Whose tower of Babel?

Watching a bunch of movies around the Osacr flurry can be a bit taxing, but films such as "Babel" and "The Departed" do excite one about the interesting possibilities of cinema as a medium. A medium that encompasses every conceivable artistic possibility. Let me take a look at "Babel" first.

Being aware of the fact that "Babel" is part of the trilogy that the Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu started with "Amores Perros," the non-linear style and grammar of the film was predictable. Still, it packed tremendous amount of cinematic punch. I was amazed by the intricately woven layers - both in terms of the content and form. Do we miss human performance in this grammatically amusing cienmatic marvel? Not at all. All the actors, including most of the amateurs, did fabulously well. Though it received quite a number of nominations, there were justified speculations that Alejandro might not be succesful because of the repetition of narrative style.

I might sound stupid if I say that the story is about a minor, innocent shooting incident in the inaccessible hills of Morocco, its trans-national links and the related socio-political and cultural contexts. In fact that is the one line story one can narrate. However, it can be deconstructed and viewed from as many perspectives as one might want to. I, for instance, watched it from the perspective of the war against terror, in which real people are forgotten and how paranoia and excessively speculative reponses and conspiracy theories place citizens' rights below the State's priorities. How simple solutions skip the minds of the powers-that-be and how everything related to a Muslim state and a gun assumes stupidly complicated proportions. I wouldn't want to let out more on that because that will kill the possibilities of watching this great movie.

To me, the movie is also about the connectedness of the world and how the poor and politically powerless in this world pays for this connectedness. It is also about the failure of established systems and how the people and things that you truly despise in your life comes to your rescue. It is about the servile existence of majority of people to a simple minority of the powerful and the rich; about the fallacies of nationhood, good deeds and so on. In fact, I can go on and on looking at the different layers. The engineering precision with which he packs the layers of events against time and geography is simply brilliant. We have seen this before, but this one is impeccable.

Alejandro, who stunned us with "21 Grams" three years ago, literally overwhelms us with his cerebral creativity and cinematic competence. The use of silence, static shots and close ups, excellent use of the lenses (look out for the scenes of abandonment and helplessness of on the US-Mexican border) the artistically calibrated length of shots and the deft mix of fidgety and steady shots make the movie extremely interesting.

Among the performances, I was particularly impressed by the Mexican actress Adrianna Barraza. She literally lives the disempowerment that countless Mexican illegal immigrants experience in the US. Do watch out for her. She is a veteran. An equally interesting performance is that of Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi, another powerhouse to watch out for. Cate Blanchet and Brad Pitt, the lead performers, do justice to their roles.

Babel also signifies a new quality in film writing. Guillermo Arriga, who has written Alejandro's earlier works, redefines the art of screenplay writing. It is itense, intelleigent and has a very high literary quality. In about 140 minutes, if a film can take one through the creative stress of an interesting work of fiction, its worth a watch and a difficult piece to write.

By the way, Alejandro was a DJ in Mexico before he studied cinema. Is it a give away on his style. Anyway, he was not the one who started it. The most complicated of them all was "Memento" which demonstrated structural engineering in films followed by Gus Van Sant's "Elephant", which won two top honours at 2003 Cannes festival.

Why rip, mix and play? coz Alejandro met Derrida

Nearly two decades ago, a writer-friend introduced me to Jacquez Derrida, the Algerian-French philosopher and the proponent of deconstruction (of course not the man, but his work). I remember, deconstruction was the centre of post modern intellectual discourse those days and soiled photocopies of Derrida made the rounds in the smoke-filled coffee houses and university campuses in India.

Ragged youth who betted on a new linguistic, literary and art culture, as well as polished urban fringe intellectuals dropped Derrida, post-modernism and deconstruction at the drop of a hat. Curiosity and the need to stay contemporary compelled me to read a bit of post modernism as well. I read a bit of Derrida, Roland Barthes and semiotics and tried to apply them in some things I was doing. I also read post-modern literary pieces including some from my native language, Malayalam. My reading led to a lot confusion and lot of clarity as well. I was overwhelmed by the intellecutal intensity of some of these Western philosophers and was excited about a new way of analytical reading of just about everything - written words, art, cinema, paintings and anything that has meaning.

As Harvard scholar Barbara Johnson (1981), wrote, deconstruction is a specific kind of analytical "reading": “Deconstruction is in fact much closer to the original meaning of the word 'analysis' itself, which etymologically means "to undo" — a virtual synonym for "to de-construct." ... If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is not the text, but the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another. A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyzes the specificity of a text's critical difference from itself. (verbatim from Wikepedia)

During the last 17 years of my professional life, I have heard this term used mostly out of context and without meaning, particularly by the urban gender and development specialists. Deconstruction as an english world. Not too sure if they really knew that there was an extremely thought-provoking discourse behind the word. Anyway that is not the main issue here.

Why do I write about deconstruction now? Because, it is the most relevant concept to describe the present world. A world, where success comes from how best one does what I described above: rip, mix and play. By being non-linear.

It's a non-linear world. Here logic does not travel in a straight line and the meaning does not belong to the creator, but the reader. Here vertical does not meet only the horizontal, but the vertical itself or, the vertical becomes the horizontal. During the post-modern, deconstruction discourse days I did understand that one could read a book in several different ways conjuring up a dozen different perceptions and meanings. My abstract painter friend, Achutan Kudallur told me that one does not explain an abstract painting to one's audience. It is up to you. You create your meaning. You rip, mix and play. In the current world, it is the order. If one does not follow that order, one is out of sync with the present world.

The first line of citizens in the world seem to belong to that world - both in terms of creation and consumption. A periodical like the "Wired", hugely succesful business models such as "Google" and "iTunes", public content behemoths such as "wikipedia", Internet TV streamers such as Joost and film-makers such as Alejandro González Iñárritu. Extremely high quality intellect and absolute intolerance to mediocrity seems to be the underlying principle of this new world order.

Reading things in context, reading different meanings in different situations, creating one's own out of somebody else's creation, packing a million light years in a three minute music video, leaving broadcast-freedom to a million private homes, creating movies that can be read in multiple layers, installing art in several dimensions and different media - the world is in a deconstruction mode. And I call this rip, mix and play world.

Of course, there were people who heralded this world order ahead of their times: Derrida perhaps saw this coming; Merce Cunningham perhaps was bored of linear style of dancing and noted Malayalam writer Anand perhaps thought of applying principles of engineering to his work.

And what do we do with the fossilised, incompetent old minds? The will cut and paste before they are edged out by sheer intellectual enterprises.

Hollywood's picnic in Africa continues

After quite a wait, I could finally get to watch one of my favourite actors, Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin, the earstwhile dictator of Uganda, in "The Last King of Scotland". I was really curious about the title: what is the connection between Uganada and Scotland and that too a "King" from "Scotland"?

In this movie, Forest Whitaker is brilliant and is true to the tagline: charming, magnetic, murderous. His arresting performance, replete with subtle nuances in mannersims, idiosyncrasies and the intelligent use of his hulking frame to recreate a real character, who has been featured on celluloid many times earlier, is the highlight of this straightforward film. The story is about Idi Amin's notorious regime in Uganda in the 70s, woven around the strange relationship between him and his Scottish physician Nicholas Garrigan, played by James McAvoy, the young Scottish actor whom we saw last in the "Chronicles of Narnia". James had done a brilliant job too bringing to screen a heady mix of boyish exuberance, sexual adventure (he ends up having sex with one of the wives of Idi Amin), compassion and the fear of a dreaded despot. The only other known face in this film is X-filer Gillian Anderson, who plays the insignifcant role of a fellow doctor. For a change, she looks haggard and fragile.

The film is well written and has a style that evokes curiosity, emotional engagement and fear. The grammar seemed appropriate: wide angle lenses which the characters dramatically walk into at the right situations; handheld shots for scenes that are tense and fearful, unsteady shots when things really go out of control; intelligent use of sound and cuts that are surgically precise.

The background elements that are elaborately and carefully reconstructed with the detailed properties, costumes and people, are not excessively brought upfront - the subtle nuanced style of context-setting. A huge of amount of painstaking details fill the background so that the settings and situations look authentic.

The film also symobolises the new style of film making: films that have a casual elegance about them and films, though richly detailed, that don't make a fuss about being detailed. One can sense a carefully calibrated colour scheme and good use of DI; unconventional shooting schemes that involve hundreds of people filling the scenes, and a large number of vividly detailed characters. Personally, I felt the shooting style was similar to that of The Constant Gardener, directed my current favourite Fernando Meirelles. This Brazilian director, who surprised the world with his "City of God", has devised a style that moves away from the "start-action-cut" routine and uses minimal paraphernalia so that film-making can unobtrusively move to real settings capturing exciting subtexts and unpredictable texture. Many directors now creatively use the intrigue that a slightly shaky handheld can create (by the way the hand held shots in the Indian movie, "Guru" were painful and pretentious). Remember those shaky action shots in "Bourne Identity"?

The "Last King of Scotland" is also about Africa and how native pride is grossly exploited by megalomaniac, blood thirsty despots.

Africa and Africans are increasingly becoming a mainstream Hollywood theme and the production houses are making money too. In the recent past we saw "Black Hawk...", 'Hotel Rwanda" and "Shotting the Dogs" followed by "Constant Gardener" "Blood Diamond"and "Catch a Fire". Perhaps Africa, its ragged and exotic looks, despots, violence, AK-47s, gore, genocide, poverty-stricken people and a few white characters make a good box office mix.

(Disclaimer: I am not too sure if the story is fictitious or real. The film claims to have been inspired by real characters and real incidents. However, in a report in The Herald Tribune on the premiere of the film in Kampala, I have read that the relationship between Amin and Nicholas is fictitious. Perhaps somebody can clarify)

The tree at the bay in Maluka province, Indonesia felt lonely

For 12 years, I was a low paid news-nomad equipped with an eager mind, a thoughtful heart and an adolescent commitment to social change. As a close colleague told me those days, the newspaper I was working for in Chennai was an unparalleled platform for advocating change and my salary, an incentive for public service. I immensely enjoyed those days of journalism and writing - a great learning experience and a journey that taught me what real India was. It was also a journey in which I met thousands of extremely interesting people from across the world whom I wouldn't have met otherwise. They shaped my perspectives, my life and my knowledge. The language I tried to produce was based on scientific evidence and was soaked in reality.

An early encounter I had in this journey was with an emerging health challenge that was spreading fear and panic: the HIV/AIDS epidemic. That was in 1991, five years since the virus was detected in India. Since then, I have been travelling with the epidemic, both as a journalist and as a human being. A large number of my friends, women and men, are people living with HIV/AIDS. While some of them died, some of them are living valiant lives. I learned the meaning of resilience and triumph of human spirit from them. I still continue my journey with the epidemic, closely observing the pathways of its spread and its impact on people.

Six years ago, I left journalism and joined the international development sector. It was the beginning of a new learning experience. New skills, new acquaintances and exciting new opportunities. However, a few months ago, I realised I had stopped writing and my instincts and skills have begun to atrophy. The question before me was, whether I go back to the print media or create something of my own.

Luckily, I am living in a world of Google, YouTube and iTunes - a world in which the new unavoidable element we ought to consume to be valid and alive is called bandwidth. It is cheap and universal. So here I am, back to writing. This time, I need to call it blogging. As digital guru Nicholas Negroponte says in his seminal work "Being Digital", when there are bits, why do I need atoms?

Photo credit: G. Pramod Kumar, 2006