“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke

True. And good men. That is a term that comes to renewed introspection each and every time some such act is witnessed. Be it in the realm of fiction, or more so when they are the infallible truth. Of course, the latter course always remains more etched, but I would go with fiction in the same breath. Because I believe that what most people dismiss as the ideal, is something more real than what is prescribed by reality. Because when we dabble in what could be done in a particular situation, in a particular way that is right, only then do we know what was not done in that same real situation and what could be done the next time. To convince ourselves that the ideal is always an unattainable untruth and that we are condemned to remain in a tragic reality is something that always keeps the glass half empty.

But then, do we realise that at that very moment, when we shun away the ideal, we do also lift the line on what is good and what is bad. Because the good will always remain an ideal. The good will forever be lost in obscurity. And like the bad-penny realist, we will always come to grips with the term that everything is grey. We can change colours, but we can never really change our mindset now can we?

But I also do admit that being an idealist is difficult. Because when we try to convince others of the utopia that we so badly think is necessary, we necessarily become lanterns that need to light the road for others. And to burn oneself all the time is indeed a painful task. Much rather be the people who just want the light to go to where we want to go. Or better still forget everything and stay rooted to the same spot like an inanimate object.

And the reality does teach us how to come to grips with mostly everything. Even so that when we actually see some good thing happening, we coolly declare, “God did it!” But hold the phone just one second here – did God not send a human being to do what He wanted to do? Didn’t God ask Noah to save mankind from the great flood? Did not God ask Moses to help his flock cross the Red Sea and save themselves from Genocide? Did not God send down the Pandavas to clean up the mess on the earth? Who were these people? God’s chosen ones I suppose… And what if they said, “Fuck you, I’m going to do my own thing. I give a damn about the rest!” But they didn’t, did they? After all that long speech and rhetoric about ‘free will’, do you expect a sinner like me to believe that they had no say in the matter?

I just presume that they realised what was right and what was wrong. They found the line. And they did it. Oskar Schindler. He’s the man. Take him as an example. Or maybe even the Bielski brother. What in the name of your so called sitting on a cloud with a harp in his hand God did they have going on in their head? Why on earth did they do what they did? I don’t believe they ever went to sit on Mt Sinai. I don’t believe they were given a management speech by Lord Krishna. I don’t believe they found the voice of God beating about the bush in their heads. No, I believe that they did it because they knew what was right and what was wrong. And they decided that the right would lead them to one thing and the wrong to a deepening worse.

And it is the right in this reality that leads us to utopia, an ideal world. You may say I am a dreamer, but I hope I am not the only one. And only if you join me, only then can the world live as one. Else we will all want a bigger share of the apple pie. I know that nothing that is going on today is even remotely pointing to the fact that the world is ever going to live as one, but either we decide to bite the bullet and get on with nothing, or we try and see how we can have a better tomorrow. For that too we have to bite the bullet, but not to digest it, to chew through it, and keep chewing it like gum. When the taste dissolves off, then we spit it out and put in another. We need to keep working at it. No miracle is going to happen. Nobody will play the harp from above. Let’s just give a damn and I am sure that we can get somewhere with this whole thing.

Why am I giving his huge speech? What made me rut off like that? I watched Tears of the Sun. And I realised that it is time we give a damn instead of just following what we are told and what we already know. If you think you want to join the millions like me, you can watch it to. Else just watch it for Bruce Willis and Monica Belluci, and also for the fascinating music by Hans Zimmer.

It’s just a thought.

The Pledge, the Turn and The Prestige

“The first part of a magic trick is to show your audience an object... otherwise known as the Pledge. Then you make it disappear, in magical parlance known as the Turn. But that does not interest people and they don’t clap just as yet. The trick really is to bring the object back. That is when the audience goes mad with ecstasy. This part of a magic trick is known as the Prestige.”

Well, I must admit that these are not exactly the words used by Michael Caine when the movie begins, but this I must say is how I sum up this movie when the whole show comes to an end.

At one point of my life, I was heavily into the X-Men and least to add to it, into Hugh Jackman. He was just not the Wolverine for me, he was a showman. How else could you explain the weird horn shaped hairdo and the no-start, no-end beard – and yet be called the sexiest man alive? I always remember telling people that it takes a Hugh Jackman to pull off a Wolverine. Not because he is someone every man on this planet would want to look like, but because he can pull it off. For Christ’s sake, he pulled off everything right in the X-Men Origins: Wolverine. That movie was a crap duster, but somehow, as always, he made it work.

And it was around the same time that I also came to know of this movie, called The Prestige, in which Hugh Jackman played one of the principal characters. Then came our Indian saga, Ghajini, and it was at that time that I came to know about Memento, and consequently, Christopher Nolan. I had seen Batman Begins, but heck, at that time it was all about Batman. I loved that movie, but still, I was more interested in Bruce Wayne starting off as the Batman. And then I managed to see Memento and I was completely blown away. I could never believe that someone could write a script like that and carry it off with such conviction. Truth be told, Ghajini helped.

And of course, I always had a special affection for Christian Bale and Michael Caine. He had after all played my most favourite superhero, Batman and Alfred was the kind of guide that I always wanted in my life. Someone who could always tell me “I told you so”, but yet when the time actually came to tell me that, he’d say, “Today, I don’t want to tell you that!”

And slowly, the pledge was made – everything that was needed to start off finally came into play and I managed to watch The Prestige.

Now to cut the long story short, the Turn was amazing. It was a bloody visual spectacle. And it is by no means a very simple story to show. There is just not one turn in this movie, there are many. The characters, the presenters, the whole goddamned show, it is a whole cascade of turns. And that is why I need to mention that no other director but Christopher Nolan could do justice to this movie. Because he knows how to juggle a storyline, juggle it so well that it all fits into place at the end. His non-linear story progression is a must when making a complex movie like The Prestige. And it is only through these means that the audience can realise the pledge at the end of the movie. Otherwise, it is all a waste.

And what a prestige it was! When it finally came way in the end, it just jolted you out of your senses. The magic trick that Christopher Nolan had planned was now complete. All the while, as you were wondering what happens where and which piece of the puzzle appears where, it just seems to darned simple at the end. And the whole historical acumen with which this movie was made, it was completely unbelievable.

And where would this movie be without Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale and Michael Caine. Each one of these actors were absolutely mesmerising in their efforts. And the counteracted their characters with precision – particularly in the case of Jackman and Bale. One was the showman who was just a magician, and the other was the wizard who could not present his case. One was a Lord, playing under a different name to uphold his family’s honour, the other a simple working class commoner. It was such a wonderful feeling to see such performances on celluloid, such honestly in performances, at a time when everything that we see is ‘abracadabra’. To be honest actors playing magicians is by itself a task, but to play them so truthfully and yet deceive, that is the prestige.

At any rate, I do not think that we shall ever yet see another movie like this in a long time, not even if the whole combination repeats itself. Movies like these are made once in a lifetime, and though I will eagerly away Nolan’s next movie, hopefully a Batman one, I know that he will never be able to make what he did. To say that watching this movie was a magical experience, would just be an understatement.

Abracadabra!

There is a Hulk in each one of us. And whenever we are pushed in adversity, however meek we may be in our daily existence, the Hulk within us emerges to destroy everything that is trying to destroy us. And we all have it within us. Only thing is that like Dr. Bruce Banner, we never really want to expose this Hulk to the outer world – because if we do, the consequences could be disastrous for all, except ourselves.
This is picking up once again from where I left off with X-Men, the Last Stand, where I was speaking about comic book ideology and polemic. Comic books really are not what they are generically made to believe. They have an ideology, with by itself is a stark contrast to what we conceive them as. They are double intending literature, both to arouse fantasy and leave back a story. A story about the characters is my area of concern. The rest is just to express the means to that concern.
Each and every superhero has a story behind him. And this story is about ourselves, much magnified for the purpose of entertainment. But my very basic question in this matter, containing myself to the character that I am talking about now, the Hulk, is why is Dr. Bruce Banner always scared to unleash the Hulk, even when he is under attack from various quarters. That I believe is the moral victory of good over evil. We all have psychic imbalances – no one is free from that. But the question, as always is, which way are we more prone, or bent. That is what makes the difference between the superhero and the supervillain, or on realistic terms, between us and them. Some of the most iconic villains in this universe are after all beautiful minds, if I may put it so. Be it Osama Bin Laden, or closer home, our very own Charles Shobraj. But the fact is that they are bent over to the darker aspects of psychology and therefore, they turn to acts of terror. Had they been channelized in the other direction, I doubt it if we would ever have a problem with anything in the world.
But the show must go on. For every dark character in this world, there is a good. And good normally wins over evil, because the world has to go on. An anarchist can end our existence, but we can’t let that happen. We have been fighting for our survival since the days of the Amoeba. And now that we are animals with intellect, we have to survive at an even greater cost. It kinds of massages our ego. Thereby the social imbalance, tilting in the favour of the ‘good’. So we see perhaps, that even though Dr Banner wants to put the Hulk to rest once and for all, when the Abomination turns up, he cannot help but get back into the flesh of the Hulk to go and save mankind. That is why the Hulk is a superhero and not the other way round. And the good always comes out in the face of adversity. It happened here, and it always happens under every circumstance. Whenever the world is on the verge of destruction, heroes come up – now they may be shown as Captain America, Daredevil, Wolverine or even Spiderman, we just have to take the cue from them.
And this is the demarcation that people are expected to make. To understand the good guys from the bad. If the bad can come in any package and we are ok about it, then the same professional courtesy needs to be offered to the good as well. We may all look like anything the other person can imagine, but the fact of the matter that differentiates us from the other, is what lies in our heart. If people around us cannot understand that, then truly it is very sad.
There is another legend too that I will need to speak about when speaking of the Hulk. It is the much fabled, Prometheus story that we have heard from our very births. The Hulk, I feel, is indeed a modern day Prometheus. Dr Bruce Banner tried to alter the fundamentals of nature, to control it, but he turned into the Hulk. Now the good or bad Hulk is something that we just spoke of, but the fact again comes to the fore about temperament. Yes, there is a match obtained here with a legendary lore, but should that really be a factor of denial? Should we say that the Banner deserved what he got because he tried to experiment? Do we treat him the same way as the Gods treated Prometheus? Or do we want to make him a hero for trying to do something? We are actually rather content with the way things are. We always talk about changing the world, but we won’t even bother planting a single plant in our own backyard to combat global warming. We just want the whole thing done for us and we’ll just come in there to sweep the glory. That never happens. Therefore, we need a Dr Bruce Banner, who has it in him to find out ways to change things, to develop something for the betterment of all humanity and then, and then if he fails, he channelizes his new found powers again for the betterment of humanity. That’s the way it’s done.
The Incredible Hulk I’d say was a much better movie than the first one. For starters, it has one of the greatest actors in cinematic history playing the much demanding role of Dr. Bruce Banner – Edward Norton. I know that most people have not even heard of his name (at the most, if we see him, we say, “Oh! The Fight Club guy”) but he is truly at league with the best of the world. He understands the whole medium and that is what makes him such a great actor. Don’t get me wrong. Eric Bana was also pretty good and he did try his level best to save that film. But it never really got to it. I did miss Jennifer Connelly in the second movie, but Liz Tyler was alright, nothing to write home about.
And unlike the last movie, here we actually see the Hulk trying to defend the world. The last one was a personal feud between General Ross and Banner. This one feature the Abomination in the sexy climax. It brought in all the ingredients from the comic book – which is very important when trying to make a superhero movie. It should be something that all readers can relate to.
Overall, give it a shot. It’s a cool film, even if you don’t see it the way I did.

Defiance: n. Open disobedience; bold resistance

How true. This definition could perhaps best sum the whole effort. The whole effort which makes miracles seem fragile. The whole effort which allows one to believe that to be human is to be everything; the whole effort that allows one to understand the complexity of actions, the menace of situations and also offers the hazardous solutions.

This happens to me quite a lot. It happened after I saw Schindler’s List and it has happened now once again, after watching Defiance. It leaves me really with no words for the movie. Because in these cases, the movie itself becomes obsolete and redundant. It is the story itself which speaks. And this one more that the other that I just mentioned. Because this was an example of raw courage, of absolute heroism, that, if romanticized, makes the whole effort futile. But purists will scoff at what I said. How could I?

But how could they? How could they keep recruiting Jews to defend them, when they had nothing to offer. Just a few days more maybe, as the way they put it. And in those few days, they lived and surged along, allowing people to make new definitions of miracles, and more importantly of the word freedom. Three poor brothers, smuggling themselves into ghettos, only to smuggle out some more Jews? What more can you say about them. That they were the real Moses? That they were the stories that build myths? That they were the stories that offer an absolutism to theology?

And this is where the profane blunder always happens. By making them messengers of God, we ruin their whole effort. We do not do justice to their deeds. We bring in the hand of a mere abstraction, just to wipe away what is the real in front of our eyes. If we were to just believe that these people were human, we increase our own standards to newer levels. We allow ourselves to believe that really, nothing is impossible. But that is to arduous a task to take up. That is too much work for ourselves, we who are born with silver spoons in our mouths and we who have never faced a crisis in our sheltered life. We believe taking a bus is a struggle, we believe walking in the sun is a struggle, we believe not drinking coffees at Baristas is a struggle. We really do lead charmed lives and never once do we realise that when the moment ever comes, we will be found wanting. Because from there to here, we have learnt nothing, but perhaps to dust matters under the carpet. We as a social, humanitarian being have dissolved away into obscurity. We are critical today of the breath we take, not realising for once maybe that it is because of heroes like these that we breathe any air today. That 1200 people saved through these incredible chapters of human history now allow ten million people to inhabit the world today.

The day when we again know how to get off our cushions and the day when we can know what being brothers to each other is like, maybe that day, we will then learn that our revenge is the fact that we live. That is our defiance.

Freedom: n. 1 condition of being free or unrestricted. 2 personal or civic liberty. 3 liberty of action (freedom to leave). 4 (foll. by from) exemption from. 5 (foll. by of) a honorary membership or citizenship (freedom of the city). b unrestricted use of (a house etc.).

His name is Robert Paulson! He is the middle child of history, no place or purpose... he has no great war to fight, he has no great depression. His only war is a spiritual one, his only depression is his life.

Is it just him, or is it us all?

What a thought... that only in death do we have a name! A name that will be etched on to our tombstones! That is all that we amount to at the end of the day. That is the only mark that we leave behind. And that is the only way that we are ever known by other people. Not unless we do something big. Not unless, perhaps, if we let ourselves flow along with what we really want to be.

Positivity and negativity are really two sides of a coin. As far as I can understand, it will be absolutely a cardinal sin if we look upon these terms as absolute. It is just the way we want to make the whole story out ourselves is what really adds that dimension to the whole picture.

I know that most people would love to call this a negative nightmare. One that Edward Norton claims to have had. But like I say, it should perhaps more be looked upon as a negative dream. The word dream is always ascribed to something that is considered to be negative, isn’t it? And when we get up all sweaty and scared, we claim it to be a nightmare – a negative imbalance. However, as I was just saying a few minutes back, if the terms are null and void, then the prefix doesn’t amount to shit.

That was my opinion when I finished with Fight Club. Make no mistake about it, not just me, everyone loved it. Because this may be the only movie that we have all seen in a while, which allows us to negotiate answers from the questions we prop. It allows us to gather a vent to the most problematic delusion that we all face in the world today.

We so badly want to be someone today that we never really realise what we are right now. The present is sold for the future, leaving us just with the gory past at the end of it. We do not know what we are doing, we cannot sleep; we live like a consumer product because we are all so full of them that we have become them.

Not unless we all display the potential courage required to unleash the Tyler Durden in us. He’s the man that we all have inside us, the one that we all confide in and the one that we all want to become. Only that we do not have the guts to be anti-establishment. We are all, somewhere or the other, escapists. We all want to have the hottest people around us, we want to fuck the sizzlers, but seldom do we realise that we are nowhere close to getting that – because we are no one in ourselves.

We are all so bothered about living the ‘right’ life that we forget the third party intrusions in our life. And we are so normal with that, that we do not even realise that we are no longer ourselves. We all want the best in life, without being bothered about the fact that we really don’t deserve it. We all think that we are so god dammed talented that we can do anything that we want – only that in the process, we end up being able to do nothing. And yet that does not dampen our spirits, because when people ask us whether they’re talented or not, we generally offer condolence lines, because who want to be known as a party pooper, even if the response in a few light years away from the truth.

Fact be told, we all are living a life of utter confusion, but such normalised confusion that we are not aware that there exists any confusion within us.

But not anymore! Now we all know about Tyler Durden. And if we want, we can invoke him to come to our rescue. For that we need no one else, just to be ourselves at the end of it all. But that is really the most difficult part. Because then we have to tread a rather difficult path. And if we knew how to do it, then we all wouldn’t be in this mess, would we now? Oh yes, there will be ten people who after watching this movie, will start hallucinating that they are Tyler Durden. But he was just a prototype. To become what he is, we have to all try and be a little different. That is, we all have to be ourselves. Never mind if that overlaps with someone else, but as long as it is YOU, till then it’s all fine.

Now if you look at it positively, you will be able to see Tyler in yourself and make the final push towards the envelope – else just look at it as a morose affair and get rid of the whole feeling.

Whether you want your name to be remembered because of what you did when alive, or whether you want to become a tombstone at the cemetery, is something that you will have to decide for yourself. The choice is yours...

(PS. If you ask me though, I would perhaps have preferred to see Mathew Perry in the shoes of Edward Norton. Not that I think that the latter was bad or anything in the movie, there is just something that tells me that Perry would have been able to balance the dopey look and the button pusher role a little more charismatically. That is the only observation that I have from the movie that could perhaps have been given a second look. Otherwise, it was off the hook!)

I should suppose that all the awards – make that popular awards – made out only for Hindi films under the name of Indian films are over, let’s get down to my unpopular awards. Yes, I know, only three people are going to read this, so let’s get over with it fast.
And oh, before I get to the nominations and the awards and all that jazz, let me first congratulate Filmfare for changing their methods this time – they have indeed given some rather good rewarding awards this time, and that truly is a great change.
Now, let’s get on with the show...

Best Film
Rock On...
Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!
A Wednesday
Aamir
Jodhaa Akbar

Best Director
Abhishek Kapoor (Rock On...)
Dibakar Banerjee (Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!)
Neeraj Pandey (A Wednesday)
Rajkumar Gupta (Aamir)
Ashutosh Gowariker (Jodhaa Akbar)

Best Actor (Male)
Farhan Akhtar (Rock On...)
Abhay Deol (Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!)
Nasseruddin Shah (A Wednesday)
Rajeev Khandelwal (Aamir)
Hrithik Roshan (Jodha Akbar)

Best Actor (Female)
No Nominations

Best Supporting Actor (Male)
Arjun Rampal (Rock On...)
Purav Kohli (Rock On...)
Anupam Kher (A Wednesday)
Prateek Babbar (Jaane Tu.. Ya Jaane Na)

Best Supporting Actor (Female)
Sahana Goswami (Rock On...)

Best Music
Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy (Rock On...)
Amit Trivedi (Aamir)
A R Rahman (Jodhaa Akbar)

(I am sorry I don’t remember the names of most of the people nominated in the technical departments – most of them being debutants. I shall list these last few awards under the names of the movies – Subhojit)

Best Cinematography
Aamir
Jodhaa Akbar
Rock on...
The Last Lear

Best Editing
Aamir
Jodhaa Akbar
Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!
Rock On...
Jodhaa Akbar

Best Story
A Wednesday
Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!
The Last Lear
Rock On...
Aamir

Ma Kasam, Maza Aa Gaya!!!

After my friend and I finished watching this one there was only one phase that came to our lips almost immediately and at the same time – Ma Kasam!

I was reading and hearing everywhere that Hollywood is suddenly showing a more rapid interest in India – primarily because the recession has made the working environment a mud pit and therefore they are nowadays looking more towards this country than ever before. For starters, it was believed at one point that the great Steven Spielberg too had tied up with Anil Ambani for his production house, DreamWorks.

But now, let us get off the drab the financials. Financials, recession, marketing, sales, etc – these all somehow add up to justify all the moves that I was talking of till now. However, my inquisition here is different. As a matter of fact, it is indeed rather different. Because here I am talking about the style of writing the scenarios, the whole basic screenplay. This movie relies completely on beaten to death Bollywood clichés and terminology, not from now, but from the 70s. The only thing that they did not make Wolverine say in the movie was perhaps “Mere paas maa hain!”

It was fun to watch an English movie like that for the first time. No, I don’t mean to say that the Americans have never made a typical Bollywood pot-boiler before, but this time they surely did take the cake. Instead of having Shah Rukh Khan ham over his dialogues, this time we got to see Hugh Jackman tell them. Well, how he told them will be examined in detail later on.

No, why later on? It should be done right now. Because if this movie really has anything in it, it is really the principal actor, the hero of the film – Hugh Jackman. I know that this is not the first time that he is playing this particular character. He is the Wolverine. But however, I feel that there is a difference between playing the Wolverine in the earlier X-Men parts and now. Because at that time, though he did manage to hog most of the limelight himself, there was a certain egalitarian distribution of the screen between all the other major X-Men characters, like Storm, Cyclops, the Phoenix and so on. But here he was the movie. His name was on the movie poster. He was the name of the movie. And only he could pull it off the way in which he did it. I do remember telling Hitesh that it takes a Hugh Jackman to pull off a Wolverine get up – the crazy beard and the horn-like hair-do. And the fact of the matter is that he does is marvellously. He really pulls off a rather half-baked script with complete control and precision. He is truly the most popular X-Men ever – both as a character, and as an actor.

Also, I should mention that the SFX used in this film were a shade higher than that used in the earlier versions. It gave Jackman some company at the lonely end of the film. As mentioned, he was the forerunner in this movie, with the SFX allowing him to carry it one step further.

I have in my last article spoken of in detail about the various sociological developments in comic book characters and the part that I wrote about the Wolverine becomes all the more logical when we see this movie. It has allowed me to ratify the points that I had spoken of. Therefore, if you have read on through whatever I droned on earlier, this will suitably provide you with the audio-visual supplement and allow you to grapple the fact in a more convenient manner. Particularly the whole Vietnam thing.

This is just a simple feel-good movie, so watch it if you really have nothing else to do – and if you can, watch it for Hugh Jackman.

Just remember, “... there is no redemption where I’m going!”

Just don’t look for any...