MB1001: Introduction to the Psychosomatomatosociocultelecommunificience of Cinema

(or: Movies are Important, period.)

 ‘Summer was pointless--all I did was watch movies.’

Umm, WHAT?

<The Movie Buff glares in thunderous disapproval>

Ticking movies off a well-prepared list is by no means a bad way to spend one’s time--call it ‘cultural education’, if you will. From campy to classy, from extravagant period dramas to realistic parallel cinema, from musicals to horror -- and musical horror, and horrible musicals, God forbid --each one provides ample food for thought;  modules of a course that refuses to fit into a neat, officious-sounding title. Allow me to expound -- here is a selection of the many, many (manymany) movies I gasped, dozed, jeered, sneered and stared (in utter rapture, mind you) my way through this break:

Za Lou Stories - So romance is not my thing. And I know many who feel the same. If you’re tired of the same old formula, I suggest unconventional romances like ‘Harold and Maude’, ‘Leon the Professional’, ‘Love Me if You Dare’ and ‘Moonrise Kingdom’, where the protagonists are far, far from your typical limpid-eyed lovers.  Also try ‘Romeo+Juliet’-- Baz Luhrman’s typically extravagant and mad adaptation of the Shakespearean classic.

Where People Generally Shoot Or Do Grievous Bodily Harm to One Another- Violence is not a guy thing--not when it defines excellently crafted movies like ‘City of God’ (so brutal you can’t bear to watch, yet so captivating you can’t bear not to),  ‘Reservoir Dogs’ (one word: Tarantino. Check out ‘Kill Bill’ and ‘Deathproof’ before accusing him of gender discrimination), ‘The Big Lebowski’ (two words: Coen brothers), Memento (makes ’Inception’ seem like a Disney movie) and Se7en (you’ll never forget the Seven Cardinal Sins. Ever).

Light Watches - These are movies that people may either see as mindless, or fit for a fun, one-time watch with friends. While movies like ‘Paris, I Love You’ (French precursor to New York, I Love You), We Bought A Zoo’,  ‘About A Boy’ and ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ are actually well-made and enjoyable, I couldn’t help feeling that ‘You Again’, ‘Something’s Gotta Give’ and ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (see Coming-of-Age) were best left unwatched. 

Coming-of-Age - This is one genre with so many immensely popular and likeable movies that it deserves a list of its own. My personal favourites are ‘Almost Famous’ and ‘Napoleon Dynamite’. You could start with the classic ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Out’ and check out ‘Rushmore’, ‘Terri’ (see Parallel Cinema), ‘Thumbsucker’ (Parallel Cinema yet again) and ‘Superbad’ (beware: Apatowian humour is not for the prudish). Careful ,though: it’s easy to make mistakes like ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape’ (as popular as this one is, I wasn’t particularly enamoured of a scrawny and dishevelled Depp looking perpetually constipated--but watch out for a show-stealing young DiCaprio as the autistic younger brother). If you haven’t started wondering whether girls ever do come of age, do so now--this genre seems to have a definite bias. ‘Fish Tank’ (the Parallel people do love the whole ‘growing up’ deal, methinks) is a nice change, but once again, a caveat: this is an explicit movie about the seedy, welfare-supported side of life in UK.

Dramas- As a genre, this is possibly my favourite. Since it’s so vaguely defined, movies could range from Tyrannosaur (bleak, intense exploration of the cult of domestic violence) to Sense and Sensibility (period drama adaptation of Austen novel). Some others that I liked are I’ve Loved You So Long’ (French), The Kids Are All Right (Oscar-winning), Trainspotting (Danny Boyle at his best), Hope Springs (the makers of ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ manage to stay away from heavy-handedness in their treatment of a very mature topic), Precious (hard-hitting, this one), the universally loved Shawshank Redemption and my favourite, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints.  Try to stay away from typical Oscar fodder, though--‘A Beautiful Mind’ is good, but also overrated and shamelessly traitorous to its source material. One exception I’m willing to make is ‘Forrest Gump’.

Parallel Cinema- This is a touchy topic. Most mainstream moviegoers tend to stay away from this sort of filmmaking, but some of the best movies, in my opinion, fall in this category. I’m not talking about movies where some bloke balancing a pot on his head while humming is sold to people labelled ‘metaphysical symbolism’ or some such thing--those are an acquired taste at best, and at worst, shams. There are art films that surprise us by being accessible, and remind us gently of our narrow definitions of entertainment, art and life in general. As much as we all love Spielberg, a great movie doesn’t necessarily need sweeping panoramas and soaring music and a budget that could feed a small nation. Now that I’m done with my rant, you may wish to watch movies like ‘Paper Man’, ‘The Classroom’ (French ‘Entre les Murs’), ‘Fish Tank’ (see Coming-of-Age), ‘Terri’ (‘obese kid learning to accept life’ sounds clichéd, but this one is worth a watch) and ‘The Kid with the Bike’. Finally: ‘Sita Sings the Blues’-- this one will leave you tickled that such an ‘unorthodox’ film could be so much fun.

Old-School-This isn’t a genre, really: there are all sorts of great movies that we miss out on simply because they’re ‘old’. I, for one, took some time to get used to the black and white picture. Start with Chaplin classics like ‘Modern Times’ and ‘The Kid’, wait until you fall in love, and then go on to explore other genres, like screwball comedy (‘Some Like it Hot’, ‘His Girl Friday’), romance (‘Casablanca’), dramas (‘Citizen Kane’, ‘On the Waterfront’) and if you dare, black comedy (‘The Ladykillers’). Two movies that blew my mind are ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’.

Surreal, Larger-than-Life Stories- These movies fit in everywhere, yet nowhere. They have an element of the surreal, and watching them is a truly sublime experience. ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ is a beautiful movie about the overwhelming resilience and personal triumph of a pint-sized girl who’ll stay etched in your thoughts. ‘Apocalypse Now’ is a very well-known Coppola movie that exposes war in all its primeval destructiveness. ‘Into the Wild’ probably belongs to this category, but I tend to think of it as slightly overrated. ‘Cloud Atlas’ might as well be sci-fi, but its epical, time-travelling storyline qualifies it for this label.

Movies After Which You’re Scared to Go to the Toilet Alone- This, mind you, is a generic label for movies ranging from gory ‘Saw’ to creepy, retro ‘House of the Devil’. There are, of course, the classics, like ‘The Exorcist’, ‘The Blair Witch Project’’ and ‘Poltergeist’, but movies like ‘The Vanishing’ (Dutch-French), ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’, ‘Let the Right One In’ (Swedish), ‘The Orphanage’ (Spanish), Kairo (Japanese) and ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ will change the way you look at fear and the supernatural.

***

Vattu

21 February 2004

Ras Al Khaimah

U.A.E

Dearest Amma,

I promised I’d write to you as soon as I arrived, I know, but I had been ill for a while. Before you get worried: I’m perfectly  fine now; it was just a fever. I suppose it is my body’s way of protesting against the sudden onslaught of heat and dust. It has been spoilt, I tell you -- by the moist earth and the humid air and the cool well-water showers that I was used to until I came here. How are you doing? Are the rains making your knee act up? Now that I’m not there, you must ask that woman Janu to tend to it every night --  what do we pay her for, if not to take care of you? How is Achu? Tell that one I’ll get her a nice Gulf scent if she manages to top her class this time.

This is a strange place I’ve ended up in! All those stories that Raghavettan from next door used to tell us when he came home from the Gulf every two years -- they were only half exaggerated. Quiet roads with shiny cars (no rumbling Ambassadors here! I miss their noise) and loud men in long white robes… and the women! On the rare occasion that you do see them outside, only their eyes stare at you from the expanse of black cloth, like the some of the Mappila girls in Kannur. These are the locals,  mind you -- there are so many others from places all over the world, all looking for ways to send more money back home, like me. My construction supervisor is from Sudan -- a giant of a man with ebony skin and brown woolly hair -- Achu would be scared to death of him! And in my room, there are four others: Mansur from Bangladesh, Rashid from Pakistan, and Shaji and Thomas, who are Malayalis like me. Rashid showed me a picture of his new wife (waiting for his letters, just like you, in Pakistan) the other  day -- such a little mouse, Amma! She reminded me of Achu. Then there are all those Filipino men and women who work as salespeople everywhere, and the odd fair Westerner (we saw many when we went to a mall trip once), red from the sun. And people from all over India. The world is a big place, Amma -- no better place than this to show for it.

For now, we’re in Ras-al-Khaimah (if you can’t remember the name, just tell those who ask that it’s Dubai). The company is building a ceramic factory here. Rocky, bare mountains wherever one looks, and the sparse grassiness of a desert plain. They say this is the greenest it will ever get -- most of the other places are cities built in the desert, near the sea. I  am already missing the greenness of Thrissur. And the camels -- you wouldn’t think that they could gallop like horses when you see their long, knobbly limbs and lumpy bodies. Some of the Arabs here drink the milk, it seems -- it is supposed to be very healthy. All I’ve seen so far, however, are cans and cans of thick cow’s milk in endless white rows in the supermarkets (oh, them -- you won’t believe that there are so many things to be bought until you visit one! Even the smallest ones are like palaces of shiny floors and aisles). Speaking of which, do you know what we eat here? It’s a dry, flat bread called ‘khubbuz’ (I can imagine Achu laughing at how strange it sounds) -- it tastes of nothing in particular, and has to be forced down the gullet with water. I dream of your sambar  and puttu-kadala  all the time.

There is so much more to tell, but what would I write to you about every month if I finish it all off now? Send me a picture  of our home with the reply, no? When it gets too hot and noisy at work, I sometime close my eyes and imagine the early mornings --  the milky tea, the rustle of the newspaper, the chirping of the birds, the odd moo from Ammu in the manger, Achu’s voice from the window of her room; reading aloud from a textbook, and the quiet, rhythmic ‘Hsssh, hsssh’ as you sift through the grain drying in the sun…

No, no -- don’t exclaim ‘Ee chekkanentha?’ like when you read my poems. What’s with this boy, you ask -- nothing, really. Humour me, amma; it is only all the pent-up poetry (or vattu --  madness -- as you like to call it) seeping through. I hardly have time to write these days! I will stop here, hoping for a quick reply.

Yours alone,

Balan

…

I will stop here, hoping that what is unsaid will remain so. Hoping you will never know that I am nearly unrecognizable now;  that my hair is falling and my health is failing; that the food is never enough and the heat unrelenting; that my papers were seized by the Arab sponsor the day I arrived; that I will never know when I can see you again. Hoping that no matter what happens, you will always have a money order to collect every month. Hoping.