I have always maintained that human experience is never fake. The way you look at/interpret this experience can lead to false conclusions, but then that does not invalidate the experience itself.
My approach to films hangs on the same as well. What we are essentially trying to do in a film is create an experience for the viewer and let him go to his own conclusions. Everything else, the style of narrative, the opulence etc are distractions to appeal to that part of ourselves that wants to experience them.
But stripped to the bare minimum, a movie first needs to connect to the viewer - which is probably why leisurely opening narratives that create a wholesome experience (sometimes peaking them to maximize this connection) have a better chance of making it big with masses and become a true expression of art than those that rely on artificial elements to overawe the audience.
So then now, what is fear? A powerful emotion we experience – and if you experienced it, it never comes in real life is CGI packages or gory images yet we would have experienced it – often in error though – and it has a great impact.
A few years ago, I was put up at Pune. The house where we lived in was very comfortable. Except, there was spook in the air. Every evening an Owl would perch onto the kitchen window sill and sit there still without movement all night. It wouldn’t budge an inch at an attempt to scare it and it was considerably big. If you woke up in the middle of the night and went to get a glass of water, the owl could spook you out when the light suddenly turns on and you see this huge figure apparently looking into the house. Then there were bats, regular visitors huge ones and in humongous numbers. Worse every night we would be woken at a particular hour by what we thought was a baby crying. Only we were on the second floor of an isolated building and there were no babies around. Worse there were recurring nightmares and frequent waking up and occasional feeling that someone was watching us.
I don’t know what happened and now it seems irrelevant, but what could have skewed up our whole perception was the extreme amount of stress me and my wife were undergoing on various accounts. I really don’t know.
But guess what, we were spooked, and by a great measure. And ever since we have loved horror movies or pseudo ghost hunting shows like ghost hunters or paranormal state etc. Because we know what it feels like to be in the middle of the night totally awake and attentive to every noise around you in anticipation and fear of harm to you or your loved ones – the ones you are responsible for. What makes worse is that you cannot share what you experience with anyone else and sound sensible to them, and that creates a sense of isolation and helplessness - and you are alert because you have to rely on yourself in every which way.
I would often wonder as to why the events that were happening were so insignificant in total contrast to the intensity with which we were experiencing them in our minds. And I would devise strategies to capture this form of fear on celluloid. The key is anticipation that comes out of connection.
This Key is what eventually works for Paranormal Activity the film. If the same movie were to be made by a big director on a lavish scale it would simply fail because the elements of spook themselves were very small and something not totally unseen before in movies. Yet a director who would visualize this fear and try to bring it onto screen would fail in any format other than the one used in the movie. That of a simple camera and a day to day setting where everything outside what we are accustomed to is suspect.
The camera and the story and the performances are set up in a way to give a feeling that it’s a real event, and the real life setting and motivations give you that element of connection. There is a hinted history and eventual feeling that there is no escape. There is minimal drama outside what would happen everywhere and whatever is there dosent feel like drama because there is a connection established to begin with.
The movie brought back memories, my wife had a distrubed sleep and dreams in the night, where the shaking of the shades gave her problems. And that is the ultimately victory of a horror movie. The connection, the unknown, the trauma, the reality and the creation of doubt about everything you would otherwise deem harmless. Ultimately its nothing better than a combination of an episode of Ghost hunters on home video, but it has one thing going for it, the novelty of the concept.
This is not a repeatble formula, like the Blair Witch clones, but it qualifies as what we all look for in films: An experience.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
9 The movie!
I saw the Movie 9 over the weekend. Spectacular on visuals, deft in craft, interesting in philosophy, is how I would sum it up. Spoliers ahead.
The movie starts with the destruction of mankind, by a machine that was created to actually grade it to perfection. The premise being that the machine has no soul, and that is its tragic flaw. The understated claim is that the machine is aware of this flaw, and is eager to find a way to complete itself by finding a soul. This very greed, could potentially destroy it however since the creator embeds a sequence within the instrument to destroy the machine.
The creator of the machine understands this, and in a bid to reconstruct life on earth, divides his own soul into 9 dolls (or wharever). Fragments of his own human nature that function independent of memory that co-ordinates them. What if the different traits of human played themselves out in total purity of their nature in the world oustide instead of mixing the context and playing themselves inside a single human being?
The creator dies after his creation, and lets the purpose unfold to the characters as it would seem like chance. The machine is asleep after destroying the human kind because it has nothing else to do. However, it is wakes up again, when the last piece of the creators creation is fit into it, that gives it the possibility of having a human soul. And then goes on to collect the 9 different fragments of this sould with this device.
The interesting subtext is that the characters are not aware of the reason why they are created. Events that lead to apparent mistakes and temporary pain actually make sense in the big picture suggesting that there is a method to the chaos and events that unravel around us. Note that when 9 awakens the machine, which goes on to kill other numbers, he is chastitised for defying conventions and grappling with things that have brought about doom on the last survivors of mankind.
The idea is to say, that within us there is a purpose unravelling that is not apparent to the devices we are equipped with while we enter the world. That life that we see may not be what we see or want it to be, but life will serve its own path and its own purpose. But within us lies the potential to reconstruct man, from the scratch, that can help us touch the perfection that we are capable of using this life.
Now to the 9 traits themeselves. First is Fear, its nature is to hanker for security, by keeping every other attribute in its control by proclaiming itself a leader. For having first saved them by teaching them the value of security. Its closest aid is strength and pleasure, that works under its cue to keep others in check by brute force.
Then there is compassion, its apt that at the start of the movie, fear sends intelligence out to die, because intelligence asks uncomfortable questions about the nature of fear. Fear rationalizes its action by telling the principle by which it works, that one must be sacrificed for collective good. Its also apt that at the end of the movie, fear finally recognizes its own principle, and sacrifices itself for the others - to suggest, that sacrifice should be voluntary not enforced - if at all. This after the sub-text that fear knows more than it actually shows, it recognizes what the true potential and purpose is - but holds on to a narrow vision of security - so you see the eyes narrowing down when it looks at the world, and this vision changes towards the end of the movie.
It is also apt that intellect (2 I suppose), rescues reason (number 9) in the opening scenes and gives it a "Voice" and triggers the entire proceedings of the movie, because intellect along with compassion go to rescue intellect by defying the rules of fear and brute force.
9 is born in the opening sequences of the movie, thrust into a destroyed world, confused, in the wilderness, rescued by intellect - that gives it a voice, while it is taken captive by the machine (nature with its laws minus the faculities of human). While 9 wants to go back and rescue it, he is confronted by the rigid 1. Eventually, 9 and compassion go out to rescue number 2. Across the adventures they meet feminine "Ability/skill". Ability refuses to live under fear because it finds it crippling.
9 ends up waking up the monster by fitting the piece into it that makes it alive to the possibility of having a soul. They meet the twins - who catalog - or the memory, one part that works on images, the other on words - they work together holding the information of the past.
The Machine sucks up the first piece of its soul by taking in the intellect. And then proceeds to find the other fragments. Each of these fragments want to survive, and hence try to destory the machine, giving up on the fragments that it has already consumed. This would actually be against their purpose, because the machine cannot be destroyed without having woken it up. Only "Creativity/intution/right brain", who understands the purpose, but has no words to express it, but only symbols to show it knows that the fragments are not lost and that the machine should not be destroyed while the fragments are locked inside. It instructs 9 to go back to the source to understand the purpose of their life and then "act" accordingly.
Meanwhile, memory, fear and ability are trying to destory the machine. While reason goes back to the source and finds out the purpose for their creation. Eventually, fear sacrifices itself to help Reason achieve the purpose. The numbers that have been sucked into the machine are freed, and they recycle back into nature as microbes. While, the twins, 9 and the ability inherit the earth.
The movie ends when the feminine doll asks 9 "what next?" - and 9 responds "whatever we can make out of what we have" - or ability and reason with the twin memories that like adam and even can lay the foundations of the new man - and re-build by recycling.
The obvious problems in grappling with and making statements of philosophy makes it convenient to use a story line to demonstrate it, and leave the field open for interpretation. No problems with that, all in all, there is more to this movie than you see. I am not convinced with the philosophy and I have lot of objections, but that does not stop me from enjoying the beauty of it all. I like it for its integrity in story telling and a visual representation of highly artistic minds.
The movie starts with the destruction of mankind, by a machine that was created to actually grade it to perfection. The premise being that the machine has no soul, and that is its tragic flaw. The understated claim is that the machine is aware of this flaw, and is eager to find a way to complete itself by finding a soul. This very greed, could potentially destroy it however since the creator embeds a sequence within the instrument to destroy the machine.
The creator of the machine understands this, and in a bid to reconstruct life on earth, divides his own soul into 9 dolls (or wharever). Fragments of his own human nature that function independent of memory that co-ordinates them. What if the different traits of human played themselves out in total purity of their nature in the world oustide instead of mixing the context and playing themselves inside a single human being?
The creator dies after his creation, and lets the purpose unfold to the characters as it would seem like chance. The machine is asleep after destroying the human kind because it has nothing else to do. However, it is wakes up again, when the last piece of the creators creation is fit into it, that gives it the possibility of having a human soul. And then goes on to collect the 9 different fragments of this sould with this device.
The interesting subtext is that the characters are not aware of the reason why they are created. Events that lead to apparent mistakes and temporary pain actually make sense in the big picture suggesting that there is a method to the chaos and events that unravel around us. Note that when 9 awakens the machine, which goes on to kill other numbers, he is chastitised for defying conventions and grappling with things that have brought about doom on the last survivors of mankind.
The idea is to say, that within us there is a purpose unravelling that is not apparent to the devices we are equipped with while we enter the world. That life that we see may not be what we see or want it to be, but life will serve its own path and its own purpose. But within us lies the potential to reconstruct man, from the scratch, that can help us touch the perfection that we are capable of using this life.
Now to the 9 traits themeselves. First is Fear, its nature is to hanker for security, by keeping every other attribute in its control by proclaiming itself a leader. For having first saved them by teaching them the value of security. Its closest aid is strength and pleasure, that works under its cue to keep others in check by brute force.
Then there is compassion, its apt that at the start of the movie, fear sends intelligence out to die, because intelligence asks uncomfortable questions about the nature of fear. Fear rationalizes its action by telling the principle by which it works, that one must be sacrificed for collective good. Its also apt that at the end of the movie, fear finally recognizes its own principle, and sacrifices itself for the others - to suggest, that sacrifice should be voluntary not enforced - if at all. This after the sub-text that fear knows more than it actually shows, it recognizes what the true potential and purpose is - but holds on to a narrow vision of security - so you see the eyes narrowing down when it looks at the world, and this vision changes towards the end of the movie.
It is also apt that intellect (2 I suppose), rescues reason (number 9) in the opening scenes and gives it a "Voice" and triggers the entire proceedings of the movie, because intellect along with compassion go to rescue intellect by defying the rules of fear and brute force.
9 is born in the opening sequences of the movie, thrust into a destroyed world, confused, in the wilderness, rescued by intellect - that gives it a voice, while it is taken captive by the machine (nature with its laws minus the faculities of human). While 9 wants to go back and rescue it, he is confronted by the rigid 1. Eventually, 9 and compassion go out to rescue number 2. Across the adventures they meet feminine "Ability/skill". Ability refuses to live under fear because it finds it crippling.
9 ends up waking up the monster by fitting the piece into it that makes it alive to the possibility of having a soul. They meet the twins - who catalog - or the memory, one part that works on images, the other on words - they work together holding the information of the past.
The Machine sucks up the first piece of its soul by taking in the intellect. And then proceeds to find the other fragments. Each of these fragments want to survive, and hence try to destory the machine, giving up on the fragments that it has already consumed. This would actually be against their purpose, because the machine cannot be destroyed without having woken it up. Only "Creativity/intution/right brain", who understands the purpose, but has no words to express it, but only symbols to show it knows that the fragments are not lost and that the machine should not be destroyed while the fragments are locked inside. It instructs 9 to go back to the source to understand the purpose of their life and then "act" accordingly.
Meanwhile, memory, fear and ability are trying to destory the machine. While reason goes back to the source and finds out the purpose for their creation. Eventually, fear sacrifices itself to help Reason achieve the purpose. The numbers that have been sucked into the machine are freed, and they recycle back into nature as microbes. While, the twins, 9 and the ability inherit the earth.
The movie ends when the feminine doll asks 9 "what next?" - and 9 responds "whatever we can make out of what we have" - or ability and reason with the twin memories that like adam and even can lay the foundations of the new man - and re-build by recycling.
The obvious problems in grappling with and making statements of philosophy makes it convenient to use a story line to demonstrate it, and leave the field open for interpretation. No problems with that, all in all, there is more to this movie than you see. I am not convinced with the philosophy and I have lot of objections, but that does not stop me from enjoying the beauty of it all. I like it for its integrity in story telling and a visual representation of highly artistic minds.
Inglorious Basterds/ District 9
In an every increasing arc of good movies, these are must watch for both screenplay and performances. Art blends with fiction to create flawless narrative that make themes irrelevent while enjoying the movies themselves.
The thing however is, the setting to explore the content for either is irrelevent except for adding the surprise element and instant connection with the viewer. It makes you feel, its old wine in new bottle, but only if you take stock of what transpired. Purely on craft, these are exceptionally well spent 6 hours of your life. Enjoy.
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