Pikoo's Diary

26m, 1980, Ray, Aparna Sen, Victor Banerjee
This is an extraordinary, unforgettable film, all the more for its brevity. And not just for the boldness of its theme, for Indian cinema of 1980, (adultery, that too brazen, under the eyes of an alert child), but the poetic power. In the last few minutes, time comes to a fullstop, and the child's universe is transformed by elemental occurrences. Everything coincides: clouds gather, the woman falls, death creeps in, a game of cards, sleep, a lotus trembles on its stalk. Sexuality. death, sickness, aging, nature, time. Awesome Life.
Part 1          Part 2         Part 3

The Snake Pit

1948, 98m, Olivia de Havilland

A highly romanticized and sanitized depiction of mental illness, which does little justice to the depth of inner desolation it entails and the trail of destruction which it leaves. Virginia, the glamorous victim, suffers from an unspecified illness involving confusion and amnesia which lands her in an institution, where her fate is sandwiched between a callous and at times brutal establishment, and a handsome psychoanalyst. She is subjected to the painful treatments current at that period (electric shocks and hydropathy) but psychoanalysis has the day as her past traumas are pealed and all ends happily ever after, as she returns to the ministrations of a doting husband. The environment and conditions inside the hospital are more comical than horrifying, and conform more to the popular image than to any reality. As an early depiction of the subject, it is a very rudimentary and inadequate treatment which sugar coats the grim reality. Manifest behavior is the tip of the iceberg. The sea of experiential reality is invisible. Probably straight narration is an inadequate idiom. I am tempted to quote:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

The Loneliness of Long Distance Runner

Tony Richardson, 99m, 1962, UK

Long distance running, particularly in the absence of a cell phone, is certainly an activity, which provides solitude of a special kind. As Smith, the teenage boy who is the subject runs and runs, memories come tumbling and he relives his past. This b/w movie is set in a bleak autumnal British landscape in social conditions far from the affluence of subsequent period. Smith is a teenager from the underprivileged section who lands in a reformatory after getting caught for a petty robbery. We have glimpses of life at the institution.

The head of the school spots the boy's talent for running and, to add a feather to his own cap, goads him with enticements to win the prize for a five mile race in an inter school race competition. Smith leaves his nearest competitor far behind, but close to the finishing line, brings himself to a halt, gifting away the trophy. It is an enigmatic yet powerful act of self assertion, whereby his existence as an individual is established. Like the protagonist of 400 Blows, he now faces the pathless sea of the future. A somewhat rough shod film of substance.

Armadillo

100m, Denmark, 2010

This documentary tells of the experience of the Afghan war, this time through the eyes of a company of soldiers from Denmark. The camera is very close to the site of action, and we see the casualties on either side as they occur. We see the gradual desensitization of the soldiers, and the increasing depersonalization of the enemy. The surprising thing is that having completed their period of deployment, most of the soldiers elect to return to the same arena of war a year later, as though war were an addictive substance. The movie has the texture of a feature, and one has the feel of watching fiction, not reality.

Super Size Me

 Morgan Spurlock, 2004, 89m

You should see this film for reasons of health. It accentuates my feeling of revulsion towards junk food, specially the multi layer types which have to be consumed in portions that fully occupy the mouth--hardly the thing you can talk things over over. Eating, and eating together, should be a sacred act of human communion and bonding. Taste is not on the taste buds alone. But here it is reduced to a physiological exercise of stimulating and eliminating hunger using products that are essentially synthetic. This is eating for the sake of eating.

The director fed on nothing but what was available at McDonald's for thirty days, recording his own feelings as they vary between disgust, craving and fear. His medical parameters are monitored on a daily basis. The deterioration in health is even more drastic than anticipated. Among other things, the lipids and the weight shoot up. Most alarming and unexpected are the cirrhosis like signs which surface in the final days of the experiment, which could even be life threatening. Although framed in a breezy comic style, the topic is too serious to have any other effect than to set the alarm bells ringing.

Of course, arguments can be made about the drastic nature of the project, yet it is impossible to ignore the conclusions.  The results may be scaled down to the extent of one's own consumption, but it is hard to challenge the authenticity. One particularly gruesome animated sequence depicts the assembly line transformation of a chicken into golden deep fried nuggets. We also have the privilege of sharing the intimacy of the operation theater where an obesity surgery is being performed as swathes of lard are removed from an opened abdomen. Over-nutrition, like other addictions, is the result of an enfeebled mind. It is hardly less frightening than images of starvation, differing mainly in being self imposed.

Roger Ebert's review