This is a superb film about a less performed Shakespeare play. The action has been transplanted to a fictitious modern city ("a place that calls itself Rome") with tanks and guns replacing sword and armor (short of planes, mercifully). Initially the anachronistic setting was slightly off putting, as though to frill up the substance of the drama, but finally it turns out to be a powerful and convincing character study, enacted flawlessly by Fiennes, who is also the director. Coriolanus seems much more than a man consumed by inordinate pride, as he is often simplistically described. He is a man driven by a single vision, at the cost of life, family, country, who remains consistent to himself till the end. His disdain for the people is a reflection of an inability to play politics or to indulge in any kind of dissimulation. He is an idealist, making valor his goddess for the sake of which he shows utter contempt for worldly riches and recognition and in fact life itself. He has a yardstick which is completely internal, an island of a man. Compared to him, even Macbeth is a conflicted ditherer. He is the perfect fruition of a species. Yet, thanks to the bard, he is completely plausible as flesh and blood. Whether that image conforms to social ethics or not is as futile as asking about the righteousness of revenge in Hamlet. At any rate this is a film with plenty of life in it.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Coriolanus
This is a superb film about a less performed Shakespeare play. The action has been transplanted to a fictitious modern city ("a place that calls itself Rome") with tanks and guns replacing sword and armor (short of planes, mercifully). Initially the anachronistic setting was slightly off putting, as though to frill up the substance of the drama, but finally it turns out to be a powerful and convincing character study, enacted flawlessly by Fiennes, who is also the director. Coriolanus seems much more than a man consumed by inordinate pride, as he is often simplistically described. He is a man driven by a single vision, at the cost of life, family, country, who remains consistent to himself till the end. His disdain for the people is a reflection of an inability to play politics or to indulge in any kind of dissimulation. He is an idealist, making valor his goddess for the sake of which he shows utter contempt for worldly riches and recognition and in fact life itself. He has a yardstick which is completely internal, an island of a man. Compared to him, even Macbeth is a conflicted ditherer. He is the perfect fruition of a species. Yet, thanks to the bard, he is completely plausible as flesh and blood. Whether that image conforms to social ethics or not is as futile as asking about the righteousness of revenge in Hamlet. At any rate this is a film with plenty of life in it.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
The Titicut Follies
The film chronicles the conditions in an institution for the criminally insane in the US. It was a subject of prolonged litigation and its open exhibition suppressed for a long time. The litigation was ostensibly for alleged violation of privacy of the inmates and personnel of the institution but actually because it depicted the less than ideal conditions prevailing. I was expecting to see barbarism of medieval vintage. Actually, we have a fairly neutral and objective lens view, and the patients seem to be reasonably well tended. The desolation that comes across is more the inherent attribute of mental illness, and the no less taxing task of managing people with semi-vegetable minds. The not so well educated attendants and even doctors tend to treat their charges as objects, more so because the conditions shown are currently classed as incurable. Could it be that long years of exposure not only immunizes the caregivers to suffering and makes them partake to some extent of the condition of their charges. The behavior of the attendants is a mixture of mild bullying and indifference. This is a telling, if not startling, film about the world of mental illness and by extension the human condition, since the lines demarcating normalcy are necessarily hazy. The outstanding feature of the film is truthfulness, not being an enacted film.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Kinyarwanda
The title of the film is the official language of Rwanda.This is the third film about the genocidal civil war (1994) in Rwanda fought between two tribal groups, which took a toll of around one million lives. Alrick Brown, the director is a Jamaican American. The other two films I have seen about the same subject are Hotel Rwanda and Munyurangabo. The present film is a panoramic view of the unfamiliar milieu. It is retrospectively redemptive since as the film conveys time seems to have brought about a reunion of hearts across ethnic and religious barriers. It lacks however a sharp focus or intent and often seems to verge on sentimentality and heroics. A less than outstanding film about an important topic which has its heart in the right place. Notably, it is an outsider's view, as was Munyurangabo, directed by a Korean American. Munyurangabo, however, is by far the most moving in terms of simple humanism, exquisite restraint and film craft.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
The American President
This warm and highly entertaining romantic comedy situated right in the White House relates to the affair of a fictional American President with an environmental activist. And as we enjoy the Cindrella like yarn we get to know even across the tints of fantasy the routines in the corridors of power. There is even a chilling moment when the good natured big man pronounces the "Attack!" word ordering the pin pointed bombardment of a civilian target.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Into the Abyss
A pair of teenagers commit three wanton murders in the process of stealing a car. After a decade long legal process, one of them (Perry) is to die by lethal injection ten days after the interview with Herzog we share in the film, while the other (Burkett) gets away with a sentence of forty years, partly due to the sympathy aroused by his father, another serving lifer. This riveting documentary paints a picture of waste, desolation and the grief of bereavement. We participate in actual interviews of relatives of the victims and criminals, a prison official who forsakes his pension and resigns after carrying out 125 executions and a priest who's job it is to be present at the last moment.
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