Requiem for a Dream – A Requiem to Remember

There have been millions of pictures on drug abuse; but all this pictures have had only one side to the whole story. They have always been showed from the point of society, where a teenager is ‘tricked’ into drugs and then how he ruins himself and so on and so forth. Never before have I seen a movie, where the screenplay runs parallel from the point of view of the teenager and why he needs drugs in the first place, and why drugs are not the sole prerogative of the teenager alone. Yes, when every drug addict loses authority over his own life, is also shown in the movie, it becomes evident why it need not be done and should be avoided on the whole. The focal point is drug abuse and not “Oh my God, Satan’s minions at work!”

Requiem... comes in with this new story that really needs to be told. It’s about drug abuse, not about why it’s wrong, where the latter comes in as a dictum. And the brilliance of the movie is that it is not just the youth, but even adults who can get sucked into it.

And would you believe it, that the adult we are talking about here is the mother of the so called drug-ruined teenager? Miraculous, isn’t it? And the point more miraculous in this whole picture is that the whole point is shown with such conviction and realism that it becomes more real than it is actually represented.

And even the gore of drugs is so brilliantly depicted. Yes, I know, most people like to claim this picture as another show of American ‘glass is half empty’ kind of concept. To all you people, either get stoned and watch the picture, or just sit it out without any distractions, alone somewhere, where you can let yourself get absorbed into the whole flow. You don’t have to be friend of the devil alone to get involved with this picture ­– you just need to be you. And yes, you can do that without any intoxication also.

And beyond the screenplay, and also the acting, which was top-notch by the way, there is the editing that needs special mention. I once told a friend of mine that the editor of this movie must have scissors in place of fingers on his hands. Maybe on his feet also! The smart cuts on the actual drug taking process were innovative, novel, all the words that your thesaurus can find on the same. Cocaine consumption for instance – the dump, the five dollar bill roll, the pull, the veins beating that extra pulse, and the pupils dilating. The story has been told, shown and though you never saw the whole continuous process, yet you can feel it as if someone stuffed cocaine into your own nostrils. Amazing!

Oh, and did I mention the music? The whole string quartet that plays the leit-motif throughout the whole movie is an amazing piece of composition. Each movement gather impeccable momentum as it dies out slowly. So much thought has gone into something that we normally perceive as moment breakers in our films. That is what makes Hollywood so much better in the first place. They think about the whole package. We believe that once the casting has been completed, we are kings.

If this Requiem... has to be compared to any musical treatment, I’d tell you it isn’t Jim Morrison and The Doors, but Jerry Garcia and Grateful Dead at work. Slow and lazy lyrics, innovative, poetry and yet swings from time to time.

It’s an intoxicating movie. Just watch it when you can.

Men of Honour: Indeed...

I never thought I’d ever write this next line down, but here I am, doing that after keeping a huge block of stone of my heart; because at one point, you have to keep all subjective preferences aside and write the truth; however hard the truth might be for you to tell it, to accept it, you have to tell the truth when the truth needs to be told; and this is the truth – Robert De Niro was outshined this time. Cuba Gooding Jr, more famous because of his famous Oscar acceptance speech, a speech that became a style by itself, overshadowed the legend. That in no way demeans De Niro’s performance – now that is a truth if there ever was one – that De Niro is a legend, a God for us people who make living souls our Gods, but in this movie, if he was good, CGJ was better. And that alone is a whole lot of a testimony that any actor can ever ask for.

And this movie was never about the way it was made. It was a pretty badly made picture, I can tell you that – this is what I do most of the day, watch movies, read about movies and then write about movies. I can now spot a loophole if there ever was one. So let me tell you, before you start thinking that this could be some great work of art, that it is more pretentious than it is good. But at the end it never really matters; because of the two other things that make it work – the story and the performances. And once you get on to that, you will never realise where the loopholes were. And frankly, they don’t matter. They aren’t malignant. They just stay there from time to time. They are mostly wiped out by the two actors.

And to say ‘what a story’ is a rather large understatement, because this is a true story. And when such a story is believed to be a true story, you understand the meaning of life in an altogether new way. You understand the will of the human spirit; that is if the humans will, they can do anything. And this is not philosophical anymore. It really happened. This is not a Slumdog Millionaire. This is a story that can be found in the annuls of history. It is a recorded fact.

And again, it’s just not about the person itself. It’s also about friendship. It’s about a person who wanted to thwart you because of pressure on him, but when he realised that you were the best, he bowed out and he stood there for you till the ultimate trial. That is something we never see today. It’s all about frauds and manipulation today – I can say that from personal experience, though I am lucky enough to have one such friend. They really are hard to find these days. Maybe that is why the picture connected to me even more, because I couldn’t believe that a person can do that for another person without having something for himself at the end of it all. Truly mesmerising! And it really happened...

The story is the true winner and it is the winner because the actors made it so. This is where the whole matter of Men of Honour lies. You have to see the colour of life. Maybe then it can make you live again. It can give you that hope to do whatever it takes to go there and do it. And then you also realise the road to personal glory as well. It comes by helping others. Not the objectivist methods of that dumbass Fountainhead writer. This man became a hero because he helped people whom he perhaps never even knew. And after that, when his own misfortunes befell him, he was in turn helped by the whole universe. It’s give and take. This is the world. Fountainhead methods are also shown in this movie and they reek of shame and disgrace. Not because someone felt it, because it really happened. It’s not about Marxism, or Communism, it’s just about helping the people around you in any way that you can. It’s about humanity... or if a word may so be used, humanism. And when you believe in humanism, only then can you be called a Man of Honour...

Finally. The ‘old wine in a new bottle’ concept has been completely ruined. The man with the magic marker has dealt his blow once again.

And this is the perfect film. No doubt in my mind about that. With No Smoking I will still try and make a compromise with idiots on the bench, but with this one, I will fight till the last nail. Because this is the moment to be really proud of. To see Indian cinema reach the pinnacle of perfection. This is the coolest, most psychedelic, haunting, elevating piece of cinema that I have ever seen. I knew even with the last one that this man was a magician, this time I can fight with people on that claim.

And what a perfection! The story, the performances, the cinematography, the editing, the music... oh the music! And such marvellous shifts, it carries you away. This is the only time that Devdas’ true flaw is pulled out into the open, leaving no dubious balances required between father and son. It’s his insecurity, his insecurity about Paro’s chastity that brings about his downfall. And then again, you can only be sure of yourself. If you could be sure about the other person then the whole effort would seize to be romantic, right?

And what has created this insecurity? It’s is the distance spent over time between each other that leads to these captivating mind games. And who creates this distance? The father! So it’s the same old story and yet the narrative suddenly achieves greater comprehensiveness this time. And then there is the irony also – father comes and tells his son that London has changed him. And this time it was the father who wanted the girl in the house, not Dev. But yet it has always been the father.

Without Abhay Deol this film would never have been created – in both senses of the term. So fine is his performance that he has beaten all other Devdases hollow. The way he moves, the way he looks, the way he thinks, the way he acts – every detail that you see is unseen. This ladies and gentlemen, is what a performance should be like. It’s like jazz for the eyes.

And it is really so wonderful at the end. Dev and Chanda share such wonderful moments together that you start thinking that it was a good thing that Paro was kicked. And then you catch up to the line which says “... aakhon ka hain dhoka, aisa tera pyar, tera emotional attyachar...” See what I mean? This is surely the most positive Devdas ever made, albeit with the darkest tools ever prescribed by society.

I must even make special mention of the face-painting narrative style in the movie. The point where Chanda tells us her story, how her motionless face remains motionless irrespective of whatever trapeze acts her make-up man may do before her... And yet when she paints a simple clown face on Dev while recounting her whole story is so amazing. His face holds the expression by remaining motionless, but tweaks it at the end to bring a new twist into the transient expressional face. So beautiful!

Watch it. It’s Dev D.