Take Shelter

Something wicked, this way comes

The ancient Greeks would love Curtis LaRouche. He is the quintessential great man with the one tragic flaw. Unfortunately for Curtis, he inhabits a contemporary mid-western American town, where his paranoia and misgivings are not a tragedy but a potential prophecy/lunacy.

Curtis is an ideal protagonist. He is a loving husband and a compassionate father. A good friend and a smart worker, an upright pillar of the community. And yet, something sinister is stirring under the idyllic of the american dream. Or at least Curtis believes so. Bedevilled by dreams and hallucinations of impending doom that he cant shake off, Curtis is driven towards building a storm shelter for his family. He is using his very limited resources towards an enterprise that nobody, including his wife, thinks makes any sense.

Its difficult to surmise whether the film works as a metaphor, or is simply a study on human reactions to stressful situations. But the dread of the unknown works very well, as a statement of our times. Curtis feels a cataclysm coming, one that nobody is prepared for. He feels it in his bones. Showers of oil inhabit his dreams. He stands transfixed by the dance of starling murmurations. Thunderclaps and lightning are always lurking in his increasingly fragile mind.

Is his state of mind a muddy reflection of our own in these very trying times? I think so. The world has become unpredictable. Natural and financial catastrophes have blindsided us so often that most of us feel unprepared for whats to come, no matter our station. Like Curtis, we too have begun to question the nature of our alliances. We may not feel compelled to address it, but the film gives voice to an ineluctable sense of doom that pervades the air these days. As Curtis spends his time cleaning and mending the storm shelter, one wonders if the JFK generation felt a similar chill of uncertainty during the Cuban Missle Crisis? Will we survive the way they did? Or was the shelter locked down only to be opened again, this time for good?

Michael Shannon churns out another tortured performance as Curtis. The movie is often slow, but his natural brilliance along with the beautiful and very talented Jessica Chastain(Tree of Life) keep you riveted nonetheless. Something about Chastain's earthy eyes can lift even the darkest gloom. And we thank her for it.

Curtis thinks a storm is coming, the likes of which we have never seen. His friends and family think he's gone off the bend. They're probably right. But if they're not, one thing is certain. No one is prepared.

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.

Dear Zachary

'Is there anything you would like to say to Zachary?'

How do i review this?

Let me start by saying that this is not a movie. Its not even a documentary. Its a memoir and a letter. Its an attempt to capture the fading memories of a dead friend, a beloved son, a respected colleague, a flesh and blood human being whose violent death has created an emotional vacuum that should normally have been filled with rushing anger and bitterness, even a lasting hatred.

What you see instead is something incredible. You see a clear line being drawn in the sand; between good and evil in our world. You see circumstances shatter and shake all beams of reality, and then you see different people fill in those vacuums differently. While some expand into luminous beacons of humanity, others grow hollower by the day, until they are consumed by the echoes of their own vacant words.

I will fail miserably to review this, so i will not even try anymore. One can review a film, because it is reviewing the structure and execution of a perspective. One cannot review life, for it will always astonish you with its vastness, with the richness and depth of its color, and the black abyss of its madness. I wish there was a tangible takeaway from this viewing. A deeper understanding of why anything happens at all. But in the end, there's only what you have experienced. There's only what you have seen.

Go watch it. Thats all i can say.

Netflix Movie of the Week: 12/3/10

Crimes and Misdemeanors by Woody Allen

Only half of 'Crimes and Misdemeanors' plays out the way it sounds or vaguely promises. You walk into it hoping for scoundrels and damsels. You expect capers and glib social innuendos. Perhaps even a clever bank heist, Woody Allen style, dripping with wry humor and scheming cons.

Well, no, this is not one of those movies.

CnM in fact is an uneasy alliance between two parallel story arcs, that meet only once, not as a plot device, but as an exclamation point of resounding volume. Its a disturbing confluence of criminal tragedy and romantic comedy. The stressful drama unfolds in the life of a successful opthamologist (Martin Landau) whose mistress of the past few years (Anjelica Huston) has had enough of sitting on the sidelines. She does not want to share Landau anymore, and is willing to go to any extreme to achieve that goal. The oddly endearing comic relief is provided by Allen himself, a middle aged documentary maker who yearns for the affection of a kindred spirit and fellow artist (Mia Farrow), while getting increasingly distant from his uninterested and disappointed wife.

The genius of Woody Allen's work is in portraying the every day life with such precision that the pathos of it's characters seeps into you like water in sand. As a conflicted Landau struggles to deal with the increasingly neurotic and insecure Huston, you often find yourself taking his place and dreading it. As he slowly unravels in the face of the constant threat that could utterly destroy his life, his family, his career, you find yourself admonishing him under your breath for his indiscretions and infidelity, at the same time thanking the Universe for not placing you in his cursed shoes.

While we watch Landau's fall from grace with increasing discomfort, Allen's own dilemmas leave you wishing for a happy ending for the despondent filmmaker. Not only does his wife have no love or respect for his non-commercial work, he finds himself constantly pit against his arch-nemesis, the wildly successful brother-in-law (the great Alan Alda). Allen's Cliff sticks to his principles and integrity inspite of being constantly upended in love and glory by the maverick Alda. You root for him till the very end, even as he sits confused and defeated, unable to find a single ray of light to brighten his derailed life. Of course, how Landau's guilt ridden opthamologist fits into this end is what Woody Allen and the film is all about. As expected, Allen leaves you with more questions than answers, with a faint hope that the truth lies somewhere between the crimes and misdemeanors of human existence. Nobody portrays the irrationality of life in cinema, without being cinematic, better than Woody Allen. And here, he's at the top of his game.