THE ARTIST (2011)

In the last few years, we have had to bid goodbye to many familiar things, as technology marches on inexorably. The baby boomers are discovering rheumatism and we are writing bedtime stories about paper books, DVDs and a truly free internet for our grandchildren. So it is no wonder that 2011 was heavily nostalgic on the movie front: Midnight in Paris with its cotton-gathering hero, The Descendents with its protagonist who labours under the weight of his ancestors' deeds and the expectations of his descendents, The Tree of Life with its narrator who remembers the horror and innocence of childhood and Hugo with its touching tribute to Georges Méliès.  The Artist went one step further with its wonderfully satirical throwback to the silent film era.

How many film aficionados have you met, who don't list at least five silent films among their favourite films? And how many times have you told them that the only reason silent movies existed was because they hadn't found a way to stick sound to the picture, not because it was a superior story-telling device. The moment they found the technology to do so, they abandoned silent films and ushered in one of the most glorious and exuberant eras in film: musicals.  Why would you want to watch people mugging at the camera when you can watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers fire up the screen instead? Well, Michel Hazanavicius presents a strong case for the former, having had over a century's worth of cinematic cautionary tales warn and inspire him.  Is it not said that hindsight is 20/20? So too was The Artist with its beautifully arranged scenes and simple plot that always threatens but never actually falls into the trap of rose-tinting the past.  Perhaps the original silent films were constrained in their imagination and plot due to lack of technology and because the art was very new, but after watching this film, my interest in silent films has been piqued.  A well-executed and well-intentioned film, Hazanavicius reminds us that sound often obscures our ability to see.

Jean Dujardin plays a famous silent film star at his peak. He is entranced by a spunky, ambitious woman, Bérénice Bejo who manages to worm her way into Hollywood and hitches her wagon to the rising star of the talkies. Dujardin on the other hand, becomes a has-been and doesn't even realize it.

Simplicity has been called the crowning reward of art; the ultimate sophistication. If you take away dialogue and noise which tend to dissemble and even take away the over-the-top gesticulations associated with silent films, what you are left with are little gestures, longing glances and lip quivers which tell you the whole story.  After so many bloated films with enormous budgets, lavish sets and costumes and self-indulgent dialogue, The Artist with its spartan aesthetic was satiating.  There is a scene when Dujardin, the famous star of a film and Bejo, a set extra are filming a scene in a room full of dancers.  We giggle when Dujardin, is so captivated by Bejo's beauty, that he absent-mindedly forgets his role and then we sigh when they forget that the camera is rolling and dance together unmindful of the rest of the world. Or a scene when Bejo, sitting in her plush luxury car secretly purchases everything put up for auction by a tired, angry and destitute Dujardin and manages to convey love, concern and guilt without having to say word.

There were a number of hat-tips to Singin' in the Rain, a film about the introduction of talking films and one of the cheekiest and most enjoyable digs at studio bosses, starlets and Hollywood in general. But I was also reminded of another film about silent films: the darker and tragic Sunset Boulevard, a critique of Hollywood's flagrant use-and-throw attitude with its people.  Dujardin's fading celebrity more closely mimicked Norma Desmond's dangerous self-obsession and inability to flow with the current than Gene Kelly's Don Lockwood who, despite being uncomfortable with the new technology, admits defeat when he sees the overwhelming response to talkies. Singin' in the Rain is a happy story because Don swallows his pride and takes diction lessons. He accepts criticism of his silent film style of acting and instead concentrates on his strengths: song and dance. Norma Desmond failed, not because she was old but because she thought she was more important than the art itself.  While this film could have captured Dujardin's catharsis better, Dujardin does a fantastic job with his character.

Truth be told, I was not swept away by the film when I watched it. It was good, it did everything right but was it enough, I wondered. But weeks after watching it, I find myself dwelling on scenes, some of which were composed like paintings or I find myself thinking of Dujardin's range as an actor or even some particularly clever title cards.  Some would say that my growing regard for the film may be related to the growing number of awards it has been racking up and because it is a very likely winner in the Best Director, Actor and Picture categories this Oscar season, but that's nonsense. This year, my heart and inconsequential vote are with Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. But then, simplicity really ought to be a more popular virtue in Hollywood and I hope that it is encouraged by suitably rewarding The Artist with golden naked men.

REVOLUTION STATE OF MIND: PART 2

The Discriminating Dissident’s Essential Movie List

1. The Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Adored by film students and dumb charades aficionados alike, The Battleship Potemkin is one of those game-changing films that, even today inspires film-makers. For the first time, film-makers took the camera off its tripod and explored angles. This film also experimented with montages and film editing techniques to maximise audience empathy.

Apart from its technical achievements, it is important to watch Potemkin in the right context. When this movie was made, the Tsar of Russia had been dead for 8 years and Stalin was consolidating his power. It is also important to remember that Potemkin was a government supported propaganda film; every single frame was designed to have the greatest emotional impact on its audience. And it achieves that objective most effectively. I haven’t felt such socialist stirrings since my Law and Poverty course in college. I began to see Rasputins, Tsar Nicholases and Stolypins among the characters that represented the Establishment.

In 1905, the worker uprising had begun. Disgruntled sailors onboard the imperial battleship, Potemkin want to join the workers. But the straw that finally broke the camel’s back was rotten meat. Putrid, maggot-ridden meat is served to the sailors in their borscht, despite their vehement protests. When the sailors refuse to eat it, the Captain threatens to have them all shot. But one sailor, Vakulinchuk makes an impassioned speech and the sailors are so moved that they take up arms. But in the ensuing fight, Vakulinchuk is killed. He instantly becomes a martyr, the man who was “killed for a plate of soup”.

So shaken are they by his death that even the people of the port town, Odessa, flock to see this martyr’s body. Suddenly, all the people who never wanted to get drawn to either side of the revolt realize that the battle lines have been drawn by Vakulinchuk’s death and have to pick a side.

The movie’s most iconic sequence, The (dreaded) Staircase of Odessa, where a robot-like troop of Cossasks brutally murder the townspeople, including women, children and the infirm is horrifying and riveting. As I watched it, I thought, “Clichés much?”: woman carrying dead son, pram with baby rolling down a set of stairs, weeping old woman, the unfeeling military types marching on relentlessly. Except, you realize that all these devices were used for the first time ever in the history of cinema. It is the cinematic equivalent of watching the creation of Adam and Eve, and it takes your breath away.

2. The Battle of Algiers (1966)

Really, do yourself a favour and don’t watch this movie. Unless you have three sleepless nights (and three ensuing unable-to-work days) to spare. Damn you, Gillo Pontecorvo with your exquisite film-making technique and Ennio Morricone with your haunting soundtrack. If that scene where a man is tortured to reveal an insurgent hideout and then just sits there, with his dark, tear-filled eyes burning with hate and shame for himself keeps me awake for one more night, you will owe me a job.

Often called the greatest revolution movie ever made, The Battle of Algiers is about clashes in the city of Algiers between the native Algerians (a mostly Arab population) and French settlers during the Algerian War of Independence. But the depiction is so brutally realistic that it could have been a revolutionary war set anywhere in the world, at any point in history. In fact, the Holy Wikipedia says that this movie is regularly screened for counter-revolutionary and armed forces personnel to understand the nature of guerilla warfare.

Perhaps the most refreshing feature about this movie was that, it practically danced on a knife edge between the two sides. The movie never makes any sort of judgment about whose reasons for murder and arson were better. You do what you do for what you believe in, and you must accept all the consequences (this is precisely why I excluded movies about revolutionaries in this series; film-makers often get infatuated by their characters and feel compelled to rose-tint them a little bit).

War is not pretty and rarely fair. I believe it was Chairman Mao who said, “Revolution is not a tea party”, and how right he was. If you watch this film expecting some sort of justification for armed rebellion or torture by armed forces, expect none. This movie was designed to make you uncomfortable about any side you pick, because there are always consequences. Innocent infants and mute spectators die on both sides and fresh-faced, earnest young men are among the guerillas and the soldiers. The revolution leader is a brilliant strategist who makes zero moving speeches five minutes before the climax and the head of the counter-revolutionary force is not the standard issue army sadist (I’m looking at you, Colonel Quaritch), but was once part of the French Resistance himself.

A number of scenes are bound to strike a chord, even today. The water boarding scenes and some scenes which were awfully reminiscent of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, are a reminder that more than 50 years later, almost nothing has changed.

3. The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006)

If you were in a rebel army and found a traitor in your midst, you would have him shot, right? But what if the traitor was your lifelong friend? Or your brother? What of your principles then? This pain of so many families and friends opposing each other during the Irish Civil War in the early 1920s is not an uncommon theme in Irish literature.

The Wind that Shakes the Barley is the story of two brothers, Teddy and Damien who are leaders of a brigade in the Irish Republican Army (IRA). But once the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 is signed, they find themselves on opposite sides. Although sympathetic to the IRA and their demands of complete independence, this movie’s great strength was the heart it brought into a political event. The feuding brothers are an obvious allegory of the Irish Civil War, but that doesn’t make their relationship clunky or unsubtle, but their affection for each other and the strength of their convictions are extremely believable.

I always assumed that the British soldiers were dickish towards only brown people and orientals. However, if this movie is anything to go by, apparently this was a general attitude problem in the British army. Say what you will, but they really knew how to work their divide and rule policies. An enemy who is different is easily opposed. But fighting your neighbours and third cousins? Messy. They let the IRA have everything within an inch of their demands, then sat back and watched them destroy themselves over that inch. Some felt that this was a chance for peace in Ireland; others felt that this was just putting a calico frock and lipstick on a pig. And this sort of thing happens on a regular basis. The Suffragette movement in Britain, the Indian National Movement and so many others suffered the same problem. Everybody starts off with the same oaths of freedom and liberty, except, nobody can actually agree on what those words mean.

I’ll leave you to ponder these perturbing questions over a hearty Irish rebel song.