Opinions
Some stuff we stashed in this tome...
- 21 article(s).
- 3 years, 1 month since the last one.
Some stuff we stashed in this tome...
There is one scene from Sympathy for Mr Vengeance which summarises why I like Park Chan-wook so much – Ryu sits in his dingy room helplessly while his ailing sister moans in pain and the boys next door masturbate listening to it.
But that’s not how he shows it. What we see is a row of masturbating young men who are trying to keep up their illusion by touching each other selectively and by looking at pornographic images put at the back of the guy in front. They have pressed their ears to the wall, and we can hear in the background what appears to be the moaning of an orgasm. The camera keeps drifting, and we have some time to think about the scene at hand to allow us to detach ourselves with casual deprecation. Then we come to Ryu’s room to find him sitting on a chair with the kind of detachment that can come only from utter despair, and we find his ailing sister moaning in pain on the floor.
Now we have to judge those young men again in light of our previous impression.
Just another scene calculated to shock? Yes, but there is more that Park Chan-wook conveys here. Those masturbating young men, they are not perverts, they are common human beings just like you and me. Their lives are our lives, and that is all there is to life.
The day before yesterday I heard a lecture from my friend about why he despises those who criticise India for embracing the western culture. According to him, if something is better in another culture, why not accept it into our own culture and make it our own.
While I have no sympathies for the cultural fundamentalists, I don’t subscribe to my friend’s perspective as it is either. That probably doesn’t mark me as a liberal.
The thing is, nobody is really embracing the western culture because it is better (do excuse the generalisation, I am speaking for the masses). They do it because everyone is looking at those higher in the socioeconomic ladder and trying to imitate them. Various marginal process do exist which do not follow this pattern, but as I said, they are marginal, having originated mostly from compulsive nonconformists.
To my absolute horror, I have just realized that about seventy percent of the fiction I pen down are love stories. Or love poems.
I guess that this trait can be traced back to one of my Freudian nightmares in childhood, but that doesn’t help me in coping up with this mess. I mean, what sort of people keep writing one love story after another! Someone might try to point out P G Wodehouse here; but then, he was funny. Anything can be excused if it is funny enough.
Am I disillusioned with cricket?
Well, I don’t know what you are talking about. Cricket is still my religion, and Sachin is still my God.
India managed to get kicked out of the Cricket World Cup following its worst performance in a World Cup ever. Is that going to put a full stop to the fanaticism we have been nurturing in this country for so long? Is this where the future historians will put their fingers to point out where the decline of Indian Cricket frenzy started?
Eklavya has a great beginning. The first scene of the movie is probably the most powerful one. As Boman Irani recites a sonnet from Shakespeare to his dying wife, remembering the better moments of their courtship, one is mistaken for a moment about the present reality, and when the meaning of it crashes in with all its irony and cruelty, one doesn’t know whether to feel sad for Rani Ma (Sharmila Tagore) or for the Rana (Boman Irani, who is reminiscent of the kings in Shakespearean tragedies). However, this bitter irony of life soon takes a malicious turn and the movie takes off. The darker and gloomier foreground of the deathbed against the lighted backdrop sets the mood of the movie.
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