"GOODBYE, SOLO"

DIRECTED BY RAMIN BAHRANI

STARRING: SOULEYMANE SY SAVANE, RED WEST, DIANA FRANCO GALINDO

Larger than life is a tagline one should never associate with ‘life’, and that is the irony I find in critical response to Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani’s third venture. Maybe life has just one way of presenting itself and it’s us humans who corrupt its uniqueness with perceptions of our own, but ‘Goodbye Solo’ perceives for itself: A hundred and first, of sorts. And it is not exhilaration or a sense of triumph that I feel when a film on such lines comes my way or if I seek it, but rather an urgency to sit and think. That’s precisely what ‘Goodbye Solo’ inspired in me.

Solo is ambitious. He desperately wants to get out of the streets of Winston-Salem, but he doesn’t mind the skies over it. In fact, that’s where he wants to be: Serving people on a plane. That’s what he does when he thinks he’s sure that no one’s looking, and that could be right for all we know, because his wife Quiera is busy enough nursing herself and yelling at him, his step-daughter Alex (an extremely adorable Diana) hardly makes eye-contact, and his friends are often too sedated to notice, and this isn’t a bunch of negatives heaped on everyone else. Neither is it a glorification of a misplaced protagonist. It’s life: As plain, and as simple.

But there’s William the ‘old dog’, and he’s pretty much the watchful eye for everyone except himself, only that he hides it beneath the wrinkles and streaks of graying red hair, never to be caught in the act, although uncovered at a point of time. He has his share of cheek, although it takes a hell lot of time and an equal amount of provocation to get that out of him, he drinks like the sobriety he is, he is reminiscent of his times and virtually lives there, with the Harleys and Hank Williams and less complicated telephone sets. He has money in a bank account, only to spend on films at Marketplace Cinemas, a place he frequents (not without reason), and on a far more ‘adventurous’ task that has his negotiate with the cab-driver who flat-out doesn’t want to be one.

One can never explain ‘love’, one can never theorize the intensity of certain affections and the existence of the same. Solo might be one who dreams about the sky, but it doesn’t take a rival to bring him to the ground, nor does an equivalent ambition. It’s surprisingly the lack of it, and he cannot see why it is so. He finds he can never comprehend William, because he’s just not like him. Solo speaks of attachment, and family to him is ‘fun’. William wishes to be alone. It is a love story that has not been touched, and we know that Solo would never get to William, and we know that Solo, on his part, would never cease trying. We know October the 20^th can never be stopped from coming, and we know for sure, that ‘Blowing Rock’ is not exactly a picnic spot one would plan to camp in. But we still watch it: Not with a degree of empathy one would relate to other films with fairly similar themes, but as a detached, separate person in the thick of things. Not through William’s eyes, not through Solo’s, but through the tiny opening on the camera-phone that Alex so incredibly operates, which happens to be the only way you get to see the world as it is.

I wouldn’t touch upon anything that Ramin Bahrani was part of, because I know that what is, is only because he intended it to be so. That’s why Souleymane keeps saying, “I appreciate it”, and that’s why he’s so very far from being a good actor. Because we’re all bad actors who forget our lines and ask for time to rethink about what we were about to say. William wouldn’t give it to him, for his head and his pocketbook are brimming already. It’s a clear-cut void, one facing the back of the other, a glass wall in between. Thinking things is the most they can do.

Maybe I could be wrong. Perhaps there would be a time when Bahrani would require a revisit so he could get back to what he was, get back to his brilliance. This, is not that time. This is the ‘brilliance’.

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.

"HE BELONGS TO ANOTHER WORLD"

FILM: ADAM (2009)
DIRECTED BY: MAX MAYER
STARRING: HUGH DANCY, ROSE BYRNE, FRANKIE FAISON, AMY IRVING AND PETER GALLAGHER.
COMMENT: ---NICE---

I’ve at least a half a dozen things to be written before this review, but I pick the seventh because I feel like I have to explain to myself why I like this film. No it’s got nothing to with the usual ‘good film bad film’ conflict, I happen to like it fair and square, but it’s just that this film doesn’t happen to have a stable aftermath that films I like usually have, it’s all bits and pieces and a faint trace of wellness. That made me want to analyze as to why ‘Adam’ is a triumph to me, and it doesn’t take too long for me to hit it right, for me to tell myself that that’s what ‘Adam’ is all about.

“We’ll never have a moment when we’ll look into each other’s eyes and know exactly what the other person is thinking.”

Adam is not incomprehensible. He’s the contrary, actually, he’s plate-glass and you can always see right through him, know exactly what he’d think if you did something and that’s an innocence that you normally associate with a child, except that he can never believe in your fairy tale. He hits it straight, and there’s no dishonesty at all, because he’s just not capable of it, it’s like he’s impaired in the sixth sense, meaning he can’t lie so as to not hurt you with the truth, and that’s because lying could hurt him more and he’s not in a position to handle deceit, it’s far too complex for him, unlike Astrophysics which comes easy, which in turn could be something you could break your head over. He’s not labyrinthine: He’s more like a straight line to a round world.

Elizabeth Buchwald is the girl Mayer has written into Adam’s life. She looks amazing, (everyone knows Rose Byrne does) she teaches kids at Wildwood and aspires to write children’s novels, and when you start to add two and two, thinking she could have about all the tolerance and care and compassion one needs to cope with Adam, you’re shown the actual picture. She has a father who’s fighting a jail sentence, someone who’s also keen to keep her firm-footed on the ground about Adam, telling her clear that ‘he belongs to another world’. It’s not like she needs it, though, she sees clearly the line drawn between innocence and impertinence and cannot appreciate, at times, that Adam can’t. And that’s the point, that’s how we are, that’s how we can’t laugh when the joke’s on us, Adam or not. It’s not no-nonsense stuff, we’re just not that charitable, and the fact that Beth’s actually one of the nicer kind makes the effect more pronounced. Ironic.

‘Adam’ is a story not wholly of Adam, but includes a bunch of people whom you could term ‘real’, like the employer who fires him, like Harlan, his father’s friend who’s part of the ‘compassion kit’ along with Beth, Beth’s dad Marty Buchwald (played by Peter Gallagher) and her mom Rebecca. The plot doesn’t ‘progress’ as such, because there’s moments of everything, a little this and a little that and a little of ‘that’ in ‘this’, and you’re an outsider all along. Every time you get close to borrowing Adam’s point of view, Beth butts in and you start to see things through her eyes and it’s not a confusing tangle, it’s something that gives you utmost clarity, being way better than just taking someone’s side. No one’s bad, no one’s incurably criminal or insane, everyone’s just ‘individual’ and although there’s a crash of a slump that Marty takes towards the end, it’s not entirely a plummet, it’s just the course of things that life has to offer, and so are his wrongs. There’s no ‘romance’ in the air, although one can easily take Adam’s approaches to be so, except that he does whatever he does because he finds it fascinating, even when he shows Beth his ‘planetarium’, which he does because he has fun doing it and he likes to share his happiness with her, and perhaps one could possibly argue that that’s what love is in the first place, and who knows? Maybe that is ‘love’, maybe everything we see in ‘Adam’ is love in one form or the other, the gestures of Adam washing Beth’s window or Beth buying his a book to get him through the interviews, or even the scene where Adam tells Beth that he loves her, although he says he wants her to move with him because without her he can’t get along with the world, get along with ‘worldliness’ because he doesn’t have any other person who’s a representative of the rest, of people who are not ‘him’. It’s not contradictory: That’s his version of love, maybe that’s everyone’s version of love, everyone’s motive behind ‘love’ and we’re just too scared to say it out.

Every emotion expressed in ‘Adam’ is real, everyone is real and everything that everyone feels is real, everyone including Adam. It’s not a problem with people, it’s more of a problem with the worlds they belong to, for in the case of Adam, it’s a case of a different world altogether: A world where the tiniest of lies could shatter trust, because it’s a world that doesn’t know small from big unless the context is physical, and lies are lies, big or little. It’s obviously tough to cope with that world, let alone relate to it. But all the same, the pros and cons are clearly sketched out, and it’s up to you to like his world or to stay away from it. Beth took the long way and got pretty far. I felt willing to hit the road too. I like ‘Adam’.

'GLADDEN MY DAY'

Dumb day, really dumb day. Sparks of happiness flying around that saved me from being drowned by rain, and I've thanked the source already, pretty electric. But here's who actually cleared the sky for me.

I clicked one when she was looking, but in the end, this looked better, so here we go. I guess this is going to be my response to everyone who sighs when I disapprove of a top-class model or a heart-throb heroine, or a downright sex symbol. This, to me, is what true beauty is. Something that can sweep one off his feet. She swept me off my feet.

COME-BACK

I'm not going to say I never left.

Don't know what I was waiting for, either. A certain pattern of stage, maybe, a south-bias or a westward slant, I don't know. I've always been doing things as they crossed my mind, so I guess it's time that needs to be questioned, as to why it didn't want me to write on here before. All the same, I'm not taking all the blame away from me, I think my contribution to my absence has been but one thing: I didn't want to see what I was. I didn't think I was as competent as I am, and I thought any trace of an insufficient 'me' needs to be avoided, first degree. I didn't quite fancy erasing what's been written because it's a representation of my past and how I've evolved and no, that's not right. I don't think I evolved, I think it was a rebound, sort of, a drastic change in too short a span and that distinguishes 'My Book of Rhymes' from this, and I believed I was safe over there when I was suddenly struck by the thought that said, why not get back and you know, shuttle a little.

I seconded that thought. So here I am.

"This morning,
there's a calm I can't explain,
rock-candy's melted
only diamonds now remain..."

- 'CLARITY', John Mayer. 'Heavier things'.

I'm not saying this is going to be yet another incarnation, this is just a part of me that's been shying away for a while and it took me a lot of brute strength to bring it to the front of the stage and yeah, it's up to that part from now on, the rest of me has nothing to do with it.

Hope you guys have fun.