Category: spotlight films

The Broad Canvas

“You don’t know what I can do, what I’m gonna do, or what I’m gonna be! I’m good! I have good things that you don’t know about! I’m gonna be something! I am! And don’t f*#@ing tell me I’m not!”

A very young Mark Wahlberg blurts out these lines to his mother when he leaves home. It not only speaks of the determination of the protagonist but sets the tone for Boogie Nights. More poignantly, it reveals the canvas of Paul Thomas Anderson’s existential artistry: he likes to back characters who are down on their luck but have the pluck to beef it out in the big bad world.

The Setting

Set in the late seventies in the twilight of the porn-film industry (as opposed to porn videos) this is an early work of Anderson’s that hits home with audiences and critics alike. It’s about the sexual counterculture that besieges Hollywood and America in the seventies, and the manipulative forces that emerge to transform middle-class drudgery into attainable hedonism.

The Story

Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) a dishwasher in a Hollywood nightclub is fortuitously discovered by a pornographer, Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds). Jack has a coterie of porn stars who feed off his enterprise, but Eddie, renamed Dirk Diggler, becomes the main attraction.

Burt Reynolds plays a poor man’s Hugh Hefner with a detached sensibility towards brandished sex. He lives with Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), a former housewife and porn star, but is more interested in achieving an artistic high for this derided film genre. Amber, who is a cocaine addict, pines for her child (who is with her ex-husband), and slowly becomes a surrogate parent to Eddie, who is somewhat lost in the catapult of his own success.

Don Cheadle, William H. Macy and Luiz Guzman play key characters to capture Hollywood second-stringers of the time. Heather Graham’s, Rollergirl act, even having sex with skates on, is perhaps intended to deliberately titilate, remind us of the elusiveness of conquest, and capture the infantile fetishism of the sexual act.

Final Note

This film is based on a short film made by Anderson (written and directed) in 1988 called the The Dirk Diggler Story. The character is based on real life porn-star, John Holmes.

THE BROAD CANVAS:

This film made a deep impression on me, especially about the wonders of natural life that thrive in the oceans. Next time I am on a beach I will look at every shell or crustacean with a new sensibility: how each mollusc or shellfish has its own fascinating and fragile life story.  And how each of these stories have a meaning in creating the fine balance of life on this planet.

THE BACKGROUND:

Craig Foster, a documentary filmmaker, suffering burnout and creative block, returns to his childhood home at the southernmost tip of South Africa. He begins diving without a wetsuit or oxygen tank in the shallow kelp forests (a beautiful setting) nearby in order to rejuvenate himself. While observing the undersea life he is soon fascinated by a particular octopus, and he decides to track its life on a daily basis: its den and hiding places, how it hunts down its preys, and how it adroitly escapes attacks from pyjama sharks.

THE STORY:

This story is about the special bond that slowly develops between Foster and the octopus. The picturization of their how their friendship develops: initially sceptical, the slow building of trust, and then trusting enough for the octopus to climb onto Craig’s arm and venturing away from its den, is riveting.

This unlikely relationship is all the more fascinating because humans have almost nothing in common with octopuses; not even our eyes, which apparently evolved from a different evolutionary strain. It is actually a soft-bodied mollusc, which can transform into a solid without a skeleton, or even become palpably liquid! Most of its brain is lodged in its tentacles, and it can change colour, shape and movement in almost a trice. This evolutionary diversion from humans happened so long ago that octopuses appear to be almost alien-like to humans. There is an otherworldly quality about their form which both intrigues and fascinates us.

FINAL COMMENT:

The film-makers do get carried away by the ‘otherworldly’ nature of the subject and emotional angle of the story: these prevent it from becoming a classic documentary on octopuses. But that is exactly the reason why I rate this to be a great film for all audiences.

THE MOVIE:

Martin’s Scorsese’s film Silence is an intensely powerful film which forces to us look deep within ourselves: faith, purpose, emotions, morality and the choices we make. The film is a sensorial experience that needs to be relished with a personalized dose of reflection and contemplation.

THE DIRECTOR:

We all known Scorsese as a master-director who has rarely made a bad film. He studied to become a priest, but luckily for us film-buffs, he unleashed his talents upon the world of movie-making. Unlike his other films about crime, mafia, showbiz and glitz, this film seems intensely personal.

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

The film is based on the 1966 novel by Shûsaku Endô. In 17th century Japan, where Christianity was forbidden, intrepid Jesuits priests sought to spread their faith. The film poses many questions surrounding faith, religious conversion, and the (lack of) omnipresence of god. It is almost Buddhist in spirit: the soul of a seeker looking for an answer.

THE MAIN CHARACTER(S):

Two padres from Portugal (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) look for their mentor (Liam Neeson) who is supposed to have committed apostasy by stepping on the image of Christ, under duress from local Japanese officials. Issei Ogata plays an official in charge of eradicating Christianity from Japan and he torments the priests with extreme torture and humiliation.

Garfield excels in bearing all the punishment and pondering over the meaning and mercy of god. Is god indifferent to suffering? Can a man renounce god and still find a way to salvation? There are references to Christ suffering on the cross. There are many more questions, including some from the Japanese point of view: why should I stop believing in my god? I am perfectly happy with him.

MY IMPRESSIONS:

The movie is a prayer to silence. Instead of music it uses sea-waves, wind in the grass, crackling firewood, burning flesh and other such nuances to establish the setting required for deep reflection. The movie is a visual beauty which appears to magnify the contrast of the sufferings depicted in the film. No wonder that it was an Oscar nominee for Best Achievement in Cinematography.

If you enjoy reflective, soul-searching sagas that question the purpose of life on earth, you will not be disappointed.

THE MOVIE:

Recently I had a chance to watch Capernaum – a Lebanese, award winning film, directed by the very talented Nadine Labaki, who has rendered a thought-provoking and audacious drama of lives in relentless chaos in the backstreets of Beirut.

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

The film is about a street-smart, quick-witted, and hardened 12-year-old boy, who runs away from his negligent parents, commits a violent crime, and is sentenced to five years in jail. In the end he sues his parents to protest the life they have given him.

THE MAIN CHARACTER(S):

The protagonist, Zain (Zain Alrafeea), an immensely likeable kid with an unsmiling face, fights tooth and nail against all forms of injustice that Lebanese society metes out: his family, his friends, strangers and even the government. Two other characters stand out: Ethiopian refugee, Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw) and her baby son Yonas (Boluwatife Treasure Bankole). This toddler is the best baby-actor, ever!

MY IMPRESSIONS:

There is something of Twain’s Huck Finn about Zain— a wily, footloose, and imaginative boy whose wanderings illuminate the absurdities and horrors of the larger world. He’s also, in circumstance if not in attitude, like a Dickensian hero navigating a metropolis where poverty and cruelty threaten to overwhelm kindness and fellow feeling. The sorrow inherent in this tale would be unbearable without the film’s flashes of humour and performances by a cast of non-professional actors that are both realistic and intense.

Watch this if you enjoy taking a deep dive into realistic life struggles of other cultures.