Random..

It's cruel to blackmail people...

And it isn't fun to be blackmailed.


Siddharth thought Tia would return to him if he threated her and told her he'll mail her pics with him to her dad. Her dad never kept well, and he knew this. But what he didn't know, was the fact that he was lowering himself in her eyes every time he threatened her. Tia had spoken to his mom, they spoke everyday. She was a kind woman and understood things.

She couldn't understand why he was messing up things so much... Everything was fine till two weeks back, she loved him, she was okay with trying to tell her dad to let her marry him though they belonged to different religions. She wasn't sure how her family would react. But she wouldn't miss out on trying. She thought he understood her well.


He had a few days back suddenly presumed, for no clear reason that she was ignoring him and didn't want to be with him. No matter how hard she tried he wouldn't understand she was busy with work. So after a series of fights and yelling she finally swore at him saying being with him was the stupidest thing she'd done. 


This was the second time in the last two weeks he'd threatened here about the pictures. She tried to understand the first time. But this time would be the last... how could she be with a guy who'd fall so low and be so inconsiderate.


Evangeline

La Mosca en la Ceniz - Review

The fly ash or La Mosca en la Ceniza by Gabriela David, is the story of two girls who reach Buenos Aires from a rural place, in search of a good job, but are deceived and forced to work in a brothel.

One of them refuses to work and struggles to escape, but the other adapts to her new life.

The film portrays the issue of human-trafficking and is indicative of the fact that how poor girls are hoaxed into such a business.

Most of the film is shot within the brothel, showing us the life inside these closed walls. The frames, lighting and sound within the brothel are suggestive of the closed space they are in. A feeling of suffocation accompanies and is well portrayed.

The rooms in which the girls gather, is highly decked, while the room they sleep in looks cold and closed, except a small closed glass window. This perhaps mirrors their life, decorated from the outside for customers, but lonely and dreadful in reality.

The frames emphasize the thought and reactions of a character through a lot of close up frames, and mid-shots. As if each character is important as a separate entity and everyone has small parallel stories that are visible even with the main story that is happening.

The film also depicts a huge contrast in the neighboring affluent houses and open spaces. Neighbors continue to deliberately pretend to ignore the hidden brothel.

The trick of the drowning fly in water and its revival when it’s dropped into a tiny heap of ash could be metaphorically similar to the drowning of the two girls and their revival as they succeed in getting out of the brothel. It’s like ‘resurrection’ when one of the girls manages to escape and brings the brothel to the notice of people thus saving all the other girls trapped inside.

I enjoyed the movie for the social issue it deals with.

Troubled.... VERY!

"So! why do you have to lie?? ", she yelled...

He couldn't figure out what was going through her mind. She looked at him with spite in her eyes and fury... She looked at his puzzled face, an expression that seemed as if he were asking himself worriedly, "What does she know...?" Of course the fool had no idea she knew it all..

She was irritated, at the way he could pretend as if everything was normal. Every time he said "...love you", it irked her more. She was swearing at him within herself and wanted to slap him hard.But all she did was shiver... with anger..

She wanted to leave... now...

How would she? How she wished she never existed... she wished she could vanish in the air and never return... she wasn't an escapist, no she didn't run away from things, she faced them. But for this once she wished she were never born...

El Nino Pez - Review

El Nino Pez(Spanish) is directed by Lucia Puenzo, the movie portrays Lala and Ailin Gyaui(a house maid) in Buenos Aires, madly in love with each other.

The film weaves together two separate themes. While the first and prominent is a lesbian couple and their struggle, the second is about a supernatural being or Gyaui’s ‘fish child’, who is half-fish, half-human and lives under water in the lake Ypoa next to which gyuai’s home is.

While the girls plan their escape and steal everything they can lay hands on, events with Lala’s father being involved in this mysterious story become clearer. Ailin ends up in prison for a crime she has not committed while Lala reaches  Lake Ypoa here she finds out about Gyuai’s past.

The film does present the social inequality in South America while showing the contrasting lives of Lala's father and Guayi's father and the other people like a guy who keeps a lot of dogs and helps Ailin out.

I do particularly like Lala's dog, it's really sad when the dog is shot.

The camera gives us the stories of both the characters as it indulges in both their lives separately. We can feel two characters being shown. The underwater shots are beautiful as the legendary fish child is magically portrayed with his surroundings and the place he lives in.

The movie is a good one time watch, but not something I'd call a 'must watch'.

Road To Sangam - Review

Dir : Amit Rai

India 2009, Hindi

The movie starts with an Urn being take out of the Orissa State Bank locker and moves on to change the location to Allahabad, with a fast panning to introduce parts of the city to the viewer. Between a sufi song in the background we’re introduced to the group of men, obviously Muslims in present day India. Here we meet , Hashmat Ullah  who has to repair an old V8 ford engine that once carried the ashes of Mahatma Gandhi. But the local community leaders call for a strike in reaction to arrest of young muslims and their killing. Hashmat Ullah is caught between the love for his country and loyalty to his community. To top it all, the old man is one among the leaders within the locality.

But for Hasmat Ullah, patriotism rules over the feeling of communal loyalty. In his decision to repair the V8 ford engine, the man goes through a struggle against his own community as he’s almost disowned by them at the face of it. But the surprise comes when, even while denying to talk to Hasmat Ullah in broad daylight, the muslim brothers get together in the night after being persuaded by Hashmat, to do their part in getting the engine working.

Paresh Rawal, playing Hashmat Ullah convinces the viewer of his dilemma so well that by the end of it, it felt like I myself was a part of his struggle. Also,I like a particular dialogue by a rickshaw wala in the movie when asked by Hashmat Ullah if it wrong to do one’s work during a strike, he responds saying this is India, not “Pakistan or Taliban” to say that free thought is the right to each Indian.

The movie also throws a question on why terrorist attacks lead to suspicion on Muslims. A message here is delivered that Muslims in India chose to stay here, they chose India as there motherland and should or are loyal to it.

A couple of scenes I particularly remember is the birds eye view of Paresh rawal being alone in a huge empty expanse portraying his being left alone and a frame where he sits on the terrace with his back facing the camera.

What I also find nice are the interveneing shots of  the pot carrying Gandhiji’s ashes , shown with Hashmat Ullah’s story, both stories meet at a confluencing point. The pot first taken from the bank locker, over River Kaveri, the Yamuna bridge – New Delhi, National Highway 12.

The role of the press is well emphasized, and how they hype up events is shown. It  is at an interview with NDTV at the first place that Hashmat Ullah comes to know that the V8 engine belongs to the V* for that carried Gandhiji’s ashes.

We see a repetition of Gandhi’s Satyagraha when Hashmat Ullah is ready to give up food and sleep and to sit outside the shop till he gets the key back. He is singled out in his community.

I see the use of Kites being used to send messages as representing spreading the word beyond boundries.

The movie ends with, the Urn being placed on the vehicle as Church music plays in the background and the whole of Allahabad forgetting religion, revering the pot of Ashes as the Ford vehicle moves through the streets on its road to Sangam.

Love on a Wkend- Review

Tres piezas de amor en un fin or Love on a Wkend as translated (US), a spanish film by Salvador Agurrie  with a huge cast but no special or main protagonist. The film shows three different classes over a period of one weekend. I feel the movie isn't all that great to have won awards.

Alright it was prior to the presidential elections and at places political issues in the country are shown. The condition of the less earning class is shown infact pretty nicely but then I don't see a particular connection in the story. Its just too haphazard and the sex element is way overdone, like for no particular reason. Swapping partners is something i could see very prominently.

I did somehow feel that, even though on the surface the Love peices were of couples, there were ideas of other senses of love, family love, motherly love, love for one's country or political beliefs, extra-marital love, love for football and how the love for one's country is shown through love towards a sport the country plays and so on.

Nothing about the movie kept me interested halfway through i was bored.

The setting however i think is beautiful and apt to the class being shown at a particular time throughout the movie. the rich look very rich, the poor look poor and troubled. The camera was well used when characters are in deep thought, close-ups make a really good impact.

But overall, I don't think anything about the movie would keep me hooked on.

Anti Christ - Review

There has been no other movie featured at the IFFK that I so strongly feel against, yet, it is the one movie that has seemed to impress itself upon my memory, visually.

With William Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg in a passionate love-making scene right at the opening the movie further grew complex.

So, in their passionate moment both Dafoe and Gainsbourg tend to not notice their toddler crawling towards the window and falling right out of it with arms wide open. Almost like infant Jesus pictures are shown. But a horrendous moment as with a child falling out of the window and dying is drowned in the extremely soft and passionate opera with the slight tinkling of bells to make the snow flakes appear magical.

The whole scene even in its aesthetic quality gives this sense of uneasiness that prevails throughout the movie.

As it comes to the knowledge of the couple that their child has died, the woman can stand the shock, the man as a part of her treatment and being a psychologist takes her to this place they call Eden. An idea as opposed to the biblical idea of Adam and Eve being thrown out of the garden of Eden for trespassing in desire to acquire knowledge.

Further I notice the reoccurring theme of dead new-borns. First the human child, then a bird falling of the tree and a deer kid still half in its mother being born dead.

The scenes have such powerfully horrific imagery I feel. Too much death, lot of pain. It’s even excruciating to watch.

At this place, the forest Eden, the woman used to come earlier to work on her project about Genocides, emphasized more by the many hands that are seen under the tree where the man and woman make love.

As opposed to the Garden of Eden where creation took place. Is the movie then at a level of a questioning of the whole idea of creation? For later in the movie, dissatisfied as she is and deprived of sex, the woman first resorts to self satisfaction and then decides to entirely do away with the sex organs of both the man and herself by mutilation, almost as if questioning the whole idea of reproduction and progeny.

Altogether, I think the movie is very suffocation and tortures my psyche. The camera is so brilliantly made the frames look artistically very appealing with added effect to the story but i wouldn't want to watch the movie again.

Evangeline

So, I open my eyes and look

I search around me, every nook..

I find it not..Where has it gone?

It should be back..It's been so long...

I search the house and streets nearby

and over the fence that does divide..

Land that He once created for all.

For every man now, needs a wall..

To mark what's his.. or so he thinks.

But when with wrath, nature shall bring..

And destroy all that we think is ours..

We'll faintly count the final hours...

They all shall join me in my search...

There shall be then no temple, no church...

No wall or fence will stand to divide..

Man from man... each side by side..

will hold the other's hand and cry..

And kneel under an angry sky..

And man shall hear His voice once more..

to speak of what's for us in store..

But brothers I ask you before its late..

Why should we fear a terrible fate..?

Where is peace that was for us..

where did love go, amongst fight and fuss..

I find it not..Where has it gone?

It should be back..It's been so long...

Happy new year to the rest of the world.. from Me:D

1st post of the year :D
Happy new year...
i learnt tonight some tanzanian konyagi drunk alone in secret can give you the cheer you need ... and then there is the phone... they all call :D
i don't want to make any resolutions this year :D

Me.. :D