I was one of the insatiables. The ones you'd always find sitting closest to the screen. Why do we sit so close? Maybe it was because we wanted to receive the images first. When they were still new, still fresh. Before they cleared the hurdles of the rows behind us. Before they'd been relayed back from row to row, spectator to spectator; until worn out, secondhand, the size of a postage stamp, it returned to the projectionist's cabin. Maybe, too, the screen was really a screen. It screened us... from the world.
- Matthew (The Dreamers)
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Saturday, September 01, 2007
The Edukators
excellent direction… touching the right cause…witty dialogs…patchy camerawork…
To put it all together…a work of art ! :)
But as I said…found it just skimming over the cause in the end…
Some lines that I could pick from the film(/subtitles):
Jan: Rebellion is difficult now.
Before all it took was dope and long hair...and the establishment was automatically against you.
What was considered subversive then you can buy in shops today...Che Guevara T-shirts or anarchy stickers.
-----
Note on the wall: Your days of plenty are numbered.
-----
Jule: When I was little...with my friends...we played house with dolls
It was so real for them. They were so into it. I was never able to forget they were only dolls.
I always felt like...more of a watcher than a player
You know?
I still feel like that...in real life
Jan: It's the matrix.
If you see it you can't be living in it.
-----
Jan: How can someone with your past live the way you do? You must have had ideals.
Hardenberg: My father told me: "Under 30 and not liberal, no heart"
"Over 30 and still liberal, no brains"
But as I said…found it just skimming over the cause in the end…
Some lines that I could pick from the film(/subtitles):
Jan: Rebellion is difficult now.
Before all it took was dope and long hair...and the establishment was automatically against you.
What was considered subversive then you can buy in shops today...Che Guevara T-shirts or anarchy stickers.
-----
Note on the wall: Your days of plenty are numbered.
-----
Jule: When I was little...with my friends...we played house with dolls
It was so real for them. They were so into it. I was never able to forget they were only dolls.
I always felt like...more of a watcher than a player
You know?
I still feel like that...in real life
Jan: It's the matrix.
If you see it you can't be living in it.
-----
Jan: How can someone with your past live the way you do? You must have had ideals.
Hardenberg: My father told me: "Under 30 and not liberal, no heart"
"Over 30 and still liberal, no brains"
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Down and Out in Paris and London - an excerpt
it's the book in my bag currently...a semi-autobiographical novel about a writer's struggle and his tryst with poverty in the two cities..read on..
George Orwell
Down and Out in Paris and London
CHAPTER XXII
For what they are worth I want to give my opinions about the life of a Paris PLONGEUR. When one comes to think of it, it is strange that thousands of people in a great modem city should spend their waking hours swabbing dishes in hot dens underground. The question I am raising is why this life goes on—what purpose it serves, and who wants it to continue, and why I am not taking the merely rebellious, FAINEANT attitude. I am trying to consider the social significance of a PLONGEUR’S life.
I think one should start by saying that a PLONGEUR is one of the slaves of the modem world. Not that there is any need to whine over him, for he is better off than many manual workers, but still, he is no freer than if he were bought and sold. His work is servile and without art; he is paid just enough to keep him alive; his only holiday is the sack. He is cut off from marriage, or, if he marries, his wife must work too. Except by a lucky chance, he has no escape from this life, save into prison. At this moment there are men with university degrees scrubbing dishes in Paris for ten or fifteen hours a day. One cannot say that it is mere idleness on their part, for an idle man cannot be a PLONGEUR; they have simply been trapped by a routine which makes thought impossible. If PLONGEURS thought at all, they would long ago have formed a union and gone on strike for better treatment. But they do not think, because they have no leisure for it; their life has made slaves of them.
The question is, why does this slavery continue? People have a way of taking it for granted that all work is done for a sound purpose. They see somebody else doing a disagreeable job, and think that they have solved things by saying that the job is necessary. Coal-mining, for example, is hard work, but it is necessary—we must have coal. Working in the sewers is unpleasant, but somebody must work in the sewers. And similarly with a PLONGEUR’S work. Some people must feed in restaurants, and so other people must swab dishes for eighty hours a week. It is the work of civilization, therefore unquestionable. This point is worth considering.
Is a PLONGEUR’S work really necessary to civilization? We have a feeling that it must be ‘honest’ work, because it is hard and disagreeable, and we have made a sort of fetish of manual work. We see a man cutting down a tree, and we make sure that he is filling a social need, just because he uses his muscles; it does not occur to us that he may only be cutting down a beautiful tree to make room for a hideous statue. I believe it is the same with a PLONGEUR. He earns his bread in the sweat of his brow, but it does not follow that he is doing anything useful; he may be only supplying a luxury which, very often, is not a luxury.
As an example of what I mean by luxuries which are not luxuries, take an extreme case, such as one hardly sees in Europe. Take an Indian rickshaw puller, or a gharry pony. In any Far Eastern town there are rickshaw pullers by the hundred, black wretches weighing eight stone, clad in loin-cloths. Some of them are diseased; some of them are fifty years old. For miles on end they trot in the sun or rain, head down, dragging at the shafts, with the sweat dripping from their grey moustaches. When they go too slowly the passenger calls them BAHINCHUT. They earn thirty or forty rupees a month, and cough their lungs out after a few years. The gharry ponies are gaunt, vicious things that have been sold cheap as having a few years’ work left in them. Their master looks on the whip as a substitute for food. Their work expresses itself in a sort of equation—whip plus food equals energy; generally it is about sixty per cent whip and forty per cent food. Sometimes their necks are encircled by one vast sore, so that they drag all day on raw flesh. It is still possible to make them work, however; it is just a question of thrashing them so hard that the pain behind outweighs the pain in front. After a few years even the whip loses its virtue, and the pony goes to the knacker. These are instances of unnecessary work, for there is no real need for gharries and rickshaws; they only exist because Orientals consider it vulgar to walk. They are luxuries, and, as anyone who has ridden in them knows, very poor luxuries. They afford a small amount of convenience, which cannot possibly balance the suffering of the men and animals.
Similarly with the PLONGEUR. He is a king compared with a rickshaw puller or a gharry pony, but his case is analogous. He is the slave of a hotel or a restaurant, and his slavery is more or less useless. For, after all, where is the REAL need of big hotels and smart restaurants? They are supposed to provide luxury, but in reality they provide only a cheap, shoddy imitation of it. Nearly everyone hates hotels. Some restaurants are better than others, but it is impossible to get as good a meal in a restaurant as one can get, for the same expense, in a private house. No doubt hotels and restaurants must exist, but there is no need that they should enslave hundreds of people. What makes the work in them is not the essentials; it is the shams that are supposed to represent luxury. Smartness, as it is called, means, in effect, merely that the staff work more and the customers pay more; no one benefits except the proprietor, who will presently buy himself a striped villa at Deauville. Essentially, a ‘smart’ hotel is a place where a hundred people toil like devils in order that two hundred may pay through the nose for things they do not really want. If the nonsense were cut out of hotels and restaurants, and the work done with simple efficiency, PLONGEURS might work six or eight hours a day instead often or fifteen.
Suppose it is granted that a PLONGEUR’S work is more or less useless. Then the question follows, Why does anyone want him to go on working? I am trying to go beyond the immediate economic cause, and to consider what pleasure it can give anyone to think of men swabbing dishes for life. For there is no doubt that people—comfortably situated people—do find a pleasure in such thoughts. A slave, Marcus Gato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work is needed or not, he must work, because work in itself is good—for slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery.
I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think. A rich man who happens to be intellectually honest, if he is questioned about the improvement of working conditions, usually says something like this:
‘We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don’t expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry for you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a, cat with the mange, but we will fight like devils against any improvement of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you.’
This is particularly the attitude of intelligent, cultivated people; one can read the substance of it in a hundred essays. Very few cultivated people have less than (say) four hundred pounds a year, and naturally they side with the rich, because they imagine that any liberty conceded to the poor is a threat to their own liberty. Foreseeing some dismal Marxian Utopia as the alternative, the educated man prefers to keep things as they are. Possibly he does not like his fellow-rich very much, but he supposes that even the vulgarest of them are less inimical to his pleasures, more his kind of people, than the poor, and that he had better stand by them. It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions.
Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like Negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the. average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? In my copy of Villon’s poems the editor has actually thought it necessary to explain the line ‘NE PAIN NE VOYENT QU’AUX FENESTRES’ by a footnote; so remote is even hunger from the educated man’s experience.
From this ignorance a superstitious fear of the mob results quite naturally. The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day’s liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. ‘Anything,’ he thinks, ‘any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.’ He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and—in the shape of rich men—is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom, such as ‘smart’ hotels.
To sum up. A PLONGEUR is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the process, because they know nothing about him and consequently are afraid of him. I say this of the PLONGEUR because it is his case I have been considering; it would apply equally to numberless other types of worker. These are only my own ideas about the basic facts of a PLONGEUR’S life, made without reference to immediate economic questions, and no doubt largely platitudes. I present them as a sample of the thoughts that are put into one’s head by working in an hotel.
George Orwell
Down and Out in Paris and London
CHAPTER XXII
For what they are worth I want to give my opinions about the life of a Paris PLONGEUR. When one comes to think of it, it is strange that thousands of people in a great modem city should spend their waking hours swabbing dishes in hot dens underground. The question I am raising is why this life goes on—what purpose it serves, and who wants it to continue, and why I am not taking the merely rebellious, FAINEANT attitude. I am trying to consider the social significance of a PLONGEUR’S life.
I think one should start by saying that a PLONGEUR is one of the slaves of the modem world. Not that there is any need to whine over him, for he is better off than many manual workers, but still, he is no freer than if he were bought and sold. His work is servile and without art; he is paid just enough to keep him alive; his only holiday is the sack. He is cut off from marriage, or, if he marries, his wife must work too. Except by a lucky chance, he has no escape from this life, save into prison. At this moment there are men with university degrees scrubbing dishes in Paris for ten or fifteen hours a day. One cannot say that it is mere idleness on their part, for an idle man cannot be a PLONGEUR; they have simply been trapped by a routine which makes thought impossible. If PLONGEURS thought at all, they would long ago have formed a union and gone on strike for better treatment. But they do not think, because they have no leisure for it; their life has made slaves of them.
The question is, why does this slavery continue? People have a way of taking it for granted that all work is done for a sound purpose. They see somebody else doing a disagreeable job, and think that they have solved things by saying that the job is necessary. Coal-mining, for example, is hard work, but it is necessary—we must have coal. Working in the sewers is unpleasant, but somebody must work in the sewers. And similarly with a PLONGEUR’S work. Some people must feed in restaurants, and so other people must swab dishes for eighty hours a week. It is the work of civilization, therefore unquestionable. This point is worth considering.
Is a PLONGEUR’S work really necessary to civilization? We have a feeling that it must be ‘honest’ work, because it is hard and disagreeable, and we have made a sort of fetish of manual work. We see a man cutting down a tree, and we make sure that he is filling a social need, just because he uses his muscles; it does not occur to us that he may only be cutting down a beautiful tree to make room for a hideous statue. I believe it is the same with a PLONGEUR. He earns his bread in the sweat of his brow, but it does not follow that he is doing anything useful; he may be only supplying a luxury which, very often, is not a luxury.
As an example of what I mean by luxuries which are not luxuries, take an extreme case, such as one hardly sees in Europe. Take an Indian rickshaw puller, or a gharry pony. In any Far Eastern town there are rickshaw pullers by the hundred, black wretches weighing eight stone, clad in loin-cloths. Some of them are diseased; some of them are fifty years old. For miles on end they trot in the sun or rain, head down, dragging at the shafts, with the sweat dripping from their grey moustaches. When they go too slowly the passenger calls them BAHINCHUT. They earn thirty or forty rupees a month, and cough their lungs out after a few years. The gharry ponies are gaunt, vicious things that have been sold cheap as having a few years’ work left in them. Their master looks on the whip as a substitute for food. Their work expresses itself in a sort of equation—whip plus food equals energy; generally it is about sixty per cent whip and forty per cent food. Sometimes their necks are encircled by one vast sore, so that they drag all day on raw flesh. It is still possible to make them work, however; it is just a question of thrashing them so hard that the pain behind outweighs the pain in front. After a few years even the whip loses its virtue, and the pony goes to the knacker. These are instances of unnecessary work, for there is no real need for gharries and rickshaws; they only exist because Orientals consider it vulgar to walk. They are luxuries, and, as anyone who has ridden in them knows, very poor luxuries. They afford a small amount of convenience, which cannot possibly balance the suffering of the men and animals.
Similarly with the PLONGEUR. He is a king compared with a rickshaw puller or a gharry pony, but his case is analogous. He is the slave of a hotel or a restaurant, and his slavery is more or less useless. For, after all, where is the REAL need of big hotels and smart restaurants? They are supposed to provide luxury, but in reality they provide only a cheap, shoddy imitation of it. Nearly everyone hates hotels. Some restaurants are better than others, but it is impossible to get as good a meal in a restaurant as one can get, for the same expense, in a private house. No doubt hotels and restaurants must exist, but there is no need that they should enslave hundreds of people. What makes the work in them is not the essentials; it is the shams that are supposed to represent luxury. Smartness, as it is called, means, in effect, merely that the staff work more and the customers pay more; no one benefits except the proprietor, who will presently buy himself a striped villa at Deauville. Essentially, a ‘smart’ hotel is a place where a hundred people toil like devils in order that two hundred may pay through the nose for things they do not really want. If the nonsense were cut out of hotels and restaurants, and the work done with simple efficiency, PLONGEURS might work six or eight hours a day instead often or fifteen.
Suppose it is granted that a PLONGEUR’S work is more or less useless. Then the question follows, Why does anyone want him to go on working? I am trying to go beyond the immediate economic cause, and to consider what pleasure it can give anyone to think of men swabbing dishes for life. For there is no doubt that people—comfortably situated people—do find a pleasure in such thoughts. A slave, Marcus Gato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work is needed or not, he must work, because work in itself is good—for slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery.
I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think. A rich man who happens to be intellectually honest, if he is questioned about the improvement of working conditions, usually says something like this:
‘We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don’t expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry for you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a, cat with the mange, but we will fight like devils against any improvement of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you.’
This is particularly the attitude of intelligent, cultivated people; one can read the substance of it in a hundred essays. Very few cultivated people have less than (say) four hundred pounds a year, and naturally they side with the rich, because they imagine that any liberty conceded to the poor is a threat to their own liberty. Foreseeing some dismal Marxian Utopia as the alternative, the educated man prefers to keep things as they are. Possibly he does not like his fellow-rich very much, but he supposes that even the vulgarest of them are less inimical to his pleasures, more his kind of people, than the poor, and that he had better stand by them. It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions.
Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like Negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the. average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? In my copy of Villon’s poems the editor has actually thought it necessary to explain the line ‘NE PAIN NE VOYENT QU’AUX FENESTRES’ by a footnote; so remote is even hunger from the educated man’s experience.
From this ignorance a superstitious fear of the mob results quite naturally. The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day’s liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. ‘Anything,’ he thinks, ‘any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.’ He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and—in the shape of rich men—is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom, such as ‘smart’ hotels.
To sum up. A PLONGEUR is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the process, because they know nothing about him and consequently are afraid of him. I say this of the PLONGEUR because it is his case I have been considering; it would apply equally to numberless other types of worker. These are only my own ideas about the basic facts of a PLONGEUR’S life, made without reference to immediate economic questions, and no doubt largely platitudes. I present them as a sample of the thoughts that are put into one’s head by working in an hotel.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Random Places, Random People and Random Chats
Often found these three roulette wheels yielding bizarre combinations with me. This time with an Iranian guy, at a London pizza joint, and a banter(a discourse rather) on religion.
Had a tough day in office, and came home to see a documentary on partition playing on tv. Just dropped my bag in the room and joined my housemates to catch it from between. As is the case is with all documentaries & films on the genre, they leave you with a different insight on the period to mull over. It got over at 11, which meant pizza for dinner(again). Also feel a good film or a good book is best followed with a stroll. So having given this intellectual backing to the only option in front of me, I took to the road.
Not very far from my place is this pizza joint where you can find freshly baked pizzas that are penny cheap. It’s here that I got into talking with the guy owning the shop. I could guess that he wasn’t British, but couldn’t guess that he was from Iran (he looked European). I told him that I had seen some of Majid Majidi’s films and had found him to be brilliant in his craft. He turned out to be a bigger fan of Shahrukh Khan – I was hoping he’d have taken some other name….but so be it. Chatting further he asked me if I was a Hindu. I said yes. He felt that religion was nothing but a business to make money, and asked me if I felt the same. Honestly, I didn’t. Because if it were, it’d make us the richest economy I the world! On another note, I do not go to temples often, neither does my family have many ceremonies and customs performed. So I felt it’s a personal discretion, that the religion can’t and doesn’t dictate. What do you believe in? he asked. And this is what he went on asking me later. Hmm…let me see…I was trying to look for an answer, but was totally lost. A person who has ever had to answer this question would know my state. My struggle to give a quick, yet a discernable answer was made worse by his continuously asking me the same question. “Tell me my friend. What do you believe in!”. I had to reply, and just to shoot something at him, I said – myself. Myself? What did I just say? It sounded funny to me and wondered if it was the best I could come up with. Anyways, I had spoken, and unless he was momentarily deafened by some miraculous cancellation wave, he’d have heard it. As I would’ve expected, he dismissed the answer, and asked me the question again. I told him that I wasn’t able to grasp what he was looking for, and hence wouldn’t be able to answer his question. I mean c’mon…You believe in so many things right from your philosophies. So though it’d be ideallic to have one belief that drives the way you live each day, each moment, it’s often not the case. Finding no answer from me, he started with his discourse. Why are you a hindu. Just because your parents are, and their parents were? How much have you tried to find your own beliefs. People don’t eat cows because it gives them milk. What the f*. A goat gives you milk, a sheep gives you wool. Why all these foolish practices when we are all going to die in the end. Why do we need to go through this cycle of living? He sounded much like a rigid anti-hindu, which got me into a defensive mode trying to defend. But soon I realized he was denouncing all religions. Islam, Jews, Christians, He touched them all, rejecting them all one by one. I was shuffling between being convinced at one moment, and finding him just another pseudo-intellectual at another. However, his narration was quite animated and gripping. Which made me spend close to 45 minutes there. I had no answer for his questions on idol worship and its likes, and found myself at the wrong end, as I’m one of those lesser hindus if compared with the average of the lot.
Going by his narrative, I was waiting for an enlightening conclusion, which turned out to be a little bland in the end though. He told me that his ideology is to take 5 minutes out every night to retrospect on his day, his past, and how it fits into his entire life. And to think about a supreme power in those 5 minutes. This way he said, if there’s a god-you were right all along. And if there isn’t, you didn’t lose much in those 5 minutes every day, and besides you’d never know that you were wrong once you die. Interesting concept I thought, but nothing that you’d have heard or thought for the first time.
Nevertheless, he had asked me to live with a motive, and try and find my beliefs in life. So, the quest goes on...
Had a tough day in office, and came home to see a documentary on partition playing on tv. Just dropped my bag in the room and joined my housemates to catch it from between. As is the case is with all documentaries & films on the genre, they leave you with a different insight on the period to mull over. It got over at 11, which meant pizza for dinner(again). Also feel a good film or a good book is best followed with a stroll. So having given this intellectual backing to the only option in front of me, I took to the road.
Not very far from my place is this pizza joint where you can find freshly baked pizzas that are penny cheap. It’s here that I got into talking with the guy owning the shop. I could guess that he wasn’t British, but couldn’t guess that he was from Iran (he looked European). I told him that I had seen some of Majid Majidi’s films and had found him to be brilliant in his craft. He turned out to be a bigger fan of Shahrukh Khan – I was hoping he’d have taken some other name….but so be it. Chatting further he asked me if I was a Hindu. I said yes. He felt that religion was nothing but a business to make money, and asked me if I felt the same. Honestly, I didn’t. Because if it were, it’d make us the richest economy I the world! On another note, I do not go to temples often, neither does my family have many ceremonies and customs performed. So I felt it’s a personal discretion, that the religion can’t and doesn’t dictate. What do you believe in? he asked. And this is what he went on asking me later. Hmm…let me see…I was trying to look for an answer, but was totally lost. A person who has ever had to answer this question would know my state. My struggle to give a quick, yet a discernable answer was made worse by his continuously asking me the same question. “Tell me my friend. What do you believe in!”. I had to reply, and just to shoot something at him, I said – myself. Myself? What did I just say? It sounded funny to me and wondered if it was the best I could come up with. Anyways, I had spoken, and unless he was momentarily deafened by some miraculous cancellation wave, he’d have heard it. As I would’ve expected, he dismissed the answer, and asked me the question again. I told him that I wasn’t able to grasp what he was looking for, and hence wouldn’t be able to answer his question. I mean c’mon…You believe in so many things right from your philosophies. So though it’d be ideallic to have one belief that drives the way you live each day, each moment, it’s often not the case. Finding no answer from me, he started with his discourse. Why are you a hindu. Just because your parents are, and their parents were? How much have you tried to find your own beliefs. People don’t eat cows because it gives them milk. What the f*. A goat gives you milk, a sheep gives you wool. Why all these foolish practices when we are all going to die in the end. Why do we need to go through this cycle of living? He sounded much like a rigid anti-hindu, which got me into a defensive mode trying to defend. But soon I realized he was denouncing all religions. Islam, Jews, Christians, He touched them all, rejecting them all one by one. I was shuffling between being convinced at one moment, and finding him just another pseudo-intellectual at another. However, his narration was quite animated and gripping. Which made me spend close to 45 minutes there. I had no answer for his questions on idol worship and its likes, and found myself at the wrong end, as I’m one of those lesser hindus if compared with the average of the lot.
Going by his narrative, I was waiting for an enlightening conclusion, which turned out to be a little bland in the end though. He told me that his ideology is to take 5 minutes out every night to retrospect on his day, his past, and how it fits into his entire life. And to think about a supreme power in those 5 minutes. This way he said, if there’s a god-you were right all along. And if there isn’t, you didn’t lose much in those 5 minutes every day, and besides you’d never know that you were wrong once you die. Interesting concept I thought, but nothing that you’d have heard or thought for the first time.
Nevertheless, he had asked me to live with a motive, and try and find my beliefs in life. So, the quest goes on...
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Trainspotting
‘Choose Life. Choose a Job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big Television. Choose Washing Machines, Cars, Compact Disc Players and electrical tin opener.
Choose good health. Low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a home. Choose your friends.
Choose Leisurewear, and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase. Choose DIY wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose a couch watching mind numbing spirit crushing game shows stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth.
Choose rotting away at the end of it all pissing your last in a miserable home nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish brats you’ve spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose Life !
But why would I want to do a thing like that. I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin.’
And its theme. Only, the nonconformist here swings between choosing and not choosing life.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Piff - Day 2
Sunday
The plan was pretty straightforward for day 2. Get up, drive up and witness what the festival had to offer today. Like yesterday, I wasn’t able to browse much through the catalogue, and had left the choice of films open to contemplation, mainly governed by my whim at the moment. Barring a few bad decisions, I thought I stayed pretty much on track, getting what I wanted from the fest. Few recollections from the day:
Woman with a camera
Reached a little late to catch the film from its start, but managed to catch most of it nonetheless. The movie was truly for, of and by women. Which was little disappointing for me at least. It upsets, and sometimes puzzles me when women start identifying with a creed of their own. Women’s day for instance. Before expecting men to give their share of respect, it is important that women too erase that grey line, and stop identifying themselves as an oppressed class. Anyways, this seems to spawn a new argument altogether, most of which the film doesn’t deserve, so I’ll take it in a separate thread. Having said what I said above, I still found the film noteworthy, portraying the vivid kaleidoscope of Indian, and more specifically keralite women, quite elegantly. Besides catching real life glimpses from a wide area, it also had certain abstract sequences filled in that made the painting complete. Overall, a good attempt, and definitely a well thought of film.
Thanks
The post screening session said it all. For a change, the audience was blunt on the face of the film’s representative telling him that he had left too much to the imagination. I did agree with some who spoke, as I too felt that though it is best left to the viewer to read between the lines, a film must have the substance to provoke him to do so. Otherwise, it all appears a random sequence of images created just to satisfy the director’s whims.
Chaabi Waali Pocket watch
This one was my personal favorite. So what I write here is prejudiced by my individual admiration for the film. Reason 1 – it being a ftii diploma film which I feel is reason enough. It is like catching a gushing stream right at its source. True it is majestic and grand going down the stages, but the purity of the trickling stream picks its own draw of admirers. With some of the diploma films I’ve managed to get my hands on, one can see the art of filmmaking at its embryonic best. The depth of intense thoughts is portrayed through the outdated, commercially inept equipments, much like the concept itself. It always was, and forever will be the story with ftii films. Reason 2 - the plot: pick an urdu poet, looming in obscurity, and base him in hyederabad. The idea was simple, yet having that intellectual appeal. It was played well as an old, yet spirited shayar who chooses anonymity with deliberation. From the words of the protagonist ‘ Vo fankaar hi kya jise avval hone ke liye awaam ki mohor chahiye’. The film had many short citations that kept the film rolling. Reason 3 – Gayatri Kachru : this was a pleasant surprise. Gayatri used to be my senior in school, pretty then as she is now. Once or twice I had the opportunity to have her company among other friends (whom she knew better I must admit), during the lunch breaks. I somehow remember she couldn’t pronounce my name correctly, much to the amusement of others. Well, that mispronounced name she’d very much have forgotten by now, but it was unusual, and hence moving to see someone you had known in school being part of the credits that rolled. Reason 4 – its cinematography and Art direction: The film was a visual treat if nothing else. Though the cinematography was slightly biased towards gayatri, it deserved a separate round of ovation for its brilliance.
The Old barber
I always had my doubts with Chinese films. Some that I had seen seemed to have a very picturesque subject far from the tries and tribulations of human emotions. Besides, some of them used camera techniques to ‘bend’ the reality to the script’s favour which turned me off. With nothing better showing in other theaters, I decided to try my luck with this one. Also, the title seemed interesting, so did the synopsis. I was at my cynical best(or worst) for the first few shots, that were quite slow paced. I was sure that they were intentionally created so as to catch the critics’ interest. But gradually, the story picked up pace, clearing my doubts of it not being a genuine film. For instance, the winding of the clock at 9 pm everyday that was becoming monotonous when shown repeatedly, soon took meaning when Uncle Jing doesn’t wind it one day. What moved me most was that it could very well have ended as the audience had expected it to, and it’d still have been appreciated. But the story skims through the exit points, often playing with the viewer’s anticipations. It was quite satirical in that way. It ends quite well, marking a perfect closure to a well made movie.
Vietnam symphony
This was a documentary based on a Vietnamese make-do underground music school during the war. The film fared well, tracing some of the graduates from the school, and accompanying them on their walk down the memory lane.
The Black Road
An intense documentary to say the least. Where the line between being a neutral observer is questioned, and finally crossed. Nessen, an Australian journalist who was there to cover the freedom movement rising in the Aceh’s from the Indonesian military’s perspective, soon found himself changing his viewpoint about the rebellion, and later supporting their cause with all his might (well..almost). From gun battles to the mourning over those dead, Nessen covers the rise and fall of the struggle from its very core. It had the power to take the viewer’s attention off it being a documentary, and mull over the cause. Honestly, I must admit I was slightly relieved to hear that peace was declared in the region…though with a mere compromise of a bargained autonomy to aceh, against their voice for complete independence. Made me also reflect over a cause closer at home…could we have gone wrong there?
The Collector
&
UNO
These were the bad decisions I had mentioned. UNO being worse of the two. I’d have gone for ‘The Little Lieutenant’ had I not overheard two chaps discussing in marathi of how good UNO was. Either I judged with the wrong people, or my marathi needs hell lot of improvement. Either ways, wonder how the other movies fared.
In parallel, there was a movie that took quite a rush. Thereby sparing me and a few others a lot of breathing space in other halls. It was the first movie (and I assume it’d be the last) in the fest, where people crowded up in front of the gate much before the intended start. Such was the fervour, that the tide of people now owe the regular E-square clientele a slightly un-hinged door at screen 3. The title of the film – ‘Just sex and nothing else’.
And to say that we indians don’t believe in the concept…well, sez who !
The plan was pretty straightforward for day 2. Get up, drive up and witness what the festival had to offer today. Like yesterday, I wasn’t able to browse much through the catalogue, and had left the choice of films open to contemplation, mainly governed by my whim at the moment. Barring a few bad decisions, I thought I stayed pretty much on track, getting what I wanted from the fest. Few recollections from the day:
Woman with a camera
Reached a little late to catch the film from its start, but managed to catch most of it nonetheless. The movie was truly for, of and by women. Which was little disappointing for me at least. It upsets, and sometimes puzzles me when women start identifying with a creed of their own. Women’s day for instance. Before expecting men to give their share of respect, it is important that women too erase that grey line, and stop identifying themselves as an oppressed class. Anyways, this seems to spawn a new argument altogether, most of which the film doesn’t deserve, so I’ll take it in a separate thread. Having said what I said above, I still found the film noteworthy, portraying the vivid kaleidoscope of Indian, and more specifically keralite women, quite elegantly. Besides catching real life glimpses from a wide area, it also had certain abstract sequences filled in that made the painting complete. Overall, a good attempt, and definitely a well thought of film.
Thanks
The post screening session said it all. For a change, the audience was blunt on the face of the film’s representative telling him that he had left too much to the imagination. I did agree with some who spoke, as I too felt that though it is best left to the viewer to read between the lines, a film must have the substance to provoke him to do so. Otherwise, it all appears a random sequence of images created just to satisfy the director’s whims.
Chaabi Waali Pocket watch
This one was my personal favorite. So what I write here is prejudiced by my individual admiration for the film. Reason 1 – it being a ftii diploma film which I feel is reason enough. It is like catching a gushing stream right at its source. True it is majestic and grand going down the stages, but the purity of the trickling stream picks its own draw of admirers. With some of the diploma films I’ve managed to get my hands on, one can see the art of filmmaking at its embryonic best. The depth of intense thoughts is portrayed through the outdated, commercially inept equipments, much like the concept itself. It always was, and forever will be the story with ftii films. Reason 2 - the plot: pick an urdu poet, looming in obscurity, and base him in hyederabad. The idea was simple, yet having that intellectual appeal. It was played well as an old, yet spirited shayar who chooses anonymity with deliberation. From the words of the protagonist ‘ Vo fankaar hi kya jise avval hone ke liye awaam ki mohor chahiye’. The film had many short citations that kept the film rolling. Reason 3 – Gayatri Kachru : this was a pleasant surprise. Gayatri used to be my senior in school, pretty then as she is now. Once or twice I had the opportunity to have her company among other friends (whom she knew better I must admit), during the lunch breaks. I somehow remember she couldn’t pronounce my name correctly, much to the amusement of others. Well, that mispronounced name she’d very much have forgotten by now, but it was unusual, and hence moving to see someone you had known in school being part of the credits that rolled. Reason 4 – its cinematography and Art direction: The film was a visual treat if nothing else. Though the cinematography was slightly biased towards gayatri, it deserved a separate round of ovation for its brilliance.
The Old barber
I always had my doubts with Chinese films. Some that I had seen seemed to have a very picturesque subject far from the tries and tribulations of human emotions. Besides, some of them used camera techniques to ‘bend’ the reality to the script’s favour which turned me off. With nothing better showing in other theaters, I decided to try my luck with this one. Also, the title seemed interesting, so did the synopsis. I was at my cynical best(or worst) for the first few shots, that were quite slow paced. I was sure that they were intentionally created so as to catch the critics’ interest. But gradually, the story picked up pace, clearing my doubts of it not being a genuine film. For instance, the winding of the clock at 9 pm everyday that was becoming monotonous when shown repeatedly, soon took meaning when Uncle Jing doesn’t wind it one day. What moved me most was that it could very well have ended as the audience had expected it to, and it’d still have been appreciated. But the story skims through the exit points, often playing with the viewer’s anticipations. It was quite satirical in that way. It ends quite well, marking a perfect closure to a well made movie.
Vietnam symphony
This was a documentary based on a Vietnamese make-do underground music school during the war. The film fared well, tracing some of the graduates from the school, and accompanying them on their walk down the memory lane.
The Black Road
An intense documentary to say the least. Where the line between being a neutral observer is questioned, and finally crossed. Nessen, an Australian journalist who was there to cover the freedom movement rising in the Aceh’s from the Indonesian military’s perspective, soon found himself changing his viewpoint about the rebellion, and later supporting their cause with all his might (well..almost). From gun battles to the mourning over those dead, Nessen covers the rise and fall of the struggle from its very core. It had the power to take the viewer’s attention off it being a documentary, and mull over the cause. Honestly, I must admit I was slightly relieved to hear that peace was declared in the region…though with a mere compromise of a bargained autonomy to aceh, against their voice for complete independence. Made me also reflect over a cause closer at home…could we have gone wrong there?
The Collector
&
UNO
These were the bad decisions I had mentioned. UNO being worse of the two. I’d have gone for ‘The Little Lieutenant’ had I not overheard two chaps discussing in marathi of how good UNO was. Either I judged with the wrong people, or my marathi needs hell lot of improvement. Either ways, wonder how the other movies fared.
In parallel, there was a movie that took quite a rush. Thereby sparing me and a few others a lot of breathing space in other halls. It was the first movie (and I assume it’d be the last) in the fest, where people crowded up in front of the gate much before the intended start. Such was the fervour, that the tide of people now owe the regular E-square clientele a slightly un-hinged door at screen 3. The title of the film – ‘Just sex and nothing else’.
And to say that we indians don’t believe in the concept…well, sez who !
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Piff - Day 1
another filler for now....
btw, day 1 here was actually saturday...Since I got to attend the fest only for selective days, i've decided to number the days as per my calender. (I skipped friday's shows)
btw, day 1 here was actually saturday...Since I got to attend the fest only for selective days, i've decided to number the days as per my calender. (I skipped friday's shows)
Thursday, March 15, 2007
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