TROUBLED

There’ve been a string of films down my lane that primarily dealt with people, young people having to take in hand things that are a little big for them, and them having to deal with it, because although it draws in from the outside, the inside’s pretty much puke-material. And it’s been almost a couple of decades since I got to know this bunch of people called ‘elders’, who came up with nothing but what’s quoted above, although in less intricate ways, and what with the change in scenario these ‘films’ managed to produce, I kind of get this impulse that I might as well be counseled through my life than having to get myself into the mess the protagonists find themselves in.

‘400 Blows’ set the whole thing up. A film with a ‘hero’ for a change, the ‘dark horse’, dark because he’s made so, a by-product of social evolution towards neglect, of the woman of the house who’s not as concerned about her son as she is about the fact that he’s caught her cheating, and the whole thing is untidy, this whole process that makes the ‘hero’ of today, so chaotic that the blend’s not exactly what we’re looking for, in fact not even close. ‘Kes’ fought oppression and (again) misguided youth using an inanimate tool, a life outside life, a metaphor. ‘Havoc’ was bullshit, as confused as the characters, not sure as to what the whole point of the attempt was, ending up to be a puddle that you wouldn’t want to get your feet wet in. ‘Paranoid Park’ had me hooked, solely due to the fact that it was masterfully done, numb as it gets you. ‘Fish Tank’ falls in this line, with more or less the same outfit. Literally.

And this is where I trash it.

‘Fish Tank’ has Katie Jarvis in a role that could have sparked off an exhilarating career, of ‘Full frontals’ and ‘foul mouths’, and could prompt the men with the pen to jot her to be the ‘actor of the next generation’, and Michael Fassbender as the object of covet, a cause of heat and hatred between mother and daughter, sister and sister, with even the littlest one craving for physical contact and enjoying the same when it came her way. This is undoubtedly a very physical film, there’s a lot of emphasis on even the sound effects, the gasps are quite clear when working out and making love and it sure adds to the physicality of the whole scenario, not to mention the excessive flaunt of skin through low-waists and lingerie. It’s clear that Arnold wants the audience to end up as provoked as her characters, that she wants it shown that they’re no cruder than the rest of us who watch the film, and shamefully switch places when required. The mother looks sensual, is sensual, the daughter tries her best to keep her desire a secret, as much as she wants it known to the man, and the man on his part, tries to be his ‘dignified’ self. And there’s the mechanic, there’re the girls who sunbathe at the start of the film, and there’re the ones who dance it out subsequently, in flashy clothes. And it’s not an interplay of sexual beings, all the while: It’s rather a collection of ‘best-kept-secrets’ only to be unveiled as you ride along.

It would be a masterpiece if ‘Fish Tank’ was intended to be nothing but a radical modification of something as harmless as last year’s ‘Water Lilies’, but no: Mia (Katie) is intolerable, but can be explained. It’s only a question of social stratum, bird-cage apartments, parentage and portions of self that can only be a mystery. This colossal mixture, incidentally, is where the whole film fails, and there’s an incapability to substantiate. The focus is Mia and her family and the outsider Connor, and that’s about it. It’s a crucial blow, this neglect of not everything that contributed to Mia (which could round upon her mother and a paternal absence) but what Mia does to the world around her, apart from head-butt and dance hip-hop. It’s their household, the room Mia rehearses in, the tank, the garage and the malnourished horse, and there’s but one sequence where the world hits back at Mia for what she’s made of herself, the only spark in the dark. Interactions, otherwise, are null and the effect’s like that of the Addams’ Family, minus the hilarity.

It’s absurd as to how a film as personal and perverse as this could be compared to Truffaut’s ‘400 Blows’, which happened to be not just a film, but a movement as a whole. While ‘Fish Tank’ could be a movement in itself, a showcase of blatant realism or of absolute fiction narrated in a provocative way, it is plainly too narrow, for ‘400 Blows’ was about Antoine Doinel in the world around him. ‘Fish Tank’ is nothing but Mia. She walks, she dances around, she spies on her mother just to see her man get naked, she shamelessly complies when she gets her chance, just as he shamelessly abuses his, and everything contributes to the forgettable experience that this film is meant to be. A story that makes one yearn for intimacy, and loses head once that wish is granted.

P.S. As for comparisons of Arnold to the politically and socially sound Kenneth Loach, I wouldn’t want it out of my mouth that a certain Roger Ebert is, indeed, going senile.

'CHE'.

This is not a lament post. The remark’s not counter-intuitive, (I just learnt the term, I only knew it before) it’s a preventive measure against what could lead to the same. Pretty much like the face-value suspicion of illness in a fairly healthy man, only to be ruled out in the end, so it’s like a healthy-sick-healthy transition, throughout, and it’s not like I intend to stop that. I’m just pre-stating what you’re in for.

“What’s his name?”

“Che.”

“Aha!”

“What?”

“Commie. (Snide smiles)”

I was about twelve when I read a piece about this man called Ernesto Guevara on the last page of ‘The Hindu’ (I don’t remember the date, so you’d look stupid if you counter-checked) and it’s not like I ‘read’, it was a time when I used to want a newspaper that had nothing but the last two leaves in it. And it’s only been downhill, since, because right now, I don’t want a newspaper at all. Anyway, that was when I enquired, you know, probed and I was to find that he had led a revolution, spat at the USA, got himself killed by the end of his prime, only to become the most-worn person ever. I’m not entirely sure about the credibility of that remark of mine, but I’m sure I’m close enough, bringing to the front what’s been stowed away in the back of my mind. I told him I’ve never seen him on a shirt before. He said I’ll see. And I see now.

The Beatles. Iron Maiden. Nirvana. ‘Che’. I guess that’s a paragraph shortened, irony withheld.

Anarchy is different, so different. That’s the official ‘everything else’ by ‘everyone else’, an excuse to do what you’ve been doing because after all, you find you need an excuse for that. No, it’s an excuse for the excuse, than the excuse itself, and ‘Che’, for all intents and purposes, fought against that very excuse. And while ‘Anarchy’ is nothing but a vengeance against a wrong that’s not yet happened to you, a hit back against a raised hand (or a hallucination of the same), revolution is a third hand that helps drag by the collar, the white that’s drowning you. It’s not a symbol, it’s a spirit, and you carry it inside, not bear it on you, showing it off to the world, that’s sharing some spirit you never have anyway.

“Heart on a sleeve,

you need a stab to believe,

in auricles and ventricles,

a hundred each;

that’s how hard you are, to reach.”

The world already knows what I want it to know, without me getting to tell it. But I say it all the same. Ernesto Guevara died at 39. No OD. No suicide. No unspecified lack of belief in life. He was shot dead by the forces that decide and define ‘pop culture’ today, and his instatement has been but a Dostoyevsky fate, or far worse. There’s a fact-fiction ruckus about Jesus Christ, but this man’s flesh and blood and he’s been so, he’s been seen so. I don’t think I’d die for anyone else but me, and that too would be contested by a want to live, and I know it’s a shameful thing to be saying that, but I won’t, I don’t think so. This man did. And that doesn’t make him a ‘martyr’, no that’s not what it makes him.

He’s a Hero. 'The' Hero.

(Heart beats to the left. Well, mine does, at least.)

AND SO I DREAMT

What is to follow is not an argument: It’s an authentication of point-of-view.

Daydream delusion,
limousine eyelash,
oh baby with your pretty face!
Drop a tear in my wineglass,
look at those big eyes:
see what you mean to me;
sweet cakes and milkshakes,
I’m a delusion angel,
I’m a fantasy parade;
I want you to know what I think,
don’t want you to guess anymore;
you have no idea where I came from,
we have no idea where we’re going,
latched in life,
like branches in the river,
flowing downstream,
caught in the current,
I’ll carry you, you’ll carry me:
That’s how it could be…

Don’t you know me?
Don’t you know me by now?

Sometimes, you know, at times, there’s this feeling that you hold inside a whole lot of steam that could steam any envelope, pop it open and flood the world with the thoughts stacked inside, with the words within and then you feel that you have no envelope, it’s more like a blank piece of paper and steam unfortunately can’t create but just bring outside what’s in, and what’s about to follow is the worst thing that can happen to anyone, that can happen to you, and you know it, you feel it when you stand there doing nothing as the steam froths and fizzes into something less substantial, something relatively dim and you get to watch it all from close-by, you watch all that’s alive falling down to die, and your hands aren’t tied as it fades, they’re free but you find that you can do nothing about it. Because you’re just not supposed to.

So many trains. So many buses past, so many encounters that never were. So many places, and so many faces, and so many people wearing them. So many instances of her. At least he got her off with him, as he got off the train. At least he went to speak the things I wished to speak, to confess at times, to lure some out at others, but mostly speak his mind out, not afraid of leers, not afraid of tears, not afraid of love, yet not entirely sure of it, all the same. At least he took his chance, scoring in it, merging with her at sundown and not the midnight encounter, before the break of dawn, only to facilitate a chance to screw it all up, to lead on to an overwhelmingly messed up state of mind, so overwhelming that it could replace the one he had previously, in the mind of the world, for the world loves chaos than what’s intact, with what’s intact only inspiring a break-down to solve it all from scratch, built it from the ground than to shape it from the side. At least he did while I just dreamt, only to prove himself right, though.

I’ll never forget this film.