The Tree of Life

What is our faith based on, when the roar of a waterfall can drown our prayers for help? What do our questions matter, when entire galaxies are being created and crushed on an incomprehensible scale all around us? What is the value to our pain, the depth of our loss, the tragedy of our mistakes, when our lives are but a cosmic blink. Mallick wonders about these, much like his characters, who speak more through silence and reflection than through dialogue. A son has died, a brother has been lost, and human questions rise like smoke in whispers, trying hard to be heard, searching for sense through the cold magnificence of nature. The mother who wants to fly with grace and love, finds herself bound to the ground heavy with grief. The father who respects nature as much as he fears it, only occasional sorrow breaking the stony facade to reveal a sliver of grace. The brother, who mourns the early loss of innocence, and carries it through his life, meanders a lonesome landscape looking for the same answers to the meaning of life and death as we all do.

What is profound about Mallick's evocative labor of love is how he tries to put the miseries and triumphs of the human experience in context to our place in the Universe, without making them seem insignificant. You are awed by the spectacle of the birth and evolution of cosmos, and our solar neighborhood, even the little rock we call home. And yet, it doesnt eviscerate the dull pain you experience for the family. You ask the same questions, in the same hushed tones, with the quiet frustrating knowledge that no answers are forthcoming.

'The Tree of Life' is not flawless by a long shot. The vagueness of art is more suited to music than to movies, given to seemingly irrelevant stretches. But that is also what makes it an experience of note unlike any other. It seemed like a worded rendition of Koyaanisqatsi. Some will love it, others will walk out on it, both will not completely comprehend it. That in itself is worth the price of admission.

The Secret in their Eyes

This is a wonderful lazy-weekend fare. TSITE is neither your joyous romantic comedy, nor your assault-the-senses action flick. Its an Argentinian piece of art that makes you wish you intimately understood their language and were familiar with their mannerisms, even if only for a couple of hours. It tastes like old wine, with a flavor that is distinctly cultural and a flow that is effortless as it weaves between love hate and horror. Im afraid speaking too broadly of the plot might give too much away. So i'll restrict myself to what i liked about this movie.

To start with, it feels terribly old school, but in a good way. There is direction here that is comfortable, yet unpredictable. It never gets in the way of the characters or the story, and the director's steady hand keeps it from becoming a hyperbolic Hollywood disaster. The characters are everything here. Their eyes speak volumes, as they should given the title. Your cinematic conditioning expects them to react differently than they do. It is only later you realize that you would probably react the same way. Although this is a thriller of high order and electric tension, it is Campanella's tender questioning of the meaning of love and its consequences, that shines as well as frightens through this beautifully executed film.

Great movies not only entertain, but stay with you, like the aftertaste of that great wine you just had. This one will have you smacking your lips for days to come.

Spartacus: Guts, Glory and Boobies

Rome. The word conjures images of armored soldiers in red tunics, prime politicians under flowing togas, and a suppressed proletariat living on scraps. A city that rose from a predominantly warrior class to the first Pan-European Empire. Birthplace of the conceptual republic and home to the most brutal dictators to ever rule the world. But one image lends itself to the idea of Rome more than others. The image of the Colosseum brimming with hordes of ecstatic Romans, screaming for blood.

Nothing epitomizes the Roman lust for action more than their reverence and hatred of the Gladiators. Picked up as slaves from defeated colonies, all Gladiators were reviled uniformly. They had to earn their respect, and seldom their freedom, by walking over the butchered bodies of the fallen in the arena. The only way out of the hell of slavery and certain death was to elevate yourself to the status of God, by satiating the blood-thirsty crowds.

'Spartacus: Blood and Sand/Gods of the arena' is about these Gods amongst men. The series is based loosely on the story of Spartacus, a gladiator whose battles against the Roman Legions sent tremors through the very corridors of power in Rome and reverberated across the vast Republic. It chronicles the beginnings of the servile revolt, and does it with such panache and color that you begin to wonder if such a society ever existed. For the Rome depicted is exotic and extreme. It is a society so overflowing with life that nothing seems strange after a while. Absent any organized religion, the pagan Romans are decadent only in their actions, not in their culture. While sex and nudity seem no stranger than eating or walking in this pre-Christian era, the politics and treachery remind us that lust for power is not endemic to regions or cultures but innate to individuals.

The story centers around the ludus (training school for gladiators) of one Lentulus Batiatus. The House of Batiatus has been in decline, the former champions of the arena a distant dusty memory on the undecorated walls of the mansion. While the scheming Batiatus and his equally venal yet voluptuous wife oversee the training grounds from a safe height, the souls and stories of the slaves training to become worthy gladiators forms the real heart of this series. While the halls above reek with depraved machinations, hard won honor is often found in the grime of the ludus below. It is in the ludus that Spartacus gets molded into the legend he will be one day. And it is an epic journey to be on with him.

This is a first rate action series with some brilliant plots and characters and wonderful creative direction, no doubt taking cues from worthy predecessors like HBO's Rome and Snyder's '300'. I would definitely recommend watching 'Blood and Sand' before 'Gods of the Arena'. Once you move past the weak first episode, the rest quickly becomes a delicious ride into a time and space that once was, and perhaps will be again some day.

And oh, dont let the nudity distract you. After a while, you'll wonder why you thought it was odd in the first place. Have fun in the arena.

Network

Best.Movie.Ever.

Thats why nobody remembers it. You'll not see it featured on any premier cable channel. Nobody will reminisce about Chayefsky's devastating screenplay or Finch's self-incriminating powerhouse performance, except to maybe compare it with Ledger's Joker for the haunting madness of their roles that landed them posthumous Oscars. Its a forgotten gem, truth fortified in stone and dropped into the lake of celluloid obscurity. Perhaps its just as well, for its characters often threaten an unwelcome dislocation into real life. In the iconic scene, where Finch's Beale goes mad as a hatter on live television, you see him walk slowly and deliberately off the stage, like a stalking Velociraptor, sending his crew scurrying for cover. The entire film moves that way, sometimes walking right into your living room, trying to shake you out of your stupor.

I am afraid of this movie. I am afraid to review it, ink my thoughts on it. I am afraid i might find the language of television emerge through the heart of what i have to say. I am afraid i cannot think about it, or anything else for that matter, without donning the mask of some on-screen character first. I am afraid we are all mad. Not as hell. Simply mad. Lost and hypnotized. Having the script of our lives read out to us. Terrified by our own thoughts, always seeking validation from the alternative reality only a remote click away. I am afraid Mr. Beale, were he alive, would address me thus:

"We deal in *illusions*, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds... We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even *think* like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! *WE* are the illusion!"

~ Howard Beale, the mad prophet denouncing the hyporcrisies of our time.