Weekend Mash Up

For one reason or the other I haven't been reading much or watching any movies.  Then over the long weekend I caught up with a few movies and books.

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First up, Kaagaz ke Phool. I must have seen the songs of this movie any number of times but hadn't seen the movie itself.  Given that it is generally touted as a classic, I bought the DVD on a visit to India and finally got around to seeing it.   It turned out to be movie that had a few things to say but said it all so badly that you had to wonder if this really is the best of Hindi cinema.  Its tale of genius/creativity crushed by the world at large was well meant but given that every tired trope and stereotype from the adoring ingenue to an insufferable wife (I must note that many Guru Dutt movies are laced with a certain kind of misogyny) are present in the movie, it makes for tortuous viewing.  The film is at its best when immersed in the workaday life of films and it goes against the grain of popular cinema in being relentlessly pessimistic about the chances of sustaining both creativity and love in this world.  The people who Dutt casts are also regulars  (including of course Murthy, Dutt's photographer) so there's something of the sweetness of the man himself that comes through. But it's hardly up there with an early Ray or Ghatak or even Tamil movies like Parashakti and Andha Naal. If anything it illustrates the perils of straddling the conventions of both art and commercial cinema.  And like many an Indian film it harbours the contradiction of an often laboured, naive and embarrassing narrative punctuated by sublime songs.  In the songs, the films seem to find exactly what is to be said - Waqt ne Kiya for e.g is pure art even on repeated viewing - pity about the rest of the film.  And sadly, Johnny Walker, so delightful in all his songs, is otherwise completely insufferable. 

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Talking of songs, the somewhat cheesy remix of Kitni Akeli has been on high rotation :-)

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I was unable to read more than a few pages of How we are Hungry. The general reviews of McSweeneys and The Believer seemed to suggest tweeness.  So I was predisposed to give Away We Go, which is scripted by Dave Eggers and his wife, a skip.  I did however watch it and was unexpectedly charmed.  Some of the criticism regarding its smugness is true.  Still, this tale of a couple expecting a child who travel everywhere only to return to a sense of home is sweet.  It's central theme really is that each couple works out in their own way what they want their family to be.  This is admittedly compromised by the farcical nature of some of the families the couple meets on their journey (the redneck mom, the nutty leftist etc. etc.) and perhaps lead to the charge of smugness.  But on the whole this is such a gentle, sweetly tart movie that I quite liked it.  And on a reading, The Believer was not bad either.

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Also got around to reading a long held copy of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia.  It is many years since I read a play and this one was brilliant.  It is witty, beautifully mixes science (thermodynamic, chaos, fractals) and art and moves easily through the centuries.  Stoppard wears his erudition lightly and I think every bit of praise that Arcadia has garnered is more than well deserved. 

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The ABC had a decent, detailed documentary on Walt Whitman which stirred memories of a long ago reading of Leaves of Grass. Which I must read again.  Here's Whitman on animals:

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.

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The doco of course made reference to Whitman's homosexuality. Which reminded me of a recent visit to the airport and the tender kisses and farewells exchanged between an Indian boy and his Chinese boyfriend. Sydney is by and large tolerant and this has an effect - I have an Indian friend here who quickly progressed from being homophobic to acceptance. The ordinary, matter of fact nature of the exchange is a measure of how much things have changed and how much they will continue to change.