La la Land

Why am I constantly wondering? Why can't I just observe?

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Location: Singapore, Singapore

Looking to learn, to explore and to imagine possibilities......

Sunday, July 17, 2005

The women of bengal: A look at films

Sharat Chandra and Tagore need no introduction. The recent movies made on their works stood out in their portrayal of women. I refer to “Chokher Bali,” “Devdas”, and “Parineeta.” For those not familiar with the stories, here is a little synopsis of each movie

Chokher Bali: This is based on Tagore’s Binodini. Binodini is played by Aishwarya , a widow who was turned down by two educated city men, before she married someone from a village and became a widow soon after. Circumstances bring her to the home of the man who turned her down, and her desire to live a life suitable to her education and brains creates ripples in everyone’s life.

Devdas: Devdas lacks the strength to claim his childhood love Paro, who gets married. A heartbroken spends his life getting drunk, and is unable to accept the love of Chandramukhi, who loves him deeply.

Parineeta: Who is a married woman? The one who has taken the “saptapadi” (the seven steps around the fire) or who loves from her heart? This question forms the theme of this beautiful love story.

The women are all beautiful, intelligent and sensitive. They love deeply, and openly. There seems to be a touching directness in their actions. Paro goes to Devdas in the middle of the night, asking him to elope with her, Lolita garlands Shekhar in Parineeta on an impulse, not considering the consequences and Binodini embarks on an affair with one man and eventually proposes to the other, choosing to remains alone in the end. They take bold steps but the men find it hard to keep up with their courage. This is definitely not the world of “knights in shining armor” and any gallantry seems to be faded and lackluster. As for the women, here is no beauty versus brain stale dichotomy here. These women challenge their men, overshadowing them easily. Their strength as well as their vulnerability seem natural, and add to the depth of the characterizations. The men are weak and yet the women accept them as they are, not questioning their perfection or their ability to protect them. There is a touching humanity in these charaters.

These portrayals are at sharp contrast with the popular view of traditional Indian women being invisible in social realities. Is this relegated only to the literature that came out of colonial Bengal? Early 20th century Bengal was the vista where education as well as social reforms became the windows for women to look outside and find forms and faces that went beyond physical beauty? Did the land of the “mother goddess” in conjunction with western intellectual traditions create these literary characters? If yes, why did that trend fade away and not continue?

A very interesting common theme in all these stories is the weakness of the male protagonists. Is there a hint of intellectual impotency evident here, a result of being subjugated by foreign forces? Is there a desire for the satisfaction that comes out of being an “object of affection,” hidden in the men in these stories? They revel in the women loving them and the pain they go through due to that pain. There seems to be some reflection of a political reality there. The strength they lack in the social or the political realm is exercised in their power play with their women. Do Tagore and Sharat Chandra see that weak men subjugate their women? Satyajit Ray has dealt with these themes in his classic “Charulata” and “Ghare Baire,” both based on stories weaved by Tagore.

Suppose these stories were written today, would these women still love the way they did?
Would men get away with the transgressions they commit in the stories? Probably not. There have been definite changes in social realities.

Wheel of time

“Documentary film about the largest Buddhist ritual to promote peace and tolerance, held by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Bodh Gaya, India and Graz, Austria in 2002, including exclusive interviews with the Dalai Lama, access to secret rituals for the first time on film as well as footage of a pilgrimage to the Holy Mount Kailash in Tibet.”

From Wernerherzog.com

I had the amazing privilege to see this film yesterday. It was a piece of cinematic integrity. I have been to Bodhgaya, and some of the first photographs I took in my life were of the temple and the bodhi tree there. However, I have never considered it to be a place of cinematic material. I realized after watching this film, how uninformed we are of the depth and nuances of the religious traditions we take so much for granted. This film made me wonder, think and maybe created a longing to visit the places shown.

The film starts with showing tents and hundreds of thousands of Buddhist monks and followers who gather for the “kaalchakra” ceremony. The kaal chakra is the “ Wheel of Time” a symbol of the universe. It is created with colored sand, in three dimensions, through days of painstaking and precise effort on the part of the monk. Its creation is an act of artistic and spiritual unity.. Buddhists believe that its creation will bring peace and unity to the earth. Herzog, brings us frames of those who make the journey to Gaya over thousands of miles on foot, those who serve others, the Dalai lama. His ability to take us into the moment without any provocation or unnecessary emotional comments is exemplary. His respect for the event shows in his sensitive handling of shots, many of which stay with the viewer long after the screen turns dark. He is consistent in this even with his other films. The ceremony eventually gets cancelled after all preparation, and yet the serenity never leaves the film.

He then takes us to Mt Kailash, where believers circle the mountain and hoist prayer flags in a Saga Dawa ceremony. The landscape is beautiful and this is authentic filming at its best. Herzog, maintains a distance, observing and asking questions, that never cross over to the barrenness of the irreverent, neither does he show any propensity to get entangled emotionally. His artistic integrity is immense, even in depicting a spiritual ceremony.

In the final piece of the film, the kaalchakra ceremony takes place in Austria, and the contrast between the people and the culture is highlighted, without making a big show of it. There are bodyguards, Western clothes, an auditorium, and in all the atmosphere is very different from that in Gaya where the other ceremony was aborted. Is it possible to show contrast and compare without judging? I always thought this was an impossible feat, but Werner performs this amazing tightrope walk with amazing dexterity.

A must watch, if you ever get the opportunity to see it.

Prozac nation:some thoughts

This is a movie based on a true story and novel by Elizabeth Wurtzel. It’s the story about a young girl who wins a journalism scholarship to Harvard and her descent into the depths of depression. This is not a review, just some observations on some pertinent issues the movie highlights.

The film’s story, the characters, and acting are realistic enough, while not deviating from stereotypes of broken families, self-absorbed father, over indulgent mother and adolescent girl struggling with self-identity. Her therapist seems to be the only cool voice of sanity (?) who prescribes Prozac to give the protagonist “space to breathe.” Lizzie protests, saying that this cannot be a solution, if her sanity depends on a pill. Does that not make her doctor a dealer and the pharmacist a pick up spot?

Lizzie’s issues are to do with love, rejection, excess empathy, inability to deal with pain which are all human emotions, that everyone has felt in some degree at some point in time. Why does her life then spiral out of control, leading her to seek the highs of sex and X (ecstasy), while in college? There are obvious real difficulties to do with her life here, none of which become the focus of the story. The onus on the individual to handle her failings is complete, even to final moment of choosing between suicide and Prozac.
Her epiphany lies in realizing she is a broken human being, and a pill is her only path to freedom to live.

There are social questions, subtlety raised, even as the story relies on a personal account. The book has been criticized as self-pitying description of the horrors of depression. The reason I find this criticism interesting is a teacher of “directing actors” mentioned today in a class that audiences do not sympathize with self-pitying individuals, as they feel the pitying is over done. Apparently this has basis in some philosophy that those who are deep in despair and are aware of it need no empathy. Empathy should be limited to those who are not aware of their own weaknesses. The film highlights this point too.

If you can’t fix it yourself, get help who will legally give you a pill. Lizzie seems to echo this viewpoint repeatedly in the film. Its an interesting view on what modern society can offer those who find life’s burdens a little too heavy to bear.