The Last Aztec

In my mundane life of the past few weeks, the odd bit of frisson came from watching The Last Aztec. It was a meandering, eccentric doco and rivetting in parts. DBC Pierre's idiosyncratic, garrulous and not to speak of drunk presentation and some kind of mad love for Mexico meant you watched the whole damn thing regardless of whether it was fact or grandiose, passionate assumptions. The title seemed sly - appearances notwithstanding, he may well be the Last Aztec.

The Norwegians are Coming.....?

I know next to nothing about Norway, its literature or its films. But I am suddenly intrigued by the country. For one, I absolutely loved Get Ready to be Boyzvoiced, a boy band mockumentary. As a genre, a mockumentary is sort of adolesecent but I have to admit I can watch endless repeats of Boyzvoiced (happily a lot of it is on youtube!). And then there is Reprise, which I just finished watching and can't wait to watch again. There is a darkly delicious thread running beneath both these diverse offerings. No Oslo visit in the offing but I can always google all that Norway has to offer :-)

அம்மா

Not a day goes past without my remembering my mother. I miss her presence in my life in many ways. And though this is an emotion we associate with our children - "I wish to watch my child grow" - it is one I feel for my mother. I wish I could have watched her grow old.

This was written for her in Sydney circa 2003.




Here in this land
Far from where your ashes lie
your very spirit lies
An old man speaks to me of the dead.

Of lying down besides a mother's
spirit in the night
and then returning to the world
becalmed and wiser.

Through the expanse of time
and distance, I hear often
your spirit, a slow murmur
a soft touch in the night.

In my hours of sorrow
In my hours of joy
You return me to the world
becalmed and wiser.

Theodore Roethke's Dolor

Roethke on institutions:

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

Tu Chiami Una Vita

Having had to spend time at home in the weekends, I have been having a bit of a Jamesian moment. More accurately, a Henry James on Film moment. Perversely, given that hardly any film adaptation is an improvement on the book, I make it a point of collecting DVDs of films based on books. Watching James back to back, as I did, can be faintly disorienting if you are confined to the house - you almost walk out expecting carriages and bonnets on the streets.

I couldn't quite decide what to make of Jane Campion's adaptation of "The Portrait of a Lady". It is not Henry James but that is hardly a disqualification. The point is to take liberties with the text. But Campion's visual and ideological signature is so strong, if muddled, that eventually what we see is a Campion film that seems to have a tenuous connection with James at best. It strays so far from anything Jamesian that really only the kernel of the story is left. Even watched purely as a Campion film, it is somewhat wanting, you never quite engage with it in the way you did some of her previous films. Like all Campion films, it has a strong undercurrent of the violence implicit in a romantic relationship (by this I mean that is possible but not necessarily inevitable or desired) - she does seem to be drawn to the theme. Apart from some strong performances from the actors who play Madame Merle and Isabel Archer's cousin, all it really has going for it is Campion's absolute command over the images she chooses to put on screen.

Wings of the Dove is universally held to be one of the better adaptations of "unfilmable" James and it doesn't disappoint. It admirably manages the tightrope of paying homage to the source material and yet making the film its own beast. Its helped along by its cinematography (less ostentatious than Campion's), a pitch perfect performance from Helena Bonham Carter and the general structure and intelligence of the film. Lots of money, sex, deceit (few novels are little else but these seem to be constants in James) and also one of James' innocents in Millie Theale and the faint possibility of redemption through someone like her. Which brings me to the last of the movies and another of James' innocents - Catherine Sloper in Washington Square. This movie is fairly faithful to the book apart from a few changes, especially the ending. But its also a bit uneven and at times a bit broad in its depiction of characters (though this is after all an early James novel and not as elliptical as the later ones). Still, at the end of the film I felt I had made more of an emotional investment in this film than the rest, you feel for Catherine Sloper. Inspite of a few false notes, Jennifer Jason Leigh is effective in doing this. And I don't care how inauthentic Tu Chiami Una Vita is for the period - its still charming on film :-).

PS: Writing this I realised that all films seemed to have been made at the same time (96-97).

मखदूम मोहिउद्दीन

The 80s seem such a distant country and yet this is the decade in which I was a teenager and consequently it still feels so alive. How much in the past the decade is however brought home to me when I see a movie like Chashme Buddoor or listen to some of the better songs of the decade (leaving apart the fugly mainstream Amitabh-Jeetendra flicks). One of my favourites is Makhdoom Mohiuddin's Phir Chidhi Raat (he also wrote Gaman's Aap ki yaad aati rahi). Gloriously it is on youtube.



Watching the movies, I also miss the "ethnic chic" that characterised the better part of the 80s (see for example Supriya Pathak's clothes, the gajra, the parandhi in the clip). It was an expected backlash against the bouffants, pale lipsticks, printed saris and general ugliness of the 70s. This was also the decade of the Festival of India - the first time many of us would have been seen Teejan Bai's Pandvani at least on TV - and the tail end of this phase must surely be the sweetness of Surabhi that documented major and minor cultural aspects of India. Surabhi of course had the cute Renuka Shahane who managed to successfully co-ordinate short hair and very ethnic gear.

Silent Light

An expanded version of my previous review.

Critics would have it that Mexican film maker Carlos Reygadas' work is influenced by Dreyer and Dumont by way of Malick or von Trier. However, Silent Light (Stellet licht), which screened at this year's Sydney Film Festival, is indication that Reygadas' is a mature film maker who has come into his own. The film is a tale of adultery set in a Mexican Mennonite community and spoken in an archaic language, which is really its least remarkable aspect. For between its wondrous opening and ending shots of the beginning of a day and its close, which seem to unfold in real time, Reygadas' film is a slowly unfolding marvel of philosophy and grace.

The effect of adultery on a marriage can be explored in many ways from bedroom farce to a full fledged assault on patriarchy to a more relaxed poly amorous approach where adultery is sexy and the actors get to shed their clothes. Silent Light, which makes use of non-actors from an actual Mennonite community, eschews all this. Reygadas keeps the film unhurried and the dialogue (or what there is of it) formal and this quality combined with the Mennonite setting gives the film a quality of being archtyepal. There isn't much by way of plot, we begin the day with Johan and first by his tears and then by way of a number of interactions learn that he is in a married man in an adulterous relationship. That the relationship has resulted in all the elements of a triangle, guilt, pleasure and grief and that it has sent ripples through Johan's family and the small community is clear, however Reygadas never discards his slow, calm approach. How to resolve the situation? Reygadas chooses an astonishing route with - as more than one critic has noted - parallels to Dreyer's Ordet. That route, and the film as a whole, is certainly concerned with religious belief, spirituality and transcendence. However, in the Q&A at the Sydney Film Festival, Reygadas whilst acknowledging that he does regard Dreyer highly as a film maker emphasized that his ending, unlike Ordet, had little to do with a miracle and viewed it as more organic and natural. In fact the film is deeply embedded in the natural world, in particular the water element - it is present in the love making between the adulterous pair of Johan and Marianne, in a lovely quiet familial scene in the river where the family bathes and most extraordinarily in a scene of the heart broken wife, Esther, crying in the rain. The "actors" are all non-actors, as a rule Reygadas never works with actors because he believes one is sub conciously primed to see the actor in character rather than the character. Of all of them, however, it is the other woman Marianne who is most effective, both in conveying her passion for Johan and her grace and compassion towards his wife.

If there is a flaw to the film it is that it is far too structured - Reygadas nearly pulls it off but you do not forget how carefully composed this film is. Nevertheless it is a thoughtful and serene gem and a departure from his earlier films. The film maker also has a sense of humour - at the Q&A he mentioned that his lead actor signed up hoping he would get a break in Hollywood! Whether the film maker himself makes his way there is debatable.

Homage to Catalonia

Is there a better writer in the English language than George Orwell? When it comes to non-fiction, I think not. I didn't quite get into 1984 or Keep the Aspidistra Flying but Down and Out in Paris and London was unputdownable. As is Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's account of the Spanish Civil War which I am now reading. There's something entirely authentic and true about Orwell's prose and thoughts even when he is passionate (and therefore possibly partial) about his beliefs.

Wonder how much of a debt Ken Loach's Land and Freedom owes to this Orwell book? Considerable, I think.

PS: IMDB reviews certainly indicate this.

St. George of Lebanon drives a taxi

My taxidriver today was a Lebanese-Kuwaiti who has been in Sydney for 30 odd years. He was an imposing burly man of the world with a booming voice, I was invited to guess his nationality, even the number of children he had. Russia, Iran, Iraq were all rejected even though all of these seemed admixed in his features. It turned out that he owns cabs (and one can only assume their drivers too) - this was just one of those days he had decided to take the cab for a spin. He turned out to be quite the dada of St. George and amongst other nuggets, informed me that he disliked Lebanon and indeed on his last visit had barely lasted a week, was exceedingly strict and honest unlike other Lebanese, his children were wonderful and such achievers and there was no country like Australia. This assessment of the country had echoes of the quote on Kashmir - if there be a paradise on earth, this is it. Paradise today was slightly grey and we passed the usual stretches of buildings, terraces and the desultory traffic on George Street till he deposited me at my destination.

His presence was so huge it filled the entire taxi and he didn't seem to be a man who took kindly to any opposition to his will. I haven't met a driver so formidable and imposing in all my travels.

Indian Blanket Flower

We used to have masses of these in our Delhi and Kanpur gardens. They look a bit like weeds but were the basis of my first flower composition of flowers and canna leaves at age 12.

This picture from Helen Klebesadel.