Black Swan: why we need to meet our darkest selves

Early in the film, Nina (Natalie Portman) encounters her own self coming towards her on a road, dressed in black, looking askance at her, with a little smile playing on her lips.

The way, sometimes, we encounter a part of ourselves, just like that, or sometimes when we realize there is more to us than just what even we see in ourselves.

The question is - what is the conversation which ensues? Do we have an internal fight? Or a talk to recognize, acknowledge and accept that we have a different, often darker side? Or do we just shy away from having a dialogue?

Black Swan asks these questions, surreally, inside the head and heart of an emotionally overwrought and totally-on-the-edge girl.  As Nina, a ballerina,  prepares for the role-of-a-lifetime of the Swan in Swan Lake, she is able to essay the role of the pure White Swan with ease. But she is just not able to break loose to play the evil Black Swan. She's just too nice to be able to essay the insidious.

And then life's umpteen pressures start telling on her - her mother's imprisoning nurturing, the snideness of some of her co-dancers, the seduction of a freedom which a new danseuse provides, the extreme tension of delivering what is expected of her, and, above all, her very own lonely fragility.

She is perfect in her dance technique, but is unable to garner the abandon which would help her transcend technique into genius. She is not able to let go - and she is half the performer - and person - that she can be.

I remember there was an incredible episode in the original Star Trek series where Captain Kirk is split into two persons - one which embodies all that is good in him, and the other which has all the evil of his being. And the all-good person is a failure as a Captain - good-hearted but indecisive, compassionate but without the ability to take those hard decisions which leaders have to take. And his evil side kept on exhorting the good one to be ruthless and above feeling, so that he could finish the mission. Ultimately they are able to join both the Captains again, and the true leader which Captain Kirk was, emerges.

Everyone of us has to accept what boils within us. We cannot sit in denial of what drives us and our being, and then expect to live a life of acceptance and truth. Otherwise, we will break symbolic and literal rashes (the way Nina does) and keep encountering our hidden selves in dark alleys, which would have us live diminished lives in the worlds we inhabit.

Black Swan is often terrifying in its intensity, and one has to look away from the haunting vulnerability of Nina, as she deals with the demons fighting inside her. We may never tip over the precipice, as she does, but one understands why, at some point in our lives, we need to meet our darkest selves, however frightening it might be, to be complete as persons.


7th March 2011

7 life lessons from 7 Khoon Maaf

Vishal Bhardwaj cannot keep things simple. And thank god for it. Even the most linear of narratives, in his films, carry meanings beneath the patina. Sub-texts abound, and simple tales have layers.

Saat Khoon Maaf is no exception.

One can enjoy the film as a quirky story of an unusual woman, Susanna, who loves, marries and kills (well, many times over). Great music, dark tones, stellar performances, flawed characters sketched quickly and enacted effortlessly - these are all there to revel in. But scratch the surface and the richness overflows; what emerges are life-lessons in barrel-loads, inherent in the life-choices Susanna makes.

Here are just seven reasons why this film of killings could be a fine reference film for living:

One: Embrace life:

There is nothing more compelling than seeing a person refusing to lose hope, to continuously seek correction or redemption in the next move, next turn or - next husband. Sussana refuses to give up, in her search for love and life. And her final choice, as night begins to fall in her life, is the finest possible: at long last she finds a person to dance with till the end.

Reason Two: Be decisive:

Susanna does not leave anything undone. She resolves things totally, and then only does she move on. Her little admirer and mentee, Arun, the narrator of the story, asks as much after her Kashmir sojourn with Irrfan: why didn't she just leave the sadist and come back. And he is told by her faithful retainer, the butler, that Sussana first closes a chapter completely, before opening another one.

Reason Three: Be open, learn to give and receive:

Each turn of life brings its own charms. One needs to learn to take risks. Poet, hunter, doctor, spy, singer - Sussana's life is rich in the kind of people she attracts. She refuses nothing, as long as it has potential to add to the tapestry of her life. She is failed in her search for love, but not in her attempt to seek life in all its hues.

She is finely tuned into the fancies of each of her husbands. She revels in their strengths and the beauty of their talent. Song, poetry, gastronomy, dance, physical charishma - she knows life is short and its richness can't be denied.

And then when the time for denouements comes, she cleverly uses methods which are the downsides of these very same habits, fancies and talents. The circle completes itself.

Reason Four: Always have someone in your life who loves you unquestionably:

We are nothing if we do not have people in our lives who would die for us and are beside us in our bleakest times. People who might not like our choices, but who know that being human and making mistakes is part and parcel of loving someone.

Sussana's maid, butler and one-eyed horse-keeper are her closest associates, who are, as she once states, more faithful than even the owners of the house. They can do anything for her - and they do.

Reason Five: Trust completely:

Sussana immerses herself into each of her married lives. She is whole and trusting, everytime, even though she faces heartbreak not once, but again and again.

Reason Six: The past needs to be burnt to enjoy the present:

There is enough symbolism of this when she decides to wreck her house to hide a body. But her ability to carry her past lightly enables her to find more reasons to live. She is unburdened with what is best erased.

Reason Seven: Always know the time for finalities:

Sussana realizes when the end-play begins - and when life has to be given its final twist. And she was the one who had to give it. Her choice of her final husband was her iconoclastic way of saying: this is my way of living - and living on.

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No Strings Attached

Natalie Portman looks frazzled, she's confused. But who's to complain, as she agrees to a 'sex-only' relationship with Ashton Kutcher - and jumps into it with vim and gusto!

Nothing is simple; and the lovelorn spaniel that Ashton is, the results are long foregone.

The proceedings are nicely helped along with a fairly-decently etched-out legion of family and friends, as also the dialogue, which is tartily frank.

Nothing memorable, but the film has a nice lived-in feel about it. And it's always nice to have Natalie around for a while in your life...

February 14th, 2011
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Yeh Saali Zindagi

A frenetic, funny and bawdy ride through the underworld of society and souls.

Acted, edited and directed with pizazz, this is the first Guy Ritchie of Hindi cinema.

With total irreverence, it shows how love and crime are so similar - faithlessness can break hearts or bones but faith can mend lives.

Unmissable.
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Waltz With Bashir

A haunting movie, on the effects of war on men.

Awash in ochre shades and sepulchral music, it reminds us that wars can only minimize us as human beings ~


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The Green Hornet

Good for a few laughs, with your kid (or for the kid inside ), but woefully short on all counts.

Written shallowly, with actors with zero charisma, its combo of action-n-humour is just not punchy or corny enough ~
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Dhobi Ghat

What do we see films for ?

To enter lives of people, to feel their feelings, to experience the dramas of their changing seasons. And to wonder at the amazing diversity of choices which people have - and end up living their lives with.

Dhobi Ghat is about the lives four people choose to live in one metropolis, where the crowds ensure you can pass each other at a whisker's distance, and not know about the other's presence.

Arun (Aamir Khan) is a reclusive artist. Shia (Monica Dogra) is an investment banker from the States on sabbatical. Munna (Prateik Babbar) is a dhobi and a wannabe actor. And Yasmin (Kriti Malhotra) is a Muslim newly-wed.
And they are all part of a city which gives them either recognition or anonymity, sometimes by choice, sometimes by happenstance.

Connect. Change. Be changed. Part.

But its easy to connect to human-ness, whatever the background of the characters in a film. It's both a strength and a weakness of thi film, that none of the protagonists have darkness in their souls. It makes them likeable, but also renders the drama a trifle effete. Thus things happen to people in spite of them being good. And they react the way good people do - tremoulously, tentatively, by flight, by withdrawal , or simply by permanently exiting.

But is there change in any of the characters as the film reaches the end? Have the incidents they have gone through changed them in ways good or bad? Alas, no.

The slice of their lives shown in the film remains a surface examination of the incidents and feelings of the characters: some tears, yes, but no red blood corpuscles on show.

But what the film loses in drama, is made up in empathy. There is a huge affection which the director has for her characters, and it shows in every shy smile and gesture of theirs.

Munna is an absolute sweetheart. He carries his status of a dhobi lightly, and doesn't let it overwhelm his relationship with the upper-class Shia. Similarly, Shia is sensitive to Prateik's feelings, in spite of her love for Arun. Both are characters well-delineated and enacted. But surely, the most poignant is Yasmin, the newly-wed who is seen entirely in video, and who enters our lives with stars in her eyes and leaves (and leaves us behind) with tears.

The most unsatisfactory - and the most surprising - part is that of Aamir. Underwritten, and lacking depth, one doesn't know what he feels or stands for. No amount of star-power - or brooding aloneness by the sea-side - can overcome a character which is poorly defined.

To make up for this one weakness is the incredible charecterisation of Bombay. It is a hideaway, a place for voyeurs, for a man to hide behind multiple pursuits or an upperclass woman to be friends with a washerman; but it is also a place so small that there is no one to reach out to, when one needs it most.

Finally, a film is as good as what it makes you feel. And this one brings a lump in the throat. There is delicacy and understatement - and the story is so obviously from the heart.

But it also makes you leave the dining table with the feeling there was a course served less. The rounding off is too little, the drama slight. It has its moments, but is not memorable.

~ Sunil Bhandari
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January 23rd, 2011

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