La La Land and Hamilton Walker's and Casablanca

That  La la Land is a grand movie has been proclaimed by many reviewers and moviegoers, and it has been nominated for many awards. And it so deserves them all. The movie validates art and artists and rebels and liberals without whom we will be rather poor in mind, and in hope, and raises "love" to a level and a time that is at once in the past but very much in the present. It embraces drive and ambition in both man and woman, effectively making those very necessary parts of that ethereal, romantic thing called "dream". It is a movie about movies and stars. About a city of stars and "stars".
a movie that shows the power of imagination, its ability to dream, to plan, and to re-imagine the past, return to the present. it celebrates coincidences shamelessly, plants imagined memories, deja vu feelings with gleeful abandonment, much to my delight. After all, as  I keep saying, a movie is a construct. And so are we. And time goes by! All of which makes one think again that life is but a dream. That the world is a stage. Where all of us are stars in our own little movies, big movies - tragedies, comedies, adventure, drama, horror, disaster and so on. (well, back to my old hope - what if we can really lead those virtual lives? :) )
Mia's song

Aside: If I sound less than enthusiastic, please know that it is not the fault of this earnest, sincere, hopeful, youthful movie. It is me, this jaded old person who  cannot really identify with young lovers following their dreams, with hope and passion, although I have to say, in spite of my passionless head, I liked the movie, and I would recommend it. And I can imagine a young Asha being wowed by it, being immersed in it, swimming in it!

Last week we went to this new restaurant in town, Hamilton Walker's. I knew it took up some space in that intersection, but was a little surprised when I stepped in. I am all for ambience, and this one unexpectedly made me feel like I had gone back in time. Like I was in one of those black and white movies set in New York, in one of their swanky restaurants with  jazz band. There was no jazz band even a piano here, but just Dean Martin's seductive voice floating over the soft voices. But that was enough, with the cozy dark seats and dark wood, and murals on the walls, it was quite pleasant.

Then I saw La La Land. The songs and the dances. The hero and the heroine. Mia and Sebastian. Wow! And the ending. At "Seb's". The jazz band. The gin joint. Hamilton Walker's? what a charming coincidence! :) though I have no one waiting inside!  "Of all the gin joints in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine." Mia walks into Seb's. As I am walking out of the theater, I remember the mention of Casablanca by Mia. Ingrid Bergman's picture on the wall. Casablanca in modern times. Albeit without the intrigue, excitement, and suspense of a war, espionage and the ambience of it all. The fear, the urgent life and death atmosphere of the times.

here, the gin joint owner is a gifted pianist. Like that other old role of the vamp now usurped by heroines, maybe this one has been taken too. But that s fine. as they all do it so well! As their eyes meet, it's the pianist who must have said, "here's looking at you, kid!" Curiously, in true time flipping, movie history timeline twister style, it seems as if La la Land ends where Casablanca begins.

Casablanca- Sam, the pianist, Rick, and Ilsa

Update: Not that great, really. The actors are good. The song nd dance gimmicks are nice. Just a nice movie, overall. Nothing special.

Death and lemonade: Leaves of Grass (2010)

As often with me, I have to start with an apology -- here goes - please do not think I have too high an opinion of myself. That I consider myself to be up there with highly talented, successful people. But whenever I see a Woody Allen movie, I feel that movie was something that I would write. Well, I thought the same thing when I saw "Leaves of Grass" by Tim Blake Nelson. He wrote and directed, and even acts in the movie. Why do I feel this? There is something familiar in the themes, in the way they unfold. You may say it is the universality of the themes, the characters, Maybe, but that would be enough to appreciate those movies. It is more than that in the sense that there is an underlying thread of exposing/teaching/information-dissemination in most of such movies. Just like I would do, like I have done in my novel. Detractors can call it preaching or propagandist. But such a movie, that with a message or messages, is an example for  another version of art for social change, according to me.

This is my perspective of Tim Blake Nelson's movie. When I watched it, at first I was tempted to dismiss it as superficially intellectual and artificially attractive or vice versa -- a phrase I remember from my past :) Look at the academic shenanigans at that Ivy League University on the East coast. One of the protagonists,  portrayed wonderfully by Edward Norton, is a teacher of Philosophy. Since it is not a philosophic treatise, but a movie about many other things too, it struck me as superficial, simplistic, shallow etc. Then there is that stock female character - intelligent, attractive, with a surprising quality, sometimes she appears as the prostitute with a heart of gold, but always as the one who has all the answers. (ya, right!) Here we have the village poet beauty who is an expert at "noodling" too! And she is like Socrates to our poor philosopher who by sheer grit and focus achieved his dream. Very mean of her, I thought. And I wished that he would influence her too - make it more of a mutual affair. Let's see if the sagely young woman will feel the same in say, 5 years! Will it be easy then to make that change, for this time, she won't be the same, and time will be against her. But then we all got through such choices, and ideas, and changes, and then we all die - that is life!

That takes me to my next change of mind, regarding the movie - superficial, artificial - that is what the academic world really is. After all those discussions about Foucault and Derrida and Lacan, (genuflect here- as an aside, we in India tend to look at any written word as sublime, and if especially it is by a foreigner, we treat it like the scriptures. Same with movie stars, rock stars, political/religious leaders, - we are in awe of them, guess we still haven't lost that naive wonder and admiration for success and fame -  here there is an irreverence, and more of an envy towards everyone and everything, except, maybe national security and full body scanners in airports) and aesthetics and politics, what did we achieve? What did I achieve? Other than long papers and dissertations that are buried under layers of dust in some corner of a room. Papers that are really papers on other papers. Mishmash, rehash, analyses that in the final analysis may be really splitting hairs- and that is how the other (anti)hero, who, fascinatingly, is the twin of our philosopher, also ably portrayed by Norton, describes it. But that description also is not new, but that doesn't make it any less real. He is the alter ego of the protagonist - literally, and figuratively.

So what does this movie teach? Philosophy, mainly. Practical philosophy. Philosophy democratized. Practical aesthetics. For instance, all those deaths in the end happen in the "idyllic" ambition-less countryside, where the characters seem to go with the flow of Nature, rather poetically. And there is ambition and dream here too - the brother wants to sell his scientifically advanced drug business in order to start a normal family life. So death - the deaths in the movie did not really make me sad. The build up of the story till then prepared me for it, thus reinforcing the inevitability of an end. It is as if I was ready to die, or to let them go! Not out of disappointment or depression, but after a sense of completion, satiety, catharsis.  And then that awareness of  the futility of it all. No matter what one's reality is, and here we have parallel realities of twin brothers - one whose life has the order and the beauty of a Zen garden, outwardly anyway, and the other, whose life looks like a riotous cottage garden filled with wild flowers and vines, with a rocky brook running alongside. Again, I am reminded of those stereotypes - say in a Hallmark movie- the busy city/career girl or man vs the free-flowing, nature-loving warm country girl/guy. They all always end up in the country. But here, the writer-director makes it more realistic -with  death - many deaths - in the country, and then with a pitcher of cool lemonade in the end. That is what happens in real life, isn't it? People die, we move on.  There are little cosy comforts at the end of a long, hot day. We just aren't aware of that fact of death all the time, that's all.

So - what else does the movie teach? We are aware of the writer-director's mind working  in many of the characters - we learn that a god-fearing Jew can be a drug dealer, that a pothead or a redneck can be smart, I liked it all, even as I felt they were contrived. Maybe I prefer it that way - the movie is a construct, after all. Just like the sublime brother-crude brother juxtaposition. I think I did not mind all that  in the end because we see that they are not all that different in the end. Those stereotypes are dismantled.  I have done all this in my writing - which doesn't make it right, but it is done with a purpose - to make the viewers/readers think, look at the world from a different angle. And that in my book is art for social change. And that is where all those seeming useless discussions in the field of Humanities are there for.

At the end of the movie, I was not judging one way of life against the other. I realize that they are all equally good or bad. The lives, the choices. But I wished that we all could live different lives at the same time! Not just one other life where someone from the past or the future comes and tells me my past or future, like, say, Dr Who. I don't mind it, but I want to be that person who can travel through time, live many lives, in many places.  Everyone has to be that person. Now that would be flowing, real freedom, or, total anarchy. Who knows! As it is we have a couple of choices - wine or beer? death or lemonade? Or both, and all.  :)

age of self-conscious living-- part 3 or 4?

My fascination with the blurring of boundaries between the real and  the unreal goes hand in hand with my fascination for the age of self-conscious living. This is the third or fourth time I am writing about it. trying to articulate the ideas in my head. Recently I read an article in Time, about Oprah. Now, I admire Oprah, and the writer of this article does too, as he writes about not Oprah in particular, but her new cable channel, OWN -- Oprah Winfrey Network. I do not know where to start! The ideas that ran in my mind as I was reading this article! virtual wild horses waiting to be caught! and tamed! familiar ideas that sounded almost crazy suddenly turned probable and real!
Oprah embodies the spirit and substance of "celebrity". As I said before, we all want to be 'celebrities" in our own ways. The writer of the above article concludes his article thus, "your best self, it turns out, is a self with a show on Oprah's network." What is your "best self'?" We have read and heard a million answers for that. A host of religions attempt to teach you that. But in the present world of democratized media, what constitutes "best self"? To me, that would be a self whose existence has been validated, is being validated. Who validates it? Myself, I could say, like a million self-help books tell me, but i would say it is others. My existence is validated by other selves, the world. And what better way than being in the media? No wonder these reality-tv shows are not going away anytime soon.
And you cannot say that celebrities are just twinkling stars that do just that -- twinkle. it takes a George Clooney to bring Sudan to your attention. It is his idea about the satellite in the sky over that troubled spot that is being put to work right now. His voice is heard, his movements are followed, and there is his power to make things happen. Like Oprah. So the age of self-conscious living , the age of TV living is here as a natural evolutionary force in our existence. I do not know the "real" Oprah. I just know the "virtual" Oprah. And this virtual Oprah changes lives. Inspires others to be life-changing celebrities.yes, your best self is your virtual self!
Now, in this age of self-conscious living, we are all characters in a virtual world. We are heroes -- tragic at times, with one great flaw, comic at other times laughing at ourselves. Movies are made of our thoughts, ideas and what we see. Great or funny music accompanies us, those same thoughts and ideas. We are significant beings whose existences are valid. Valid enough to be seen and heard on a global platform by other valid beings.We are all walking movies, at the same time, we are all moviemakers. We are the "best selves" living in a "self-conscious" world of which we are very aware, a world which has to notice us in turn.

Artisten (The Artist) by Jonas Grimås

It was in 1987 when I was a Literature student at this girls' college back home, that a professor from another university visited us. He read a poem about a train (not his, I remember that) and held up this black and white picture of a train winding up a hill, with trees on either side of the tracks, as he read it. ( We did not have TV)The reading wasn't that rhythmic, but I fell in a trance imagining that train as it chugged its way round the bend, and up the hill, "smoking" all the way. I could see the green of the trees, the blue of the greyish blue of the skies, and above all, hear the rhythm of the train.

There is a romance about trains, and the people who travel on those, and no wonder they have been used in movies and songs and commercials and fashion shoots. Murders take on more mystery, forbidden love gets spicier -- all in that rarefied ambience of trains. Be it the Murder on the Orient Express, or that Vogue shoot with an exotic Diddy and his lady, or the latest Chanel ad with Audrey Tatou, trains and train stations thrill us. And it is the same for me.

Artisten

But add to that, my fatal fascination with the blurring of boundaries -- between realities, the real and the unreal, between genres, between art and life -- I will get hooked. That is what I felt when I saw this short movie named  Artisten, by Jonas Grimås made in 1987. What I saw in my classroom back then, and what I see now in this movie, I should say it has been a gradual journey that has reached a particular culmination. The journey won't end here, surely.  Obviously I am sure much has been written about this brilliant, award winning movie by many and much better qualified people than me. But these are my thoughts.

The Artist is about the blurring of boundaries. In a way, it is  a metamovie, a movie which explores the making of a movie.The synchronous art of the foley artist-hero, and the movie he was showing, is captivating.The final explosion in the movie within the movie, and in the theatre fittingly tops it. This movie is layered and the themes are so many that it makes you think on so many different levels -- an embarrassment of riches, as they say. It is a big, short movie. I cannot get that artist out of my mind, the passion, and the belief. Nothing is beyond bounds for him. Not at all worried about going overboard! He does it with panache. Nor can I forget the would-be artist. There is a sadness and a humor in both the persons that touch one. Do I imagine that sadness? Am I coloring it with my feelings?In moments of self-doubt, which are many, by the way, I think I am that person. Of course I want to be the hero, but will I ever?They are pathetic and heroic at the same time, like us. Maybe I am way off mark in my understanding of the film, but I guess the movie is in the mind of the viewer now.
see the film here : http://vimeo.com/17857824

may 17  2011 update : there seems to be something to the name? another "Artist" is making waves in Cannes! I think i should call myself "The Artist" -- maybe that would help! ;)