SILENT LIGHT (2007)

I cannot draw on Carlos Reygadas’ oeuvre having just seen Silent Light, as apparently the element of shock and repulsion plays quite a role in his other films like Japon. Recent criticism, has classified the film under CCC- contemporary contemplative cinema. An ingenuous term, I reckon, considering how well it captures the essence of some contemporary cinema. Marked by certain properties like plotlessness, alienation, slowness and wordlessness, it is a strictly defined genre with even a detailed chronology, which has come to define very well, what was earlier known only as slow cinema. Of course, Harry Turtle identifies 34 films which concur with all the given properties, and silent light is not one of them. Most of us are probably familiar with ‘Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring’ which is one of the 34 and which easily identifies with the categorical definition. This article isn’t going to be about CCC in any way, but I would like to point out however, that, even if Silent Light makes use of conventional plot devices insofar that the film is basically about a triangle between the husband, his wife and his mistress; it is CCC in many ways. In its essence, if I might say so at the risk of sounding hollow, the film moves with a certain perspective from the director, it refuses to be psychological, it doesn’t move with any pace, it deliberates on the mundane incidents, and it chooses to interact with nature, in a very elementary sense; not of aesthetics but present nature itself.
 

Silent Light, portrays life of the minority group of Russian Mennonites all right, but the film can is hardly about that. I mustn’t call it focus, it is a certain expansiveness, for expansiveness alone has a range which rushes over smoothly, which here, is not cultural representation but that of different people in the course of the story. But it is this range which is nothing specific, which can be described in what it is not- it is not about the community, it is not about the family and, it is not about infidelity-that helps us look in certain directions.


There is a scene where the camera moves slowly toward a woman bathing inside, there is no door, but two walls which seem to suggest a barrier, and the viewer does not want to go further either; but the camera does. This is one of the many instances through which we are drawn to the [in] action in the story. I suppose there are two distinct extremes which garner immersion from the audience- that of a very action packed story which calculatedly desires attention or a story that moves on its own and has a self-involved story and is not concerned with the audience. Naturally, Silent light falls in the latter category. It is not really a story about the hero who falls in love with another woman; yet it is a story revolving round the three characters- the man, his wife and his mistress. Character relation is of some importance here: from the beginning of the film we gather than the protagonist, man- Johann is facing a crisis. As the movie develops, we learn of Marianne, the mistress and aspects of her personality-that she is independent and that she understands he has to leave her and also that she loves Johann. Interestingly the personality of the person in question, the wife, Esther, is developed only toward the end. The audience is inclined to believe that Esther is just a housewife, who has become indifferent to her husband; yet culminating in her death, the audience is rudely awakened to the stoical passion of that common woman.

And what about the miracle? In the course of the funeral, where Johann is utterly devastated, and everyone else is mourning her, Marianne enters the room where the body is lain, and kisses her and Esther awakens, I guess from her death. No explanation of any kind is provided. Also we do not see Johann seeing his resurrected wife, or what happens afterward; whether he chooses to live with his wife or not. The film cuts directly to the outside, and the remainder of the film follows faithfully the setting of the sun and the stars. So, I don’t think we are supposed to find out what the miracle means for it is part of the movie and is to be appreciated separately. It can be easily be seen as a coming together of the dual personas, you know, the mistress and the wife; but I find that reading fatally reductive.

Thus aesthetics is such an important part of the story, though if done in such a naturalistic way and with such intentions, I don’t think it’d be fair to deem it aesthetics. Capturing such shots however underlines the characters’ spiritual or otherwise connection with nature. Similarly, this is to be seen as a decision taken by the director, and therefore be seen as part of the film’s world view. Opening and ending with brilliant shots of the dawn, the open sky and the myriad sounds. This obviously deflects attention from the characters or the story to something else. Interspersing such shots with the story emphasizes on the shots, and not on the story. Filming some action completely, like showing the family eat breakfast, or shooting the entire journey in a car, all do the same thing.

THE PASSION OF LOUIS

The film, Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, directed by Neil Jordan is based on the book by Anne Rice. Made in 1994, the film stars Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, Christian Slater and a young Kirsten Dunst. This is a fine, engaging film with exquisite sets and evocative performances but what it certainly isn't is a horror film. Most themes in the movie are common to most vampire films, but Interview with the Vampire is autobiographical-in first person-inasmuch that the film is about a vampire telling his life history spanning many centuries to a young journalist, Daniel Molloy. Thus, we receive a panorama of choice events seen and felt by Louis.

Vampire films distinguish themselves by playing with contradictory themes and paradoxical characters. Thus, Louis, aged 24 having renounced life awaits death and Lestat, the lonely vampire, impressed by Louis’ passion converts him into a vampire. On conversion, Louis can perceive differently yet, he is horrified when he learns of what his fate entails. The passion which makes him a vampire, is also the only mortality left in his immortal being. For, he cannot kill humans because of the guilt it causes. Thus his ‘dark gift’ comes with the ability to feel.

He spirals downward into a bigger morass of paradoxes, when he finally gives in and drains Claudia, only a girl. Lestat however makes her into a vampire to be their companion. The audience is now being prepared to deal with a serious ethical problem of Claudia. Claudia, the vampire ages, but she is forever trapped in the body of a young girl. Louis’ passion is contrasted with Claudia’s ruthlessness; even though a child she kills easily and mercilessly. Despite having nearly killed her, Louis is passionate about her, looking at her as a daughter. Of course, Claudia is more ambivalent, addressing Louis as ‘love’ and ‘beloved’. She avenges her existence by killing Lestat by feeding him dead blood and by cutting his head.

In the quest to find a vampire community and therefore to find answers to his questions-which include finding out what a vampire truly is-he and his adopted child go to Paris, where they meet Armand who runs the Theatre des Vampires, where in the course of the plays they conduct they kill people on stage. The sets are beautiful and extravagant. A further distinction is made again, between Claudia and Louis’ passion. While Claudia thinks it extremely clever of ‘vampires who act as people who act as vampires’, Louis is disgusted. This defines his passion, as an essentially individual thing.

When, at the Theatre des Vampires, Armand’s men kill Claudia and Madeline by exposing them to sunlight; Louis then seeks revenge by killing the entire troupe sans Armand. Here, we see his passion kindled into fury and revenge only because Claudia was killed. There is a certain justification in it and the viewer completely agrees because of the importance given to the presentation of the very emotional bond between the vampire and his adopted child on screen. Thus, opposed to the vampire’s apathy Louis’ passion is reasserted.

His passion is part of his individualism, which is contrasted with the mob-like vampire community of Paris. Thus he is able to reject Armand’s offer though it would have meant he could learn the answers to his questions. Further, he refuses to help or join Lestat who we find out has not died yet though we sense his underlying something of a respect, since he after all is his maker.

The film is able to present a much nuanced view of the vampire community successfully though in autobiographical terms, it could have been easily a one-man story. The passion is finally reflected in the purpose of Louis’ interview. As Armand had pointed out to him before, Louis has the power to reflect; and this telling is a subjective perspective on his own life. This telling however, has the opposite effects. The journalist is enchanted by his life, or probably the gift of immortality and asks him to make him into a vampire. Disgusted, he leaves. Ultimately, this sensitivity is contrasted with Lestat’s who comes back a second time, and tells him in the same way he had told the youthful Louis centuries back; that he is to be given a choice. Thus, while Louis sees conversion as a bestowal of a curse, Lestat sees it indifferently as a gift he can freely give.

THE DISCREET CHARM OF LA MEGLIO GIOVENTU

This 6 hour Italian film directed by Marco Tullio Giordana follows the life of two brothers, Matteo and Nicolo, from 1966 when they begin as idealized youths and undergo transformations with changes in the personal, social and political environs. La Meglio Gioventu [ The Best of Youth] is however, a very simply story told with an emotional pace which draws you in for all the 6 hours. Their lives change when Giorgia, an inmate of the mental asylum comes in to their lives-both of them are disgusted by the abusive treatment of electro-shock therapy, and take her away from the institution, en route their trip to Norway. She is captured by the police, and the brothers part ways there, with Matteo cutting short his trip being repulsed and angered by his helplessness. Matteo enlists in the army and Nicolo continues to Norway.

The film has amazing characters; all idiosyncratic personalities in their own right. No brief interlude is marked by forgettable characters, that way; the story line is so taut and restrained. What I hated however, was the gross error of unimportance served on some pivotal characters. For instance, Luigi Lo Cascio who plays Nicolo is the nearly omnipresent character on screen, every story comes full circle to Nicolo’s which tilts the theme of the film in an utterly conventional direction. The story is filled with wonderfully different men and women, surprisingly-women who are essential to the story in their difference yet tracing Nicolo’s life from 1966 to 2000 faithfully means an idealized youth, a radical psychiatrist, brilliant father, patient husband and finally, romantic lover. Contrariwise, look at Matteo Carati. Played by Alessio Boni splendidly, the film opens with his brooding face scanning pages from a book. Atypical because of his opinions, he is highly sensitive, why, he even falls in love with Giorgia. A nonconformist who refuses to appropriate anything, he joins the army:

Sicilian Commissario: What were you looking for, joining the Police?
Matteo Carati: I wanted some rules.
Sicilian Commissario: And what do you do, with these rules?
Matteo Carati: I apply them.

He is unsure about everything, and as years pass by he comes to view himself as a failure which causes him to push his family away and refuse to be committed to a relationship. But I will not be unfair, and place all the credit on Alessio Boni’s acting-the role itself is more interesting, and requires much inner turmoil and anger and conflict. Thus, after seeing his mother on New Year’s Eve, he commits suicide. I was indignant through out the movie, that more attention had not been paid to this masterly role, which would have diminished more of its soap-operatic nature and lend it more perspective than that of a mere family drama.

Yet, what is best about this is how the story moves-in so linear a fashion that all depends on the interaction between characters to make it bright and sparkling. So characters cross paths and that is when there is the story. Ironical as it may seem, in the 6 hours, what the audience receives is a synoptic view of a large family and friends which keep together.

The political consciousness and its influence are subtly played in the film. Mostly encapsulated in the role of Guilia- through Nicolo’s marriage to her we see how she gets involved with a red brigade cell, and has then to be put in prison for her terrorist activities. A complex picture of her character develops, as not only stemming from political ideology but also from a personal crisis of utter distrust. Perhaps just as well, I can imagine, what a great mess political events can add to a family drama. As she gets out of the prison, she has severed her political past completely, and attempts even to reconnect with her daughter, with which she only partially succeeds.

Lastly, we have Giorgia, the mental patient whose life parallels the other characters’. In the end, she is rehabilitated and reintroduced into normal society. We catch only glimpses of her; she comes in, for a few important scenes and the last few ones trace her recovery and her remembrance of Matteo. As Nicolo says of other mental patients; silence is all they have left, and Jasmine Trinca uses silence as an instrument to play her. After all, she started it all in1966 with Matteo and Nicolo-changed their lives and now she’s got to keep silent and watch how the story goes.

Man and Woman in Skammen

When I chanced on the movie, Bergman’s war movie with two musicians, I was curious about how Bergman could transfer the charms of his mystic inner world to the cut-open world of the war. Especially, when his usual characters, in reality would adorn only the peripheral world in such a movie and, as the war is essentially about soldiers. Perhaps not. But the staple food of all horrifying images and incidents occur, but are supposed to reflect on the man and woman in the movie. However, the tangent directs you not toward the psychological profiles of Jan and Eva; rather explore the transformative potential of the man and woman under duress. So then, is war a scenic backdrop in the film? So does the auteur stay within his regular themes and explore only the individual? This constant personalism…individualism, do they suggest a deliberate purported unimportance to the societal and the social? A reductio ad absurdum, I would probably say tomorrow.

The film, unlike other Bergman films, rarely focuses on faces. It moves through a story where the protagonists are part of the war, not the other way round. Differentiation of personalities is portrayed as not effected because of the war: Jan is meek and nervous, while Eva is of a stronger constitution. However the metamorphosis of Jan in to the hardened survivor is problematic because of its premise. War, being the grand scene obviously points to herself as the cause of this volte-face. But what about the interlude between Eva and the mayor that he witnesses and which makes him almost hysterical? Or the consequent refusal to give the money to save the mayor? And of course, the relish almost, with which he shoots at the mayor when ordered to? It would be simplistic to pin this all to the war, and ignore the undercurrents of the deteriorating relationships and, also the suspected infidelity. Which brings us to the question- isn’t this film about the man and woman?

Eva is tired of Jan constantly, reminding me much of Moravia’s Contempt, but Eva’s feelings for Jan doesn’t border on contempt, hatred or irritation; nothing perpetual. She is acutely aware of Jan’s shortcomings and flaws but through out the movie, we sense an underlying bond which ties [restrains?] her to Jan. That is why she wants to have a child with him, and that is why she follows him to the sea in the end. There are many symbolic scenes where she is ready to proffer her self for love, but Jan is too self absorbed and egotistical to notice. There is a brilliant scene when Jan breaks away from an intimate moment by saying that his leg hurts.

Contrast the scenic [sic] images of the war with the occasional cutting to Eva’s face. Placing the individual in the matrix and watching her. Eva is the hero of the movie to me, insofar, that I see the film through her eyes, surprise and resignation curiously mixed to Jan’s metamorphosis. Thus I also recognize that, this movie is trying to explore Jan and Eva, but the war is an important part of the mis-en-scene. It underpins the plot with its essence or the matrix, albeit this is not its story.

Yet, as the film progresses we see Jan and Eva’s lives interweaving more and more with the war and being affected by it. This is when we are forced to confront the actual meaning. It is the duplicity of its ontology that the image appears to be that of the persona and not of the war. The immediate cause of rupture in the relationship is perhaps, the mayor, but what of the essentially ruptured relationships between them? What brought that about? Isn’t the curious resignation or accommodating a changed Jan because the already ruptured relationships had made them complete strangers of each other? You are surprised when someone you know changes, not otherwise.

Thus the viewer is subjected to the obvious effects of the war serving the backdrop, but it is what we cannot see that propels the plot of Jan and Eva forward. Calling it a psychological understanding would be crude; because what is presented is unknown to the character and the audience.

Bergman places such import on the ending in his movies. They hold the key, the resolution, the denouement, the epilogue or the conclusion. I cannot but help draw a parallel between the danse macabre in The seventh seal, and the travelers in the boat in the open sea. Both are after the end, a passage to the netherworld for the former, and the relation of the fates for the latter. After the end; can also signify the reflections on what happened, and for me, these reflections hold the purpose of plot to be read and re-read of course. The end, for Skammen, is underlined prematurely, through regular cutting to the open sky and the dwindling resources.

One of the most powerful scenes is when they come across all these bodies floating on the water, and they have to be poked at to make way for the living, so to speak. The film ends with Eva narrating a dream: ‘….Then I came to a high wall and it was overgrown with roses. And then came an airplane and set the roses on fire but it wasn’t too awful since it was so beautiful. I watched the reflections in the water and saw how the roses burned. And I had a little child in my arms. It was our daughter. She clung to me…I felt her lips touching my cheek. And the whole time I knew that I should remember something…something someone had said, but I had forgotten what it was.’ Thus, reflecting on the irreparable damages and the changes, having confronted the scars and the wounds, having forgotten what it was like before, nostalgia and happiness, the film ends.

Nattvardsgästerna

This is probably the deepest study of Christianity that I have come across in a film. Bresson is more general, and more at easy and convinced of his faith and his thoughts but Bergman deals with a problem and he does a great deal presenting the problem. Winter light, part of the trilogy of faith, with Through a glass darkly and Silence. This is Bergman’s favourite film, may be because of the amazing incisiveness with which he deals with his subject.

The film rotates around Tomas Errikson played by Gunnar Björnstrand, a pastor in a small town who is no longer sure of his faith, and hence doesn’t have all the answers, yet he conducts regular sermons mechanically failing to give advice which could have prevented his parishioner’s death [Max von Sydow]. Then there is the odd and atheistic Marta [Ingrid Thulin] and Gunnel Lindblom. I loved Gunnel Lindblom in the film. She is so subtle and natural and modest and inconspicuous, even with her baby. Ingrid Thulin is good, but Lindblom is simply the best. She handles with traditional ease and maternal anxiety simultaneously her husband’s crisis and his consequent death. These are separate elements in the story, yet inside church everyone serves a symbolic function; especially the crooked sexton and the cynical organ player serve only to heighten the crisis which is partially resolved in the end.

Sven Nykvist’s cinematography. Alternately making the cast look two dimensional by focusing on their figures through out the movie and not as part of a larger background, it undercuts their insignificance and emphatically state that this is not a movie about men or women. It is about god, and what the different men and women in the church view him as. Nykvist also makes the winter permeate every scene, ensconcing the viewer in a pre-emptive quest which can end only with more agony.

I do not know. Perhaps being irreligious has got something to do with the movie. Bergman himself was an atheist, and many atheistic friends have been moved by the film. I cannot tell if the portrait of a crumbling church and the dwindling faith of the past can provide succour to the faithless but I think it’s got more to do with the ending of the film than with the bleakness and wintry misery. The ending is not a regular denouement, for the pastor prepares to conduct the mass mechanically even after the scene of faith with the sexton, and after knowing that only Marta came for it. Yet I am not sure if the doubts and points raised by the misguided sexton-who began reading the bible to go to sleep-should be pinned down as the ideological crux of the film. I’d also hate to see it as a simple case of thesis, antithesis and synthesis: the pastor’s lack of faith, Jonas’ confirmation of it and in the end, a rejection of it through an answer about silence, how the son of god had to bear it as well. Here I feel that Jonas’ confirmation would have been the synthesis technically-with the answer of suicide to an excruciatingly empty life on earth. But that is not what the film says in the end; it advocates nothing but it clearly rejects paths set by Marta or the organ player or even the sexton.

I think perhaps this movie leaves such a powerful impression among atheists, is because the film is predominantly individuals though of course foreshadowed by the church as a whole. And I think it is herein that we find the answer to the film. Nothing in the movie can be seen as answer to the question of doubt of faith. When the sexton elaborates on Jesus’ suffering as spiritual and emotional and not physical, first being forsaken by his own friends and disciples and then by his father; we are here presented with a revolutionary idea. Here, emphasizing on the man of Jesus, Bergman resists the viewer’s impulse to register his suffering at par with him because he is a separate individual from whom we may learn not imitate. This discussion of god’s silence thereby identifies the problem- it is up to every person to individually find answers that may placate him.

Rembrandt fecit 1699

Rembrandt fecit 1699 is a dutch film made by Jos Stelling. It covers a lot of Rembrandt’s life; if narrative were to be divided with his relationships with three women: with his wife Saskia van Uylenberg, nurse Geertje Dircx and maid Hendrickje Stoffels. This is not a great movie, and unless you are interested in the visual arts you will find the movie painfully boring

Firstly, other than roughly following his life, the movie neither offers a thorough exploration of his art or of his personal life. I am inclined to think that if Rembrandt were to send Geertje Dircx to the bridewell asylum and have Hendrickje Stoffels be punished for the act of fornification and paint the subtle Nightwatch, then he probably wasn’t the bleak, caught-in-my-very-own-private-world artist. Such artists are often products and creations of the twenty first century.

To have painted his very famous domestic scenes, he probably had a way with people and to observe requires being at ease with people. In the film sadly, the bleakness of last years foreshadows even the first years. Sad and drooping, he rarely talks through out the movie. The personal ambition is underscored but his luxurious lifestyle and commanding very high prices for his paintings figure, implying that this movie though a biopic, is plot-driven-which is a very bad thing to happen when you are talking about a person. The film tries a little of that I think, in the beginning when we see Rembrandt making faces in the mirror, dressing up and all, to create self portraits. He also plays with his young son, Titus and Geertje’s attachment to the child is also shown tenderly. But these random scenes are too random to change the overall foreboding tone of the film. Considering, how much that renders the film a drag, it is a very unforgivable flaw indeed.

Secondly, the film portrays the life of the sequestered private individual Rembrandt; no mention is made of the other painters which would have been all right, if he weren’t working right through the Dutch Golden age with other big shots like Vermeer and Ruisdael. Or even Frans Hals, if his achievements in portraiture put him any closer to Rembrandt. The movie is also quite amiss when it comes to Rembrandt’s own works. Other than providing a nebulous outline of his family life, the director does not progressively look at his works, or diachronically, when he was painting very Christian themes such as Stoning of Stephen or the later, myth influenced themes of Rape of Europa or Rape of Ganymede. Instead, Rembrandt is shown to be fleetingly assessing a Bible later in the movie but the fact is because of his catholic upbringing and the catholic master, the influences were more deep seated than drawn later because of the economic difficulties in later years.

Thirdly, it is a bad movie in so many ways. Apparently it is one in the series to come, on very famous Dutch men. May be that explains the egoistic wrapping of the movie around the man, and his headlong diving in to the misery of his last years when with the brush of fiction, so much could have been developed-like beautiful Titus or what becomes of Cornelia. But, hey, as an introduction to Rembrandt or simply to watch a painter paint, which is what I wanted; a good watch.

La Notte

I had watched L'avventura a long time back, and I remember feeling very very bleak. In keeping with the rules of a trilogy [thou shalt not deviate from the bleakness/happiness etc], La Notte or The night is not entirely different, but unlike L’avventura which relates an event’s impact on people, La Notte focuses on people in events, however misleading the name might be!

There is a certain economy which defies psychological attribution. It is obvious that the story is about two individuals-may be leaning towards Lydia as the viewer feels that the camera sees through her eyes, especially the scenery and backgrounds. The continual industrial imagery with the claustrophobic skyscrapers and the constant search by moving across different places and pausing only to stare at random people only to look away when the eye meets the eye. It embodies her weltanschauung of sorts, and also her vulnerability, a strange aloofness with people with unwillingness to commit.

Psychologically, what does Antonioni attempt to present? It is not the society, it is not the person- may be, it’s two persons or if Tomasso’s death in the course of the movie could be seen as symbolic; a futile attempt to integrate oneself back in the society with all the distances I or you, may personally create. Tomasso looks like a scepter, especially on Lydia’s face, the viewer is spurred, in the morass of meaning making, to think that his dying might have been the impetus for the crisis that the movie explores. For, La Notte does capture life when passing through a crisis and its success lies in a truthful telling of it. 

Marcello Mastroianni plays the intellectual, and he is as suave as in other films of his, perhaps a role underplayed deliberately not unlike the subtle writer in 81/2. Every great actor has a mark that differentiates him from other great actors. For Anatoly Solonitsyn, is his casual charm, for Max Von Sydow it is the suffering etched into his face, for Gunnar Björnstrand  it is his stoicism and similarly, for Mastroianni, it is that he bares his soul and can genuinely look lost. Totally, purposefully and innocuously. But Mastriani is lost on me for this movie, for I am bewitched by the actress-Jeanne Moreau with her beguiling face and sad looks. I cannot decide about her. There is something distasteful about that face, it hides years of age but then it looks so openly and cleverly you are not allowed to judge her while she judges and passes on. She plays the wife with a swiftness which suggests a pre-emptive ending of the story, and in the end of the film when she is smothered by her husband with kisses she cries out that she doesn’t love him anymore, repeating her earlier sentiment only this time it smacks of a peculiar detachment-eager to get away from the scene-but of course he doesn’t stop, and the movie ends there thus drowning her defiance with the greater power of the two in a marriage, or may be, backfiring in a confrontation in to buying a deal you had you decided you don’t want.

 

I don't particularly like the story. My mind is screaming, what a rotten plot, but out of deference to the master, I am just going to say the story didn't go too well toward the end. In a review I read of the movie, the critic praises the imagery in the movie, and all the freudian undercurrents; what with Giovanni getting seduced by a brazen woman right after an intense scene with their dying friend, but it gets stilted with the regular plot line toward the end.

So in the middle of this failing marriage, comes the beautiful Valentina who Giovanni is attracted to and who Lydia doesn't seem to mind. Then there is the other guy who Lydia goes out with and gets wet in the rain, but again these typical foils annoy me so very much :| after all, Monica Vitti is a great actress in her own right, must she have appeased her lover at the time, Antonioni and messed up his beautiful movie? No. She is so superfluous to the movie, with her troubles and tribulations. A little piece, she hesitantly shows Giovanni, is truly the most B.S. I have heard any one utter in a great movie. But, yes, may be that was the point.

I like Antonioni when he is simple like when in the end, Lydia reads out a love letter and Giovanni doesn't remember that he himself had written it. That, that, is a beautiful moment. It is a nice movie with powerful performances from Giovanni and Lydia, standing still as they are, in the middle watching their marriage float away. It is in these movies, that the ending really does not matter, and as with the time in the movie, it only goes forward and more.

The Color of Pomegranates

The Color of Pomegranates is a 1968 film by the Soviet Armenian director, Sergei Parajanov. It follows the life of the armenian ashug [something like a 'mystic troubadour'] Sayat Nova-King of Song. It is easier to talk about this movie through images for, the film bursts with colour.

Tarkovsky taks about his predilection for poetry in cinema by differentiating poetically linked cinema from the traditional narrative of images linked together. But, in a film that is thoroughly and truly picturesque, it redefines conventional narrative by linking images through images. Tarkovsky claims logical sequentiality is banal, and poetry in cinema participates the viewer. But what does Parajanov do through his images? It functions a similar role to iconography, where images serve to point and direct toward multiple layers of meaning.

The images in the film stand still for a second, enough to impress on the reader the colors; they are sometimes aided by sound as well, like when men mechanically grind grapes with their feet or with the songs used when mourning the death or Sayat Nova's poems used in the film. However all these serve to heighten the effect of the image or the picture, if that sounds independent and not the other way around. 

The film traces the poet's growth, from his childhood to his sexual awakening even registering his wife's death to a rapid change in color of lace from red to black, and eventually his death. 

 But saying that the movie is about Sayat Nova alone would be swatting it with a simplification. Armenian culture seeps through, in every image. The movie doesn't allow you much to think, for it is such a graphic movement in toto, so you are left gaping at beauty in the end, is all.

 I like the poet though. He is so curious and so awestruck by his life and the life around him that it is really nice and warm to watch him. Every phase in his life envelops his face with a dominant emotion, that it sets the tune to the story inside the story. 

The viewer watches this movie as a voyeur, of the highest order. The complete access to the images and thus life, imply an unawareness of the watcher. Thus it is like watching through a glass very clearly except that the images trapped inside cannot see us. But I won't take this voyeur-pass for granted; because the images does allow for subjective identification. In a traditional movie, the viewer identifies through the process of immersion, which you might think impossible in an image-movie. But Sayat Nova manages to filter, and selectively grant you access to the poet, the poet alone-for the poet is the object and the rest are after all the background. 

When I say the movie is full of images, I might have categorized it too roughly in the imagist file, but he took inspiration from Tarkovsky, Dear Parajanov, he created a poetry of his own.

This is Spinal Tap!

I cannot begin to write about this movie! I have this really bad habit of skimming through the film as soon as I get it, and invariably judging if the film is any good. That way, This is Spinal Tap, looked like a regular bore-what with it being a rockumentary [documentary, did you say?] and chronicling lives of fictitious rock stars. To the first, i generally hate documentaries-god help al gore-to the second, I distinctly remember being appalled by The Doors-the 1991 biopic on the rock band with its very own original lame attempts at impressions of a stoned mind. Ah, but what pleasure watching this one was. I think I'll watch Almost famous now, a previously rejected movie-which when skimmed looked like a loser's personal diary of little achievements.

TIST is a film of quirks, and while royally satirizing the rock stars' very own lives, it is a nice surprise that Spinal Tap manages to retain its idiosyncrasies and originality, and carve an abominably likable niche of its own- which is why they have released almost like an album with the Smell my glove cover-the sleek black mirror thing, and not the original greasy nude lady on leash. Some lyrics from probably the most popular song, Big Bottom :

Big bottom
Big bottom
Talk about bum cakes,
My gal's got 'em.
Big bottom,
Drive me out of my mind.
How can I leave this behind?

This film is racy and good. David St Hubbins, Derek Smalls and Nigel Tufnel played by Micheal Mckeen, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest respectively. St Hubbins is the patron saint of footwear. Nigel has a room full of guitars, of which one he has never played, and one at which you cannot look at or point at after some time. 

My favourite performance is of Nigel's, the lead guitarist of the group and childhood friend of David's. Apart from all the wacko lives, the rockstars live, C Guest manages to underplay emotions and swim in the right currents when necessary-thus bringing the essential plot to a regular story by leaving the band once and returning in the end capturing the essential denouement in a story about a rock band-through a reunion. The girlfriend who is too big a part of the band now, the manager who knows them through and through, weird people who cannot understand their music are all there. The answer when asked by Marty Dibergi played by Rob Reiner if they are losing popularity, is that they have just got a more selective appeal now. 

Reminiscences are an important part of the movie- the singers continuously remember their past lives for Marty thereby producing the viewer with the story but at the same time, as a tribute and pointer to the actual lives of the rock stars, so subtly captured when the Tap pays a visit to Elvis Presley, after realizing that their popularity that once soared, is now at 'where are they now' rocks.

 Before I wrap this baby up, I would like to state emphatically that if not tailored to meet any genre, it is definitely a very very funny movie- advantage of making a satire you might say, but clearly, no for every moment from the hideous anorexic fan, to the changing accents all through the movie, the stonehenge, the deaths of all the drummers in the band-one even of spontaneous combustion-and Derek keeping a cucumber in his underwear are heights of comedy; separate events that can crack you up any time.

What kept me up till 3:40 to write about the movie however, is how fast paced the movie actually is, jumping from character to character, entwining simple lines in a delicate way as Nigel says, to produce a compilation that shows you all the different emotions in the life of a band-even veering slightly to the sad private individual who is so lost in all the band shit and never gets to speak, and who perhaps realises that, he is just a fad and that everything will come to pass.

It is a beautiful movie, with the right colours and the right texture of the 1990s like with most other Rob Reiner movies. However this one lacks any agenda, one to motivate or make you cry. This is primarily a tribute to rock music and the unbiased handling of their quirky lives through the eyes of the interviewing Marty who only raises the film's credibility as an attempt to see through, to the lives of the reigning and falling gods in music.