and there is no consolation for it. There is no facade of the miniscule possibility of love and care in it. Sure it does but it all vanishes in a jiffy when the main characteristic in their brains take over. It is not the pessimism but the transparency of seeing things of what they are. True that I do not want to see it and for that case no one wants to see it and when they see it, these philosophical ramblings are going to evaporate. Yet in the clearest of setting and brightest of minds, there is a greatest blunder in us not to notice that plain simple truth. You can see it in “The Bad Sleep Well”.

Now I go back to a film which I laid my wrath upon which executed a spirit of human in pieces without any redemption, “The Beijing Bicycle”. In that there is a clear indication of the harsh reality and I minced it in my review. After talking so much about the darkest nature of us in preceding paragraphs, what is the difference in this film to have the same concept being accepted and praised while in the other it was shot down and butchered? I believe that is the effect of Kurosawa taking an invisible wise figure stand in his films. In “The Beijing Bicycle” that seems to be in absence. A missing of such a character to make us swallow that bitter pill and that made it an unpleasant experience.

In Kurosawa’s films there is a stand of Zen way in his preaching. We do not infer not even an ounce of condescension or arrogance but sweetly hear rustic adages towards the simplicities and complexities of the lives we lead. The story telling in his pictures bode the property of our grandfathers and grandmothers at their peak of experience and old age sharing some wisdom not for us to change but to tell it as a piece to remember. We make our own mistakes and when the realization comes it is engraved as a lesson with the power of their words. Kurosawa does so in “The Bad Sleep Well” and it is for you to hear it.

"12:08 East of Bucharest" (Language - Romanian) (2006) - Movie Review

The only question which came up throughout the film of “12:08 East of Bucharest” in me was “Do I really care?” This supposedly claimed dead pan comedy of the distracted realism of the history is never for a moment carries a value of conspicuous care for the characters in its film. The questioning of how a historical event for a country translates to little towns and the people in it is an interesting topic to ponder upon but does it need to be so flat and does it have to suck so bad in its effort of not even vaguely connect ing with its viewers? Whatever the underlying political commentary this film says to be, it is buried beyond recognition for me.

This Romanian film lights up in an ironic fashion showing the street lights of the small town Vaslui going off in a sequence. Up gets up three characters for the day of the 16th anniversary of Romanian Revolution where the Communist regime was overthrown by the revolutionaries. For that small town is the TV station owner and anchor Virgil Jderescu (Teodor Corban) phoning hard to find some one for his show that afternoon. His dingy little TV show for that town remembers the nation’s time sixteen years back by inviting two people who were there on the day December 22nd. Virgil wants to bring up the question whether the Romanian Revolution happened in this small town. To arrive at the show, we see the uneventful banality of these three characters.

Virgil is a rich man involved with his anchor and tries to discipline a distant daughter. And there ends his personal life. The other is Professor Manescu (Ion Sapdaru) a drunkard and due to that a known loaner. He is the guest in the show who will be grilled by Virgil’s half baked annoying journalistic comments and by viewers calling in to say how much of a liar he is to say be present in the Town Square protesting on that day. I can understand that the people does not want to be bare stripped of them for not representing the heroism and the patriotism blindly expected. The other character is an old man Piscoci (Mircea Andreescu). He now and then yells the reality of the town and the facade of a concept of being freed and the importance of revolution as such.

Now I read a comment posted by a viewer in imdb for this film saying that one needs to be a Romanian to understand this film and to grasp the inside jokes. I would definitely agree with that as I can see very many films in my native language failing to translate to suffice its minimal satisfaction in any other language. But I was able to see what the film was trying to do and how desperately it was failing on that. The subtleties of characters linked by events and the mere reason of being the small town are noticeable but honestly did not intrigue me enough to care about it.

I know a colleague of mine at work who is one of those people “seeing movies for entertainment” say an interesting point which is if the film does not make one care of what is happening next, that film sucks. Very valid and blunt point. Sometimes of course there are films which take its time to arrive at the cruciality of its plot to make it worthwhile but I can see where he is coming from. This film would drain the care to watch further. I was asking myself the question of why do I need to keep watching this?

The acting is mediocre and the comedy, well there seem to be an assumption of its humour being good acts self conscious too on it. These three characters have their share of personal problems. Especially Manescu who promises his wife to bring back his full wage only before loaning a bottle for his day and paying off his debt. Now he goes back to a Chinese guy he insults when he is drunk for more money. His life is in the ditches and he finds motivation to come and claim his stand on that day for his freedom. People do not agree with that though.

Corneliu Porumboiu’s film drained the energy out of me. Being a Romanian would sure make me understand it more but will it be a better film than the one I just watched? I can only assume but I would not give that benefit of doubt to this stale and uninteresting film.

"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) - Movie Review

“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” has an odd clarity. It is a series of events which clearly seem to have very little emotional value and yet we come to like these two brats. Because of Paul Newman and Robert Redford who create these outlaws and killers into some one we can hang around and drink with. And also their victims shown in the film are the one who attacks them. Even if it is for the right reason, we know that if those people get to know these two they would be good friends. In fact we meet couple of them who are faithful to their job but also like these fellas. They are the friendly neighbourhood outlaws Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and Sundance Kid (Robert Redford).

Directed by George Roy Hill, it is a western and loves the nature. It carries among the vast wide lands with nothing but rail roads inviting to be robbed. It ventures through the deserts where the trails of horses are gone the second it lifts its leg. It streams through the dense jungles and gushing waterfalls. But before that you got to climb the rocky terrain. This is a film which adores its outdoors and makes them a major element in its story. Escaping through these places are our two men.

Conveniently mentioned as “most of what follows is true”, this is a picture of course getting mesmerized by its two charismatic characters. Whether the real Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid were really this fun is something no one will ever know but the men Newman and Redford creates are nice lads with an itch to rob. They rob banks and trains and spend it immediately. They have been addicted to this routine for some time and in one of the takings, they are surprised by a bunch of law men. They run and run but they are constantly followed without any tiny bit of tiring from their trackers. They employ several methods to distract and try to lose them but this time around there seems to be no escape. That run is like any other chase. Time consuming and totally suspenseful, it is the first draw by the film to invite the viewers into it.

Sundance has a woman Etta (Katherine Ross) whom Cassidy loves but only to a limit by both of them. Sundance knows it and allows it as he knows his buddy and his woman well. They become a trio in the second half of the film. From thousands of places, Cassidy opts for the country of Bolivia because he has read, heard and understood that mines are surplus and money is easy to be snatched off. Sundance a good shot knows his friend is smart but not as smart as he says. Yet there is no option and the trio go to the land of the South which becomes an interesting venture in the land they do not speak the language. We also witness a funny robbery with a problem in communication.

There is no hurry in the action nor in the characters we come to slowly like. Butch played by Newman is the subtle and sarcastic man. Newman flies with the air of friendship and casualness all around him. Redford speaks less but is lovable because of his trust over his partner. They both of course click. The great thing of the comic timing in between these two is the surprise simple revelations in the crucial times. As them we form certain traits as their part of life to be taken for granted and when that comes to be the quintessential thing to save their life, we burst into simple laughter.

Watching the film, I might be lying if I say it as the best film made and a classic to be cherished. I liked the film a lot but there is an oddity to the nature in which it surrounds the story amongst its characters. There is no attempt to even treat the friendship not with melodrama but not even a simple drama. In fact that is how it should have been treated . Despite that we believe on the trust these two men have over each other. And that scarcity may have also put some blank thoughts in reaching towards the film.

But it is a classic for different reasons in my opinion. It is classic for its presentation and the music by Burt Bacharach to align the scenes. It has colour tone usage appropriate and carefully employed in not overemphasizing it. And it is a classic because Newman and Redford are plainly adorable. They are the outlaws as a kid one would read about and shelf their morality for a while. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” is a rare film. Might not be the single most greatest film of all time but clearly has marked its era and no one can deny its existence in the novelty and unique presentation of its times.

"2009 Oscar Short Films"

Short films come and go as forgotten gems which does not reach any audience in most cases. When the distribution is so worse for the regular common feature films made these days it is no wonder that these films go unnoticed. Thankfully in the teeny tiny big village (yes I said it) of Peoria has opened a teeny tiny Indie theater (www.peoriatheater.com). I was extremely happy to see “Waltz with Bashir” on a slightly bigger screen than my television and that too early not waiting for the DVD release. To a great surprise they are viewing currently the 2009 Oscar nominated short films along with “Waltz with Bashir” for a week. With glee I went and all the five of those were wonderful. Succinct and sweet. A great viewing pleasure.

When I had cable and managed to see IFC channel, there were a series of beautiful short films which made greater mark than many other feature films. They become the stepping stone for a better picture by the budding directors and the crew. I cannot forget the afternoon I watched a series of films in a friend’s house. In that was the terrifically funny and sweet movie directed by Craig Hammill called “Cleats of Imminent Doom”. If you get a chance do watch it. In the meanwhile let me go through the five nominated films (in order of viewing).

Auf der Strecke (On the Line)

Directed by Reto Caffi, this german film tells about a security guard in love with a clerk in a book shop. He monitors the live video feed and when she leaves the office, he joins along for the train ride, a routine he has been following for a while. In one such ride he sees her with another guy and things begin to go a little uncomfortable for our man. In the coming series of events, he happens to make a choice which becomes his immense guilt and hates himself for the rest of the film. Shot most in the mall environment and train rides, both surrounded with strangers this is a film which works on the mood than the unfolding of the story.

New Boy

Directed by Steph Green, this is that cute film which also reaches beyond its bubbly characteristics to say something more. It is about a quick school session with nine year olds and an African boy getting into the class and how he perceives the changed environment and the violence he has seen projecting on his new class mates. It has very matured acting from the kids. It does not overdoes it with sugary ending. It is the simplest film of the five and is the one which while accommodating wide audience gets its cinematic view too.

Spielzeugland (Toyland)

Directed by Jochen Alexander Freydank, this german film is about a mother’s search for her missing child at the dawn of the Holocaust. Her Jew neighbours are taken away and their son David is a good friend of her son Heinrich. She tells them they are going to “Toyland” and the boy makes his plan to getaway with them. The film is told in parts by flash back and then to the current situation. As I was watching the film, the thought went once again of the Holocaust films being done enough but as I always answer it with “if it is made good, it can be done”, this films is good.

Grisen (The Pig)

This Danish film directed by Dorthe Warnø Høgh (I am wondering how it is pronounced), is a perfect indie short film. An old man comes to the hospital for an operation to remove an abscess from his rectum. He comes alone for not giving trouble to her busy girl Mona. As he goes through the procedure and examinations in his room, he sees an unusual art of a pig jumping to a small lake with an expression of smile. He sees it as a comforting thing and makes it his guardian angel through this ordeal. But when another patient comes in with his family, the art work is taken away and our old man gets upset. It is then a nice little fight we would have seen in public places which then finds it resolve (of course little times).

Manon sur le bitume (Manon on the Asphalt)

From french directors Elizabeth Marre and Olivier Pont comes this narration from a girl named Manon who we see lying on the road after meeting with an accident. She lays there thinking about her possible death and how her friends and family would go about her demise. And in doing that she goes over her love she begins to yearn. It also makes you see that every passed moment might be the last and got to be enjoyed while it lasts. It glows with the characteristics of a french film and that is a good thing.

There it is, the five films working magic. All the films had background scores and soundtracks with beautiful precision and leaves you wanting more. I would suggest all these five films to every one and would strongly ask any one living in Peoria to use this opportunity to see these films running for a week in Peoria Theater.

"People I Know" (2002) - Movie Review

The underbelly of the celebrity den is a suffocating exhibition of debauchery, betrayal and politics. In this den works an aging publicist Eli Wurman (Al Pacino), a disintegrating man going through one of those nights with a dreary day to follow. He has gone through this chore million times and his face is there to show it and the people he meets and talks to prove it. Yet this time around he is beginning to lose it and whether he can hold himself together for this ride becomes “People I Know”.

Whenever there is a train wreck of a career I hear about a celebrity with drugs and scandals, I always wonder what makes them to trigger out these obvious mistakes. And then I evaluate their fame and glamour. The adrenaline of walking that red carpet and people adoring you is a pure insurmountable experience to miss. Being loved in any ways is a feeling hard to deny. This makes them to the elevation of being god and then it becomes a curiosity to push the envelope more and more and test the limits of this pleasure. Is there a roof to hit is the question they ask every time they get into drug rides and crazy outcomes. It is tough to handle that sort of power, many and fame. It is tough being the god of uncontrollable emotions running around them. And Eli Wurman has made a career making them look good or at least making them not look worse with the troubles they get.

Eli after a bad play he worked as publicist is gearing up for the next day. A day which heads to a benefit function he has managed to organize for a cause of African Americans and the deportation of African foreigners by the current Mayor. A very liberal man Eli spent his young ages in the free love 60s and 70s but understands the city of New York changing constantly into this potpourri of different culture, politics, religion, race and the countless things which divides people. He has survived that storm of climate and now wants to have something attached to him he once believed. This fund raiser is the only thing he could feel a little good about himself. But before that he gets a quick job from his only client, a popular and famed actor Cary Launer (Ryan O’Neal).

Cary rings up his man downstairs to give a mess to clean up which Eli has done so many times. Eli smoothly blackmails to not take up this unless Cary comes by for the benefit. They agree or at least seemingly closer to terms. The mess is Television actress Jilli Hopper (Téa Leoni). She is one of Cary’s flock birds. Eli gets her out from a police precinct as she got herself into trouble for drug possession. She comes out without realizing who Eli is and then freaks insane to learn that he is Cary’s man. In that night they go to a place where the next day has no trace of happenings and a zone of pleasure induced by drugs that would make your head spin. While Jilli is busy in getting a toy which would be a vital information source, Eli sucks some Opium to be blacked out of the skull. They end up in a hotel and when Eli in his hazy state is taking a leak in dark rest room, Jilli gets attacked and in half conscious state Eli witnesses it. He walks out of the room without any knowledge and the day unfurls.

“People I Know” as the plot makes it sound is not a thriller. It is a depressing state of life for a man. He had complete knowledge of his actions in his career he has chosen and has built upon a falsified fort to look upon higher causes which now begins to break and fall while he stands on it. He knows too many men and women who knows too many other people. He knows information that he has been safe to keep upon and stayed loyal to his clients to keep his career going. He thought of surviving this day for the cause he worked upon and that would give him some closure before he can get out.

The only purest and honest thing in his life is his demised brother’s wife Vicki (Kim Basinger) and both are in love which they cannot pursue. But when Eli walks with shoulders down and eyes sunk, she does not light him up but the mere face can make him sleep flat on a couch forgetting his horrific and ugly world he is dealing with. And who else other than Al Pacino can do it. He comes here without his regular throwing up of hands in air and spitting words at his oppositions. Here he is drugged, soft, cunning and smooth. He would slit a throat of some one while they are dining with him and they would only notice an hour after in their bed bleeding. And they would call him to fix it. He is that guy.

“People I Know” directed by Daniel Algrant is an early but sad version of “Michael Clayton”. Eli and Michael have seen things and tolerated it to accept it as jobs than wrongdoings. They swam across the river of phony and disgusting betrayals amongst the broken bodies of discarded values and system to the place they are right now. And they are stark naked and shivering of their bath in hell with no one to offer them warmth. Even if there is some one, they are a mirage of the hope for which they see another river of garbage they need to cross. I knew Michael Clayton survived to make that mirage into a little solace of possible absolution but does Eli has a chance? See “People I Know” for that.

"Waltz with Bashir" (Language - Hebrew) (2008) - Movie Review

“Waltz with Bashir” an Israeli film directed by Ari Folman is an animated documentary but I would call it pseudo documentary. And I am not dropping a doubt or declining the mode of the film but to truly explain the nature of this piece. It is as many often is the most poetical pictures you could see for an animation film. It takes bleaching brutality of the bloodshed into a less stressful watch but mounting into the unavoidable disastrous tragedy of the humans. The film is stirred by a nightmare occurred to a friend Boaz Rein-Buskila (Miki Leon) of the director. He meets with Ari Folman the director himself and that incident questions Folman’s time in Lebanon War in 1982. His mind has erased the existence of that period of time and he desperately wants to see the ugliness hiding inside the brain cells.

He remembers that he was yards away from the Sabra and Shatila Massacre that took place in West Beirut, the knowledge of which I embarrassingly and shamefully not aware of. But the audience who will be watching this film have not heard as me and the film while does not give a lecture on what happened unfolds the hallucinations of the forgotten reality from the director. Ari travels and meets with his old friends and comrades whom have taken the trips apart from the defeating life of war. They have become a recluse and have surrendered to the inner guilt. Sometimes the brain made them forget and some time confrontation is all they have got.

Through these people with real interviews and the mixing enactments through the animation, we see the shootings, shelling and slaughter of the innocence, the irreversible guilt, paranoid fear and pure rage. With the power to dispose bullets, it is better to be safe than be sorry. The safe out here is the paranoid and fear surrounding and germinating in the simple objects around them. One of the veterans tells about a non-stop firing on a car which later found to be filled with a nice family. And the director walking in the airport dissolving in to the hopes of being in that place for vacation travel and not for war are an outcry I cannot imagine going through.

The psychologist Zahava Solomon explains about a media man covering the war. She once asked him how he is able to bear the gore and execution of soul in the field standing as a spectator. He mentioned her that he sees them as an image and not in emotions. And I learned that he saw it as a great graphical device to be framed and placed in a newspaper to transport the feeling of that scenario to another person in the world. Something similar to the audience seeing the film. The life span of the emotions is the duration of the film, most of the times. We get back to the road we came and go further or run around in circles but the emotions expire. The media man managed to do that and separate it until the “camera” broke as Zahava puts it.

The animation is the key in telling this story. It is gruesome and affecting which is how it should be but keeps it going to complete the film. It is not a shock value or a spectacle of emotional black mail but how the clan, cult, religion, sect and what not has nothing to do with the past but mere labels to group the atrocities and victimizations. It also symbolizes that what exists in the mere end is the actions and inactions of oneself in a particular part of their life. That is forgotten and convinced in the corner of the mind to be otherwise but sometimes even the dismembered truth is enough to bring back the past. It is very effective in the past we want to forget.

“Waltz with Bashir” has a music which does not move with consistent theme. It uses electronic, orchestration and rock to aid the visual of surrealism better. It is immense and deep when we see the recurring nightmares of Ari about him floating in the sea and walking naked to the shores and getting dressed to see the flares lighting up the skies and the city. That is shown very many times but each time it adds a layer of an emotion based on the lit factors.

I was moved of course and disturbed deeply in the end as expected. But the journey to that abyss of questioning humanism is filled with love for the art of films. In bringing those colours and novel animations for story to be told on the human blunder not in the act but in being stale and non-reactive is a clever and honest presentation. In the film “The Happening” when the gun shots are heard in the far corner of their other group, the wife of the hero asks and shouts for doing something saying “We're not gonna be one of those a******s on the news who watches a crime happen and not do something!” History has written the horrendous acts of the evil doers in holocaust and very many other wars happening in front of us. In “The Reader” a lawyer spits on the inability of his previous generation not to act and simply going along with the Hitler’s crimes. And here in “Waltz with Bashir”, a man along with many had trained his mind subconsciously to forget the silent spectatorship. What can we do when the world is running in one direction and the direction is quite wrong in every possible aspect? Do we run along or take a turn? The answer is in the film and the lifespan of that emotion should extend beyond the screen.

"High Noon" (1952) - Movie Review

“High Noon” is unlike any western. It builds up the suspense and in the pursuit of arriving it depicts a failure of a town willing to stand up for anything. It begins heightening hopes of seeing a showdown fight continuing for very many hours between the good and evil. It is because when the film begins at somewhere around late morning aiming to the title time for a stand in battle between the retired Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) and a released criminal he put down Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald). Miller is arriving at the noon train to the town of Haydeville. Instead of gun play we see the lone Marshal just married to Amy Kane (Grace Kelly) on his way out of the town coming back for something inside him adamant enough to hold up his life for and his desperate attempts to line up some soldiers.

Westerns as much as it is boasting about the hard men with rugged yet smooth shaven faces runs more empathetic and sentimental than many would see it as so. Here Will Kane is at the end of his career and wonders to have pleasant time in his newly married life is drawn back in to the town. He has managed to clean the streets mainly by putting away the worst criminal five years back, Frank Miller. The clan of Miller parades through the town towards the train station wherein the news of the Miller’s arrival travels in waves. Minutes after his wedding, Kane is pushed away fast by his friends and townspeople to vacate the place after hearing the news. Kane leaves with Amy but he cannot as something in him torments. Amy leaves him towards the train station and he in the line of righteousness roams around the town for men to stand by him and fight this thing over when Miller arrives.

As Kane is met with failure after failure in getting his men, people have already began to assume his death. Every one want him out, some for Kane’s concern while many to avoid the hassle coming out of this bloody war. Kane is stubborn. He is shocked by the people in town for whom he has served faithfully and dangerously to be shunned and even blamed for the upcoming vengeance trail. One by one whom Kane meets disappoint him. He comes close to get away but he is gone too far to go back. He stays.

“High Noon” is a statement. A very strong political statement which raised controversies into the era of HUAC (House Committee on Un-American Activities). It is about a man questioning his faith on law and people. But it is not about law as the film walks on the shadow of Will Kane. It is about one man’s relentless righteousness. Is he stupid? May be. Most of the humans who stand on the stone of values and in a state of metaphysical elements inside them are considered so. While the reality defeats them and throws stones, they are drawn into the inner self of being who they are and taking pride in being so. While the world spits them at their face and stomps them on the ground in order to make an example of moving away from the system of staying off from troubles, they dust up and run right after their goal as if nothing happened. Such is Will Kane.

Gary Cooper presents a face fitting the man. He is old enough to retire but young enough to gun sling with wisdom. He comes magnetic and surrounded by the immense stature of his personality where he goes. He gets broken down but has a stance of pulling himself together for the fight he knows of losing. Even his hopes of building a team is to satisfy his preparation. He wants to cover bases with himself in order to die with precision and no regrets. Cooper underlines it but not overwrought it.

Written by Carl Foreman who got questioned by the HUAC, this film carries lot of cultural significance because of it. More than the times when debacle of freedom occurred under the hands of political stupidity, “High Noon” is a brave film towards that. It took the concept of strong men being posed in westerns as very many thought into cowardly people escaping into the posing woods of supposed smartness.

Look how much information it gives on the people speaking of the past and the present reflecting their state of mind without any facade. It happens in real time moving into the hot sun directly hitting the heads of our lead man to add one more enemy to fight for. When the tour to recruit deputies for his fight ends and when his past and present lovers pass through him. He lifts his head wistfully of course not smiling. We feel sorry for the poor guy from the bottom of our hearts. That makes “High Noon” a completely different Western film I have ever seen.

"Smiley Face" (2007) - Movie Review

Gregg Araki’s “Smiley Face” is a glorified cacophony of an desperate attempt to create an eventful crazy day in the life of a stoner Jane F (Anna Faris). Jane is at the top of a Ferris Wheel talking to herself through a celebrity voice of Roscoe Lee Browne (I knew about him only through this film). Of course the clock is tuned back to the start of the day as Jane settles for an usual early morning. That will be to sit on the couch inhaling copious smokes of marijuana and playing a dubious video game. The stoning directs towards some munch and Jane steals the cup cakes prepared by her nerd room mate Steve (Danny Masterson). It is a weed seasoned cup cakes putting her for an ultimate spin of complete screwed up day of random silliness and chaos.

Beginning with some giggles it does not take much for its temporary charm to fly off the story. Anna Faris a comic seen in spoof films makes a wonderful stoner. She mumbles with eyes wide and lips little bit open tempting for a drool but not quite enough, to enact the perfect face of being high. With a mysterious question mark look and as a faithful pot consumer, she wavers into focussing on solving her busy day ahead. She has to pay the electricity bills her room mate has left who deserves to be treated like this. He does so because if some one is dumb enough to leave the responsibility of paying bills to a perennial pothead, he needs to go down and out to learn his lesson.

Adding to that is Jane’s acting audition. The recent consumption of the “special” cup cakes makes her to buy some more “happy greens” from a dealer (Adam Brody) who threatens to take away her sweet and luscious bed if she fails to pay back his 40$. Thus she steps outside and one after another it is a repetitive annoyance of how noise, scream and simple occurrence around Jane spooks her out on the effects of the drug.

Now we have seen the acid trips and hallucinatory obligations in films taken as a free arena for creative extension and easy laughs. And trust me it works like a charm every time despite its odd oldness. In “Smiley Face”, the comedy becomes pester and as with the characters Jane meets we begin to get boring creeps out of her. She is purely out there and in this obvious irresponsibility, we could not blame her as the drugs are taking her to a land where her limbs are taken off the brain nerves. She wobbles into the streets and paranoids in to the routines.

Then it begins to take the route of avant garde presentation of comedy in its weirdness. The characters she meet either are mindless morons or doubtful lethargic dumb people who do not notice this lady on her trip to wonderland. People trust her in giving rides to places and give her rare documents to deliver. She of course takes what she is given and rides what she is offered.

Anna Faris has been praised by many for her commitment to the role of Jane F. I do appreciate her work in this because it is tough to imagine for some one to be in that mode of unmotivated and declining character without being actually under the influence of the drugs. She is funny when the script works with her physical comedy and her facial staleness gets her through the role. But even her both in character and person does not seem to have fun.

Araki of course seems to be a director of instincts and maintains his integrity throughout his films. Thus was his previous venture “Mysterious Skin” which quite disturbs but not appeals. Here he attempts to wear the clothes of funny tone using the stoner genre into indie flick and doing a transformation into his style. It becomes painfully distorted and uneventfully placid for the chaos it boasts.

Most of the time I felt like watching a kid’s film made for adults of course with mature themes with immaturity. That is what silly comedy is, is not it? Yes indeed but there needs to be the factor of uninterrupted laughs in that evident childishness. “Smiley Face” has the flavour of stupidity but begins to take it quite seriously. Hence as the film intended to be a pot trip on its own becomes a character under influence accompanying and irritating us till the film ends with an unsympathetic note towards its audience.

"Who Killed the Electric Car?" (Documentary) (2006) - Movie Review

Documentaries has the power to make us look small. Small enough to stand aghast at the limitless cause and effect of the system around us. It has the wand only very realistic to stir up the magic in the sense of the viewers to look beyond the screens, the doors and the city limits of their living. Such is the potential of a documentary even when it involves a ridiculous stunt or two by Michael Moore in his films, it is powerful. “Who Killed the Electric Car?” has some but I could see the frustration of the EV1 drivers who desperately protest in not allowing the cars to be crushed by the makers itself, General Motors.

Director Chris Paine takes the forgotten car which was buried even before it surfaced. It is a technology which some might have heard only when Tom Hanks emphasized with his biting humour in “Late Show with David Letterman”. Where did it start and why did it end without much publicity? Why did now hybrids are sprouting around every one with a cry for alternative sources when thirteen years back there was a chance for a better car with a dependability towards electricity than the liquid gold? “Who Killed the Electric Car?” is a film with good bullet points and it is simple and reachable. A very strong characteristic for a documentary.

It does not mock but groans with frustration. The film which opens with a funeral service for a car is only little encouraging on its unbiased presentation. But it does well for most part. Why does drama takes a great precedence when facts reaches better in films like this? It might appeal for its purpose but the route only worsens. It almost seems impossible to look past the affection Chelsea Sexton shows towards her EV1 cars. She worked as an marketing expert in the EV1 vehicle manufactured by General Motors. She says they are her babies and she treats it more than as a pet. It takes hard time to understand it because we did not go through the work of building it from scratch and we did not have our dreams which nurture the expectation in reality to be shattered by unreasonable circumstances. The knowledge of that in later part of that film makes us empathize with her. Not sympathize but understand.

The film takes a very good strategy in identifying its culprits in the murder of the electric car. It puts forth them as suspects and then declaring “guilty” and “not guilty” in the end. It takes a stand in its decision which is reasonable and ends with a hope of better tomorrow which is now or never. There are grievances, many so told with ambiguity on how a company which went far, beyond and unbelievable in erasing any traces of its product. That tells how much of a cut throat is in the arena of capitalization.

The obvious suspects are the oil industries. Their business would be jeopardized and that points us to the known story of government. Then it extends to the stand the California Air Resources Board (CARB) did not take in the fear of law suits from the Automotive industries who were adamant and spoilt in adapting for a change. When CARB imposed the Zero Emission Mandate it terrified the Automakers of losing their market share in their existing cars. But as Joseph J. Romm an expert and author mentions, the irony of Japanese actually fearing of losing the competition in this new mandate came up with better cars. Now the reality of every body opting for Japanese cars has ultimately put the big three out of business in the current economic condition.

“Who Killed the Electric Car?” could have been an all through clean cut documentary which would have garnered a wider audience. An audience who can easily dismiss the intentions showing the stunts performed by the activists in trying to save the “killing” of the EV1. I am not ridiculing their efforts. Their intentions gets misconstrued as a materialistic obsession than a genuine concern for the ultimate direct effect of those cars towards the reality of environment, fuel efficient and non-polluting transportation.

A very good soundtrack which bows itself out to the pictures but plays out in a distant room to be heard but not be disturbed is a right choice by the film makers. Along with that is the original music by Michael Brook accomplishes the spreading quality of simplicity with an effectiveness. It is sad to see President Jimmy Carter in late 70s telling that the government’s aim in reducing the dependency of foreign oil for the country of US only to be repeated hopelessly by George Bush in 2006. Now the very same line is repeated by the current President Obama advocating the change as his mantra. Hope we do not have a documentary in thirty years taking that clip to show our world’s failure continuing further.

"American Movie" (Documentary) (1999) - Movie Review

“American Movie” is something of a tough watch as you would see the words coming out of Mark Borchardt in the start of the film splashed as a bucket of water on to my face. He has the passion as I have for the films and the difference though is he does not have a steady job and a lot more too. But of course in the current times, nothing is steady yet the film is documented during late 90s. And the other difference is he acts on his passion unlike me sitting on the couch. He acts quite immensely and pours energy consistently over a span of three years to a film “Coven” which I could not finish watching. It is that bad. But this is about the making of that film. Though this film’s title carries a subtitle of “The Making of Northwestern”, it is about making of “Coven”. “American Movie” is a funny, moving, mocking and a touching film by Chris Smith.

Mark Borchardt in Milwaukee, Wisconsin works on tight film budget with loans and debts and what not along with problems of his own. He has been postponing his work of making films for so long and he wants to hit it and hit it hard. He is thoroughly convincing and a man tall, lean with a good nice inches of glasses, his physicality is no wonder brings the comic element to the film. And we do ridicule him as he seriously digs into the process. He is constantly talking and working through his passion even though his projects gets shelved understandably of financial and talent reasons. As we have no doubts on his failure and the film which he begins to work on morph into something else he started a while ago, we are sucked into his camera, life and ultimately a documentary blossoming into great emotions and truly moving film.

Mark has great friends. Two in particular have been with him forever. This is a documentary filled with characters. Characters of immense weird surrealism. The people whom Mark befriended in involving them in his films and most of all drinks. A lot of drinks. One such is Mike Schank (who also composed simple soothing guitar picking score for this film) who seem to be existing in reality within himself and pictures the actual reality as a fantasy he questions. He is in a suspended state of clear and good high. But by the time the film finishes he has quit drugs and dropped down on drinks and he still wanders like that. We are illuminated by the fact that he in fact got imbibed in that aura of ambience and that is him. Truly him.

Another one is Ken Keeen, child hood friend and a big time alcohol buddy for Mark. He helps in shooting, editing, locations and everything Mark needs help. And then there is Mark’s father Cliff and his mother Monica. They have seen this kid grow with a camera in hand and they have warned and scolded and he never let that down. In the film though they are completely in support with him. Even when Mark is ready to give up, his dad wants him to keep going. Of course Mark is far from perfect, very very far but he works hard.

What is beautiful about this film which creates comedy on the expense of these characters, especially of course Mark, is the people who sticks with this man in the worst of times. And Mark despite his strangeness is a some one stirring up the passion in others. He weathers the strong words, the dismissal of his existence and every other form to be oblivious to the life outside of his imagination. His dad though has given up on funding his film but does not stop encouraging him. That turns to the most intriguing, comical, philosophical and adorable character in the film, Uncle Bill. Bill humiliates Mark at every instant with plain truth about his failure. Yet he loans him money and when Mark visits him for thanksgiving and other occasions, he pinches him with sarcasm. With all the cynicism the man just could not shun away the optimism of Mark who sucks thirty takes of this trembling old man.

When “American Movie” begins and we see Mark with a bum written all over his face and Mike Schank confirming it, we have no respect for him. As we see him in works, however untalented he would be for his ambitions, he pursues. He proposes a business plan of selling 3000 units of his film to earn back profit and repay Uncle Bill which of course is an illusion (now though with the popularity of this film, that does not seem unachievable). But it is more for him to finish and be in the trance of completing it. And it is the passion of every other people he stirred to be fulfilled by making this film. However bad “Coven” would be, there is something extremely human about seeing it. We know how hard every one worked and how lovely are Mark’s mom, Mark’s dad, his girl friend Joan and all the actors and crews who believed in that. Understanding that makes “American Movie” a great form in captivating true human emotions of aspiration, belief and love.

"American Splendor" (2003) - Movie Classics

Have you ever paused a movie because you are laughing so hard that you fear of missing at least five minutes of the next part of it? I have not, until I saw “American Splendor”. An year shying away from a very close comparison to “Adaptation.”, this is one of the most unbelievably funny movie I have ever seen in my life so far. Charlie Kauffman wrote himself in his script with fiction, reality and creativity like no other in “Adaptation.”. “American Splendor” is from a man claiming himself as the nobody is actually more than that tells his story from the years starting the day he begins to kick start his life, in his own gloomy way of course. This is Harvey Pekar.

See that I did not cite the actor who played him in braces. Because it needs some explanation. The film is about the life of the Harvey Pekar, a living man and he narrates the story. It educates on how he got himself into the world of comics and how it got himself to put him in it. He becomes a character in his comic book which he only pens and gets the help of other artists to draw him. Hence he becomes different faces of the same character on how each of the artist see him. Some do dignifying look, others gross him out as hairy and disgusting being and another draws him as it is. Everything is a little part of him as it would be of any of ourselves. We will be watching his life spanning from his youth till middle age laughing for the most part and then beginning to empathize. Before we know, we see a more profound and in depth commentary of an ordinary life magnified by the people outside but Harvey living and acknowledging the hole he came up and dealing the events bigger than that with what it is, temporary and providing.

Paul Giamatti plays the movie version of Harvey Pekar. The film cuts few scenes with the real life characters and put the comic graphics with the story. We see a blend of everything. A comic book, documentary, reality and the whole thing is a morphed reality of fiction from the memories of a man. This is not an experiment film but a film of true integrity adapting the comic book and events of actuality. A man so full of dreary, despair and floats in a vacuous state of cheerless clouds. We see him losing his voice and his doctor asking him to stop yelling as the suggestion for cure. He could not as his second marriage goes to drain and he cannot do anything about it, not even shout on anger and to plead.

He works as a file clerk in a VA Hospital in the city of Cleveland. He does not give a damn and burns internally of the criticism of the America around him. Not in the outcast speech way but how it affects him in his regular day of work. The monotony and his complete inability to make something out of the ordinary. His failure becoming the only better part of his existence. A job to hate but institutionalized in it and the stretched time of loneliness seeping into his thick sin and is almost there to tear the elongated slowness of his routine. This frustration blooms into a reality TV narration only a lot more original, better and honest to begin his comic book career. The film becomes the same and invents itself through brilliant castings and acting with a daring direction from Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini.

But being funny is from the happenings around a normal man. He is more clearer than any one of his sunken living and has that clarity of thought to put it across of his day’s overhearings, encounters and experience into words which triggered the comic into the film that work precisely for the same. It is not boasting but bluntly truthful. It does not act smart but wonders how complicated, chaotic the day can be with people of every day dumbness.

Harvey despite his popularity in comic book continues without of course ever quitting the file clerk job but one fine day he is teased of being with a woman when he meets his old school mate Alice (Maggie Moore). And suddenly a film so funny turns for a few minutes into the sadness and pain of a being in the city walking alone in the streets empty. He sees that gap as a writer losing himself in lost for words seeing a blank white page. Then it springs back and we see a comic geek in a far away place at Denver getting irritated by her life giving tough time. She is annoyed because she missed reading the latest comic book edition of “American Splendor”. That is Hope Davis portraying Joyce Brabner. We do not identify her as the love interest of Harvey not because of Hope Davis but because of the immediacy we come to realize how similar and perfect her agony and cribbing coincides with our main man.

“American Splendor” blew me away, completely on my back, flat and plain, wondering aloud looking right up on the false ceiling upwards. Every one identifies with Harvey not because of the dreaded term of every man but of the turmoil of self esteem, low confidence and the tough life every one goes through even in the most financially proliferous job. It differs in the environment but the feeling is mutual. But it is also due to the character Harvey Pekar himself and Paul Giamatti nailing it. It is difficult to imagine but being on the same set as some one whom you are portraying is a tough gig and mainly to share the time on the screen. It is slightly made easy by an immaculate screenplay by the directors and of course Pekar and Joyce themselves.

It is weird that what Pekar did is a form of trashy reality TV. But what is the difference of this autobiography and the crappy TV show? It is the daunting honesty of saying what it is without any speck of manipulation, over dramatization or made up insanity. Most of us passionate about something see the life of us through it. Our stories written in books, our successes coming up as a character in a play or the submerged secrecy of passion in paintings and the songs which takes the otherwise mute day into something special. In music, books, paintings and theatre, it adds the beauty of the missing colour in the regularity of the day. I see that in films. What do you see?