Film Review: Hiroshima, Mon Amour

‘Hiroshima, Mon Amour’ is essentially a film of parallels: the desire to forget against the urge to remember, the pain of war against the ache of love, the personal war against the war waging outside, the dissimilarity and similarity of the past and the present, the joint pleasure and pain of love, the effects of the same war in two different parts of the world. This film formed an integral part of the French New Wave, moving away from the classical style of filmmaking.

Elle (Emmanuelle Riva), a French actress in Hiroshima for a film on peace, and Lui (Eiji Okada), a Japanese architect begin an explosive love affair that gets progressively contemplative as they examine the ripples created by the Hiroshima bombing and the resulting death and loss. Despite both of them being married, they embark on this affair where they start falling in love with each other.

Elle gradually reveals her painful past, when her first love was claimed by the World War, in France. As she feels the joy and pleasure of a new relationship, she continues to be haunted by her grisly experience and social ostracism in Nevers, France and is torn between the act of remembering and the inevitability of oblivion.

French director Alain Resnais and screenwriter Marguerite Duras have engineered a deliberative tale told through a tapestry of images, traipsing between the past and the present to convey the sense of loss and the shifting time passages in a beautiful and innovative way. A series of documentary and news reel footage establishes the roles of memory and oblivion. The film moves at a slow pace and could have been a little shorter, yet with the sheer artistic rendering and the sleek story-telling, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Cinematography by Sacha Vierney is immaculate in black and white with smooth camera movements, leading us back and forth into time. Editing is splendid as it harnesses the avant-garde style. The musical score by Georges Delerue and Giovanni Fusco is evocative.

The performances of both Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada are admirable, laced with subtlety, depth and just the right amount of emotion.




It’s interesting to note that their names are simply ‘Elle’ and ‘Lui’ which is French for ‘She’ and ‘Him’, since it exhibits something that is extremely personal and yet something that can happen to anyone at anytime.

“Why deny the obvious necessity of remembering?”, asks Elle. A statement like that is succinct in making its point, yet never provides any answers. The importance attached to reminiscences is a powerful but not overpowering presence in the film. We want to hold onto memories, no matter how tragic and painful, but alas, as life would have it, forgetting is inevitable. Tragedy is something that we all strive to forget yet it is imperative to remember too.

This film, despite being made in 1959, is very much relevant today, reminding us about the ghastly whirlpool that is war. We’re hard pressed to find a film like this nowadays, an artistic platter that can be both delectable and contemplative.

Sequelism

Originality seems to have been declared an endangered species. Alas, about 70 percent of the movies released this year have a positive integer as its suffix. Summer seems to be the ideal time to unleash these harmless hi jinks to a key demographic of hungry, ennui ridden kids and adults alike. But what I fear most about the unhealthy practice of Sequelism is that it’s rendering true cinema obsolete. With movies that are decked up with pretty people and scant storylines, who’s gonna complain? That’s what audiences what, isn’t it?
For instance, the experience of sitting through The Hangover 2 was akin to having a bad bhel puri at Juhu Beach. It’s merely a hangover of the very first Hangover, again a film too banal to even worth talking about. Films like these manoeuvre their way to the audience under the guise of looking like a funky play on concepts like smartness and fun. However, it’s just another hackneyed yarn coughed up to sell, sell and sell. Frankly I’m weary of looking at the newspaper and seeing a dissonant symphony of films running in theatres.
It’s astonishing just how prosaic a film can get, only to observe that it makes an equally dire film look rather appetizing. This year, The Hangover 2 made Transformers look like Citizen Kane.
In another case, James Bond seems to be diagnosed with a Benjamin Button complex: with each successive movie, Bond becomes younger (and blonder). With franchises like X-Men, Spider-Man, Superman and Batman, the names alone manage to entice congregations to theatre halls.
Once upon a time Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings and Narnia were strictly literal but now have superb on-screen potential. Don’t even get me started on that insipid Twilight series. Films like these roam the district of ‘been-there-done-that’, bringing nothing new to the table, yet being marketed to give the impression otherwise.
Whatever happened to quality cinema built with a robust framework, complex characters, palatable storylines, breath-taking cinematography and inventive surge of storytelling? And what’s with the obsession for 3-D? Just because ‘Avatar’ did extremely well doesn’t make it appropriate or even sane to cash in on the epidemic. A remake of The Great Gatsby in 3-D is scheduled for release next year. I mean, The Great Gatsby and 3-D in the same sentence doesn’t sound particularly savoury. However people might be curious enough to actually check what all the noise is about. See, that’s what I’m talking about. Curiosity itself proves a noxious weapon.
‘Inception’, however, is a frighteningly brilliant display of creativity, which shows that stories like this haven’t died out so far. But how many more of these ordeals will we have to sift through to get a film that shows more technique than trite? I guess Sequelism derives its MO from everyday life. Not unlike the experience of going to the same restaurant every week and ordering the same dish every single time or asking for a second round of blueberry cheesecake. I guess art imitates life.
I don’t suppose Hollywood studios pay much attention to pleas like mine. What matters most to them is the ‘dough’, not the depth.

It's Published!!

My review of Arna's Children in Prithvi Theatre Notes for August 2011:

http://www.prithvitheatre.org/uploads/pdfs/PTNotes_Aug_2011_for_1311686628.pdf

Potter Has Left The Building

The end is not near. It’s here. The last of the Harry Potter films, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2’, is just out. In the 21st Century, Harry Potter is an ubiquitous phenomenon. There’s no running away from it, it’s going to catch up with you sooner or later. Not unlike death. Or taxes.
I’m a self-confessed ‘Harry Krishna’. Or at least I used to be in my youth. The last remaining dregs of the hysteria are still within me, but they’ve been distilled by age, experience and existentialism. It has played a massive part of my childhood. Me, along with the other million apoplectics out there in the world, have grown up watching Harry grow up. The series played an integral part of my childhood, spurring me on to read so many other books and giving me a very wide vocabulary of words to use in everyday life.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for these books and their author J .K. Rowling. She has so brilliantly managed to conjure a believable and alluring world, right out of thin air. Her prose is a whirlicote of eloquence, moving at a steady pace and beckoning us into a realm tres magicale. She has taken elements and symbols from ancient mythologies, myths, legends, put her own contemporary spin on it and engineered something that is the epitome of originality. The characters seem more real to me than real-life people themselves. I preferred getting lost in their trials rather than my own. The saddest bit was when Harry lost Sirius Black and Dumbledore, people who were both very close to him. An enjoyable bit was when Fred and George Weasley, the adorably gleeful pranksters, abandoned Hogwarts with a bang by conducting a mutiny against Professor Umbridge by a shower of fireworks. The books filter most of the characters into two concrete groups: good or evil with very little grey area in between. Apart from the world’s favourite trio, my favourite character is Luna Lovegood the quirky-yet-lovable, peculiar-yet-trustworthy friend of Harry’s. By the way, she gave a killer commentary on a Quidditch match at one point.
J. K. Rowling has managed yet another feat. The series and the way she’s choreographed it cannot really be compared to any other piece of work. Instead numerous works have been compared to Harry Potter itself. A massive pop culture phenomenon, not unbeknownst to majority of the world. Believe it or not, Quidditch has actually become a sport. Yes, with ‘flying’ broomsticks et al. The series has given ‘playing dress-up’ a whole new meaning. Kids and adults, people of all ages alike, flock to theatres and bookstores at the onset of a brand new release dressed as a Dumbledore or a Hermione or a Death Eater or a Dementor. Nothing says ‘Expelliarmus!’ like the dulcet tunes of Potter-inspired mayhem. Bands like Harry and The Potters, Draco and The Malfoys, The Whomping Willow… They’ve shaped up the wizard rock movement. They’re pretty good, actually.
Oh, and the films. Beginning from 2001, the films made an impact on the people who watched it. They were honoured with an award for Outstanding Contribution to Cinema at the 2011 BAFTA Awards. They help us to visualize the landscape of say, Hogwarts or the Ministry of Magic, given faces to much loved or despised characters and have thrilled and charmed audiences. It’s obvious the films have their share of deflections and discrepancies. But then again, the books have another kind of depth and intricacy altogether. I mean, the books are always better. Out of all the films I’ve seen (not counting the last two), I’d have to go with The Prisoner of Azkaban as my favourite. There’s a certain artistic flow to the film which the others are lacking in. Great cinematography of Michael Seresin and a strong story.
There’s a tie between the weakest of the films: Chamber of Secrets and the Order of the Phoenix. Reasons: Shoddy editing (the latter more than the former), poor storytelling with unsatisfactory acting where the actors resembled wind-up toys, vacantly and stiffly spouting dialogue.
The theme park at Universal Studios has, well, everything for the quintessential PottHead. Rides, Sweets from Bertie Botts, the Three Boomsticks signature drink Butterbeer and wands for 65 dollars apiece (highway robbery, if you ask me)…
So there’s goes my apotheosis for the Harry Potter series. In all honesty, there really may not be another Harry Potter. It may occur once in a while every now and then, much akin to a Halley’s Comet sighting. But that’s what makes it so special. But once I go to the theatre and see it, I’ll forever be in mourning.

Film review : Arna's Children

A car ambles its way through a street flanked by protesters at an Israeli Highway checkpoint. We catch sight of an old woman, one of the louder protesters, yelling “You’re the face of the occupation!” Meet Arna Mer Khamis, a woman elderly in appearance but young and feisty in demeanour, in spite of suffering from cancer. She, a Zionist, married a Palestinian Arab and settled on the West Bank. She spent majority of her life trying to better the education system, after the schools were closed down by the Israeli occupation.
She was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, the Swedish parliament’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. She used the prize money to open the Freedom Theatre where she gave sanctuary to a handful of pre-adolescent kids. Here, in Jenin, death, destruction and paranoia are considered mundane.
The theatre group acted as a canvas upon which the children could voice and vent their angst, frustration and fear into better outlets. Arna’s son Juliano Mer Khamis filmed footage of the theatre group and served as co- director for this documentary along with Danielle Danielle of the Netherlands. Through Juliano’s on screen and off screen presence, we get well-acquainted with brothers Youssef and Nidal and their friend Ashraf, Ala, Zakaria and Daoud as they put on plays, put forth their opinions and appreciate Arna’s hard work . However, there isn’t a much coveted happy ending to this tale.
After Juliano returned to Jenin, years after his mother’s death, he slowly began tracking down each of Arna’s Children. The theatre had already been destroyed by then. It turns out that most of the kids, now grown-up, went on to lead a life of militancy and violence, taking cue from their surroundings.
“Acting is like throwing a Molotov cocktail,” says Youssef. Youssef went on to join the Islamic Jihad and was killed along with Nidal. We first see Ala staring bleakly into the sunlight as he sits on the rubble of his house which was demolished by Israeli forces. Ala grows up to become the leader of the Aqsa Brigades in Jenin. On 26th November 2002, he was killed. Just two weeks after the birth of his son.
With a subject as delicate and intricate as the calamitous situation on the West Bank, the documentary is handled intelligently. With great editing, the film roams to and fro from the past and present, giving the contrast between childhood and adulthood. Juliano silently tries to fathom what led these talented kids to join in on the brutality. It’s a sheer vestige of a debauched system where war is a contagious disease. In a war-torn region, catharsis was gained through performance art. Later on, the same war was waged against war, only this time, through death. But, can art really sustain itself against violence and politics? Can art really be the form of salvation that can combat the inertia and hopelessness of war?
On 4th April 2011, Juliano was shot dead outside the theatre. An unlawful murder of a true artist and an attempt to denigrate art and any form rebellion.
‘Arna’s Children’ serves as a canticle sung fearlessly, denouncing war and its loathsome implications and upholding art as a form of sublimation and tranquillity.

The Birthday Cake

I'm getting old.
And, yes, I baked it.

Mirrored Perspective