Why is there so much hype about Slumdog Millionaire?

I just don't understand the hype surrounding the movie! It has got the Golden Globe for the best picture; It has got 10 Oscar nominations; some Indians are all praise for the movie while others are too critical. I don't think it is worth the attention.

The first time I heard about it was about 3 months back when I read Roger Ebert's review of the movie and how he had said after a viewing in Toronto that it would win the Audience Award. I was intrigued by the storyline and saw it as soon as I got the opportunity. I found it good and entertaining but not as great as it was being made out to be.

I have seen far better films during the year which should beat this hands down. Talking about Oscars I feel that they are a bunch of jokers. Though they honour some good performances from time to time they are not the best judge of which are the best performances of the year. Just as an example, would you believe that a movie like 'The Shawshank Redemption', which has been voted as the number one movie of all time by millions of IMDb users, didn't receive a single Oscar!

About all the criticism showing India in a bad light, it's a Goddamn movie! If you didn't like it just ignore it. If someone says that westerners don't show the dirty side of their country I will point out many movies which clearly do the same.

Another thing which amuses me is that loads of Indians, esp. the Indian media, seem to feel proud that this movie has been nominated for Oscars. I don't understand why the pride! The movie has been made by a Hollywood studio and by a Hollywood Director. This is not an Indian movie, period!

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Apocalypse Now is probably the best war (or shall we say anti-war) movie ever to be made. It is one of my favourite movies if not the favourite (it’s difficult to decide with Shawshank and a few others coming close).

If I were to be very honest, I didn’t like the movie when I saw it for the first time. The reason being I was thinking it to be a war movie which would have grueling war scenes with gruesome battles ala Saving Private Ryan. Alas that was not to be! All it showed was a journey of a young captain through the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia. I had failed to understand that the movie was beyond the usual war movies. It was much more than that!

Though I had not liked the movie I kept on thinking about it, such was the impact of the movie. I decided to watch it once again and there was no looking back after that!! The movie is set during the Vietnam War. A young captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is sent on a mission which officially 'does not exist - nor will it ever exist'. The mission is to ‘terminate with extreme prejudice’ a renegade Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando). This colonel had set himself up as a local God in Cambodia and was waging his own war. The movie shows the journey of Captain Willard where he experiences different adventures ranging from a surfing crazy Lieutenant Colonel (Robert Duvall was simply amazing) to Playboy bunnies. Most of Captain Willard’s thoughts are communicated to us through his voice-over which provides for a really gripping atmosphere throughout the movie. As the journey progresses, sanity evaporates his and his fellow travelers’ minds. The dossier on the Colonel makes him wonder why it is that the powers that be want to kill the Colonel. The closer he gets to his destination the more confused he becomes about what he is going to do when he comes face to face with the Colonel.

The movie shows the insanity that prevailed during the Vietnam War and the way the war affected the minds of the people involved in it. It shows the inner battles which take place within all the participants in a war. It shows the horrors of the war without becoming a gore fest!

Francis Ford Coppola has made a masterpiece and proved once again that he is a genius. The acting was superb with Martin Sheen giving a very convincing performance as the young Colonel. Excellent performances by his boat crew as well especially by Sam Bottoms as Lance B. Johnson. A special mention needs to be made regarding the cinematography and sound effects for which the movie received Oscars. Some of the scenes are simply breath-taking while the music is amazing, haunting at times. The opening sequence is probably one of the best with the bombing of the jungle with ‘The End’ by ‘The Doors’ in the background.

The movie was released in 1979 but a new ‘Redux’ version was released in 2001 with an added footage of about 45 minutes. There have been a lot of debates as to which is better – the original or the redux version. I have never seen the original (though I have read about the differences between the two versions) but I agree with some of the critics that some of the scenes in the redux version could have been done away with. However that does not, in any way, reduce the greatness of the movie.

I have seen a lot of discussion regarding the ending of the movie and how disconcerting it is for some of the viewers. All I can say is that the ending only adds to the eerie atmosphere of the movie and it results in the culmination of the madness that this entire movie is all about. To sum it all up, I will use the words of the director, 'This film isn't about Vietnam. This film IS Vietnam'.

Fermat's Enigma

A few months back I read a book called ‘Fermat’s Enigma’ by Simon Singh. For the uninitiated, Pierre de Fermat was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. The book describes the quest to solve the world’s oldest mathematical problem called Fermat’s Last Theorem. It states:

It is impossible to separate any power higher than the second into two like powers

In other words,

If an integer n is greater than 2, then the equation a^n + b^n = c^n has no solutions in non-zero integers a, b, and c

Though this seems very apparent and simple it took mathematicians more than 350 years to prove this! This was called the last theorem because all the other theorems of Fermat were proved except for this one which went on to become the greatest mathematical challenge ever. The man who finally proved it is Andrew Wiles, a British mathematician and a professor at Princeton University. Wiles claims that it was his childhood dream to prove this theorem.

I would urge people, who have the slightest bit of interest in mathematics, to get a copy of the book and read it. It is a very simple account of everything that went on to prove the theorem without ever becoming a nerd fest. For people who are not interested in mathematics this book can serve as an account of someone who went on to live his childhood dream. Go get it!

Mumbai and New York

Life in New York is not very different when compared to Mumbai. In fact, it is said that New York is the future version of Mumbai, except no one knows how many years in the future. The reasons why I think Mumbai and New York are similar are given below:

§ Both are financial capitals of their respective countries
§ Both are cosmopolitan
§ Life is fast paced in both the cities

There might be quite a few other similarities which I can’t recollect right now. Whether Mumbai can become like New York is a matter of conjecture. No one knows whether it is going to take 10 years or 100 years for this to happen. If you ask me I think it might take even longer, perhaps it may never happen!

There are tangible as well as intangible reasons why I believe this. Tangible reasons are for everyone to see and are usually a function of the intangible reasons. The main tangible reason which I can see is the infrastructure. One doesn’t need to spend 10 years in Mumbai to find out that the infrastructure is not sustainable. It just takes a few days. However, this can be corrected if we take care of the intangible reasons.

The intangible things I am talking about is the attitude of the people, not just of the people residing in Mumbai but of the whole country. Let me come to each attribute one by one.

This is public property and I have a right to abuse it – No one cares about public property in India. If there is something in public domain it is there for everyone to abuse. We make sure that we don’t throw the waste in the dustbin after all what is the road there for! Oh the dustbin just disappeared, seems like someone stole it! It has been observed time and again that even if the Government tries and puts dustbins for everyone to use, it is either not used or stolen. We need to stop this attitude if we want to develop.

This city belongs to my community and I will drive out the other people – I am sure everyone reading this knows what I am talking about. India is a collage of many cultures and if each one of them starts talking about breaking away there is no India left! Why do we need to have separate states for separate communities? Why can’t we live in harmony along with others? It is easy to blame the politicians for everything but it is the people’s support which drives them to perform radical actions.

I can go on and on about the above points but as Shakespeare has put it in Hamlet: Brevity is the soul of wit. I can only hope that the above is corrected before it is too late.

Love, Lust and Rape

What is love? Is it mere lust for someone or is it something altogether different? Can you rape someone you love? These are the questions I want to ponder over in this piece and I would like my readers to give their views on this topic. The third question might seem a little odd to people but let me tackle the first two and then I will give the context on which my third question is based.

I believe that love is much more than lust. For me it is not a physical longing for anyone. In fact it is platonic and does not encompass lust at all. I don’t think that both, love and lust can co-exist. Many have claimed to have experienced the feeling of love. Alas, it is a mere illusion for most of them! For what most of these people have experienced is not love but lust or infatuation.

I have heard of the phrase ‘love at first sight’ and have often wondered as to how can can someone fall in love with someone just by looking at them. It’s a fantastical phrase and sounds good only in movies. All those who claim to have experienced the above phenomena have just put up a façade to cover lust. One can fall in love and experience physical attraction towards the other and vice versa but the two are not substitutes. Thus, love is not lust.

Before I come to the third question, read this small story. David is a young street punk and is head over heels in love with Deborah. He secretly watches her while she practices dance. Deborah has high ambitions and wants to become an actor. She too likes David and knows that he watches her while she practices but doesn’t say anything to him. Things take a wrong turn for David and he is impirsoned. He comes out of jail after a decade and meets Deborah who is on her way to success. He joins his old friends and becomes a gangster. One day he takes Deborah out for a lavish dinner. During their conversation she tells him that she has higher plans for her career and David wouldn’t allow her to pursue them. He nods in acknowledgement and realises the fact that Deborah wouldn’t accept him as her life partner in spite of the fact that she loves him. While on their way back he rapes her in the car!

This story is from a movie called ‘Once Upon a Time in America’. I was horrified when I saw David raping Deborah. My heart cried when I saw it. I have since been asking myself the question ‘Was David ever in love with Deborah?’ I can’t believe that anyone who is in love with someone can go to the extent of raping her! People who might have seen the movie will agree with me that the events before and after the rape point in the direction that David was in love with Deborah. Yet he couldn’t control his lust and went on to do the heinous act described above! I can’t ever imagine myself doing what David did in spite of the fact that I know that the love of my love will never be reciprocated…

Why this blog?

I just wanted an outlet for my thoughts; thoughts which come when I am watching a movie or when I am reading a news article or an editorial; thoughts which come to my mind when I am sitting and contemplating or dreaming or thinking about how my life has progressed. This is not a means to flaunt my literary abilities. In fact, I expect most of my posts to be unstructured. Occasionally I will post movie reviews as well. That is the scope of this blog which may be expanded as and when I want.

I had been posting on another blog but there were a lot of issues and finally I have decided to switch. I will start initially by posting some of my old posts from that blog.

Let's begin!