This poem is meant to be an introduction to yet another short story I am managing to write (I just write by the way, not often do I tend to complete every story I pick up!!!). And that story is quite horrific to be just another piece of slander literature (As if someone could call that literature!!!).
Anyway, this poem's quite odd because possibly of the split: It splits into two parts of 22 and 8 lines each, and that split has nothing to do with poeticity: But it has got something to do alright! I mean it's not just a stupid move, but it has some meaning, that doesn't even touch upon the poetic aspect of poems :P
Twenty Two: The number that's flashing on the post - I wish not to comment upon that. Yes I did edit this post, this was not how it was when I first wrote the post, but 22 has turned my life over!!! (And that's all I can say!)
THE INTRODUCTION
Salutations to my dear folk who wish to pass;
This gate’s the way in for all, be it lad or lass.
All aboard the express ‘cause we’re riding the road home,
Everything’s an abode here, beneath the azure dome.
This World’s a world that gives one piece of bread,
To all those alive of course, let’s not touch upon the dead;
Alone they need to be, for that’s why they went!
Sans the association or force, or having been sent
Matters not, for it’s still a point of no return,
And talking about them is as handy as talking to a fern.
So let’s drop it for mercy’s sake, let’s put our socks
In it; and buddy, you forgot to drop a coin in that box…
Be it of the people, by, for or even not,
What matters most is not what you are but what you’ve got
Even here in my world, yessirree - money matters;
This tube’s for the roomy, not the one in tatters,
‘Cause economics and humanity are two different things;
Furthermore, the one trying to link the separately forged rings
Is a fool and nothing short. And the reason why I say
All these things is because they lie in my way,
As I spin my tale. No worries for me, I bundle them together
Into one good roll, like a bunch of gathered heather.
That’s how my tale begins, dear folks,
For left my way, I discuss thought processes, and no jokes,
Really! This one’s serious – something you ought to ponder,
For you’d start to hate the world and not grow fonder,
After I finish my narrative, what I’ve come here to tell.
It’s full of disaster and unfortunate circumstances, and well…
Gosh! I see your impatience, an indication is your din;
So with a salute to Maupassant, now I shall begin…
STARRING: CHRISTIAN BALE, HEATH LEDGER, AARON ECKHART, MAGGIE GYLLENHALL, MICHAEL CAINE
RATING:****
I did not want to start this review of mine with a negative remark after having really enjoyed two odd hours of livewire action and what possibly is arguably the best stunt show international cinema has ever seen and one of the raciest action thrillers contemporarily. But my mind allows me to do no other thing but to start off with one comment that could be the only negative comment I had in store for what could concern the whole crew of ‘The Dark Knight’. And this is the reason why ‘The Dark Knight’ made me think about nothing more than four stars, whereas its still darker predecessor earned a hearty, perfect five and a permanent place in my heart.
Well, ‘The Dark Knight’ also is in the line-up but the very reason it is being considered is because of the amazing special effects and action sequences that were literally too good, and not because of some outstanding performance by the Late Heath Ledger (I agree that his was a really good performance, but with a plot like this even Al Pacino would be made second guest!). But one thing I felt that made this movie very meek as opposed to its toweringly darker prequel ‘Batman Begins’ is not the absence of Batman in its title (Which in turn is a very bold move by Nolan because whether due to numerology or a craving for Lady Luck, the word Batman was apparently a part of the title of every single movie on the Caper) but the absence of originality that was pretty much distinct in ‘Batman Begins’. Sure the plot has been beautifully manipulated to suit the Nolans (Christopher and Jonathan, who wrote the movie) but the very fact that made the new movie very ordinary against its extraordinary predecessor is the whole of Gotham. While ‘Batman Begins’ was charmingly ancient in look and feel with palatial villas and British accents with a dash of the orient and their philosophies and their martial arts, the new one is literal Americanization and that seems quite obvious with the new star cast (Apart from Ledger, there’s Eckhart and Gyllenhall) and as actors could be nothing more than the directors tools than are slightly blessed with the ability of self-sharpening it brings it down to Mr. Christopher Nolan as to why he chose this drastic image make-over. So suddenly we see skyscrapers, Gotham is an integral part of America, (And even if it were before too, Nolan never cared to mention it in his previous take) we hear abuse words about the Chinese, a slight touch upon Russia, (In form of a Russian Natasha who is a part of a conversation about Batman and about how real people are better than just symbols) and Eckhart, as the DA Harvey Dent shouts out that Americans are the best. Too bad that we could not catch sight of the stars and the stripes or President George.W.Bush anywhere!!!
Anyway, though the shift from the past to the present (Or maybe even the future, as Batman plays with Mobile phones as much as Hackers play with their PCs) makes ‘The Dark Knight’ even more exciting and more active as it plods along with every sequence that is almost as intense as the last sequence in itself (Which makes the film an apparent drag, for it looks like we had reached the end thrice before the final credits actually rolled) it is actually quite detrimental to our beloved Dark Knight for it seems as though he had lost his true identity?! I mean come on, Bruce always boasted his bruises while in this film all that he can show to us is one red patch and newly sewn skin in the initial stages of the film and trust me, it is not the first or the only time Batman falls or gets himself hurt! Maybe I felt nostalgic about getting back to ‘Batman Begins’ while I watched through this, but surely did we not hear Bruce Wayne say to Alfred he wanted the house rebuilt brick by brick? And was it not a brilliant Gotham city he lived in with outstanding landmarks in the form of Wayne Towers and the machine-operated bridge (Though Wayne Towers was blew up by Batman and Gordon in the last part, it could easily have been restored in the year that followed) that we adored (Or I adored!) so much?! Somehow Mr.Nolan and Mr.Nolan thought otherwise for they shifted base from somewhere in England to somewhere in the United States and while the former provided an identity to Batman and the flick he came up with, the latter just destroys what had already been created and though Gotham does create an identity of its own once again, it is nothing more than that any other mediocre superhero movie like ‘Superman Returns’ or ‘Spiderman’ manage to provide, and that in turn was mediocre because Gotham could have been any other city in the United States, and whatever others might have preferred, I definitely liked the greenery surrounding Wayne Mansion, the Cave headquarters, the waterfall and the dash of Martial arts better than what now is just a mix-up guns, bazookas and remote-controlled bombs. And doesn’t the very thinking about this make you nostalgic?!!
Anyway a lost identity is still a lost identity and though it is the case with ‘The Dark Knight’, we see redemption in the plot with an antagonist probably one of the best sadists in Hollywood history (But still not as scary as Malcolm McDowell as Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange or Al Pacino as the Devil Himself in The Devil’s Advocate) with Heath Ledger delivering a performance he had worked for apparently till his last breath, and I must say that he has to be awarded an Oscar for that not just because he has passed away but also because thanks to him, magnitude of the Joker’s terrors peak as he shortens his laugh. And here again is a slight bit of confusion as to the real character of The Joker (And I do not have the heart to blame it on the dead man) which I felt was a bit indecisive as to whether The Joker was a psychopath or a sadist (And certainly not a bit of both!!!) because being the former makes him out of anyone’s control including himself, while the latter means he overacted. But as I already said, I would never be hard enough on who would be known as the best contemporary performer and so The Joker could be aptly described as a majority of people called him to be: A Freak (An absolute stunner is the sequence where he says ‘Why so SERIOUS!?’ three times!!!).
Bruce Wayne is curtailed, the Batmobile is curtailed to a mere bike and that provides time for more Batman and hence, more action and there are many sequences that really took my breath away, including one fantastic chase sequence with The Joker standing tall against the speeding Knight. As far as the plot is concerned, it sees the rise and fall of the Joker, the supremacy of the Batman and his technology (Forgot to tell, but this one’s an overdose of gadgets) and an explanation on why Harvey Dent was the Two-Face. Rachel Dawes has nothing to do here except get caught in a love triangle and all that Maggie Gyllenhall could manage in this movie are a couple of kisses distributed equally to the two competitors before the Nolans and the comics had apparently decided that this could possibly be the longest time a female could be sustained in a league of men: Muscular men at that. We see psychology in all of it, of how Bruce Wayne gets tired of playing the superhero and reminds us all that he’s mortal, of how Harvey Dent conflicts himself with a two-headed coin and misled thoughts as to who he really is, of how The Joker prefers to work without a plan than work with one (And there’s a brilliant explanation he manages to string together to Harvey in the hospital he blows up eventually) and how he performs his little social experiment, of how Jim Gordon’s faith on the Batman makes him turn against him just for the Dark Knight’s sake and finally how Rachel Dawes explains the true meaning and an irony in the statement she had mentioned in the previous instalment (Where she was played by a Katie Holmes with emotions written in her eyes). The original score does a cocaine act by picking you up all the way to the zenith of adrenalin rushes and there you sit right on top of Mount Excitement getting a clear picture as to what Nolan’s puppets were doing, playing with each other’s mind with the only clear person among them being The Joker, and almost all of the sequences are as intense as a climax usually is.
And ironically, it is here that you miss ‘Batman Begins’ more and more because it was a Batman who was slow and steady with good martial arts and a non-lunatic villain as compared to a Batman who is more than just a vigilante: He’s a silent guardian; A hero whom Gotham needs, but not now; he’s… THE DARK KNIGHT!
And what if the film’s American and has a not-so-creative backdrop with the trademark railroad missing? It still is mad: Mad as the Joker is, mad as he makes Harvey Dent and as crazy as he drives the Batman. “Madness is like Gravity: All it needs is a PUSH! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!” That’s the Joker’s last laugh. And you can even feel it ringing through your ears as you read this review if you are lucky enough. The same way as I feel when I am writing this…
P.S. Please Mr. Hans Zimmer and Mr. James Newton Howard could you please score some music for this review? Or at least the thud you finished your movie with??? (That is an over-ask and I know it!)
STARRING: NANNI MORETTI, LAURA MORENTA, JASMINE TRINCA, GIUSEPPE SANFELICE
RATING:*****
One hundred years of solitude spent I,
Before I set my sight on this masterpiece:
And only then did I realize,
What a terrible fool I had been…
This is the very first time that I sit down to write about a movie within a minute of its end, as the end credits rolled by with me looking at them just to familiarise myself with the names involved as I always do when I watch a film that is not popularly talked about in non-intellectual circles.Normally it is just because I want to boast that I had just finished viewing a film that won at Cannes, or because I want to jump on the critic’s bandwagon and shout out loud that the movie is every bit worthy of the award it received. But this time it is really different, because THE SON’S ROOM, like some other movies like ‘L’ Enfant’ and ‘The Edge of Heaven’ is one that is meant to be experienced and not criticised or commented upon. I want to write this summary or my experience watching through the movie, because I fear that my memories would die away if I neglected this one, or put it off till later.
Every film wants its viewers to see it through the eyes of one of the characters in it, and obviously as any other good film or masterpiece rather, ‘The Son’s Room’ would also be having such intentions. But I frankly prevaricated from one character to another as I could literally not decide who I wanted to be and I could also not figure out who the movie’s director Nanni Moretti wanted me to be: Whether it was the Psychiatrist-Dad (Moretti himself) who needs to be taught by his patients what emotions were, or the typical yet lovable and admirable mother Paola (Morenta) who is every bit of the usual sensitive and impatient human beings Mothers are, or the basket-ball playing daughter Irene (Trinca) who is a typical teenager who obviously doesn’t know how she has to react in the situation of a tragedy in her family, for teenagers aren’t blessed with the maturity adults possess. Maybe I rather wanted to be the young Andrea (Sanfelice) and watch my loved ones lingering about in their emotions without a clue as to when and where they could express themselves with a bitter-sweet smile on my face.
Giovanni is a psychiatrist, who does not get to see various patients like any other faceless consultant would be doing, but all he sees or rather all that is pictured in the movie is him counselling just four or five people, and that is one aspect that gives a lot of clarity and sensibility to the whole plot. His wife Paola works at some company at a desk job while his son Andrea and daughter Irene are high-school students. The story begins with Giovanni being summoned by Andrea’s principal, who accuses him and his friend Luciano of stealing a fossil ammonite stone, and he has the testament of another boy to back his statement. Andrea is suspended for a week, and though Giovanni along with Luciano’s dad try to prove to themselves more than anyone else, that their sons are innocent of the theft, Andrea silently admits to his mother that he had stolen it ‘Just for fun and to catch the look on his obsessed teacher’s face, and he was meant to return it back when they accidentally broke it’. His mother responds by nothing except a warm hug that shows possibly that she’s glad her son admitted his mistake and I don’t really know whether she tells Giovanni this or even whether this storyline has any importance to the plot at all! What I saw in the story of the stolen fossil is a disposition of characters, perhaps too clearly, as to who they are and what they do. And this process tells you that Andrea is one teenager who is not the least transparent to his parents, though there is no doubt that he loves them even as much as they love him. He shrugs away at his father smilingly, as the latter asks him why he threw away a tennis match to an opponent named Stefano (And this has some amount to do as the story progresses) and this is when he knows full well that it is a psychiatrist he had for a dad, and that person possibly knows a lot more about what goes on through his son’s mind than any other parent might know.
Or does he…?
Andrea however does not live to explain anything to the viewers or to his parents as a Sunday family-union is converted into one with each heading to one direction thanks to a phone-call from one of Giovanni’s patients who apparently has something very urgent to say. As a change of plans, Andrea heads to scuba-dive with his friends not to return alive because of a blood clot that happens most probably because of an empty oxygen-tank. The nails are drilled into the coffin with sister Irene asking for one last look at her brother’s face before closing it: And now is when the actual plot starts. Giovanni starts to change from his usual stone-faced psychiatrist self to a normal human being – One transition people are literally not blessed with nowadays. He does everything that his patients say, and that particularly at the time he sees his next patient. He cries when he hears from one such man, that crying is something that is actually a comfort. And cry he does when he hears from another patient about how she had no babies though she loved them. He starts to give vent to his feelings as prompted earlier by a patient who appears just once and she tells him that he doesn’t get even annoyed by her speech, for he suppresses it all inside him. And also there is one patient who had called on the disastrous day, and Giovanni has no problem to vent his feelings on him as he believes that this man was the cause of his son’s death: And that is quite natural for any father who actually is guilty that his son died because of his neglect, for it was he who chose to leave and attend the man’s call rather than spend time with his son. And he realizes that too for he dwells on that thought: What if he hadn’t gone that day; What if he had his son near him instead…
Honestly I had never before seen a movie as heavy with emotions as this. How would it be to walk into a room of your son who has died? How would it be to look around in the room of a boy about whom you knew nothing particularly: That he had a girlfriend, or that he listened to English music, or that he took pictures of his room to mail to that girl? And what if those pictures were the only way you knew that your son had a funny person in him, and also a photographer in him? And how would you react if you saw those pictures handed over to you by his pen-pal girlfriend? You cry. You know to do nothing else. You don’t be aware of what other people would think. You cry. And that is what Giovanni does; Paola does it too; Irene is too childish to do that, though she cries inside a trial-room in a clothes shop (She possibly cries thinking about her break-up with her boyfriend, and you could assume she cries about her brother because at no other place did she cry in the movie, though she indulges into a fistfight with an opponent at a match as a referee refuses to call a foul). Arianna (That is the girl’s name) comes to their house with a boy named Stefano (Surprise!) who is taking her for a hitchhike to France. The girl is the bereaved parents’ last link to their son. And they feel as though that by helping her, they would be helping their son as well, because she was one girl who really knew about their boy. Not even the sister knew as much…
‘The Son’s Room’ is a film that shakes and stirs you down to the last straw. And I know that I revealed the whole plot in my summary. That does not matter: Certain movies need to be seen for the substance and the emotions they have in them, rather than for the complexities of the plot and this is certainly one such. No place do you see misunderstandings and even if there were they are just momentary and nowhere is a drift between the living threesome, for that is how a family works. You cannot help but bear a bitter-sweet smile on your face and carry a little drop of a tear in your eyes as you watch through the movie: Maybe you do live as Andrea throughout the movie. Or maybe you cannot help but admire the film and say ‘If that isn’t a thing of beauty, then Keats is a liar’.
And you know he isn’t because you are experiencing the joy of it forever…
NO NOSTALGIA HERE, BECAUSE THEY DID NOT KNOW THE WORLD
THEY LIVED IN TO FEEL SO…
MOVIE: THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES (2002)
DIRECTED BY: WALTER SALLERS
WRITTEN BY: ERNESTO ‘CHE’ GUEVARA
STARRING: GAEL GARCIA BERNAL, RODRIGO DE LA SERNA, JEAN PIERRE NOHER, MIA MAESTRO
RATING:***** (GREAT MOVIE)
‘This is not a tale of heroic feats. It is just a story of two lives that ran parallel for some time, with the same thoughts, dreams and aspirations’ and even if I had the words wrong, I sure got the sense right and so has the legend Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara: This is certainly not the stories of two warriors. This is the tale of two people who ‘Travelled just for the sake of travelling’ and because they had to travel to reach the San Pablo lepers colony that was in Peru, while they start from Buenos Aires. A distance that totals to approximately 9000 kilometres. The Equipment: A leaky Norton 500 that tells us before-hand that it is going to stand as whole pnly for possibly a quarter of the journey (And it beats it by staying for nearly half the distance!). The pilots: Ernesto Guevara (Gael Garcia) and Alberto Granado (Rodrigo Serna). That’s a wrap then: That’s the end of the plot – A plot that has nothing else but their journey to the place. 9000 kilometres of bike-rides, walks, truck drives and even ferries. And the story ends at Caracas in Venezuela where Alberto and Ernesto separate, thanks to a job offer for the former there. A little above the expected distance, the duo had travelled 12000-odd kilometres totally and this is a true story and not a Jules Verne novel! That is the story Walter Sallers had in store for me, and that is what he would be having in store for you too.
But Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara has more than that to say…
A lot more that too: So much that could be the difference between life and death and not the tiny moment in between…
Every scholar, every person who has studied out of classrooms would agree that travel is the best form of education there can ever be: There can be no better way to study about life than to live it like you ought to. And that is what Guevara conveys, though he does that in his Argentine tongue and in more complex words, while I give it in a nutshell. This is the tale of the transition of Ernesto Guevara into what conclusively triggered the rise of the legendary Che in him: And this transition is so humungous that it could be associated with that of Joan when she decided that she needed to fight for her country more than survive, or that of Karl Marx, who sat down and thought that life had a lot more to offer than just women, or Teresa, who realized that the same could apply for her too, except that it is men. And this is also one of the vital transitions for humankind, and particularly for those who enjoy at least some luxury in present-day Latin America and also in the republic of Congo as this involved one man (ONE MAN!) who made it all possible…
Ernesto starts the travel with Alberto Granado with no haste to reach the place but to enjoy the ride that took them there. And bumpy and reckless though it maybe, punctuated by a couple of falls and cow-crashes (And maybe even a lot more!) neither Ernesto or Alberto have no real haste to get to the place except that Alberto wants to complete his journey on his 30th birthday, that is on April 2nd, 1953 at Caracas in Venezuela. They take a detour for Ernesto to present a German Sheperd to his girlfriend Chinchina (Maestro) and at this point of the story you seldom see Gael Garcia as Ernesto nor Rodrigo De La Serna as Alberto Granado, but as two young men, one skinny and the other chubby, set to quench their thirsts and look into rumours about women in different parts of the country. You even sillily expect romance to brew when Ernesto takes Chinchina for a drive in her car, but you are forgetting something all this time. One: This is Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’s tale and not one of urban playboys. Two: You have forgotten, or you do not know, rather (For even Ernesto realizes this only after three-quarters of his journey) that life is pain. Before you can even think that Ernesto is going to kiss his girl, they pack up after a short party to go on with their journey with a single tear trickling out of Chinchina’s eyes as she says to her beloved: “I would wait for sure. But don’t take forever, Ernesto” that obviously sounds too good to be true (Which it isn’t of course!!!).
The young blood in them continues to dominate over their hearts even in Chile, where they get chased away because Ernesto was ‘hitting on’ a mechanic’s wife, and another stop at Peru where both are drawn to two daughters of a fireman. And at this point you realize that there has got to be an event: An occurance that has got to be so drastic that it can change one’s course of life. And Ernesto responds to your silent query by saying that life is not a blast to be changing ‘drastically’ every second, minute, hour, day or year, but life is a transition and this is when you start to see the visionary in Ernesto. Gael Garcia Bernal is as much a visionary himself, for he matches Che Guevara (Both ar incredibly handsome men) as much as twin brothers match themselves. Half the time he speaks to somebody, be it his fellow Alberto Granado or the old lady ‘who waited tables till yesterday, but is too sick to do so now’ or the young leper at San Pablo, Silvia. He does not look at things or gaze at them: He explores - He looks deep into whatever he sees and sometimes he disappears into his mind, seeing in black and white, events that haunted him so much. However long the transition maybe, the spark was a tete-e-tete with a mining couple in Chile, who say they are communists and they travel to look for a job. “What do you travel for”, asks the deeper of the two, the woman. “We travel, just to travel” replies Ernesto, sans the seriousness he gets later in the movie. “Bless you all! Bless your travels” says the lady and that for Ernesto is a strike with a hard stone, and the stone he returns, to strike back at a truck and its captain, who refuses to even take a look at those he rejected to employ in his mine. There’s the foundation stone for the Cuban revolution: Ernesto Guevara, who had always been seen before as a quiet, composed and yet truthful person, breaks free of his norms and comes out of the groove of the inexpressive person he had been, though he continues to be true to himself.
San Pablo is the final frontier, and the Lepers colony in it exposes the heart in Ernesto, well and proper. He is not a ‘Patch Adams’ or a Florence Nightingale. He is human and what he does is within human limits. He refuses to wear gloves to see the Lepers and he offers his hand to shake with an elderly patient, who himself is afraid to do so, lest he contaminates him. At the turn of Ernesto’s back, he mutters to a companion: “These two are real gents”. Ernesto condemns the lepers colony being divided by the Amazon into a sick zone and a heathy zone; he talks to lepers like a friend and he swims across the Amazon to ‘really celebrate’ his birthday, with all the patients he had befriended, and that despite he is Asthmatic. He hugs them all without the slightest trace of inhibition and although Alberto Granado goes on with his way with women, Ernesto stops and looks around and at all places, including the Incas and points at the lost cities and Lima in turn saying “This is what they turned, to this”. In the end, when the duo had succesfully reached Caracas at the end of July, Alberto mischievously tells Ernesto at the moment of his departure, that his birthday was not on April 2nd but only in August and that he had lied to motivate him. And with that he asks Ernesto when he would come to work with him after graduating. “I don’t know” Ernesto replies, “There is so much to do, so much injustice everywhere. I really don’t know”. And whether that concerns his medical studies or the returning back one cannot tell as the movie ends at that, after a ride more emotional than their ride had been bumpy.
‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ is a path-breaker. One cannot possibly imagine that a journal could be adapted in so poignant a way as this had been done. And the visuals too: This one had an excellent panorama to back the brilliant photography and some good music too. But the experience outbeats the technical expertise as this movie is more of the heart and soul of ‘Che’ rather than the brains of Walter Sallers. This is not a documentary by the way: It is too emotional to be called one. Perhaps even too emotional with tears, laughter, hilarity, smiles, admiration and a roller-coaster ride of multiple bonds that it cannot even be mediocrised as a movie. It is something more: Something equivalent to the spirit of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, possibly. Or the spirit of the whole human race even, for it is a reminder to people who have forgotten totally that they are people too…
CAST: GABE NEVINS, TAYLOR MOMSEN, JAKE MILLER, RICHARD LU, LAUREN MCKINNEY
RATING:*****
Believe me, the numb in my title is not a word of abuse that deteriorates the calibre of ParanoidPark but one word that could aptly describe the feel that the movie had in store for me. And certainly, ParanoidPark is not in the league of the tense thrillers Hollywood or even international cinema has, is, and will be offering in the future. In other words, it is a movie that is meant for you to see and understand the paranoid state of the protagonist’s mind and not share his paranoia because if you did that, you would be relieving him of his paranoia and as the whole movie is all about how he manages to relieve himself of it, sharing his paranoia with you would mean Gus Van Sant would be wasting the 80-odd minutes of the movie’s running time.
Paranoid park starts interestingly with its main character Alex writing down the name of the movie in his ruled-notebook as something that appears to be a diary entry, which tells you quite clearly that the movie in itself is a revelation that comes through Alex’s mouth or rather, from the tip of his pencil. The story unfolds in a manner that makes it more enthralling than you expect it to be, with some beautiful jugglery of sequences and each sequence starts from a place that Alex (Gabe Nevins) chooses to enter in his diary. And the main screenplay is punctuated by sequences showing Alex’s dream of punks and skateboarders, that photographer Christopher Doyle decided to shoot with the help of a handy-cam so that more than dreams these sequences looks like home-made videos posted on broadcasting sites on the net as a show off. These videos come in all kinds, ranging from serious exhibitionism of skate-board skills, and even bloopers and gags involving skating mishaps.
Well it is not very intelligent to enquire about the plot in a Gus Van Sant movie, especially after you have sat through his pointlessly exuberant ‘Gerry’ and though that is not the case for ‘Paranoid Park’, it still has one of the simplest plots maybe, written in recent times. Alex is an introverted boy whose introverted-ness is justified by him being a son of soon-to-be-divorced parents and being an elder brother to a thirteen year old boy he cannot connect with. He has a girlfriend named Jennifer (Taylor Momsen) whom he is least interested in just because she wants him to deflower her, and a friend named Jared (Jake Miller) in whose house he often sleeps over and because of whom he gets introduced to a ‘cursed’ skateboard park (Burnside Park) that is also called Paranoid Park, and which in turn is filled by all punks and all other members of the skate-board community. The park and one punk in it get him involved in a freak accident-murder and it is his paranoia at that is what forms the rest of the story that also has a sweet little part involving a girl called Macy (Lauren McKinney) and how she helps him get over his trauma.
The very thing that is so very pleasing about Paranoid Park is that things get to explain themselves in bits and pieces: If you get a piece of the jigsaw puzzle in the second minute, you get the next piece in probably after an hour, which could be even after the last piece shows itself well and good. And that jigsaw puzzle of a screenplay is not meant for anything except that this is the order in which Alex writes his story down and the very order is a clear symbol of his paranoia, which is in turn, the paranoia that the movie gives to you. You get the clarity of mind (Though not entirely in visuals) only in the last scene where Alex throws his notes into a fire, and you find out then a reason both of why he writes and why he throws them into the fire, both in Macy’s words. “If you want to get something out of your mind, write them in a letter, which you can send, save or burn. Write all your worries in a letter, write them to me…” says she, and that conveys that a paranoid person can not only get over his paranoia but also find some new love that’s waiting for him in the world outside…
The Edge of Heaven is the latest directorial venture of an excitingly modern filmmaker in Fatih Akin (Gegen Die wand a.k.a. Head On) and honestly I don’t know why I would be cutting half a star from the movie’s credits: Maybe it is because I hate him for directing two painfully tragic films contemporarily. Or maybe because in life there cannot be a reason or a valid ending to certain things, which means that the same holds for this question too…
This time writer Akin decides to play with his screenplay, following the path of yet another successful international director in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarittu (Babel, Amores Perros, 21 grams) as he splits it to three sub-plots or sub-films maybe, and finally reunites the three together to exhibit to us one of the finest pieces of drama ever and maybe even yet to come. But the pain in The Edge of Heaven is that though the sub-units merge to give a complete movie to us, Akin decides it not to be so for the characters he had pitted into the plot: Two mothers, two daughters, a father and a son all paired with perfection as the film moves from Germany to Turkey for good measure making us travel along with the characters on a chase that is literally hopeless for all of them.
Ali Aksu (Kurtiz) kicks off the sub-film called ‘YETER’S DEATH’ as he goes to visit the lady herself, as she waits at the door for him in her brothel. As she speaks at the door, a couple of Turk Muslims hear her speaking Turkish, and she is warned to quit the sinful trade and repent for it. ‘I repent’ says she with gritted teeth clearly showing what ran through her mind. Ali generously offers her money in return for her stay in his house that is also inhabited by his German-professor-son Nejat (Davrak) and though he doesn’t really like the idea of her staying in his house (Well yeah! Who would?!), he still agrees and begins to like her when she tells him she funds her daughter’s studies with the money she gets. And then Yeter’s death is brought about by Ali in a drunken brawl in his son’s absence, after which he shifts to jail and Nejat to Istanbul, where he decides to search for Yeter’s 27 year old daughter and continue to fund for her studies and the movie advances to its second sub-film named ‘LOTTE’S DEATH’ and here we get to find out that Yeter’s daughter Ayten is actually a part of a political rebellion and her bid to escape from Turkey after stashing a little bundle, brings her to Germany and at the doorstep of a woman named Lotte and the very fact that she is truthful to her triggers love between them, much to the displeasure of Lotte’s mother Suzanne (Schygulla) who wants Ayten to rather join the asylum or the European Union. Ayten refuses, as she says, “The Union is in the hands of England, Germany, Spain, France, and these are colonial countries’ and it is at this point that you expect this movie to take a political turn for sure, but you are mistaken because this is one movie you are not supposed to expect anything but experience it.
In fact, every time you start to expect something in this movie, your ideas fail and that starts from the beginning when you expect something close to Akin’s previous brash and uncouth venture; you expect a political movie when Ayten runs around with a gun as part of a rebellion, masked, chased by the cops, but you’re wrong again as you expect a love story somewhere with a hopeless Nejat on a wild-goose chase for Ayten. But the movie wins the guessing game as it ends as a pure drama with the characters returning back to the places where they rightfully ought to be, with the elimination of two of the six characters as the two titles suggest, in the third sub-film aptly named ‘THE EDGE OF HEAVEN’.
‘The Edge of Heaven’ has a plot for no other reason except to unite the characters it introduces and here Akin and Inarittu look like long-lost brothers. The movie stresses upon the characters and their ignorance of what is happening around them that you start to pity them at a point of time because you know more than they do as the director discloses more to you than he does to his characters themselves. The end is anti-climactic to a painful extent and maybe it is at this that Akin succeeds to a great extent. He doesn’t make you weep for his characters, though he makes you sympathize with them: He makes you get to know them, and to get to know the world that we live our lives in because his characters live their lives in it too.
The Edge of Heaven is the least thing close to a re-union: It is a reminder about the tragedy life is and you might be lucky enough to realize how much you are ignoring people close to you that you might suddenly get a rush of blood to drop everything you have in hand and run to embrace those who really love you, much the same way as Nejat hands his book-store over to Suzanne to get to be with his father after a teary-eyed narration of the reason behind the festival of Bayram. And you rush as he rushes because you wouldn’t want your love and care to be showered posthumous on anyone; you wouldn’t want yourself to be as unfortunate as Suzanne is. After you laugh, cry, sympathize and smile at the characters in the end, you come out of the film with some clarity at least regarding the choice of Akin’s title: After all, what is not heaven itself, but something at its edge is definitely a part of the lives we live and the fact of its proximity to heaven tells us that that life is nothing but one with the love one has to have in it…
