Images, images

The beginning of every interesting piece of art is a canvas. This is especially true in the world of storyboarded cityscapes rendered in hypercontrast as Robert Rodriguez does. There are other ways of going about creating art and putting it down on film though.

Some auteurs have managed to think of every frame as a canvas in itself - and have spent loving hours (sometimes years) in turning such frames into masterworks. Examples? Certainly. Ray's Pather Panchali, Sergio Leone's Once upon a time in the west - remember Harmonica's thousand year old face, enduring and indestructible like the mountains which framed him? And yes, remember also how a camelback rider suddenly appears in the view on the far left of a huge, huge, vista - they called that 'the anvil of the sun', in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia.

The very best of these works have told beautiful stories, and have used fantastic imagery to imprint those stories into our consciousness. But sometimes, the story takes second place to the canvas. A fabulous example of this is Refn's Valhalla Rising. This is a ponderous work, which creaks under its own burden of self importance.

Every frame is created with the utmost care. Vivid nightmares of colour appear, to be washed away by the everpresent mist. There is a long and arduous Rime of the Ancient Mariner chapter, save that there is no albatross, and no redemption. The violence is sporadic, but always threats to break loose. And the soundtrack. Dear Gawd, the soundtrack. The use of harsh guitar tones from an obsessive compulsive strummer you cannot see - mixed in with the sound of a heart beating. This, frankly is baiting. Very skilfully done, effective, even - but not subtle.

There might be a story here. Who knows? Depends on how psychotropic your last indulgence has been. But this will leave you shaken.

Lakshya, Dhoom and Dhoom 2.

There are Hindi fillums and there are Hindi fillums. I have often wondered why really good Hindi cinema does not get the attenshun it deserves and why crap floats up to the top and makes so much money. A case in point is Drohkaal, a cinema I have already blogged about. A more recent example is Lakshya, which is based on the 1999 Kargil war.

Briefly, a slacker finds his way into the Indian Army through the proverbial series of unlikely cooincidences. The discipline of the Indian Military Academy proves too much for him to handle and he decides to quit. Except that he just goes AWOL. When he gets back home, he is greeted by (in sequence): relief (his mom), disapproval(his dad) and contempt(his girlfriend). Something inside him goes, quite audibly 'click', and he heads back to the IMA. His CO takes him back, but not before hammering out a very well deserved punishment. They say that the life of a GC (Gentleman Cadet) at the IMA is harsh to the point that after graduating as Second Lieutenants, these young men find life at the LoC(Line of Control in Kashmir) quite relaxing. This is what our protagonist goes through, and after graduating, he is promptly posted to Ladakh (the highest battleground in the world, where the Indian and Paki armies have been facing off for 25 years). His regimental CO is the venerable Amitabh Bachhan who in one of his most masterly understated roles yet, points out to the youngster at the unit welcome dinner that "one billion Indians sleep secure in the knowledge that you and I are awake, and watching over them".

Prophetic words, for shortly afterward, in the spring of 1999, an Indian goatherd spots armed men sneaking across the LoC. Afghan mujahideen, backed by Paki Special Services Group and the Northern Light Infantry had built fortified bunkers on our side of the LoC. The Indian and Paki forward commanders have long had a gentleman's agreement to collectively withdraw from the border in deep winter, a time where both sides lose men to exposure and not bullets. The Pakis, not being gentlemen, decided to use the opportunity over the winter of 1998 to move men and materiel over the LoC. This started the Kargil war, where over 500 Indian officers and men died. The Pakis admit to losing 350 regular Army soldiers. Unofficial estimates put the number of Paki and mujahideen dead at above 3000. Perhaps we shall never know how many people fell in the snow. But what is known and recorded by scribes from the front was the immense bravery of the Indian Army. The Indian officer ethos is summed up in the simple words 'follow me'. The disproportionately high officer casualties suffered in the taking of Tiger Hill and Tololoing came from brave young men leading from the front.

Lakshya means 'goal' or 'objective', and the objective of our hero in the film is an unnamed hill, which is a Paki artillery observation post. Was it Point 5353? It is never mentioned in the film. We share our hero's desperation as he leads his team in an almost sucidal assault up a sheer cliff. Lakshya was a rare film, one that showcased bravery and sacrifice without ever descending to jingoism. And Indian audiences rejected it at the box office.

In return, Bollywood gave us movies like Dhoom and Dhoom 2. Both of which are lame and brain dead. And people loved them. We deserve that shite that is served to us in the name of cinema. Before leaving, check out these clips from Lakshya:
1. IMA graduation
2. The unit welcome
3. The ascent

Aaahhhh.. Friday night

And here we are, still stuck in lab, looking at an evening and a weekend of work ahead. Not complaining, mind it. But surely there is an alternate reality where I would be going home at this time to nice food, pakodas' perhaps, maybe a hot cuppa Daarjeeling and a GoldFlake? Oh yeah, THAT reality. Never was going to work out, was it? I spent most of today at a protein sciences seminar, and then coding my way through some AA sequences. Someone must have done this, its just that I don't know where to find it. Did I mention that I dislike coding? There is sooo much more to life. Like reading HG Wells, for example. I finished his 'Imperialism and the Open Conspiracy' a few days ago. Amazing how he anticipated much of the EU today. Also Amitava Ghosh. 'Countdown' is well written.. but it is mostly a knee jerk Indian lefty intellectual turning a Nelsons' eye to larger realities. What was that shite about India and China never having any disputes? Has the man heard of Arunachal Pradesh?

Anyways, so me back again to work (and play), and this line cam to my attenshun which I decided to share with you...

Sometimes, though, late at night, I would think again of vim.

And since you obviously must read the article it came from, here it is.

And then for my "achiever" friends, the proponents of Dudeism, this discussion of how the Big Lebowski has transcended space and time to become something beyond mere cinema is worth checking out.

Why read?

It must be a coincidence: last night, I finished watching 'Farenheit 451', a cinematic adaptation of Ray Bradbury's novel by the French avant garde director, Francois Truffaut... and today, the first eye catching article on reddit was this: The Dumbing Of America

So... what do we say to this... it is certainly not a uniquely American phenomenon. The plain fact is that multimedia resources have so far trumped print media that any comparison on the impact that they respectively have on an average citizen's life is ludicrous. F-451 is the temperature at which paper burns.. this film is about a dystopian future in which there is music and TV and even interactive TV (which is a reality at this moment), but no books. Books are viewed as evil, as they cause unhappiness and sow the seeds of elitism. Anyone found hoarding and reading books will be punished and the books burnt. And during the relentless execution of his tasks, one of the enforcers begins to doubt the system. Anyhow, I will not talk about the entire plot, I would much rather you went ahead and read the book.

We have witnessed a systematic dumbing down of all popular media, be it news or entertainment. As we move towards a more machine driven society, it becomes all the more necessary that humanity acquires the wisdom to transcend this technological adoloscence. Alas, I don't believe that 9 second sound bites on our most respected news channels and the persistent apotheosis of delinquent celebrities is doing anything toward that goal.

Coincidence: trivia.

Maurice Jarre, a French composer of considerable talent wrote the music for the towering epic Lawrence of Arabia, directed by David Lean. Here is a performance by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Jarre. Now, this cinema was about the Arab revolt against the Turkish Empire against the backdrop of WWI. Jarre's son, Jean-Michael Jarre wrote the music for Peter Weir's landmark film Gallipoli, which has Mark Lee and an unbelievably young Mel Gibson as two friends who are part of the ANZAC troops holding the island of Gallipoli against the Turks in WWI.