Inside Out

Joy finally gets to know something which we all know - Sadness could also bring people together.

Time and again I've written about pain and darkness. And have been asked what lies inside? Maybe at the core I'm a sad. But it doesn't mean I'm a sad person. I remember what one interviewer said of Woody Allen - "I don’t even think Woody does comedy. I think he does dramas with jokes. They’re all sad at their core." (Chris Rock in a Vulture.com interview.) Happiness has its use.  But so does grief. And they describe a person - not necessarily define her.

The complexities of our emotions is often a choice - but more often than not are they mere chemical reactions? Don't we have control over ourselves?  Of course we do. Often.  But - often not. And the battles inside us rage without us always knowing about them.

And Riley's mind is one such battlefield - as she is born,  grows, glows - and faces change. She is all of twelve years old when her parents change town - and her little being faces the catastrophes which even big beings can often not handle wirh equanimity. And inside her head Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust and Fear battle it out. Continuously.  And the five of them battle it out to gain precedence and pursue their own natures even as they seek to protect the little girl they love and have a sense of duty towards, in ways their nature knows best.

Calamity strikes when Sadness strikes,  and she and Joy lose their way in the mind's labyrinth. And we discover the way our inner world works. The factory of dreams, the imaginative friends we conjure in our inner lives, what inhabitates the deepest recesses of our fears, what happens to our memories when we dont dust them into remembrance enough, how our core memories - things which our hearts know are significant - make up the core of our beings, and how our consciousness is a moving train which often, oh so often, gets derailed.

This is a triumph of a film. It delights in its inventiveness, and finds humour in its darkest moments. It conjures the synapses and the interconnectedness of our emotions - how we swing from one end of the emotional spectrum  to another,  how we struggle to feel something and end up feeling something else, how our inner philosophies seem like cubist art (oh yes!) and how our inner lives determine our outer ones. 

And amidst it's adventure,  camaraderie,  road journey,  lost highways, dream factories, crashing trains and crushing losses, the movie gives its heart to heartbreak and generously allows Sadness to find its mojo, in a way in which only a Joy could do.

Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! - Dhoti too loose ~

As I walked out of the hall, there were only two kinds of comments all around - "Why did they make it so complicated?" and "I dozed off for ten minutes".  And I suddenly didn't feel guilty of nodding off somewhere in the middle of the first half. That's Dibaker's Byomkesh for you. Moody, atmospheric, stylish - and crushingly boring! And that is such a tragedy. 

In creating a big canvas, the director lost track of small things. Terrific atmospherics don't automatically create intimacies. A thumping soundtrack doesn't eliminate intrinsic somnolence. And big nation-saving stories don't create big stories. 

Dibakar seems so pleased with the budget he has got to recreate a truly beautiful period piece, that he forgot that there have to be characters in front of all the art direction who should be able to connect with the audience. And that's where all the Byomkesh films made in Bangla are far superior than this one - they connect, they hold one's attention, and they leave one rooting for the eponymous hero.  Such complete satisfaction!

And the surprise is that in such a long movie, the characters are still so underwritten. Take Swastika's Angoori Devi. This beautiful actress is the femme fatale. Her body tells of many stories it knows, and her childlike voice anticipates the tragedy of misplaced trust. But with all her talent, her limpid eyes and slow seduction, Swastika can't transcend the limitations of her poorly etched character. Or the fact that, Satyavati doesn't exchange a single coy look with Byomkesh throughout the film, and in the end is proposed to. Lazy writing and absolute balderdash.

Strangely, it is the end when the film bursts into violent life. Ferocious, fabulously choreographed, and like a page out of an Antigone saga -craft at last seems to meet purpose. Indeed, the last ten minutes are almost like a different film. And the film this film should have been. 

Furious 7: tender tinder

So there was this dude who was asked why Indians didn't do well in life in general. And the answer was that, well, because they spend most of their time watching films! This is that kind of a film. Time waste. Time pass. Whatever. And the kind you come out happy and utterly satisfied. And in spite of aphorisms of the kind above, don't make you feel wasted. 

One of the greatest pleasures of my life is of reading a thumping mystery as a Saturday evening drifts by, and I sit all alone, as the body count increases, and I turn page after page, and wonder if life could be better? I remember a Sherlock Holmes mystery where the master of the house acts as the man servant, and opens the door to a guest, and shuts it on his face, saying "Master is not in," because he was reading a book with a fireplace burning , a cigar between his lips, and a glass of something strong glistening on a side-table. And didn't want to be disturbed. Well, again, this is that kind of a film. 

And when you are into the seventh instalment of a film franchise, well, you are with family. You know the tics and tricks, that expression on the face, that reaction, the loves and fears, of each one of the protagonists. You become indulgent towards the irritating and big-hearted towards the bogus. You do this for family, don't you?

Oh and there is much to be indulgent about, what with so much cheesy splendor on show. Cars speeding out of planes, landing on highways and immediately commencing pursuit of an armored truck which has nasty guns sprouting out of every nick and corner of the vehicle. Or a billion dollar car crashing out of the airy heights of the glassy exterior of a skyscraper into another building, and then another. And a car flying into thin air to encounter a helicopter midair and blowing it apart. Oh the audacity of imagination! 

But there is a sunset feel to the proceedings. Paul Walker would no longer be there. And he would be missed. He gave a winsome vulnerability to the film amidst it's impossible heroes and heroics. There's tenderness and remembrance. And the final tribute in the film shows the warmth of this warm persona, not only with his co-leads, but with the audience. Slow or fast, life spells out the inevitability of moving on and away. 

For the rest of it, this is one breathless ride. The best was saved for the last. 

Insurgent: incisive.

Shailene Woodley's Tris is a character forever in an existential crisis. Her vulnerability shimmers on her face. She says "Everybody who has come close to me has either died or been hurt." The time she completely breaks down, after telling her truths under the influence of a serum, is a time where, strangely, she shows her greatest strength: her fragility. Because she can combine it with her determination, and transcend her self-doubt. 

Tris carries the guilt of her mother's death, that of her father and of personally killing a dear friend. For someone like this, the choice to give oneself up for any eventuality is easy. For her humaneness would ensure her survival - if not physically, then as the idea of her. 

But as humans we can scarcely think so far ahead. We can only be generous, humane and good. And let the Universe take care of us. 

In this outstanding adaptation of a mediocre novel, interpretations of 'the greater good' abound. Questions of slotting human beings into definitions of their primary strengths are asked. And the fight ensues. 

In a society which is demarcated into Dauntless, Amity, Candor, Abnegation and Erudite, as per a person's choice of what her strengths are, the lines have to blur. Someone has to think that they are brighter, better, more entitled to power. Humans desire peace but abhor nature's piecemeal distribution of resources. Hence trouble is forever the compatriot of peace. 

The film explodes even as its heroine implodes. It sears in it's ambition, in it's portrayal of a city getting destroyed as it's societies disintegrate. And it soars in scenes which take your breath away. And in front of your eyes you see a wisp of a girl turn into a peerless heroine.

Wild: of Cheryl who Strayed ~

Cheryl: God is a ruthless bitch

At the end of every journey you only find yourself. 

What if you are a woman, running away from yourself, from what you've become? Trekking 1100 miles, alone, with a bag so large that it is nicknamed Monster by others, someone who has never hiked before, and who gets the wrong fuel for her hiking stove. Someone who is so wasted that she cheats regularly on her husband with random strangers, does drugs, and then when separating, chooses the name Strayed, because that's what she had done.

Stacey: You get lonely? 

Cheryl: Honestly? I'm lonelier in my real life than I am out here. I miss my friends, of course but it's not as if I have anybody waiting for me at home. 

The thing which kills, on a  trail, or in life, is aloneness, the knowledge that the one you loved has been pushed back by you, and he has moved on. And now you crave his voice, the look in his eyes when he turned his head your way. Alas, often you push people away because you have been made the last priority in a world where you suddenly have no rights. And you feel - you have no right to live. Thus does self-destruction begin. 

Cheryl: What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn't do anything differently than I had done? What if I'd actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

And that's the mystery of journies. You can only start them, you do not know where you will end. And if you are ready to let the straying path find you, and you have the guts to let the elements take you into their random peregrinations, you will be handed with both life's mysteries and it's moments. 

Cheryl: Why are you here? 

Stacey: I don't know. I just need to find something in myself, you know? I think the trail was good for that. I mean, look. 

[They look up at the sunset]

Stacey: This has the power to fill you up again, if you'll let it. 

Cheryl: My mother used to say something that drove me nuts. There is a sunrise and a sunset every day and you can choose to be there for it. You can put yourself in the way of beauty. 

And that's the way solutions come - the way the problems do. Suddenly. When you least expect. Sometimes before you reach the Bridge of Dreams. Most often it is born in the womb of your greatest tragedies. When you choose the impossible trail, when you choose to back yourself over every possible difficulty. 

Cheryl :The thing about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the thing that was so profound to me that summer-and yet also, like most things, so very simple-was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do. How there was no escape or denial. No numbing it down with a martini or covering it up with a roll in the hay. As I clung to the chaparral that day, attempting to patch up my bleeding finger, terrified by every sound that the bull was coming back, I considered my options. There were only two and they were essentially the same. I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go.

And this is the benediction we are a part of - this mysterious irrevocable sacred life.

Quotes from the film and the book by Cheryl Strayed "Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail"

Birdman: seeking significance ~

I will let you into a secret, which no one knows. I have flown. I don't mean in an airplane. I mean - like a bird. There were undulating hills. I must have been seven or eight. And the wind was strong and high, and I was left alone by adults, relieved to find me happy in my aloneness. And there was space to run. Which I did. I was small, I was light. And the winds caught me, and raised me high above. And I flew. For many many seconds. And I did it again and again, for longer and longer periods. Over the grass, and the shrubs and the long stalks of wildflowers. I've never mentioned it, because no one would believe me. It was a high point, literally and figuratively. 

I know exactly how the Birdman found his flight. And his meaning. 

But there's a BC and an AD to everything. The movie, Birdman, talks about the AD of glory. A huge star, Riggan, is in the last eddie of life. And he is seeking connection - with his family. And significance - in theatre. And his life revolves around that search.

The theatre hall is claustrophobic but it is also the place where he hopes to find his epiphany. The camera prowls through the narrow passageways of the old theatre, the way electric signals move through the nerves in our hearts and minds, seeking life and, more importantly, purpose for life. Because what does a man do when today's reality is washed out and yesterday's glory looks increasingly illusory?

And Riggan's choice of play, an adaptation of a  Raymond Carver story, is not random, because Carver finds infinity in the minutiae of love and life. And he knows, deep down, that seeking relevance ultimately starts from asking questions and seeking answers of oneself. But the journey, ah, that's another matter. It is fraught with breaking heads, breaking hearts, and finally, literally cutting/shooting off one's nose. It's an action which is rich in metaphor. Riggan gets a new nose - totally unbeautiful. But he gets his flight back too. 

In these last few months of totally terrific films, there has been none with the layers and magic and art of Birdman - and the consummate craftsmanship. 

The camera is both a seeker and a surgeon. The music is both a companion and a creator. The acting is an amalgam of regrets, realizations and resurrections. And the director breaks the characters and lets them reassemble themselves, until they find themselves anew, however imperfect that might be. 

Life's triumphs are glorious. But in an Inarritu film, life's defeats can only lead to something triumphant.

The Imitation Game: life imitating death ~

I don't know loners (caveat somewhere below). But I've read about them, seen them in films - misfits, restless geniuses - hated, ostracized, obsessed. Invariably, disliked. And achievers. The art world lends itself well to this creature. The lonely unrecognized unsung auteur working selflessly at his art and craft. They are fascinating because they defy the normal rules of working in teams, putting others before self, etc etc. 

Two of my favorite fictional heroes - Howard Roark and Lisbeth Salander - were both loners. And they were hit badly by the world. And it was only by the sheer skin of their prodigious talent that they survived. 

Alan Turing is one of them.And a real life one. Awkward, inwardly tortured because of a disastrous truth, he is completely incapable of working with others, or show finesse in his dealings with people. But he is also one of the greatest mathematicians of the time. And he is itching to crack the ultimate puzzle - that of coded Nazi war messages. But it is no mean task. As he has a team but he doesn't know how to use them. And he makes enemies very quickly. Until the ultimate truth dawns - he himself is his own first and foremost enemy. 

The battle then is severe - he has to fight himself first before Hitler can be defeated. It's truly an inside job. 

Now the caveat. There was a period, in high school, when I was discovering interests which none of my friends shared. Haunting art galleries, learning to dance kathak, taking workshops in theatre, reading in public gardens and parks, sitting inside churches. I was a loner. Alone. Friendless. But - I did what I wanted. I went where I wanted. It was scary - and liberating. No one to answer to, free. But I was also socially awkward, could write well, but went tongue tied when asked to speak. And when with my brother, who was charming, magnetic and fun, I invariably was gauche, silent and continuously putting my foot as soon as I opened my mouth. So it was torturous too. 

So it was a strange mixed time of my life. But progressively I reconciled with the fact that I walked to a different drumbeat - and I could silently ask those who commented about my obsessive need to be alone, to stuff it. 

I changed. Adjusted. Found a mean. Alan Turing is not able to. And he survives with great discomfort and pain. And it's a visual and dramatic treat to see the finely layered film span out in three time zones laying out what made the man what he was. And what made him. 

And unmade him. 

He committed suicide at the age of 41. 

Thank god, I learnt to love my aloneness less and my friends more. 

The Theory of Everything: a brief history of love ~

We all know Stephen Hawking, one way or the other. A shrunk man with a twisted face, with a permanent grimace on his face, deep inside a wheelchair, with an assortment of screens and instruments all around him, helping him to communicate. 

He is a part of our consciousness even if we are not always sure what he is famous for - something to do with black holes? A physicist? Has he won the Nobel Prize? Almost certainly we know him for The Brief History of Time, which is lying unread in our bookshelves. 

We know the challenge of being Hawking, and the triumph of a spirit which makes the mind go ahead even when the body refuses to assist. 

But you know what the other, and possibly bigger, challenge is? Of the people who dedicate their lives to such a person.

Jane Wilde and Stephen were in love before illness befell him. He tried hard to keep her away as doctors had given him a life expectancy of a mere two years. But it requires a woman in love to be ready to do anything for love. Stephen's father told Jane "This is not going to be a fight, it's going to be a heavy defeat for all of us." But she insisted, saying at least they would have two years. Jane had the courage to take this huge leap into darkness.

The film is their story. And how he goes from bad to worse in the body, and better and better in his mind. And she goes from softness to determination to burdened to exasperation to bitterness. The arcs of life and love and passion are encapsulated in their stories. 

They were not always rich -  and the burden of Stephen, and soon their three children, began telling on her. He was strong in his frailties, and she was fragile in her strengths. Love can't be burdened too much - it breaks. And when the innocence of the first flush is lost, it is often found by someone else. And here, it turned out to be a nurse, Elaine. And she saw the essence of Stephen, which Jane, burdened as she was with life, had lost. 

The film glows and shimmers in the land of endeavor and achievements,  and then delves gently into the land of frailities like the ebb of love, infidelity, separation, discovery and rediscovery.

Eddie Redmayne is astonishing as Hawking. Nothing, nothing at all, can make you feel it is any one other than the physicist, in front of you. But it is Felicity Jones as Jane who forms the determined - and ultimately human -counterpoint around which Hawking's character is built. 

Life is stranger then fiction. After you come back from the film (and only then) read what further happens to Jane and Elaine. Life can be cruel to love. 

Snowpiercer: the unending folly ~

Snowpiercer is horror. And brutal. And cautionary. And futuristic. And probably one of the finest films of last year which nobody saw. 

The apocalypse of the Ice Age has come to haunt earth again. A bunch of survivors are in a futuristic train which is going in circles around the earth as a modern age ark, carrying within it all kinds of survivors - the haves and have nots, the privileged and not, the exploited  and the exploiters. And there is trouble a-brewing. There is resentment in the barracks (back of the train), and a plan is being hatched to take over the command center (the front). And, as expected, everything spins out of control. 

The story of the privileged ensuring preeminence, by hook or by crook, is combined with the survival instincts of a Lord of the Rings, and the war which ensues within the claustrophobic environs of the train becomes both a battle for territory and a voyage of discovery. And when the circle of exploitation closes in a stunning climax, it leaves us to wonder about man's continuous attempt to control nature: natural selection takes on a different meaning. 

Visually stunning, and imaginative even in it's violence, the film ends on the snow flake of a hope. The world has to start on a clean slate. It has to start from innocence. Before all of the old human instincts of survival and competition (and folly)  set in, and the seeds of destruction are sown yet again.

Only Lovers Left Alive: love in the time of death ~

As I think back to the film, it's haunting music, it's artful dark love, it's totally delicious slow-burning delight, I remember what someone was saying to students at the Art Fair yesterday "Every painting doesn't have to have a message. It's enough to say that it fills the senses and you feel good just looking at it."

I doubt you will ever see a film of this genre made the way this one is:style which gives meat to substance. A vampire film which is chic and full of a strange compassion and love. It's my first Jim Jarmusch and I am hooked, and all ready for his more famous films Coffee and Cigarettes, Dead Man, et al.

Tilda Swinton is the most chameleon-like actor ever (I will talk about her further in another of her performances, in another stupendous film, Snowpiercer, but that's later), and she gives her Eve a satisfied aura, a sophisticated woman you know you will be happy if she merely acknowledges your presence. It's a performance of an amazing smoothness. And then there is her lover of centuries, Adam, played by Tom Hiddleston with a tired and an almost-insolent indolence. Nobody has loved his claustrophobia and his funeral music more. And then there is Mia Wasikowska as Ava who spells trouble from the moment she walks into the twosome's beautiful life of serene darkness. She brings a dangerous disruption into the proceedings, and nothing remains the same. The BC/AD of Ava.

There is so much to love in this film. Adam's home is a triumph of pristine memorabilia, music equipment, books and a hundred artifacts probably collected over ten centuries.

 

The city of Detroit with it's ghost-like factories and inky streets. . Tangiers with it's Mediterranean-white walls, narrow lanes. There are non-seasonal mushrooms, bunches of messy wires, guitars of the most beautiful kind, conversations which go nowhere but make you smile as you listen in carefully (Eve: I'm sure she'll be very famous. Adam: God, I hope not. She's way too good for that.) and a bullet specially made. And there's one mesmerizing song, which comes near the end. And, after they discuss the lovely theory of entanglement, the final luscious choice of survival the lovers have to make. 

See the film. For the dark and love inside you. See it with all the lights off. With a terrific music system. And then let the velvety beauty of the film flow elegantly over you. 

American Sniper: toll of choices ~

You seek to change the way things are done. You change your entire life to do it. And then you are changed. And then it is out of your control.

You learn to kill something which has a beating heart. And then you learn to kill a body which has a human heart. You don't blink an eye. You learn perspective - and when to kill without compunction. The larger good. And a war which shoots hearts to silence, finds it's heartlessness seeping into life. 

The toll on you of your choices of life will always haunt you. 

American Sniper does not question choices. But it questions wars. The toll of it. And then it swings it's perspective to show a normal life's ordinariness, hark, it's uselessness. Love seems bland. Normal life leaves you nowhere. What is the worth of watching your son's basketball game, when the edges of your country are  being snipped off. 

The pace of a life at home, the glow and it's ordinary glory, sink in slowly. And by the time find it's pristine worth is found, the  karma of irony kicks in. 

There is always a price to pay. 

American Sniper is compelling, pounds with suspense, and tells how what we are good at often saves precious lives, but is not always able to save what is precious. 

From Here to Eternity: forever ~

I think six people were the luckiest people in Calcutta yesterday evening. We were the only ones seeing the filmed version of Tim Rice's Broadway hit From Here to Eternity in a 200 seater cinema hall. It was sheer luck that I saw the announcement in the morning, for the one show of this fabulous play.

The original film, with Burt Lancaster as the talented moody protagonist, is itself a masterpiece (5 Oscars) , and one of my favorite adaptations of a fabulous book. But Tim Rice (of The Lion King fame) has elevated this already strong story to another level with his stunning lyrics and music. 

The story is of a army unit in Hawaii, in the days before Pearl Harbor happened in 1941. The catalyst for the internal cataclysm is a young soldier who joins the unit, with a huge reputation as a boxer and a bugler - but who refuses to indulge in both pursuits because of 'personal reasons'. He just wants to be within himself, keep his nose clean, and eke out his army life in peace. But fortune ordains something else. He falls in love with a prostitute, befriends a loser but brave soldier, and sees every resolution of his blown to smithereens. On the other side is the lonely wife of an overbearing officer, and her dangerous affair with another officer. And weaved into this story is the camaraderie, the pettiness, the charm and the disillusionment of army life. And the impending doom of the Japanese attack. 

This is a film of live theatre. And it's been shot stunningly and sensitively. Not for a second does one get distracted to the fact that it is theatre one is watching. And for Tanu and me, it was beautiful deja vu, after seeing the best of plays in New York, London, Las Vegas and Chicago. 

I believe Nandita Das is also doing exactly this by preserving on film some of the best plays of India. This is certainly the template to follow. 

Ugly: little else ~

What is the genesis of venality? 

Like almost everything else - economic? Deprivation?  Greed? Or is there a need for freedom, without the sense that it leads to another trap?

What is the need for domination? 

Disgust? An inferiority complex? Frustration elsewhere? A depraved need for release? Or a simple pleasure to ride on one's own power, regardless of the fact that the victim is weak, helpless? 

In a world where survival is paramount, and one's own standing in one's own eyes is suspect, the economics of existence is the only worthwhile algorithm of living. Everything else is secondary. Relationships are equations of convenience. Existence is an existential state of cold-blooded logic. 

Seeking a visceral revenge on an old grouse is a mere setting right a power equation. Hating your wife is a mere extension of this. Kidnapping is a symptom of this. Friendships flounder when 'my' economics clashes with 'his'. 

And is this another world, or 'our' world in a lurid guise? Many things are extreme when 'others' do it, and are 'logical' when we indulge in them. We protect ourselves from ourselves by working out justifications for our own good. In the shadows of our bodies we hide sordid souls, which come out to play when we think nobody is watching us. 

An intolerance to suggestion, or an irritation in a relationship, or the politics of affection, are the soft manifestations of every extremity we may abhor. 

And therein lies the tragedy of our world. No crime is 'there': everything lies inside us. 

Ugly is that. And it is elemental and visceral and tragic because it is born and exists and perpetuates in our minds. And we are repelled,  because we understand it is our very own world. 

The Wonderful Now: wonderful stillness ~

Shailene Woodley (Fault in Our Stars, Divergent) as Aileen has this wonderful stillness. Not outside her, but somewhere deep inside. That's what gives her the wonder which she feels when good things happen to her. There is an aching sweetness in her diffidence. And she accepts acknowledgement of her considerable gifts as a gift by itself. But just the way she's alive to what's happening to her, she also has the depth to know what doesn't happen to her. 

And in the very moment she feels her deepest disappointment, you know she has also forgiven. That's the grace of her being. 

In our lives, we all seek equanimity, amidst all the strife and passion and heartbreaks. We want to conjoin at the very moment we want to break it all up, we want to be together at the very time we want to break loose. But these conflicts are rarely resolved. And we let the moment's tragedy flood our entire life. We lose perspective, we lose the beauty of all possibilities, we lose the blessing of an unforgettable past. 

To know that everything passes, but doesn't erase yesterdays. To know that the celebration of 'now' of our lives is what will give beauty to our 'later'. And to embrace the changes wrought by fortune with a Zen-like acceptance. And to embrace life not as a right, but a precious furry beautiful loving thing capable of giving, even as it breaks our hearts. 

Shalene is so infinitesimally subtle that you learn about the beauty of evanescence by her presence. You will be moved beyond yourself. 

Boyhood: somewhere in between ~

I think it is the moment which seizes us.

Is life anything other then vignettes and changes and less of the same and more of what we never expected. We never realize how in one life, how many lives we get to live. And we live by seeing changes happening before our eyes and suffering the consequences. Until we reach a stage when we make the changes - and find our lives change. 

And life finds ways to transverse landscapes of our hearts and minds in ways we can't even imagine. We see the spring of our age disrupted with unseasonal rains and storms. We find autumns find their way into the lives  of our loved ones. And we find enemies of our childhood become friends, because that's how everything changes. And because nothing is ever permanent. 

And all the time we are growing. Bruising, surviving, discovering, hurting, losing. But also finding that the promise of life and discovery far far exceeds whatever trials life brings. 

Boyhood is about growing up and what it means to do so. From the first bruise to the first drink to the first kiss to the first love to the first breakup. The magic of the first which can never ever get repeated - and the expectation and excitement of which drives our lives to fulfilment and gives us meaning and memories. That, in spite of repetitions, life can never be rote. That in spite of trajectories of many lives following similar arcs, the stories never turn out to be same.

Ordinary life. Extraordinary film.

(Boyhood is a 2014 American coming-of-age drama film written and directed by Richard Linklater and starring Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater and Ethan Hawke. 

The film was shot intermittently over an eleven-year period from May 2002 to October 2013, showing the growth of the young boy and his sister to adulthood. 

The film premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically on July 11, 2014. The film also competed in the main competition section of the 64th Berlin International Film Festival, where Linklater won the Silver Bear for Best Director. 

The film was declared a landmark by many notable film critics, with particular praise for its direction, acting, and scope.

Ethan Hawke, the actor associated with the project, says-

"It's Tolstoy-esque in scope. I thought the Before series was the most unique thing I would ever be a part of, but Rick has engaged me in something even more strange. Doing a scene with a young boy at the age of 7 when he talks about why do raccoons die, and at the age of 12 when he talks about video games, and 17 when he asks me about girls, and have it be the same actor — to watch his voice and body morph — it's a little bit like timelapse photography of a human being."  - from Wikipedia)

Interstellar - a few thoughts ~

Inception was a thriller of the mind. Interstellar is a meditation on space and the spaces in the heart. It bridges the infinite to the intimate, parting to yearning, belief to discovery. Even as it weaves intricate science into it's narrative, it deconstructs the part love plays in science. And how faith and care will always be the unnamed dimension in any scientific equation.

And since the film is a meditation, it eases it's way into our consciousness in soft grace and hard heartbreak. As the astronauts search for new places to inhabit people dying in an increasingly unhabitable earth - they realize how the loved ones inhabiting their hearts are ageing faster than them. Some of the most aching scenes in this film full of aching grandeur are of father and daughter parting, of a father listening to the messages sent by his children and seeing how they have grown and changed even as he remains almost un-aged, of a father again meeting his daughter in unimaginable circumstances.

The film has a sepulchral feel to it. Even it's villainy has a sad nobility, a greater purpose. The vistas - a raging spatial sea, a stark glacial landscape, the lights of a black hole - are so stunning that it requires an effort to absorb all of it in our senses. But they are there for human drive, dream and desire to be tested, to force them to go beyond, so that they can return to what is within. 

It is an ageless pursuit. And dwarfs all discoveries of science. 

The Edge of Tomorrow: the persistence of memory

I have been wanting to write this for a while. (And it's one of those things which I remember.) It's about good memory and not-so-good memory. I have been wanting to write this for a while. (And it's one of those things which I remember.) It's about good memory and not-so-good memory. 

I have a terrible one. I don't remember names, faces, birthdays. I forget the names of colleagues I've been working with for ages. I forget names of books I've enjoyed reading, I remember tunes, not lyrics: in one word- terrible. And numbers are my greatest weakness - turnover of companies, phone numbers, how much I spent on things, et al. I've been told that I only forget things which I don't care much about. But how can one explain my forgetting the name of what's-his-name in that terrific novel, you know the father who is raising two sensitive kids and defending a black man for murder, when I've read that novel at least three times? 

And the worst is - I forget incidents, and things said. And, boy, is it one big disadvantage in heated arguments, when the other party even remembers what I was wearing when I  called them something objectionable, ten years back in a heated moment. 

And then you have the others. People I'm intensely jealous of. My dad - remembers everything, starting from what he learnt in nursery. He is my encyclopedia for all questions of space, geology, engineering, mathematics, history, mythology, and such like. My second reference-book is Avi. He who reads widely and remembers deeply. He is marvellous to talk to, because like all good debaters, he can debate both sides with equal felicity. Then there is a colleague who remembers even the time (to the second) when he'd met me for a meeting on geo-thermal technology with five other people and the exact positions where we had sat around on a round table. And then there is one who remembers the color of my socks when I had first interviewed her (why was she looking there?). That interview was, by the way, ten years back. 

Then, I suspect, there are those who remember things which didn't happen. Which now comes in great use when they know they are having a discussion with someone amiably unhinged like me. Sharks, such guys. 

Now what triggered this write? This thrilling Tom Cruise film The Edge of Tomorrow, where the man, a reluctant soldier, is pushed into battle, dies and then gets alive again, and then dies again, and up again, and so on and so forth, but with full memory of the previous times. So he learns from mistakes, re-strategises, and then pretty much saves the world. The important thing here was the accumulation of memory - and the chance he gets to live the same moments again and again, until he gets it right. What a privilege. 

And then I thought of all the accumulation of memory we do. And though I know our heads are capable of infinite capacities to hold things, I wondered about the need of it. Of course it would help if we could relive our lives and amend things which we did wrong, but does it help to remember some of the things which we end up doing?

That sarcastic remark made in a verbal duel years back. The hurt one felt when someone loved does something insensitive. How someone ignored you in a party. How you were not in a list of invitees. Who forgot your birthday. A mistake made. Words exchanged. Someone who took advantage of you. Whatever. And then you have the same person in front of you. Different. Changed. Because that's what humans do. Every moment. They learn. They change. I confess, some don't. But here's the thing - if we look at a person and only have the memory of what he once did to you, where would the space to move forward anew be? 

And that's where people with great memories are cursed. They are cursed with the persistence of memory. Things they can't forget, however much they might want to. Ancient feelings they can't let go off. Old hurts which keep renewing themselves like new everlasting springs. 

I forget. And I think I'm blessed for it. I will have nuts to improve my memory, and chawanprash so I don't go totally dotty. And I am not a Mahatma, so I also remember plenty. But I love it when I don't remember old pains, old fights, old words of anger, old aberrations of loved ones. I will lose all arguments gladly, I will lose my promotion because I forgot last year's profit figure. But I think I will be a lighter person for it.

So my friend, you out there. When I meet you, behind my (genuine) welcoming smile, I might be trying hard to remember your name. Please don't feel bad. Please. Because I will also not remember the time you called me a dolt on one of my posts on my timeline. 

*hugs*