Lions and Tigers and Bears....oh my!

A previous neglected post from over a year ago that I just posted:

The first time I took a friend from North America and took her to the subcontinent, it was a revelation. The country that I visited with fear and longing, with belonging and alienation----suddenly opened up, with details I merely took for granted: the paintings on the trucks, the inane grammar of "HORN OK PLEASE", the proliferation of public peeing, the busy roads with the trees growing in the middle, and of course---the animals. Linking Rd is a busy carpet of maneuvering, honking cars, yet in this bustle, not too long ago, it was not uncommon to find a cow in the road lazing around, while the cars and autorickshaws, without any hesitation, would swerve around it. My friend pointed out monkeys hanging around the ridge of building or climbing dangling wires, dogs going on about their business. It was this urban cohabitation with the Jungle Book that struck her and most tourists the most, when coming to India.

Today, I went to a lecture that addressed this phenomenon; it was given by Dr. Salman Akhtar, a renowned psychoanalyist and poet, an enviable achievement in my world view, especially as both come from a certain cultivation of mind and soul that is not easy to accomplish. What also struck me about Dr. Akhtar was a similarity he shared with my mother: they both have a Hindi Film Industry connection, coming from a family that boasts of an artistic tradition. They both left India and had more strictly academic ambitions than their siblings, who embraced the glamour of films. That said, I also think they both have an extreme fondness for their culture, for the lives that they left behind, and it is the personal anecdotes that peppers Dr. Akhtar's lecture that added the real masala to his already brilliant series of observations.

Dr. Akhtar spoke about Hinduism's perception of animals, in reference to Hanuman and Ganesh, and how the use of animals explains important life lessons that permeate the culture of the motherland to such an extent that it explains why it allows the cows to laze in the middle of busy intersection. I will not go into so much what he said, in case it eventually manifests itself into a book ( he already has a ridiculous number under his name), but his rhetoric was so fluid, so precise, both anecdotal but systemetic in its analysis---it demonstrates his ability to embrace the literal and the figurative, his background in science and art. He put it so beautifully when he explained Hinduism. "It is a religion of poetry." Ultimately, what Dr. Akhtar really brought to the table was a psychoanalytical take on how the stories in Hinduism convey a world view, that is really not specific to any religion. Just life, really.

A Coda:

After the lecture, he went to the Tivoli theatres to show and talk about the amazing movie the Pool. I did not attend the film as I was not feeling well and had seen the movie before, but my mother went. She claimed to have seen the movie before and wasn't very impressed by it, but when she returned from the film, she was gushing "What an outstanding film!" As it turns out, she had not seen the film.

The film, by an American Chris Smith, was one of those cinematic gems that gets lost in the hype machine (Other example: Me Without You, the New World). It came out the same time as Slum Dog Millionaire, which also dealt with street kids looking for a better life, but this film did it without the pulp, without the grandeur but within the quiet realm of a house and the pool, the boy-man who longs for its beauty, the secret tragedy that the pool embodies, and the family that resides in the house by the pool. The film was made with mostly non-actors, except for the outstanding Nana Patekar. It also showcases the mangled natural charm of Goa without a swell of orchestras or sweeping cinematography. The beauty speaks for itself.

Summer Movies Update: Old friends, New Love.

So lately, the summer film promise felt inflated.  I recall thinking about all the wonderful films out there, and then when it came down to it, not really feeling there was a movie I wanted to watch.  As a result, I found myself revisiting old friends in a new venues.

Cleo 5 to 7.  I have to thank a paramour for introducing me to this film.  He gave it to me and said, watch this.  You will love it.  And so one night, on my small television with an attached VCR and a  warped coat-hanger antenna that could channel PBS decently, I watched the film.   Like any great work of genius, the story unfolded in such a powerful, beautiful way, that what was being told was far larger than what was on-screen.  I was in medical school at the time, and I watched the film three more times that night.

The film is  simple in premise and ambling in style.  A pop singer named Cleo is awaiting a test result to see if she has cancer.  During that time, she deals with her friends, acquaintances, work collaborators, her lover, an old friend, a silent film, the streets of Paris and a new aquaitance who himself is facing an uncertain, ambiguous fate, and ultimately, she deals with herself.  Over this period of time, she grows away from her own vanity as a pop star, woman, and person,  finds her own importance arbitrary, forgets her own affectations, and discovers a world greater than herself and in the process, a rebirth and redemption.  Not too shabby for two hours, eh.  The last shot may be the most beautiful ever filmed, and I think Agnes Varda as a filmmaker and a person bares so much of herself in this film, that despite the simple premise---there are numerous ways to read the story.

Anyhow, I recently saw the film at the SF MOMA with Kris, who of course took immediate pleasure in seeing a young Michel Legrand onscreen, who he labelled as "surprisingly dreamy."  He also commented that he loves how a person can make a living in Paris selling hats.  But I think that's also a relic of the past.

Take This Waltz.  I was really excited to see this film, though I hadn't seen Sarah Polley's first feature which everyone loved so much, Away From Her. Like her previous film,  this film has  a female director, a female protagonist, seems to have dealt with the prospect of married love in an interesting way.  I think I enjoyed the film but mostly, I left the theatre feeling an overwhelming sense of frustration that lingered for a full day after.  Which speaks to the power and failure of the film, I think.

I do feel this film is a modern day Anna Karanina, in a way.  It is about a married woman struggling with her own attraction to a handsome man across the street and trying to reconcile her inner longings with the structure of her everyday life.

What infuriates me about this film is that these people are not real people.  The girl appears to do freelance, but a whole lot of nothing, which allows her to stew in her own emotions a little too much.  She's over-marinated and overcooked, and may suffer from what SNL describes as "white people problems."  The men of question in her iife are no better: the neighbor is an artist who drives a rickshaw by day.  Perhaps, her husband is a little better and different in that he is working hard towards a professional goal....a ridiculous one, but it speaks to a VISION in LIFE greater than oneself.  Maybe these people needed to spend the day with Cleo.

The film is beautiful to watch and there are some inspired sequences.  Dialogue is awful.   Sounds like a high school diary of a lit mag editor listening to too much acoustic singer songwriters.  For example, Margot, the main character, discusses her phobia about flight connections, and instead of sounding sympathetic, she just sounds pathetic and pretentious.  That said, had Polley just made a movie without the dialogue, left in the beautiful sequences of attraction and chaste flirting, and ended it ambiguously at a near-goodbye with a dream of a future that may never happen, the film may have been perfect.  But the film expounded on what happened, resulting on an interesting and unforgettable rotating montage and finally ended with some level of resolution before ricocheting back into some level of cinematic ambiguity.  I don't think I'd recommend anyone to watch this film, and yet it lingers in my mind more strongly, which I think is a sign of success.  Who knows.  Maybe it requires a second watch.

Singin in the Rain.  What needs to be said about this film, that hasn't already been said?  It's saturated in color, humor and joy.  And though I've seen the film probably a hundred times, it boggles my mind how two directors could accomplish this level of freshness that keeps fresh even after multiple viewings.

Moonrise Kingdom.  So I have a love-hate relationship with Wes Anderson.  Most people who love him do.  I am a staunch advocate of his early works: Bottle Rocket, Royal Tennenbaums, and Rushmore.  I have seen Rushmore a 100 times.  I had the film in my video player of the same television-VCR combo that followed me to medical school and played Cleo for me many years later.  I liken the film to Great Gatsby in how it expounds on a certain level of disillusionment intrinsic to the American Dream as it was originally peddled.  But that's another blog entry.

Anyhow, I feel after Tennenbaums, Anderson's films seems much more preoccupied with artifice than the visceral feeling of emotions that can give the artifice life.  For example, I loved what he did with the vision of India in Darjeeling Limited, the details he noticed, the colors, but as a story, the film fell flat.  I liked Fantastic Mr Fox but it did not linger in my mind the day after I saw it.  So by no means did any of these endeavors result in a  piece of work that I could liken to literature.  I sometimes thinks he needs to start writing with Owen Wilson again.

I was so ready to hate Anderson's next film, and yet it was as if he found himself in a language beyond the Kinks and parent-child dilemmas.  In the trailer, Moonrise Kingdom had me at the opening guitar notes of Francoise Hardy's "Le Temps de Amour."   He found a new way to revisit old themes: a fevered ascension of minor-note arpeggios culminated into a major chord epiphany.  Moonrise Kingdom the film lived up to its promise.  The artifice was beautiful, yes, but the two young leads added something to the dialogue---real, unfettered, non-ironic, bonafide sincerity.  Also, this is the first time Anderson was dealing with a love story between a boy and a girl.   A troubled boy and girl.  Two misfits, bonding over storytelling, campfires, dreams, and a vague sense of adventure as a means to refuge and salvation.  It's old territory, but a pleasant one to visit, nonetheless.  It may not have the thematic heft of the earlier masterpieces but I think a well-realized love story is a cinematic marvel in its own league.

I may have to see this one again, but I will say this: Well-played, Mr. Anderson.  I tip my hat to you.