WHERE 'IDIOCY' IS BUT A CLEVER CONSTRUCT

DIRECTED BY JESSE PERETZ

STARRING: PAUL RUDD, EMILY MORTIMER, ELIZABETH BANKS, ZOOEY DESCHANEL, RASHIDA JONES, SHIRLEY KNIGHT, ADAM SCOTT, KATHRYN HANN, JANET MONTGOMERY, STERLING K. BROWN with T.J. MILLER, HUGH DANCY and STEVE COOGAN

I like Mr. Bean. Let me tell you that upfront. I don’t like what Rowan Atkinson does with him, mixing conceit, propagating not merely the impractical, but also the undesirable to an extent that it’s not funny anymore. Humour is when you approve of it. Mr. Bean irritates. Give him a situation with only one thing that you wish to the heavens that he wouldn’t do and he’d do it. Like Crystal memorabilia however safely lodged, and he’d find a way to break it. He’s the selfish brat that stirs little empathy except in gimmicky patches where one comes to learn how alone he is and how, in such chronic loneliness, one can fathom his retardation to sociopathic levels.

But I still like the idea of him. I mean the idea of a human being you can’t classify, who has nothing like a job description, who comes across the straightest of situations and finds a way to bend it that you can’t call him anything other than an ‘idiot,’ which you call him to the best of your exasperation. It’s actually a credit on his part, it’s something that you owe to him. The reasonability of such classification and the spirit with which he accepts it. He makes things a whole lot easier for you, now doesn’t he? Who else, even in fictional society, have we been able to place this conveniently and to the best of their acceptance as well? As easy as calling a Blonde a Blonde, if you see what I mean.

This unclassifiable nature of a man is what forms the crux of ‘Our Idiot Brother.’ It’s the kind of film that’s amicable in that it’s not supposed to be. We know how much Ned Rochlin (Paul Rudd) loves everyone who constitutes every moment of his life. “I like to think that if you can put your trust out there, if you can really give people the benefit of the doubt, see their best intentions, then they’ll want to live up to it,” he says. There isn’t a moment when we see him defying his own philosophy, that which stems from routine, more or less; from the fact that he doesn’t have one, more precisely.

Ned used to work at a vegetable farm with his girlfriend Janet (Kathryn Hann), a hippie-parody as I see her. Ned himself is a week away from dreadlocks. But he’s better. He’s better than her, he’s better than the slowpoke (T.J. Miller) she replaces him with when he goes to jail. He’s the guy who hasn’t found company and is just making do with those available; even those who aren’t. “No one can love anyone unconditionally as Ned does!” his sister Miranda (Elizabeth Banks) screams at an outrageous Janet in the penultimate scene. In whom does a man like that find company? How does one love everyone beyond a level of reciprocation that’s virtually unattainable on the other person’s part? It’s certainly strenuous, but Ned is THE optimist. And he has hippies for friends. It’s almost a double-standard – a safe-play on part of writers Jesse and Evgenia Peretz. You want to give Ned some credit for real-world-applicability, sure. They do vouch for it. Or if you prefer to slap the hippie label on him, they do that too. In their defence, it’s a difficult stand. I get it.

What I liked and disliked about the film is the same thing – how much it situates its perspective in Ned’s sisters and how much it fails to do so. They are, obviously, the tellers of this tale. To us, Ned is the free-floating Samaritan whose only happiness is in keeping everyone else happy. To his sisters, he is an idiot, at least until he strikes a vein. “Why can’t I just sit around with my family and play a game of charades?” Ned asks. His sisters scoff at that question, even Elizabeth, the oldest who’s cast in the fragility and wisdom of Emily Mortimer. They are made to. And we, to the best of intentions, are made to hate them. Why else would one cast Elizabeth Banks who, in my opinion, was born annoying? It’s what comes easiest to her. Zooey Deschanel as the pansexual Natalie adds weird to the list of frigid and feeble, a heavy hand against Ned’s case.

The fact that a man who has this defeatist a sense of romance with his life comes with three sisters from different spectra of materialism is unexplained. Ned looks to be an older brother. Ebert, in his review of ‘Dan in Real Life,’ spoke about how Dan’s three daughters treat him like ‘a slow sort of brother.’ Well, Ned is exactly that. But then what is that which stops any of his sisters show even the slightest amount of attachment? Cindy (Natalie’s girlfriend as played by Rashida Jones), I thought, bonded better. ‘Lars and the Real Girl’ took care enough to explain to us how, in the film’s opinion, Lars Lindstrom (played by the exceptional Ryan Gosling) became socially retarded. How Gus Lindstrom, his brother, retaliates against his own guilt. ‘Our Idiot Brother’ doesn’t hint at such a back-story. This man is the kindest of souls amidst a flock of vultures. Period.

With that, I’ve come to the end of my review. Please note that I didn’t take this time to devalue ‘Our Idiot Brother’ for the heck of it. I watched it for the second time to write this review. There, I think, lies the problem. This isn’t the kind of film you watch again. A second watch would only point at ways not to believe in it. And that, in a way, is injustice to the stigma of likeability called Paul Rudd.

MY OSCAR PREDICTIONS - 2011

Let’s keep it honest. I’ve watched about three-quarters of the nominees, I’ve soaked in the buzz, I suppose. About a day to go and this is when I thought I’d get word out on my own. An urge, the thought of having had a say, of having said something before it doesn’t matter anymore. Everyone wants to talk about the Oscars, good or bad. I’ve had my opinions, and I took the month to validate them. Some changed, some diversified. Some things just got unclear, too personal to have a say.

I’m only going to be discussing those sections where I have enough to corroborate. As for the rest, I shall humbly recline from saying anything. In all, the nominations, in my opinion, have been fair enough. I mean, they could’ve been worse, so it’s typical Oscars. Could’ve been worse, but just about managed to keep its dignity intact. Still, no ‘Shame’, no ‘Drive’, no ‘Martha Marcy May Marlene.’ No ‘Melancholia’, for the depression buffs, even though for me it’s a good thing.

Without ado, let me get on with my opinions on the nominees as well as predictions on who I think would win, and who I want/wanted to. The pattern would be self-explanatory, I guess I wouldn’t have to walk you through it. Let me let you enjoy your walk by yourself.

Best Picture

I know ‘the Artist’ won everything else, but all roads point to ‘Hugo,’ I think. The sad part is I haven’t watched it to have a clear opinion. ‘the Help’ had won Screen Actors’ Guild, ‘the Descendants’ had a Golden Globe win too. ‘A Separation’ would have been a major threat and has conveniently been excluded. I really don’t have a preference for Best Film, but I hope they don’t go ahead and honour Artists for the Filmmaker category, that sounds strangely sacrilegious.

Best Direction

Alexander Payne. ‘the Descendants’ is not going to win anything else, it’s not half as loaded as his brilliantly-written ‘Sideways’ to win the Screenwriters’ prize. Besides, face it – this is the single most impressive film that’s almost entirely a director’s credit as the Actor supports. Payne is one of America’s finest filmmakers of this generation; he deserves it more than anyone else. It would have been a different story had Nicolas Winding Refn (of ‘Drive’) been nominated. I’d still vouch for Payne. For ‘the Descendants,’ to me, has been the single most delightful movie event of the year.

Best Actor

One of the most substantial set of nominees in any award category this year. Michael Fassbender (for ‘Shame’) replaces Brad Pitt’s formality, and I think it’d be THE perfect set. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (in ‘50/50’) played an important role as well. Anyway, I think it’s between Gary Oldman (for ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’) and George Clooney (for ‘the Descendants’). Clooney carried an entire film on his shoulders and well while Oldman played it simple and played it smart at that. Demian Bichir (for ‘A Better Life’) could be the buffer – the Surprise package. I vouch for Clooney but something tells me Oldman would bag it. He’s the virgin. Please no Dujardin. I need a break.

Best Actress

The Weinsteins make reservations – one for the money and one for the time – displacing two of the defining performances of the year. Elizabeth Olsen for ‘Martha Marcy May Marlene’, who gets my personal Oscar, and Kirsten Dunst for ‘Melancholia’, which, easily, was a career-best. Rooney Mara is the wrong young girl and it doesn’t make sense to nominate Meryl Streep anymore. Glenn Close was refreshingly subtle in ‘Albert Nobbs,’ although I think it’s a toss-in between Viola Davis (for ‘the Help’) and Michelle Williams for nailing her version of Marilyn Monroe in ‘my Week with Marilyn.’ Intuition points at Ms. Davis while my heart goes out for Michelle. She should have won it last time. She should win it this time too. Or so I think.

Best Supporting Actor

I haven’t watched enough movies to take a stand.

Best Supporting Actress

Hailee Steinfeld (for ‘True Grit’) was shifted from ‘Best Actress’ to ‘Best Supporting Actress’ last time so that she’d stand a chance – something she didn’t have against Ms. Portman sweeping the floors everywhere. Berenice Bejo (for ‘the Artist’) looks like this year’s version. It's a Weinstein move. Anyway, Octavia Spencer (for ‘the Help’) seems a universal favourite in a Dreamworks sweep. No Carey Mulligan (for ‘Shame’ and ‘Drive’). No Charlotte Gainsbourg (for ‘Melancholia’). Jessica Chastain for the wrong movie. I was impressed with Janet McTeer’s performance in the offbeat ‘Albert Nobbs.’ She gets my personal vote. Chastain gets my heart. And I go with Ms. Spencer as most probable, safely said.

Best Original Screenplay

‘A Separation’ in its only big nomination (aside from ‘Foreign Language Feature’) in a bunch of the inconsequential and the lacklustre. ‘Midnight in Paris’ is second best. This ought to be the most unoriginal year in the history of the Oscars; the year of adaptations and second-takes. ‘Win Win,' the American feel-good film of the year, hasn't been counted in. Or ‘50/50,’ the autobiography of a cancer-survivor who still hasn’t lost it in life. Disappointing. I’m glad the Iranian sneaked in. Otherwise, we’d have nothing to show.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Why do I think ‘Moneyball’ doesn’t deserve a single place in the Oscars this time? Because I haven’t watched it, perhaps. Nevertheless, Aaron Sorkin, who wasn’t rewarded last time when he stretched a one-liner story to film’s length with ‘the Social Network’ needed mention, I suppose. ‘the Help,’ I thought, was tidy. Like ‘the Ides of March’ or ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ – Tidy. That’s about it. Both my ignorance and precedence points at John Logan and his ‘Hugo.’ Alexander Payne needs the bigger prize. Pals Nat Faxon and Jim Rash better excuse him for that.

Best Animated Feature

A complete DreamWorks sweep, and I wonder why ‘the Adventures of Tintin’ hasn’t been counted in. Maybe a clause violation, I wouldn’t know. ‘Cars 2’ is the best. Any list without it doesn’t get my attention in any denomination. I think that’s enough said.

As for the rest, I think ‘A Separation’ deserves both the awards it has been nominated for, but that’s only because I think it deserves more. Ludovico Bource for ‘the Artist’ was succinct with his music score, but then Alexandre Desplat (for ‘A Better Life’, ‘my Week with Marilyn’ and on a darker note, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II’) has not been nominated. Or Michael Giacchino for ‘Cars 2’, two of the most important musicians of the decade. Too bad ‘Midnight in Paris’ can’t fall under Original Score. Or ‘the Descendants’, for that matter. There’s too little to decide between for ‘Best Original Song,’ there hasn’t been a worthy musical this year. I’d pick ‘Rio’ over ‘the Muppets,’ even though I love Jason Segel. A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.

‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon’ gets multiple nominations for mixing and editing machine noises in a ‘Linkin Park’ soundtrack? Ridiculous. ‘Drive’ needs its consolation prize. So does the unnecessary effort behind ‘the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’, I think. For the first time, we saw Hogwarts broken with so much fire, so convincing it touches your heart. The ‘Harry Potter’ franchise needs its recognition from the Muggle world. Nominations just don’t work anymore. ‘the Tree of Life’ can get the Photography prize, although I thought ‘A Better Life’ needed nomination. As well as Darius Khondji for ‘Midnight in Paris.’

Every critic has his Oscar dream – pre-nomination, post-nomination. Dreams, grievances; the little elation at seeing your horse win. I’ve taken my time to voice mine. Now I feel relieved. Relieved that I’ve shared, that I’ve spoken before it’s too late. And I hope you don’t sit with a clipboard and grade me on how much I’ve got it right. After all, I’m just another who waits for Wikipedia to tell me who has won.

ON HOW I LOST MY HEART (AND YOU WILL TOO)

DIRECTED BY SIMON CURTIS

STARRING: MICHELLE WILLIAMS, EDDIE REDMAYNE, KENNETH BRANAGH, DOMINIC COOPER, JULIA ORMOND, DOUGRAY SCOTT, ZOE WANAMAKER, TOBY JONES, PHILIP JACKSON with EMMA WATSON and JUDI DENCH

You remember ‘Little Miss Sunshine,’ with Abigail Breslin and her infamous stripper routine at the end? The child is incredible; flawless with what she had been taught to do, what she thinks the crowd wants and absolutely loves her for – a crowd consisting of none but her granddad, of course. But she believes in her performance, she drowns in the illusion of it that when it’s broken, she finds herself startled. Think of the moment the song is turned off. Little Olive claps her hand to her mouth. She is thunderstruck. So many people hate her, so many people want her off the stage. Her dance is profane or so they think. She doesn’t. She finds it to be a celebration. It’s her way of having fun, it’s her way of asking the audience to have fun with her. No one cares but her family. They oblige. And that’s enough for her. She finds fulfilment. That, we find, is all she wants.

Marilyn Monroe is that child. This isn’t what I generalized from Colin Clark’s account. This is what I inferred from it. This is what I understood; this is what the dots looked like once I had connected them. It could be called beauty. It could be the film’s single biggest flaw. The misshapen creature masquerades intact and yearns to be loved behind the scenes. The film has us give it to her. All adoration, all warmth to our heart’s capacity. All the moments I could’ve thought the dots could be connected different – well, I didn’t think that. The film kept me with it. Michelle Williams did. For an hour and a half, I was Colin Clark. For an hour and a half, I wished I was.

‘My Week with Marilyn’ starts with ‘Heat Wave’ and ends with ‘That Old Black Magic.’ It begins and ends with a song in a complete circle. Nothing has changed. But something had happened. Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) is a twenty three year old of impressive nobility but believes in cinema. He’s our Matthew from ‘the Dreamers.’ Marilyn (Michelle Williams) is his Isabelle. Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott) is her Theo. They’re not twins, but they’re as inseparable. They’re husband and wife. I hope you get the crux of the story from these comparisons. You should’ve watched ‘the Dreamers.’ And you should watch ‘My Week with Marilyn’ as well. In both, you’ll find cinema at its romantic best.

Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) commissions Marilyn Monroe to play Elsie Marina as he takes his ‘the Prince and the Showgirl’ to the screen. It’s a role once played by his wife Vivian Leigh (Julia Ormond) on stage. Marilyn asks her why she didn’t play the role again. Vivian replies that her Larry thinks she’s too old for the role, which, she acknowledges, is the truth. Also true is the fact that she doesn’t want to lose her husband to a much younger competitor against whom she doesn’t stand a chance. She asks Colin to keep an eye on him for her. Laurence wants Colin to keep an eye on Marilyn, while Milton H. Greene (Dominic Cooper) wants him to lay off of her. He’s a business partner who, as he says, once got his tongue burnt. But young Colin is new to both. To Cinema. To Marilyn Monroe. It’s absurd for him to even consider the word ‘No.’

The film is Adrian Hodges’ adaptation of Colin Clark’s memoir ‘the Prince, the Showgirl and Me.’ It’s what he recounts of his days as Third Assistant to Olivier. “It was a dream come true,” he says. “And my only talent was to not close my eyes.” The film is an old man’s fond recollection of youth, of days chronicled by the youngster as they passed by. It’s a memoir not written but lived. There are two scenes in the very beginning where Colin is ordered to bring Ms. Monroe from her dressing room to the sets as it had become her custom to delay. On one occasion, he catches her without her makeup on. On the other, it’s her clothes. Much later in the film, the two of them go skinny-dipping in broad daylight where Marilyn, yet again, takes her clothes off in front of him. “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before,” she says. He knows that. Not many people have seen her that way. Even lesser would actually write about it. He knows that as well.

It’s incredible how beautiful their story is in spite of the scandal it could brew. But would it cause any at all? In one scene in Colin’s omnipresence, he catches her in the middle of the night with a sheaf of Miller’s notes clutched to her chest, notes which we come to know are about her in a way she doesn’t approve of. Marilyn turns tearful when confronted; dizzy with further intimidation. She doesn’t like what Olivier does. She doesn’t like how Miller treats her either. But she approves of Colin. Would she then approve of his work, by which I mean this memoir? Absolutely, I would think. She asks him not to forget her. This is his way of showing he never has; that he never will. Not all truth is scandalous. Not all scandal is treachery. Neither are all who are treacherous cold-heartedly so. Not Marilyn. Not Colin, to wardrobe-girl Lucy (Emma Watson), even when he proves her right.

Michelle Williams is a bad impersonator but a great actress. She plays a template, not the person. She’s Marilyn Monroe off the sets of ‘the Prince and the Showgirl.’ On it, she’s Michelle Williams playing Marilyn playing Elsie Marina. A lot has been lost in the reworking that it looks better only through Colin’s eyes. I haven’t watched ‘the Prince and the Showgirl.’ I can’t imagine what one who has watched it would think of it after this film. Colin, that way, acts against his own suggestion of showing those clippings which worked than the ones which didn’t. But then he submits to us a different Marilyn – the one he saw. The more likeable version. Ms. Williams, if you remember, tap-danced to Ryan Gosling in ‘Blue Valentine.’ She tap-dances here too. And she winks. That’s another weapon she adds to the list. And that's not all.

Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier dazzles with wit than rendition. In some scenes, I thought, he drowns in a quest for self-importance. Those have been carefully written into character and context. The others, he has Colin to counsel. This is only the second time that I watch Branagh. The first was, of course, Gilderoy Lockhart in ‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.’ He was aptly cast in both, I felt, in attention-seeking characters. I’ve no complaints whatsoever. Judi Dench, again, is perfectly at home playing Sybil Thorndike, a veteran actor in the production; eagle-eyed with a golden heart. There are two films, two stereotypes of characters that I associate her with. One is ‘M.’ The other is the Queen in ‘Shakespeare in Love.’ Here we have a delightful case of the latter. Dominic Cooper and Toby Jones are excusably cast, but I thought Emma Watson stretched it. She’s an important actress in an unimportant character. I found a case of bigger name against a stronger performance. A step-down on the faith ladder for me.

Colin cannot get over Marilyn Monroe. Milton discourages him to the best of his ability. Miller, on his part, needed to flee the country to gain composure. They have three different dimensions to the misshapen creature she is. The lover, the victim and the chosen protector. The presence of the other two makes me want to hear their side of the story. But like I always say, that’s another movie. This one is the lover’s take on their honeymoon. It’s simple. It’s sweet. It’s blind faith, you’ll observe. And in the end you’d find yourself asking for more.

NOW, WHY DID I FALL IN LOVE WITH JESSICA?!

DIRECTED BY TATE TAYLOR

STARRING: VIOLA DAVIS, EMMA STONE, OCTAVIA SPENCER, BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD, SISSY SPACEK, ALLISON JANNEY, AHNA O’REILLY, CHRIS LOWELL, MARY STEENBURGEN with MIKE VOGEL and JESSICA CHASTAIN

I have a similar question with 'the Help' as I get with War movies or any Army camp movie for that matter. How does an actor get cast? There is a stereotype, yes. It’s an administration thing than just a movie cliché. It’s called diversity. Like Ving Rhames and the Maggie Qs of the ‘Mission Impossible’ series. Comes right down to the ‘Transformers’ and every American ensemble blockbuster franchise, my, that’s a long name. Every wide-release in Hollywood has in itself a diversity program. Actors are set-pieces. You take one out; you write another in with a different skill set. You change the gameplay accordingly. Like how Tom Cruise became Angelina Jolie in a gender-changed ‘Salt.’

Let me tell you why I started off on that completely arbitrary note when I begin to review what could be the second-best American feel-good movie of the year (‘Win Win’ is my first, and I’m not counting ‘the Descendants’). Mainstream cinema today is so purportedly race-indifferent and has this Liberal-Democrat pose of reaching out to all because, in that, they find a win-win situation. You get points for being secular. You get a bigger audience. That’s like scoring twice on the same shot. The Media demands such facilitation from the studios – I’ve read reviews in some glossy magazines where the reviewer was disappointed with the film’s racist stance. It happens in romantic comedies, more often than not. They need Black characters. They need Gay characters. It’s a political stratagem as much as it is a sensibility criterion that needs fulfilment.

American society, or even World society for that matter, has become a fabric of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic threads inter-woven to inseparable proportion that it becomes absurdly insensitive, almost mindless to exclude. Office circles, friend circles, baseball teams even. Everything has everyone in a bizarre sort of fill in a time of America’s first Black President. To put it simply, America now is what India has always been. A mix of races and religion brought together by legislation, like adamant kids and a kindergarten teacher who schools them on how to behave. Some still defy, some never learn. Most tolerate. A few even go on to appreciate, in the randomness that we call a society which, ironically, has been perpetrated by organization.

Let me come to my question, being well aware of how much I’ve digressed from it. As inseparable (I’ve used the word again, I know) parts of a cosmopolitan whole, how would one cast actors into roles in as polarized a scenario as the early ‘50s, staying faithful to the racial stereotypes prevalent back then as well as keeping a check on levels of drama that the viewer doesn’t get the feeling that he’s being force-fed? Racial tension still does exist; even the celebrities have the well-worded Mr. Mel Gibson in their midst, not to mention the entire Republican front (Sarah Palin among others) that cringes at the mention of homosexuality. Of course, that’s an entirely different subject and a fresh new demographic (with overlaps, of course), so I’d rather not head there.

Think of David Strathairn, who played the left end Edward R. Murrow in ‘Good Night and Good Luck’ (2005) in contrast with the Ginsberg-biopic ‘Howl’ (2010), where he plays the opposition in the Obscenity trials. Which one is he? And how good is personal adherence/fondness to the betterment of the character played? Like I always say, anyone can play the porn-star. But it took Sasha Grey to actually be one.

I speak for Bryce Dallas Howard who plays Hilly Holbrook, who’s so phobic, it’s cruel. Like Sandra Bullock in ‘Crash’, if it helps relate. She’s the rich girl with the right kind of friends and a forum that supports her bid for separate bathrooms for black housemaids. ‘Separate, but Equal’, she says. Kind of like a mean girl taken seriously because the story demands it. The movie in itself is a chick-flick that’s sensitized, on one level. Eugenia ‘Skeeter’ Whelan (Emma Stone) is the conscious writer-type who stays afloat when the rest prefer to drown. Elizabeth Leefolt (Ahna O’Reilly) leans to the opposition too, waveringly, while her little Baby Mae Mobley joins Skeeter along with her own nanny, the wise old Aibileen (Viola Davis), pronounced like the Chuck Berry song ‘Maybellene.’

The housemaids have a circle of their own. Aibileen is joined by the comic, wild-at-heart Minny (Octavia Spencer) and her quiet and desperate replacement Yule Mae (Aunjanue Ellis) at Hilly’s house, who keeps a low profile to ensure payment of her twin sons’ tuition at College. Spencer’s Minny, on the other hand, is the cocky, confident maid who puts her foot down. Not to the best of consequences, though. A show of cheek gets her fired and blacklisted almost, which means Hilly had made sure she wouldn’t get employed by anyone else. Except by the crazy Ms. Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain) who’s married so big she needs a cook to impress. Chastain, a young actress of climbing reputation (‘Take Shelter’, ‘Jolene’), fills in for Amy Adams, coming out immensely likeable, treading the line between innocence and stupidity, going both ways to the best of her ability. She's a delight.

Emma Stone answers a hypothetical question with her performance as the sturdy Ms. Skeeter. How would it be if we sent Emma Stone to the ‘50s? It’s not even a strong accent, she doesn’t manage a hundredth of Meryl Streep. She’s still amazing. She’s someone, let me restate, who has carried the weight of an entire movie on her shoulders. This is one of the kind of roles that you know you’ve always dreamt about only when you’ve accomplished it and watch yourself on screen. There’s no way to describe this tomboy than to call her an Emma Stone. She’s dressed different. She speaks different, occasionally breaking. She smokes. She’s the writer who has grit than vision, which comes but only with help. It’s dear Aibileen who steers the ship. Stone’s Skeeter merely pushes it to water. I hope you understand what I’m saying.

I wondered if there’s anyone else old enough to play Aibileen – Viola Davis seemed so perfect. She’s like the grandmother who’s as funny as she has sob stories to tell, meshed together into an affecting, not-too-melodramatic performance. I’ve watched very little of Davis, just two movies, to be honest. One is ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story.’ The other is ‘Law Abiding Citizen.’ The rest, I’ve heard of. From what I’ve seen of her, I know she can raise an eyebrow; literally. Davis joins the likes of Patricia Clarkson, Maggie Smith and Dianne Wiest in my terms of endearment as Supporting Actress. Playing lead this time, she does well to not go over the top. Her Aibileen is sweet, subtle and strongly-worded. Had Mae Mobely been a little older and a boy, I could've written for him. I think that’s enough said.

‘the Help’ is written and directed by Tate Taylor, based on a novel by Kathryn Stockett. It is set in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement; around the time Rock-n-Roll happened. There’s a scene where Skeeter examines the legality of the task she’s set out to do – of bringing to the forefront, for the first time, the perspectives of Black housemaids about their position and their real emotions on the White American households as they see it. She reads out existing laws in a voiceover. It’s terrible. The maids are sensible enough to have a life of their own. In fact, they already do. They’re self-sustained. It’s sad how they had reclined to their fates to ensure future security; heroic, yet sad. Even more heroic is how the entire African-American country managed to break those walls down, or at least reduce them to hedges and fences that they can jump over and get along, having a heavy hand in contributing to what’s called ‘pop culture’ today. Jazz music. Blues music. Beyonce Knowles.

But that victory would be another movie. ‘the Help’, as I see it, is self-empowerment. It’s not about the triumph as such. It’s about contentment; the helplessness to aspire for anything else. There’s a little too much about inevitability these days, isn’t there? “God says you should love your enemies,” Aibileen says. “It’s hard to do.” It’s a well-performed movie that goes a little easy on the melodrama. It’s moving.

Dreamworks (along with Reliance Big Entertainment) produces ‘the Help.’ It needs to be mentioned that Spielberg made ‘the Color Purple’ in 1985. I’m wouldn’t know if there are comparisons, I haven’t watched ‘the Color Purple.’ I know Whoopi Goldberg was nominated for Best Actress though. Ms. Davis has been nominated this year. So has Ms. Spencer and Ms. Chastain, with the film itself up for ‘Best Picture.’ It would win something. I’d go for Ms. Chastain as right girl for the wrong movie. As for ‘Best Actress’, it’s Elizabeth Olsen in my heart. And let me not be called a racist for that.

DOESN'T GLITTER, DOESN'T LIE

DIRECTED BY TOMAS ALFREDSON

STARRING: GARY OLDMAN, BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH, TOM HARDY, TOBY JONES, COLIN FIRTH, CIARAN HINDS, DAVID DENCIK, KATHY BURKE, STEPHEN GRAHAM, SVETLANA KHODCHENKOVA with SIMON McBURNEY and JOHN HURT

Imagine a James Bond title sequence. Bond on his way into a mission most definitely involving killing – double agents, men who know too much – whoever. He’d be all stealth and slickness on his way in, helter-skelter on the return trip. There is no easy way out. Five minutes of Steve McQueen styled muscle-car action, a couple of explosions and a triumphant stance, we’d have the title credits roll, of girls and guns and maybe even gold. A brief post-title, pre-introduction scene would feature Bond being told off by a half-amused-half-startled Judi Dench (a.k.a. ‘M’), words he’d conveniently dust off his blazer. Before we know it, he’d be on his next mission, stepping into the actual storyline.

‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ starts not too differently. Control (John Hurt), head of the British Secret Service, gives laconic instructions to field agent Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) about meeting up with a Hungarian counterpart who claims he has information about a Mole in their midst. Prideaux walks the streets in Budapest and meets the man at an open-air cafeteria where the waiter leaves a blotch of sweat on the table-cloth. He’s walked into trouble. An Old Lady at a window high above knows as much. Prideaux turns, paces away from the table and gets shot in a futile attempt at fleeing. The waiter wields the gun, he’s got it right only the second time, the first hitting a woman as she breastfeeds her infant. There’s a painful frame showing the child alive when the mother isn’t.

The operation having gone disastrously wrong, Control is unanimously asked to step down by his deputies, agents Percy ‘Tinker’ Alleline (Toby Jones), Bill ‘Tailor’ Haydon (Colin Firth), Roy ‘Soldier’ Bland (Ciaran Hinds) and Toby ‘Poorman’ Esterhase (David Dencik) upon his disagreement with them going for ‘Operation Witchcraft’ involving an influx of Soviet intelligence for British nothings, in turn used as leverage to obtain American intelligence. It’s pitched to him as a ‘treasure chest.’ Control calls it nonsense. We then have an ‘out with you and your ideas’ moment where Tinker, Tailor, Soldier and Poorman lose Control, decidedly. Tinker takes top spot as replacement. Control keeps his aging smirk and the faith of a colleague and an old friend in George Smiley (Gary Oldman).

The Bond operative, thus, splits four ways, where Control is an ‘M’ who takes the fall and takes his man with him. The title sequence is still a smooth jazz number as is most of the soundtrack and the credits roll on top of clippings of a weary, womanless and out-of-work Smiley getting used to newly-acquired idleness. He is, obviously, re-hired. Once an agent, he turns NOC, looking into the Circus’ affairs, instructed to catch the Mole. He asks for and gets the assistance of Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch, who looks like a young Malcolm McDowell). Armed with both humility and ability to do everything the man asks him to, Guillam and Smiley work their way through the informants in Connie Sachs (Kathy Burke), phone-attendant Jerry Westerby (Stephen Graham) and the unorthodox (and thus, crucial) Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy, delightful).

Smiley is a sort of real-time Bond. The film even says that loud. There’s a party that Smiley keeps recollecting – a source of valuable information as we come to know late into the film. One such scene at the party has ‘the Second Best secret agent’ playing in the background as everyone sings along. Smiley doesn’t, but he’s kept in focus until fade-out. The song, as I learn, is from the Bond-wannabe ‘Licensed to Kill’ (1965), its usage suggesting the film and its makers’ awareness of the standard they had set out to defy.

But ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ is not a parody. It’s a well-paced and neatly crafted suspense thriller that never gets out of Stealth Mode; a stronger comparison to ‘the Ghost Writer’ than ‘the Ides of March’ was. It’s actually a sort of equivalent. Both are translations of existing text (a 1974 John La Carre novel and a 1979 television series with Alec Guinness playing Smiley) to screen with the help of succinct performances by a galaxy of stars. The difference is the man in the middle, where the gritty and giant-killer in Stephen Meyers (as played by Ryan Gosling) is replaced by the wiser, more venerable Smiley, the stakes being higher and the consequences – more brutal.

Gary Oldman has the air of an Agent-turned-Watchdog, a subconscious advocate of protocol that he’s tried, tested and is tired of. Like Morgan Freeman in Fincher’s ‘Se7en’, but subtler. It’s amusing how different this performance is from his usual of recent times Jim Gordon, and how little he has actually done to make it look so. He keeps his accent, his natural gray. He acts his age – even older. There’s inherent warmth in him, a droopiness that endears. No one can play tired and wise better than Oldman can. A more physical performance could call for Liam Neeson. Oldman here is tailormade.

Bridget O’Connor (died of cancer and has this film dedicated to her) and husband Peter Straughan write the film to be the typical hard-to-understand-but-slow-enough-to-keep-track-of drama with dialogues that half-explain what’s going on, the rest left to flashbacks woven into a steady narrative. With the number of characters and the nature of plot, the details do get confusing at times. But Tomas Alfredson (‘Let the Right One in’), with poise in intensity on the lines of the great Polanski, prioritizes to set things straight. The film conveys. It doesn’t affect you; it’s not too much of a surprise. But it succeeds in bringing the movie-spy to fit the shoes of an everyday man - as lonesome, over-worked and wise that he doesn’t do any actual killing. And in that, as far as I know, it’s a first.

BUT WHY?

DIRECTED BY ASGHAR FARHADI

STARRING: PEYMAN MOAADI, LEILA HATAMI, SHAHAB HOSSEINI, SAREH BAYAT, SARINA FARHADI, ALI-ASGHAR SHAHBAZI, SHAHIN YAZDANBAKSH, KIMIA HOSSEINI and MERILA ZAREI

Derek Cianfrance, who made the chilling ‘Blue Valentine’ last year, once said in an interview that his worst fear as a child was the thought of his parents separating. Isn’t that universal? Death is a finality that can force acceptance. Divorce is beyond that. One moment you see them getting along. Another, you see them wanting not to. You don’t know what happened in between. The worst feeling in a human being, let alone a child, is that of having not contributed, be it for better or for worse. It’s like being most affected in a Civil war that you didn’t have anything to do with.

The ballad that it was, ‘Blue Valentine’ never really brought it down to the child’s perspective. It couldn’t have, it never tried to. It had a baby girl who was frightened by sight and by sound but didn’t know why it rained. Asghar Farhadi’s ‘A Separation’, in that aspect, works a little stronger. By that I mean it’s more devastating. It burdens its child with knowledge, destroys her further with the strain of understanding. But she doesn’t break. She does something worse. She accepts her fate. I thought of prostitution. I thought of slavery. What she goes through is just as bad.

‘A Separation’ is titled ‘the Separation of Nader from Simin’ in Persian. Which means there is no deuce. I know I didn’t watch a film about a divorce that could also have implied the separation of Mother from Child or of Father from Child. The film does not suggest it. In fact, it resists that notion. The child does not lose just one parent to the separation, she loses both. She knows that. And, not to mention, the watertight security that comes with a family that’s inseparable and as thick as thieves.

I remembered Miles Raymond in Alexander Payne’s ‘Sideways’ where he throws a passing remark on Marriage and Divorce. “Last year, it was all divorces”, he says. “This year it’s Weddings. It’s cyclical, I guess.” We’re witnessing a society that hasn’t gotten to that point yet. Nader (Peyman Moaadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) might take matters to court, the godless people they are. Razieh (Sareh Bayat) would consider it a sin to conspire against her husband Houjat (Shahab Hosseini) like that. She wouldn’t fake-swear on the Quran to get some money they desperately need. Nader, on his part, would do it just so he doesn’t lose his little girl Termeh’s (Sarina Farhadi) respect. No doubt they’re both honorable people. But their codes don’t match.

Farhadi discusses his country in this bourgeoisie-versus-the-common battle. The matchup is uneven, just like it always is. The battle takes place on two grounds. Nader chooses his Father, a victim of deep-set Alzheimer’s, over Simin’s adamant stand on leaving the country, with or without him. She accuses him of neglecting his daughter. He blames her for not trusting him with both. Whose side do we take? Nader is plenty devoted to his Father and he loves his daughter to groom. Termeh, on her part, loves him and is happy to help. She is eleven years of age and is at that point where we know she needs her Mother, or she would real soon. But she cannot side with the aggressor for simple fear of capsizing what might otherwise just about make it to shore.

One of them needs to give up. It’s that kind of issue where neither is prepared to cope with the other’s solution. Simin picks emigration for her daughter’s sake. She’s red-haired under the shawl and we see a fleeting image of her smoking on the verandah. We place her almost immediately. She’s like Marjane Satrapi’s liberal girl-friends in ‘Persepolis’ where, as the confused post-adolescent learns, abandoning ship is a survival skill. She’s practical, yes. She eyes the future with Nader caught in the past as it appears, but for what good is this seamlessness? Nader isn’t the pinnacle of subtlety either. He shoves Razieh, his Father’s nurse, out the door, hurting her both physically and sentimentally. Razieh, we know since before, is pregnant. She’s taken to hospital the same night, where she has a miscarriage. At fifth month, the law says, abortion is manslaughter. That’s the second battle.

The accusations go in a circle with everything coming back to Nader, one way or another. Consequences mount. Settlement might imply resolution, but Nader refuses. He takes the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ stand. His daughter asks him if he really didn’t know the woman was pregnant. He responds saying he didn’t at the moment. He saw a woman who had tied his Father to his bed, locked him inside and gone on a joyride. Man turns monster as emotions blind. Termeh shows just as much hostility to Razieh at that point. In her defence, she stood by her Father. Trust is a strong-room that keeps emotions secure. But she finds hers broken in and unforgivably violated as she uncovers the truth, layer by layer.

The parents show poorly in front of their child in a see-saw routine. Termeh, initially by her Father, rolls out closer to the other pole as she deals with him by herself, eventually ending up, I believe, somewhere right in the middle. She pities her Dad in all his helplessness and hates her Mom for having brought it upon him. Then she finds him to be as inertial and misshapen as her Mother pegs him to be. She lies under oath to stop him from going to jail and fights him for having turned down her Mother’s open-arm invitation to reconcile.

In the end, she’s asked to pick a side. She says she has decided. Her choice is, tactfully and rightly so, never revealed. We know it doesn’t matter. Nader has a momentum shift against him, which Simin had caused in the first place. One is as bad as the other, where the two of them have invented dysfunction in what seemed to work previously. Now they’re just vultures pecking on their daughter who stands beside this corpse called dignity that seems to have died with their relationship.

‘A Separation’ has been universally branded the film of the year. From what I’ve watched of the Oscar haul, I would say it comes close in contest against mine – ‘the Descendants.’ Both films deal with eventuality and the show of man’s ugly side in his efforts to resist it. While ‘the Descendants,’ in this quest, served to romanticize his defeat, glorifying its hero as a man who has come to terms with his demons, ‘A Separation’ shows it unadulterated.

Cinema, as I see it, is a hypnotic medium that, to put it simply, renders us vulnerable and easy to inspire; to influence. Farhadi recognizes that in his cautious stance to not give Termeh’s decision away. The separation, on the other hand, is narrated as it is – Man and Woman with blood on their hands, awaiting verdict to tell victory from defeat. I couldn’t cherish the disappointment I felt, even though I could appreciate it. Robbie Weaver in ‘Crazy, Stupid, Love’ asks his Father to get his Mom back to inspire his own love-life decisions. I cried the same to Farhadi. Our film experience can be crushing, hostile and almost entirely defeated, but on any day, I’d vouch for hope. ‘Death and the Maiden’ was hope at its forgiving best. ‘Crazy, Stupid, Love’ was hope although it’s best not to compare. ‘Blue Valentine’, like ‘the Descendants’, was a tale of glorious defeat.

Imagine this. Thirty years later, Termeh sits down with her daughter as the film unfolds in a recollection. She tells her everything up until the point where she had to decide. Would her husband have a similar story? I don’t know. The child would have a similar decision, perpetrating the cycle of being narrator and spectator of her own story, from Eleven to Forty. There’s an even younger girl (of Razieh and Houjat) whose story begins much earlier, right from the age of four. She witnesses a miscarriage, countersuits, and is made to believe that her Father killed her unborn Brother.

‘A Separation’ leaves us to a fate as pitiful as that of either of these children, helpless to do anything but ask ‘Why?’ That’s as much as my Eleven-year-old self could do. The twenty-year-old still refuses to show. I don’t think he ever would. For when it comes to such a thing as our parents’ separation, I don’t think any of us would grow up to be anything more than eleven years old.

ON GROWN-UP BLUES THAN ADELESCENCE

RECORDED BY THE TEDESCHI-TRUCKS BAND

Jim Scott loves Derek Trucks. You’d only have to listen to as much as a shred of ‘Midnight in Harlem’ to know that. Mrs. Trucks a.k.a. Susan Tedeschi steps back from the microphone and Scott rolls a carpet right out to the limousine for dear Mr. Trucks to walk on. The solo is queued in, Derek at his resonant best, and you hear it till the very last note. There’s no fade-out, there’s no intrusion of the chorus riff to steal its glory away. It plays until it dies out, the music supports. It’s like everyone stops and what’s playing is but a backing track, inconspicuous. Almost irrelevant.

Vocalist Mike Mattison (along with Derek) writes this song that’s just slide-guitar and woman vocals, both at their glorious best, in a ‘Jessica’ (from the Allman Brothers’ album ‘Brothers and Sisters’) meets Soul sort of romance. The lines are sad but her voice almost laughs. Susan has an uncharacteristic confidence that shows in a sort of Annie Lennox performance of sadness, of a woman feeling blue with her pride intact. There’s beauty in this defeatism, in the accomplished self-sufficiency of it, the contentment of feeling nothing, of wanting nothing from the listener but for them to sit back and listen.

Two worlds blend together to make one that’s bigger than both can individually ever be. If Derek and Susan kept their music intact by marrying it, this band is like a baby of that Union. ‘the Tedeschi-Trucks Band’, an eleven-member group, debuts with ‘Revelator’ (2011), a confluence of the good old Blues, some Soul, a bit of funk in the modern Blues-Rock label, and not to mention, the unclassifiable Derek Trucks. Jim Scott, having weighed it down with years with Wilco, Tom Petty, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Johnny Cash, has all the knowledge in the world to shape this record to an exciting whole. The album has been released by Sony Masterworks, a revamp of Sony Classical, founded in 2006 as we hear.

As extensive as every other Derek Trucks record (‘Songlines’ in 2006, ‘Already Free’ in 2009), ‘Revelator’ has 13 tracks running for about an hour (61 minutes), performed by a conglomerate of musicians included in and aside from the original band, like David Ryan Harris (guitar, vocal and co-writing credits for ‘Shelter’) and J.J. Johnson (Drums/Percussion on all tracks), both from John Mayer’s old roster.

It’s astounding how much of the musical pie-chart the band manages to eat into. There’s the groan-meets-badass blues in ‘Come see about Me’ and ‘Learn how to Love.’ ‘Bound for Glory’ could be the more optimistic rock standard, while ‘Ball and Chain’ wails it old-school. With the weight of the entire album on his shoulders, we can’t do without a song on Derek especially. ‘Don’t let me Slide’ is that song, a cheeky-titled double-entendre that eventually lets him slide anyway and how! We have melodies country-styled in ‘Shelter’ and ‘Until you Remember’, ‘Midnight in Harlem’ for the memories and ‘These Walls’ in a world-music mix.

Susan takes centre-stage on a Derek Trucks record. It’s an effective combination. The two of them make a power-duo of sorts. He plays guitar, she sings to match. And Scott, the engineer, cements it to spotless perfection. The arrangement is exciting and never loses quirk. The songs are strong, hard-hitting and intense. They’re beautifully mixed, even though we know that in case of a band as this, there’s barely any need. The Tedeschi-Trucks ensemble has always been extremely well-coordinated and provide some of their best performances live. They did at Clapton’s Crossroads, 2010. Here, they do better.

‘Revelator’ has won ‘Best Blues Album’ (A merger of Contemporary and Traditional Blues, previously) at the 54th Grammy Awards, with Derek battling uncle Gregg and Warren Haynes from the Allman family, alongside veterans Keb Mo and Marcia Ball. We had a similar situation last time around with John Mayer nominated (for his 'Crossroads' cover) against the might of McCartney, Young, Plant and Clapton himself for ‘Best Rock Vocal Performance.' It’s uncanny to have a kid-prodigy fighting it with the giants. It’s even better when he wins, as in a Mozart-Salieri equivalent.

Years of having been two of the very few flag-bearer of the Blues in this generation, Trucks and Tedeschi reap their reward. And with that in our system, we now wait to see what John Mayer’s about to come up with, with ‘Born and Raised’ due any minute now.

HOW MEN TURN FATHER OF CIRCUMSTANCE

DIRECTED BY CHRIS WEITZ

STARRING: DEMIAN BICHIR, JOSE JULIAN, CARLOS LINARES, JOAQUIN COSIO, DOLORES HEREDIA, CHELSEA RENDON, BOBBY SOTO with EDDIE ‘PIOLIN’ SOTELO and NANCY LENEHAN

Carlos Galindo (Demian Bichir) climbs trees. Not the branched-out ones with footholds aplenty. He climbs straight-shooters like the Palm and the Coconut, where one would need fasteners and belts and boots for better grip. Blasco Martinez (Joaquin Cosio), Carlos’ boss and, for all practical purposes, a well-wisher, provides for the equipment. On one such climb routine, Mrs. Donnelly (Nancy Lenehan) down below asks Blasco if the man is insured. Blasco is immediate to dust it off, like it’s ridiculous to even think he isn’t. But we know. Carlos (along with Blasco) is one of the thousands of illegal immigrants living in Los Angeles, having driven in from Mexico, doing the odd chore to keep the fire burning.

In Carlos and Blasco we have two different kinds of immigrants. Blasco, who’s obviously been around for longer, has a ‘hit and quit’ sort of adequacy about him. He’s the kind of guy who’s got his legs on either side of the fence all the time. Carlos, on the other hand, has completely uprooted himself and replanted in more fertile soil as he sees it. He might not have authentication in America, but he’s got even lesser in Mexico. He’s like Miguel Santos in ‘Sugar’ (made by Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden) in his preference to get lost in a sea of uncertainty than to stand stagnant back home. He doesn’t have deed, he doesn’t have document. But he has a son in America for whom he wants to make life better.

In his son Luis (Jose Julian), we have a third kind of immigrant – the first generation citizen. We see him watching ‘Cribs’ on TV in his introduction sequence. It isn’t representative of his desires and longings as one might be quick to assume. It’s representative of who he is. About fourteen years old as he looks to be, Luis is friends with Facundo (Bobby Soto) and has a girlfriend in Ruthie (Chelsea Rendon) who we come to meet in a sturdy encounter with a schoolyard bully. Ruthie does half the work by telling him about her family as Luis brings him down with giant-killing aggression. Detaining him, a Policeman asks him to take his shirt off, to check in which gang’s direction his tattoos seem to point. But the boy is unmarked as he claims he is – a claim which, as we know, is only true for the surface.

Carlos buys Blasco’s business getting help from his sister Anita (Dolores Heredia), a citizen by marriage and hence in a much better position. Closer to his dream than he was ever before, he goes for a spin and a show of heart where he picks Santiago (Carlos Linares) to assist him on his day’s work. He teaches him things about work in the garden and puts his boots on, ready to climb a tree, to show him how it’s done. At the top, we see him notice something we’re sure he wouldn’t have appreciated before – the view. He has finally become Blasco with a Carlos of his own, he thinks. Except that he, with his Rousseau-like faith in people, fails to see that no one can be quite like Carlos. Definitely not Santiago.

‘A Better Life’ is written by Eric Eason, based on a story by Roger L. Simon. It is directed by Chris Weitz, a Matthew Vaughn equivalent with his film choices. We know him from the exceptionally good-natured ‘About a Boy’, his adaptation of Philip Pullman’s ‘the Golden Compass’ and the even less forgivable ‘New Moon’, the second installment of ‘the Twilight Saga.’ This film, for him, is of a fourth kind and a debut of sorts. Its premise is immediately relatable to De Sica’s neorealist masterpiece ‘the Bicycle Thieves,’ which, I thought, the film neither shies away from, nor cashes in on. Eason (a filmmaker himself known for his insightful take on Latino communities in America and elsewhere) and Weitz weave it intricately into the Mexican underbelly of LA that the story and setting become an inseparable whole. They, along with Alexandre Desplat’s (‘the King’s Speech’, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’) music score and its exceptional photography (Javier Aguirresarobe) render the film perfectly organic.

Demian Bichir plays Carlos, a central role that’s only half the weight with Jose Julian as Luis strong on the counter-balance. They’re Father and Son in a natural conflict. Bichir is a heavyweight in Mexican cinema as I came to know. He has previously played Castro in Soderbergh’s ‘Che’ – he looks uncannily like him. I saw a win-win in casting Bichir to play Carlos, a father and a human being with unquestionable morality that falls short in only the fact that he’s an illegal immigrant, driven by despair. Bichir, who is no doubt a very important actor, empowers Carlos with a swagger and his piercing eyes, features that accentuate Carlos’ strength which helps him keep his head above the water. Also to his advantage is the fact that in spite of Bichir’s prevalence in Mexico, he is, undoubtedly again, less-known to audiences, worldwide, which is crucial, at least to a film as this, where it’s important for the viewer to stay close to character and not get carried away with excitement/confusion associated with the actor essaying the role. Brad Pitt needed to go gray to make ‘Babel’ believable, but Bichir has no such necessity. See what I mean?

But in spite of Bichir’s solid performance in all its glory, I was drawn more towards Luis and a convincing portrayal by Jose Julian. The boy looks fresh in high school and dangerously treading the thin line of well-being that splits better from worse. He’s a sort of product of negligence, but with a mind of his own and a maturity to weigh things, an effect of being raised by the unshakeable Carlos. He’s a father’s pride; he’s what Allison from ‘Havoc’ should have been to keep all trouble outside. He might not be what his father wants him to be and he most definitely doesn’t want to end up like him, but he has a moral obligation and an inherent love which he embraces as seen in his efforts to help the man. He sticks to him, in short, which Carlos, with wild-eyed pride, appreciates. They’re Father and Son, like I said.

‘A Better Life’ is a very important film. For 2011; for the generations to come. It’s a course on values and the importance of commitment, of trust and honour in a time that rejoices in a lack thereof. It, however, suffers from the problem and tries to give a remedy for harbouring such ambition – Carlos might not be a great role-model as a teacher, but in Luis, we have a very relatable student. His is an interpretation of his Father’s steadfastness and not a total reenactment which he decidedly doesn’t believe in. The champion element is his decision to not yield to peer pressure, which, as demonstrated by Carlos throughout the entire movie, is a fight against the odds. It’s delightful to watch an adolescent make that decision without the compulsion of suffering. Unlike ‘Havoc.’ Unlike ‘Thirteen.’

Demian Bichir is the grease-coat on this year’s Oscars with his ‘Best Actor’ nomination – a break from a haul of exaggerated performances, one of the most defining roles of the year. It would be interesting to see if he wins it in a dark-horse sweep. What’s sad though is that this is the only nomination. None for Eric Eason. None for Jose Julian, one of the best young performances I’ve seen in recent times. None for Cinematography or Music Score. Unfair. But then, the Awards are but a link between obligations and precedence where justice for all can’t be expected, let alone be provided. Yet again, we’d have to console ourselves with the thought that the best reward for a film is to watch it. And this is me saying you should.