A ‘free solo’ climbs mountains alone without ropes. Only 1% of whose who climb are free soloists. And as there is zero margin for error, there are many who die. Not a life that most of us lead. And yet, the greatest achievement of Free Solo is that we cannot not ask the same questions for ourselves that the documentary asks about Alex Honnold. What does he seek out of life? How does he regard death? And how does living life on the razor’s edge -where he could die any moment- impact his overall life ? And that is what makes ‘Free Solo’ such a compelling watch. You will ask the same questions about your own life, even when his life is so different from yours. We all have our own mountains to climb. Known only to us. As of October 2021, in India, Free Solo is available for viewing here
The Age of Samurai – Blood-soaked and Insight-rich
Japan in the Sengoku period (1457-1615) was a living hell. There was no central rule. The country was at the mercy of warlords, who were answerable to nobody. They waged battles for power and glory. This time was also called the Age of Warring States. A time of civil war, social turmoil, and political machinations. The Age of Samurai – Battle for Japan is a docuseries that covers this scramble for power and glory. The life and death of three warrior leaders – Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu – and their fluctuating fortunes forms the main narrative. All three warrior-leaders are ruthless on the battlefield, but this is not where their ultimate destiny is forged. It is the choices they make in unguarded moments – discretionary choices – that turn out to have a bigger impact. For Oda Nobunaga, it turns out to be how he treats his subordinates. For Toyotomi, it turns out to be the next thing to do after the war is won and the world is at his feet. Leaders,no matter what the field,…
Five Great Movies
There is a language of cinema. I don’t quite understand it. Am not a movie buff, but I can go to great lengths to identify movies that I will savour. Critically acclaimed movies or underrated gems, that’s what I seek. Here are a few movies I saw recently, all foreign-language. Bicycle Thieves Can viewers experience cinematic purity? Be literally pulled into the movie because the movie-maker wants nothing to come in the way. Vittorio De Sica achieves this feat in Bicycle Thieves. Maria pawns the family bedsheets so that her husband Antonio can get back his pawned bicycle, the only requirement for securing the job of sticking posters across Rome. It is the first day of work. Antonio leaves his son, Bruno at school and starts his work. When he has climbed atop a ladder for pasting a poster, a thief steals his bicycle. Anotonio gives chase, but fails to catch the thief. Without the bicycle, Antonio has literally nothing to fall back on. He decides to comb the entire city along with Bruno in search of the stolen bicycle.…
A Man for All Seasons
Leadership is a foul-weather job, said Peter Drucker. Indeed it is. As a global pandemic demands the best leadership calls to be made, we find that the unheralded few have done an exceptional job. Mongolia as a country is one of them. Jacinda Ardern as a leader is another. The vast majority of countries and leaders have middling results so far. Watching ‘A Man for All Seasons’, the meaning of the words integrity and conscience glow like a dying ember. Thomas More, like Socrates before him chose to die. For integrity. To heed the call of conscience. What are such people driven by? What impact do they have in the Human story? As most present-day leaders flounder, is it a coincidence that we don’t hear words like integrity and conscience being used? Are they beyond the reach of most people? Not really. It’s just a matter of couple of hours. A Man for All Seasons won 4 awards at the 1967 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor. Beautiful movie.
Thappad : A movie for men too
Thappad is a movie that invites men to reflect on their role in making a society that gives women a raw deal. A husband slaps his wife and she has an epiphany. She realises this is not the life she had signed up for. And that she no longer loves her husband. The husband tries to use the law to get her back from her parents place. She decides to file for divorce. And finds that everyone wants her to let it go because it was just one slap. The movie shows how difficult it is for the social world around the wife to accept her decision. The movie ends with searching questions about the meaning of life, love and togetherness. Facing upto these questions is a tremendous act of courage for both women and men. Rainer Maria Rilke invites us on the other side when we surrender ourselves to loving compassion. Watch the movie.
Three Great Movies For The Connoisseurs
Watching Cinema is an existential experience. What you make of it is upto you. There are tastes that cater to everybody across the spectrum. I enjoy great cinema though I don’t understand it in one go. Sometimes not even the second time. What stays with me is the feeling of having experienced something sublime and just out of reach; with the invitation to reach out more, to dive in deeper. Foreign language cinema adds the allure of a different culture, a different worldview, a different time. And yet, there is a touch of the Universal and the Timeless that helps us forge a connection. Here are three movies – only for the connoisseurs. Those who can indulge the filmmaker, seek out the vision, and persevere for personal meaning. Once upon a time in Anatolia – The storyline is deceptively simple. A group of people are searching for a dead body along the Anatolian landscape. The murderers have confessed and all that remains is to pinpoint where they have buried their victim. The movie spans the entire night in which the…
Movies : Elle – Isabelle Huppert’s magnificent performance
We harbour notions about how a movie on rape & sexual violence will be. Elle, the French movie brushes them aside; totally subverting the viewer model we have on such a sensitive subject. The moral purists may not appreciate it. But such is the mesmerising power of Isabelle Huppert, the actress in the role of Michele, that we are held in thrall by her and contend with the existential reality. Michele, the fifty-something CEO of a gaming company, is raped by a masked man in the opening scene. Everything else that follows goes against the grain, deviates from the expected proceedings. Michele does not report to the police. There is an air of nonchalance in the way she breaks the news to a few friends – as a part of dinner table small talk. She does not even actively seek to find the rapist – till he starts to needle her. And even when she starts the search, she does not let it become an obsession. Far from it, it is just something to tackle, that’s it. In short, Michele refuses…
Dunkirk : Hope amidst despair
On the deck of the boat, the British soldier anxiously asks Peter how George is doing. He doesn’t know that George lies dead on the lower deck. How did he die? Peter is seething inside. How dare you ask, his eyes speak. After all, he knows that this soldier, their own soldier, owes his very life to the help he received from Peter, his father, Dawson and George. The three of them -civilians- were on the way across the Engligh channel to Dunkirk in their private boat to help in the evacuation of Allied soldiers. They were responding to a desperate call by the British authorities. All sea-faring vessels were needed to get soldiers back home. In the sea,they had spotted this lone soldier, the sole survivor of a ship-wreck and rescued him from a certain death by getting him onboard. They planned to move on. But, the rescued soldier had had enough of war. On hearing of their Dunkirk plan, he had termed it as madness and demanded they straight away head for home instead. As talk went out of hand,…
Movies : An iconic car chase scene
Explosive Action. Intense. Gritty. Peter Yates showcases it in the pulsating car-chase of ‘Bullitt’, the 1968 thriller. If action sucks us in, it has to be because tension has been built upto the moment of release. Most action movie plots shy away from building up tension for just one definitive release. They seek the safety of numbers; and insert scenes that are like short machine gun bursts. Build a little tension here, release; build some more, release; raise the stakes higher; and release again. James Bond movies fit the bill. Action movie buffs like that. To each his or her own. It is too formulaic for my liking. In Bullitt, Peter Yates, the director, does not do that. He builds up the tension for a whole hour into the movie. And how it works! At one level, the tension is built up on the level of the plot itself. Frank Bullitt (Steve McQueen) is a lieutenant cop in charge of a witness-protection assignment over the weekend. A legislator has roped Bullitt in for the task. The witness is going to make his political…