The Decalogues

I owe a lot to my brother for throwing open the world of books to me. In my childhood, I remember being surrounded by books - from a lot of different genres. I remember very clearly a recurring instance from my childhood. Every year, on my brother's birthday, one of my uncles would ask what he wanted as a gift. The answer was a constant. Books. I grew up thinking that Russian classics by Gorky and Dostoevsky was a legitimate birthday gift. My brother had also hoarded up a considerable collection of comics/children books: Tinkle, Champak (I didn't like that even as a kid), Chandamama and my favourite - Indrajal comics with the adventures of Phantom, Mandrake, Rip Kirby, Flash Gordon...

I remember vividly the great sense of anticipation and joy with which I used to come back home after every quarterly/half-yearly exam - the joy of spending a whole afternoon, lying down on the bed with my favourite comics for company was my idea of bliss. The anticipation would start building as soon as I left school on the last exam day. Nobody at home would ask me to study and those joyful afternoons remain in my memories - written with permanent marker ink.

I felt the same kind of anticipation and joy while watching 'The Decalogues'. Its a series of 10 films (each about an hour long) directed by Kryztoff Kieslowski. The films are in Polish with English sub-titles. They are loosely based on the Ten Commandments. They were made for Polish television and screened there for the first time. Initially, he had planned to have a different director for each of the ten films. But he fell in love with the stories and decided to direct them himself. The cinematographer changes in each film but Kieslowski - as the director - is a constant. I read about the Decalogues for the first time in an interview of Vishal Bharadwaj on rediff where he was talking about Omkara. He said that he decided to become a movie director after watching the Decalogues. I am an admirer of Vishal Bharadwaj's work. So, with netflix in hand, I decided to find out what the fuss was all about.

Here is a small Synopsis of each of the 10 movies as I see it.

Decalogue 1:It is about an agnostic father who believes that everything can be solved by reason. The father is a teacher and his 10 year old son is a genius at computers. It is about the implicit faith that the father has in science and consequently the blind faith that the child has in his father - and the consequences thereof.

Decalogue 2:It is about the moral dilemma of a pregnant woman whose husband is suffering from a terminal illness. She is carrying the child of another man. It deals with the interplay of emotions between the woman and the doctor treating her husband. The dilemma is: If the doctor assures her that her husband will live, she will abort the child; if the doctor assures her that her husband will die, she wants to keep the child

Decalogue 3:This is about the one-time mistress of a now-married taxi driver making him revisit the past by taking him on a ride in his taxi through the town.

Decalogue 4:This is about a daughter finding a letter from her dead mother, which plants doubts in her mind of her real father.

Decalogue 5:This is about a killer, his killing a cab-driver, his being captured and sentenced to an execution and about the lawyer who argues his case.

Decalogue 6:This is the original of 'Ek Choti Si love story' starring Manisha Koirala which I had seen the first day it was released.

Decalogue 7:This is about a woman who had a daughter when she was very young. The child is being brought up by the young woman's mother. The young woman and her child are therefore sisters in the eyes of the world. This is about the young woman's attempt to break out with her child.

Decalogue 8:This is about an elderly ethics teacher as she comes face to face with an incident from her past (in the form of a Jewish woman) and she has to revisit a decision that she took in the past

Decalogue 9:This is about a philandering doctor who has become impotent and becomes suspicious of his wife

Decalogue 10:This is about 2 brothers (long estranged) who come across an unusual inheritance and the way their life changes.

I have not done any justice to the depth of the movies by these very superficial synopses (I dont want to spoil things for anyone who will see these movies). I know the synopses are pretty bad but the films are magnificent. All of the stories take place in the same block of flats. Virtually every character is a resident here but there is almost no overlapping of stories. There is an observer like character who moves through each of these stories providing a common link. I have seen and re-seen (thats the best word to describe it) all of these movies. All are masterpieces which make you think, which make you want to see through them at least one more time - to be able to grasp every nuance in the story. The acting is excellent across the board and as I said, except for the observer, there are different actors in each of the 10 films. My personal favourites are Decalogues 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9,10. Really..Even 8 is good but I thought not as powerful as the other nine. And it involves a lot of viewing time. About 12 hours if you see it once. But to really appreciate the collection you need to see it more than once.
This collection should be made compulsory viewing for every first time director(wherever..Hollywood, Bollywood, Kollywood, Mollywood). The stories of the Decalogues are multi-layered and brilliant. Kieslowski is a Genius.

P.S. I saw 'Sillunnoru Kaadhal', a Tamil movie, the day after I saw the Decalogues. I couldn't bear to watch it for more than 30 minutes. That's what good movies do to you. It makes you lose all patience with trash.

Citizen Kane

I am on a movie watching spree. So, there will be a lot of movie-centric entries on this blog.
Watched 'Citizen Kane' for the 4th time the day before yesterday and 'The Motorcycle Diaries' for the first time yesterday. I loved both of these movies but I might need one more viewing of 'The Motorcycle Diaries' before I venture to comment on it.

So, this post will be about 'Citizen Kane'

Directed, co-written & lead role played by Orson Welles - at the ripe old age of 25.
The movie is supposedly based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, a publishing tycoon of that time. 'Supposedly' was a term that did not rest easy with Mr Hearst. He was convinced that it was based on his life and got to know from the previews of the movie that it was not a very flattering portrait that had been painted. So, he refused to advertise the movie in any of his newspapers (and he had a lot of them). He also refused to carry advertisements put in by any theatres (for any of their movies) if they showed Citizen Kane. So, in spite of receiving rave critical reviews, Citizen Kane was shown in very few theatres and was a box-office dud.

It started gaining recognition and almost cult status after a few years (particularly after its re-release in the 1950s). Before going into my experience of watching the movie, here are two interesting nuggets on Orson Welles that I got from the DVD.

Orson Welles was supposed to address a gathering. When he arrived at the meeting, he found that practically nobody had turned up to hear him. So he starts off
"I am Orson Welles; playwright, theatre director, radio presenter, radio director, film writer, film director, actor, painter, magician, political thinker.....(and he in fact was all of these)..'
Then he continues,
"Why is it that there are so many of me and so few of you?"

The next one is a conversation that the reviewer has had with Orson Welles where Welles is telling the reviewer how much he likes Greta Garbo, her mannerisms, her acting, her aura and her mystery. The reviewer replies that he doesn't agree because she has acted only in two magnificent movies and the rest are nothing to write home about. Welles looks at the reviewer for a long time and says,
"All you require is one"

For the world, Citizen Kane was that one movie of Orson Welles.

The movie is about the moral decline of Charles Foster Kane. From the idealism of his 20s to his degeneration (both physical and moral) into his 70s.

I saw the movie for the first time and did not like it.

The movie starts off with Charles Foster Kane's death scene where he says 'Rosebud' and dies. The rest of the movie is an attempt by a reporter to find out what Rosebud is. It is a series of flashbacks by people who knew Kane and the flashbacks are in no particular chronological order. So you have a young Kane, an older Kane, again a young Kane and so on which makes it difficult to piece together the movie. To make it easier for the viewer, there is a newsreel shown right at the start (which is being watched by a team of reporters) which describes the life of Charles Foster Kane, who has just died.

When I saw the movie first, I could not understand what that newsreel was being shown for. At the end of the movie, I still did not know what Rosebud was.
So, I watched it again and things started getting clearer. I watched it again with Roger Ebert's commentary as an accompaniment. Things started getting a lot more clearer and the cinematic brilliance, the technical perfection of the movie started coming through. I watched it again, this time to purely revel in the performances of the actors and the brilliance with which the movie has been crafted.
All this effort for a movie made in the year 1941.

My favourite scene involves Charles Kane (Orson Welles) showing the 'Declaration of Principles', a document that he has written to his best friend Jedediah Leland.
At this point, Kane has just taken over the newspaper. The 'Declaration of Principles' is all about Kane's idealism at this point (things like the honesty of the printed word, the care for the poorer sections of the society etc). Kane wants it to be the editorial for the next day's edition

His friend asks him for the original copy of the document.
Kane asks him why he wants it.
Jedediah replies," I believe this might become an important document; like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution....or my first report card at school"
For me, it showed the cleverness of handling a very pivotal point in the movie to show Jedediah's skepticism about whether Kane's moral righteousness would triumph or whether the document would become as useless as Jedediah's first report card.

The dialogues in the movie are there because they need to be. And its a movie I will not get tired of watching...

I am making a list of my must-have DVDs in life. Right now, 'Citizen Kane' is No1 and I have a hunch, it will be difficult to dislodge.

Netflix tales

I am a huge Aamir Khan fan (I even enjoyed 'Mela'). I have liked 99% of his movies (excluding two of his biggest blockbusters 'Raja Hindustani' & Fanaa')....For me..He rarely does something wrong.

I have watched almost all his movies. One of them was 'Ghulam'. Ya right...I loved 'Aati kya Khandala' and Rani Mukherjee and definitely not in that order. But I loved the movie too. I thought Aamir Khan had done a tremendous job and was highly impressed with the director Vikram Bhatt. I believed it to be the dawn of a fresh new talent in the Hindi movie industry. I waited for him to shine. But he disappointed. Time & time again. I formulated a theory that you don't have to be a genius to make one really good movie. But I kept track of Vikram Bhatt's career waiting for that spark to shine through. 'Come on', I said to myself...You could not make such a 'hatke movie' and just fade away....

I have registered for netflix here and have been watching the English movies and some Hindi ones that I have always heard of but have never had the opportunity to see. I have gone through 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'Silsila', 'Kabhi Kabhi' and 'Citizen Kane'. Yesterday I watched 'On the waterfront'.

Its a movie made in 1954 and stars Marlon Brando. In the year of its release, it got 8 oscars and was a box -office success. These were the things I knew before I saw it. What I did not know until I saw the first two scenes of the movie was that Ghulam is a very faithful rip-off of this classic. Of course, there is no 'Aati Kya Khandala' here (and that's where Ghulam still scores) but there is absolutely nothing original in the Hindi remake. There are some classic scenes and immortal lines (or so the special features on the DVD tell me) in this movie.

you don't understand..I could have had class..I could have been a contender..i could have been somebody'
Its a line that Marlon Brando says to his brother who is the accountant of the big boss, towards the end of the movie. It is brilliantly done. I enjoyed the movie and am realizing that it doesnt really matter how old a movie is, whether its in colour or B&W (and I am actually liking B&W a lot)....if it is a good movie, it will always remain enjoyable...

But I felt betrayed too. With Vikram Bhatt for having made me feel that he was making something new. Its one thing to be Ram Gopal Verma and say very openly that Sarkar is a Godfather remake....I think in some ways its even alright to be inspired from other movies and stories.

But its quite another thing to copy so blatantly the plot, the scenes, sprinkle some masala and claim a unique dish. Now I know where Ghulam came from and I know why Vikram Bhatt makes the movies he does......

Makes me a little bit scared to watch more movies from Netflix. There are some movies and scenes which inhabit a very private sanctuary of my mind...a scene like the one Aamir Khan enacts in 'Rang De Basanti' after Madhavan's character dies....the one in which he is sitting with Sue and he is eating & crying at the same time.....performances which i still believe are extraordinarily moving and original.

I am scared that I might find a 'Dil Chahta Hai' in one of these movies one day. That is when my heart will really break!!!

Movies...that sing

Ram has started to blog with frightening regularity. He writes on movies and you can find his blog here. For me, books are where I can lose myself completely. But movies come in a close second. I haven't watched too many English movies but Malayalam, Hindi and a smattering of Tamil, I am right in there.

Seeing Ram's blog, I thought I will put in my bit about the movies I have seen and admired and lost myself in. I am socially outcast because of the number of times I forcibly bring in Mohanlal in conversations. People (All Indians except Mallus, a few Tamilians and a minority of North Indians who have somehow liked Mohanlal in 'Company') just cannot understand, leave alone appreciate, how a roly-poly, obese actor is allowed to star in movies and how someone can possibly like him. His name of course, does him no favours either.

But I admire him. The way he never overplays a character. The way he becomes the character. If he plays a kathakali dancer, it seems like he has learnt kathakali all his life. If he plays a football player, it would seem that he used to play with Maradona in Napoli. The versatality of Mohanlal (Comedy, action, pathos..you name it) is unmatched in India. For me, he is definitely the best actor in India. Period. He has grown portly and he hasnt taken care of his physique. But the 80s and a major part of the 90s saw Mohanlal at his peak. There are still occasional flashes of brilliance. Udayanaanu thaaram (Udayan is the star) and Thanmathra (Molecule) are those sporadic flashes. The only thing that Mohanlal has done wrong is to be born in Kerala because no one outside this small state watches Mallu movies.

Carrying on with Mallu movies, I have to talk about Padmarajan, my favourite director. He died in the early 90s. He hasnt made too many movies. Out of them, the ones I have seen are

Mohanlal & Padmarajan













Koodevide (In search of a nest)
Namukku paarkan mundhiri thoppukal (The vineyards are our home)
Thoovanathumbikal (The dragonflies of the spring)
Innale (Yesterday/The Past)
Desadanakili karayaarilla (The migratory bird does not cry)
Moonampakkam (On the third day)

Anybody who can think up such names is a poet. It is no coincidence that his movies sing to you.