HENDRIX UNWOUND

MUSIC BY JIMI HENDRIX 

Listening to Hendrix’s People, Hell and Angels was like listening to SRV’s Texas Flood. This was to have been his fourth record, after Are you Experienced?, Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland – to which it was supposed to have been a follow-up album of sorts. This is as bluesy as Hendrix has ever been, for me, where I’d hesitate to throw an insinuation as saying “this is as bluesy as he can get!” – you’d never know. It has been four decades, almost, since an untimely death and record producers and sound engineers have made sure he’s heard every now and then, ever since. It had me wonder what sort of time-testing they ought to be doing in order to conclude that the world was/is/would be ready for something like People, Hell and Angels. 

When Valleys of Neptune (2010) was released, I thought they were selling memorabilia. I mean, come on. That was Hendrix as the world knew him, sold at re-sale value. Like a wobble-head; or, in his case, an action-figure, maybe, that sang and played guitar at the press of a button. Kind of like Buzz Lightyear. 

A common trend I have observed in all posthumous Hendrix records is that they tend to lean more towards the Blues than he had done in his lifetime. It is popular knowledge that Hendrix personified psychedelia and drove the hippie movement ahead in his small ways. Here, I think, it is important to quote a line from Bertolucci’s the Dreamers, an inimitable cinematic treatise on adolescence, culture and revolution, set in the early ‘70s. 

Clapton plugs in a guitar, he plugs in an electric guitar and he plays it like an acoustic guitar. Hendrix plugs in an electric guitar, he plays it with his teeth! There are soldiers in the Vietnam War right now. Who are they listening to? Clapton? No, they're listening to Hendrix. The guy who tells the truth.

It is like the film to be dialogic about any given topic, even though it might not limit itself to the same. The aspect in discussion here is the musician’s contribution to/with the electric guitar. The two people discussed are Clapton and Hendrix. What could be restricted to a discussion on guitar techniques slowly morphs into a debate on political/cultural relevance. To Matthew, who speaks these lines, Hendrix was not only a guitar-revolutionary, he was also an on-stage activist who spearheaded a cultural movement not restricted to the skill itself (which, in this case, is guitar-playing/songwriting). 

This, I think, is precisely the problem when you are an artist like Hendrix. Whether part of a movement or not, there needs to be a bridge between the musician they want you to be, and the musician you want yourself to be, where the plane of compromise is clearly defined with your intentions. This is not to say that Hendrix would choose popular demand over personal gratification. For all I know, it could’ve been the opposite, let alone being just a fine blend. 

Musical direction defines an artist’s success in a given cultural paradigm. Time has come and time has gone. So have dinosaurs. Why has someone like John Mayer enjoyed his position in the realm of the Blues when there are stronger contenders to carry the sacred flame ahead? It is because he plays the love songs that people listen to his Blues as well. It’s the rock/pop side of someone like John Mayer that attracts attention towards something normally construed as ancient, as the 12-Bar blues. A song like Something like Olivia is in good faith, even if not blatantly so. 

I don’t know if Hendrix could have released this record in 1969, the year it was originally intended. It was perhaps at the peak of psychedelic rock, where this record is almost puritanical with its relationship to the Blues. A song like Easy Blues is, of course, psychedelic, and so is Hendrix’s version of Elmore James’ Bleeding Heart. But that’s it. Which brings me back to my original point. Listening to this record was like the first time I listened to Texas Flood (1983) – something I can say without fear of being anachronous. Youtube has been generous with the number of comments on videos that criminalized SRV as a copycat of Hendrix. I have never seen how. With this record, however, I get closer to accepting that statement, even if not entirely. 

This is to never deny the prowess of someone like Stevie Ray Vaughan. If Hendrix can be called crazy, SRV is aggression. There is a quantum of control in the way he lets loose, a trait which I – curiously – saw in People, Hell and Angels. Here was Hendrix showing the world he can care, not just at heart, but also through carefully executed licks on a guitar that’s as close to ‘clean’ as he has ever been. I have read about Hendrix cite the likes of Elmore James and B.B. King as influences. Again, I have never seen how. People, Hell and Angels, in that sense, helped make a Martian a Man. 

Careful, I reiterate. Careful. That’s the best I could come up with to describe this record in a word. Superlatives can rule another world – you get mine with the care you show. Every track is like a handicraft, for a wanderer who finds himself tamed by home-cooked food. For the span of about an hour, Hendrix ceases to be the devil, the incomprehensible craftsman; the man who played the electric guitar with his teeth. 

Which brings me to an important aspect – production. This might be the best-produced Hendrix record I’ve listened to. I’ve never tried vinyl, my sources have been digitized versions – mp3 tracks – where there ought to be a significant amount that’s lost in translation. Analog in a digital world, like people say, which – incidentally – is also what creativity is about; what dreams are about. This record is like a sweet pill without a sugar coat, achieving compaction like a high-density solid in a solid load of more in less. It’s a kind of joy when every note is crystal clear without becoming an excuse for mediocre guitar-playing. It has always been a fantasy to hear Hendrix like he actually played, as far as recording goes. This record, I think, is as close as we have ever gotten. 

Why this record? I couldn’t answer. Thematically, Hendrix is in good hands. We are not discussing things right now that they hadn’t discussed in the ‘70s. Sound-wise, it is rich and inviting. But it is as out-of-sync in terms of musical direction now as it might have been in the good old days. It is for an entirely different reason that Clapton seems to be doing full-time with the Blues these days. It’s his pilgrimage. But when we talk about Hendrix, we talk about a man who has been dead for four decades, leaving behind a stockpile people didn’t know what to do with. Timing is everything, nostalgia can only work so much. Popular acclaim needs more than that. 

People, Hell and Angels could compete to be an artist’s creative best. It is a posthumous album unlike any other I’ve heard before. Every time I think of it, there is something stranger about it - it is as contemporary an effort as it is obviously not; nerve-wracking. John Mayer, in a one-minute review, said it sounds like a Black Keys album – this, coming from a man who said ain’t it a drag to say, at least I’ve still got yesterday. People, Hell and Angels renders time circular, that way. 

You’d better love me like it’s gonna be my last time, Hendrix sings, in Earth Blues. I think I love him like he’s going to live forever – which doesn’t sound too far-fetched, given the weight of this record - something I didn't know before.

THE FILM THAT DESERVED BETTER

DIRECTED BY STEPHEN CHBOSKY 

STARRING: LOGAN LERMAN, EMMA WATSON, EZRA MILLER, MAE WHITMAN, NINA DOBREV, DYLAN McDERMOTT, KATE WALSH, ZANE HOLTZ, REECE THOMPSON with MELANIE LYNSKEY, JOAN CUSACK and PAUL RUDD 

‘the Perks of being a Wallflower’ has a refrain that could make you wonder if John Woo made it. We accept the love we think we deserve. These lines are said twice in the film, one of them to the person they were originally intended for. Paul Rudd says it the first time as Mr. Anderson, the High-School English teacher who takes it upon himself to bring a protégé to the right path. His sad eyes speak of warmth and sincerity that remind us that his likeability as a comic had little to do with the goofball self he often portrays, but the person inside him who calls out through his eyes, once in a while, like a bathtub with lather and temperature that could be called just about right. 

Freshman Logan Lerman says it the second time, playing Charlie – a freshman as well. He makes friends out of the audience whom he writes to on a typewriter that had been gifted to him for that purpose. He would make for an excellent existential archetype, if you think about it. He lives so he can narrate his story to us, the audience – in much the same way that Lester Burnham (from American Beauty) dies so he can tell us all about his death. 

The line is thrown, initially, in an outburst when the frenzied teen summons enough courage to ask his favourite teacher the question that has been bothering him for a while. Why do nice people always pick the wrong people to date? We have seen/heard people say/feel the same thing, in real life as well as in films. The guy played by Jason Biggs in Loser, for instance. Peter Parker when he’s not Spiderman feels the same way about Mary Jane Watson. It’s the classic Hollywood love-triangle plot. Writers write it in so people wouldn’t hesitate to sympathize with their lead characters. We sympathize with Charlie for much the same reason; and also because Logan Lerman shares his dread, finding himself humbled by the weight of such a big performance that he finds he can do it after all, much ado intended. 

The second time – and we’re still talking about the line, by the way – is when you find it has a whole new connotation. It comes at a time when we know more about these characters, these people, that their suffering takes a different turn. Barely ten minutes are left in the film when the line is thrown and the film is opened; how much responsibility can the ending take? These are people who know no hatred, which is ironically the source-point of their frustrations. This is a film that reveres suffering, be it in the punk-Buddhist girl who hides herself behind badly done hair and dark lipstick and an immersion in mindless ambition; be it the English teacher whom we don’t see much of, who could have a whole arc like that in Half Nelson going on in his life for all we know; the happy-go-lucky homosexual friend and his closeted lover-boy who has to endure so much to keep his precious jock-life intact. 

Deep down, all these people strive to be better beings – so much so that they crack under the pressure. Every one of them. And the film on its part advertises the beauty in letting go – much like It’s kind of a Funny Story, which was about self-inflicted pressure due to parental expectations – both being vivid adaptations of young adult novels from the recent past. If I had to make a personal comment here, I find that all young adult writing seems to be dealing with the same thing – consciousness. It hurts to be aware of what you can’t cure. And that hurt seems like a promising central premise of any given story. The very mention of the Catcher in the Rye in this film, for instance, is both an inside-joke and a clear sign of where things are heading. 

Or the soundtrack, if you’d like a look. ‘the Perks of being a Wallflower’ finds beauty in music that glorifies pain. What it calls good taste – a term that Sam (Emma Watson) keeps repeating throughout the film – is in sadness. The girl in It’s Kind of a Funny Story talked about Ian Curtis. Sam here talks about Nick Drake and the Smiths (she calls them the best breakup band), even though the final touch has to be the significance of the David Bowie song Heroes to this film. These are kings and queens through their very own night-vision goggles – the same goggles they had used, previously, to place themselves in darkness, a shadow they had cast upon themselves. And they go through their rituals of pain and suffering, some of which is irreparable (you can’t change where you come from, but you can change where you go, says Dr. Burton – Joan Cusack – who contributes with her one-liner to match Mr. Anderson) only to liberate themselves in a physical show of grace under pressure that would render Hemingway and Bertolucci (the Dreamers) proud. 

I’m aware I’ve talked about a half a dozen films until this point without really telling you what ‘the Perks of being a Wallflower’ is about. That could be because I’m struggling with giving it credit for being itself. In its own words, to accept the film, I should think I deserved it. But what happens if I felt I deserve more? Let me tell you more about the film so you can decide for yourself. It starts as a film about a boy with a disturbing past that causes him to be confined to self rather than open to social interaction. It takes him a while before he makes an effort to shake hands, the other boy being someone who’s popularly called Nothing (Ezra Miller) – the butt of his own joke. He’s called Patrick, otherwise, and it is through him that Charlie (the boy) gets to meet Sam, who looks like the usual short-haired girl with a boy’s name, like Alex from Bridge to Terebithia – she’s not too far from her either, given her character and the role she plays in dear Charlie’s life. Sam is Patrick’s step-sister, their relationship affected in no way by that detail. There is no Cruel Intentions motif – Patrick, quite conveniently, is gay, which also adds one more to the wallflower lot, as they call themselves. 

In spite of the gay friend, there is not a single moment when the film compromises on its seriousness – probably the first time I liked a film for not wanting to be funny. Even it’s Kind of a Funny Story pulled a couple of gags. Not this one, though. There is no weak sibling character who fools around; no parent trying to lighten things up a bit. The siblings are, in fact, perhaps the strongest characters for they have made it to the grown-up world already as the rest of them hope to get there someday. Charlie’s sister Candice (Nina Dobrev) – a senior in high-school – deals with an abusive relationship with yet another marginalized individual called pony-tail Derek. The door of her room open a crack, Charlie sees Derek hit a high on frenzy and throw a full-blown smack across Candice’s face. The next scene shows her kissing him goodbye at the doorstep. When he confronts her about it, she tells him he wouldn’t understand. 

A similar instance is when Charlie – officially dating Mary Elizabeth (Mae Whitman) – kisses Sam in a game of ‘Truth or Dare’. Both women are outraged, which has Charlie wonder why. Patrick, another of the film’s more well-defined and beautiful characters, puts a hand on his shoulder and tells Charlie that these are girls who have seen a lot of guys before him, and that he wouldn’t understand what it means in terms of significance of his own actions. 

‘the Perks of Being a Wallflower’, that way, is beautiful in moments. And it has some  characters that genuinely care, backed by solid performances that show it. Logan Lerman gives life to Charlie like Alex Shaffer did to Kyle Timmons in Win Win. He wins our attention in the scene where he matter-of-factly confides to Sam on how his friend shot himself. Much like how she wins ours when she describes her first kiss. The beauty of that scene shall not be understood until towards the end – something I cursed the film for. We’ve both gone through the same things, Charlie tells Sam. It says so much about the film. Like Katradhu Thamizh in comparison. This is not just the story of an introverted high-school kid. And even if it was, it only speaks of the layers that might lie underneath a person’s introversion, or extroversion (in Sam’s case). I shall not tell you what was a part of Charlie’s life to save you some suspense, but I think you can understand what it might be that could’ve brought a whole new dimension to the film that seems unacceptable given the fact that the entire lead-up seems to have taken us away from it. It is given away in a moment that has us think we have been deceived, for this could’ve been a great movie, but it chose not to be. Kind of like Charlie himself, if you think about it. 

Otherwise, ‘the Perks of being a Wallflower’ is your typical high-school film with critical acclaim that comes as a twist to the tale. It discusses the future – admissions, aging, etc. – something that Election and It’s Kind of a Funny Story tried to touch. There is talk about SATs and applications and how that contributes to most of the frustration in the life of these characters – which is not all, though, for all of them come with additional baggage as well. It has an 80s soundtrack – the best way to set the tone, stoke the fire and make-out in front of it. Homosexuality has come to be a recent theme, as well as casual handling of the same. Easy A is a strong example where Olive Penderghast and her gay (male) friend pretend like they’re having sex behind closed doors so he can still remain in the closet. Here, Patrick makes out with Alice (Erin Wilhelmi), a straight girl with her eyes on film school, talking about fag-on-goth action. A line that’s in better taste would be when he calls a bunch of presents he receives as so gay, I thought I might have given it to myself. 

There’s sex, there’s drugs; even rock-n-roll (David Bowie – duh!) – a stage adaptation of the Rocky Horror Picture show plays a significant part in the film’s initial frivolousness, kind of like the elusive rock concert in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, or the extended music-class jam of the Queen song Under Pressure in It’s Kind of a Funny Story. Parents are kept in the distance as teenagers take over all possible roles, including inhabiting an exclusive world of LSD and Merlot wine without the legal angle brought into it. Even a film like Superbad did well to criminalize it, even if to parody itself on that front thereon. And then, of course, other than the girl with the fairy lights around her, everyone else is ridiculous as a choice for a girlfriend. Like Mary Elizabeth, who is possessive, fretful, clingy; a burden, in short. 

What could have been a film as impacting as – and I’m going to give it away by making this comparison, but what the hell – Trust (2010), fizzles away into something relatively bleaker and haphazard; even less of a shocker than, say, the Lovely Bones for the simple reason that it didn’t want to take the skeleton out of the closet before a dramatic last act that only had me blame the film more, for having not played it closer to the body; much closer.

LIKE A BIG FAT BOOK IN A CINEMA HALL

DIRECTED BY JOSH RADNOR 

STARRING: JOSH RADNOR, ELISABETH OLSEN, RICHARD JENKINS, JOHN MAGARO, ELISABETH REASER, KATE BURTON, ROBERT DESIDERIO with ALLISON JANNEY and ZAC EFRON 

I like this book because it’s fun, it’s stupid and it makes me happy, Zibby (Elisabeth Olsen) tells Jesse Fisher (Josh Radnor), defending a trilogy of Vampire novels. She says she thinks he’s one of those people who thinks it’s cool to hate things. Talk about what you love, keep quiet about what you don’t. He says he thinks the country (and the world, in extrapolation) is in bad shape because of the things that people like – which, he says, are very bad. She asks him if he’d like to surround himself only with people who read the same books as he does. 

She snatches the book from him, throws it aside and asks him why he’d rather have an inconsequential (stupid) argument about something he doesn’t even feel that strongly about, when she’s sitting in front of him and they have themselves to talk about. 

It’s incredible how ‘Liberal Arts’ could reference itself in so many places. A lot of the things that happen in the film are much like the film itself. That, or I’m doing to the film what the film recommends us not to do to a work of art – be it a book, a song or a film (even though films aren’t really talked about) – dissecting it beyond measure, making an anatomy lesson out of something which can be beautiful without need for inquiry. 

This is not new in a film. As would be the bane of every film that has wanderers in its midst who thrust upon each other arsons of discussion and debate, all in playful camaraderie, if not joyful romance, ‘Liberal Arts’ reminds you very strongly of ‘Before Sunrise.’ Zibby is a girl who shows maturity that’s usually construed as beyond her age. Celine (Julie Delpy in ‘Before Sunrise’) was more American than her French-ness could permit. Jesse (Ethan Hawke in ‘Before Sunrise’) took lessons in romance from the very same woman he would go on to use it against. Jesse Fisher (possibly in a sort of tribute) has to go back to college and find a sophomore to get his act together. 

How much can what he does be called ‘getting one’s act together’? He is an admissions counsellor in New York whose routine we come across in a single montage much like Ryan Bingham’s introduction in ‘Up in the Air’ – where the asshole speaks – not as a narrator, but as part of a speech he delivers as later revealed, five minutes into the film. Here, Jesse speaks to invisible students with varying extracurricular achievements and writing skills. A while after we’re made familiar with his chores, we see him robbed of his clothes, having to buy a new shirt that a girlfriend of his says she doesn’t have to acknowledge on her way out. Ex-Girlfriend, that is. He receives a call, the next morning or many mornings after, from a professor of his – a favourite, the way it sounds – called Peter Hoberg (Richard Jenkins) back from University. The man is retiring and has discovered he’s being felicitated. He calls Jesse to do his share of the honours. 

In ‘Deconstructing Harry’, there is a scene where Woody Allen calls himself a sixty-year old adolescent. Not in the same words exactly, but in words that sound more or less similar. Jesse is that guy who needs just a whiff of fresh-mown grass to fall down and roll in it. We see a montage of golden flowers, footpaths with shades of foliage, people reading books under trees, someone playing the guitar in the open. It had me wonder how important it is for a campus to be aesthetically pleasing for someone studying something as grand as British Romantic Literature. Would that really work in, say, the erect, hapless, never-ending bustle of a city like New York? 

Why not? Zibby, a sophomore studying Drama who is part of a much talked about improv group, whom Jesse is introduced to through the Professor, would beg to differ. Jesse himself, after having made the discovery, wouldn’t get back to the same beliefs. How does she do that? Through a western-classical mix tape she gives him on the eve of their first separation. Jesse tells her he would write letters to her, in return. There’s no need to say that she would write back too. Cosi Fan Tutte, she says, would inadvertently make everyone more endearing than they would be, usually. In possibly one of the best-intended lines of the film, Jesse says: Grace, I realized, is not time or space-dependent. All we need is the right soundtrack. 

Again, another self-reference. ‘Liberal Arts’ – the film – has the same soundtrack as Jesse, the character. Having said that, how graceful does that render it to be? Does Cosi Fan Tutte really make these people more endearing? I don’t think the music is really required, honestly. Radnor, by himself, is quite the likeable guy – again, another thing that the film says too, through Zibby. So is Prof. Hoberg, a classic representation of the American left-leaning intellectual who finds it hard to even groan about his job – the communist has always been a tricky character when it comes to an American treatment. To have made Prof. Hoberg as sour as Jenkins’ usual is something to think about. Is he sour because he is, or is he sour because that’s all Jenkins can do? Let me make it clear here that this doesn’t mean I doubt Jenkins’ capacity as an actor. 

Considering that she plays a really hard role (speaking of which, I don’t really know how hard it is, because Jesse – you know – is easy), Ms. Olsen as Zibby is quite the catch. Life is improv, she says. No one knows the script. We’re just making it up as we go. Yet another self-reference that leads you to ask how scripted the film is. How fathomable is Zibby as a love-interest? There is no denying she’s fashionable, even if she has the habit of repeating clothes. What Jesse and Zibby share is unblemished as a college romance – complete with a roommate (almost) walking in on them. It is beautiful, because she is beautiful – as beautiful as the camera angles at the campus that oozes with the picturesque whichever corner you put the camera in. Like college, she reaches out and grabs. And takes you to places you wouldn’t have dared gone to had she not led you there in the first place. She’s like Suzanne, in the Leonard Cohen song. That the song itself wasn’t part of the soundtrack has got to be a surprise. 

‘Liberal Arts’ takes a scenic route in a world that’d rather bypass it. It’s both biased and non-committal towards its core premise. The fact that the film, and Radnor (writer-director) could make the Professor’s side-story an integral part of the central plot, where the film itself deals with difficult things like life, aging and coping with desire and deliberation, says a lot about its intent – to show as much despair as it inspires hope; to show as much optimism as it urges you to think twice. If or if not the film becomes a Zibby in itself – who takes the reluctant Jesse in you on an experience you wouldn’t have taken otherwise – is something for every viewer to decide for himself. Or herself, though a woman would be kind of pushing it. Like George Eliot, in the seventeenth century, the place where these two want to go back to, but find themselves damned instead, to twenty-first century alienation and post-modern critique. Life beckons, in short. 

But face it – it’s a scenic route to a felicitation ceremony that’s not even yours – a horrendous waste of your time, if you think about it. Harry Block (Deconstructing Harry, again) gets arrested at his for having kidnapped his son, where his real felicitation happens in his fiction. I found it extremely disengaging that Jesse didn’t have one of his own. He’s not a writer in crisis. He’s not the soul-searcher who finds closure in the very futility of his quest. His story begins and ends within the limits of the film. Optimism, sometimes, is not optimism at all without the adversity to pit it against. What we have here is a field-trip – a favourite restaurant, nostalgia-themed, which serves you food as your canteen did, back in the day. There is not as much in the food as there is in the memories absorbed from it. And there is only as much in these memories as there is willingness to submit to them. 

Life, as the sceptics would say, goes on. So would Prof. Hoberg, old loon and retired warmonger who has peace to deal with, now. In that context, ‘Liberal Arts’ says little to nothing. It is well-photographed, decently paced and clever enough to keep you hooked. But it only cures you of loneliness as much as the 1100-page novel that kept you out of action in the first place. It increases and decreases, at the same time.

ON AGING GRACEFULLY

DIRECTED BY JUDD APATOW 

STARRING: PAUL RUDD, LESLIE MANN, IRIS APATOW, MAUDE APATOW, ALBERT BROOKS, MEGAN FOX, JASON SEGEL, CHRIS O’DOWD, ANNIE MUMOLO, CHARLYNE YI, JOHN LITHGOW with LENA DUNHAM, GRAHAM PARKER and MELISSA McCARTHY 

That Judd Apatow has been (in my opinion) behind two of the best films Hollywood had produced in 2012 – ‘the Five-Year Engagement’ and ‘This is 40’ – is conclusive proof that the R-rated comedy is fast becoming one of the defining products of the industry these days. Apatow has teamed up with Universal Studios ever since ‘the 40-year old Virgin’ (2005), a collaboration that has given us a film every alternate year. As producer and director, Apatow works with a close-knit bunch of people – comedians and actors alike – a group that’s turning out to be thicker than the Frat-pack of the ‘90s, or maybe even the Monty Python crew. Together, they seem to be giving life to this new style of filmmaking that is so characteristic that it’s almost a trend. I shall leave it to the experts to come up with a suitable name. 

‘This is 40’ follows Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) from Apatow’s ‘Knocked Up.’ In a manner of most Kevin Smith’s ‘askewniverse’ comedies, he doesn’t wait to develop these characters for us once again, trusting the audience with their memory, of the big details and maybe even the little things they might’ve noticed the last time around. Maude and Iris Apatow (real-life daughters of Apatow and Mann) play Sadie and Charlotte, who are thirteen and eight years old, respectively. Sadie resembles Debbie to such an extent, even in her compulsiveness and her temper. She watches the TV series ‘Lost’ wherever she finds it playing – on a computer, on her iPad, on a smart-phone – everywhere but the television. Charlotte, on the other hand, is a sport, probably following her Dad (and by ‘Dad’, I mean more Apatow than Pete), who is great at playing Angry Cow and the Trampoline. She also occasionally plays the keyboard, adding to a minimalistic soundtrack – just the way Apatow does it, all the time. 

The story is simple. Pete’s turning 40 soon. Debbie has just turned ‘38’. Which means she’s actually turned 40 but won’t admit it. She says she wants to be 38 for two more years. We have a feeling that these people stopped growing a whole lot before. From where we left them last, they seem to have gotten going better, with Pete setting up his own record label with an aim to resurrect people whom he liked listening to, growing up. A largely-contested move has him sign Graham Parker and the Rumour on their first record in 30 years. He aims to sell ten thousand records to Parker’s hardest fans. 

Debbie, on her part, runs a clothing line that shows unexplained losses. Jodi (Charlyne Yi) says Desi (Megan Fox) is behind it, both being sales clerks. Debbie – the famous control freak she is – is not going to let it go unnoticed. She watches tapes that show Desi to be guilty, but not of theft. She even goes Girls Gone Wild with her to get to the bottom of this. What she finds out is barely startling – as compared to what Pete seems to be hiding from her. 

If you expect extra-marital sexcapades, then let me bring you down on that right away; there are none. This is not a spoiler. Remember ‘Knocked Up’ where Debbie, Ben and Katie sneak upon Pete thinking he’s having an affair, only to find him playing fantasy baseball? Apatow jumps obstacles of mid-life crises as commonly represented in film. No one loses a job, even though there is a house on the line. There is a financial problem, it does stretch their marriage. But it doesn’t break it. Debbie isn’t as worried about Pete cheating on her as she’s worried about him sneaking money to give his Dad Larry (Albert Brooks) who’s raising three kids with a second wife. This worry – we second-guess – could be bitterness stemming from own absent dad Oliver (John Lithgow) – a neurosurgeon who does a cameo in her life for only as long as Mr. Lithgow does one in this film. 

‘This is 40’ is that sweet film of the year your kids can’t watch. Apatow seems to be popularizing that, getting middle-aged couples to go to the movies leaving kids behind with their baby-sitter – which is fair enough, considering they’d not want them inspired by the kids on screen, sweet though they are. What’s striking about an Apatow vehicle is the amount of depth he provides to the supporting characters. Even the weakest in this film – Jodi, another reeled in from ‘Knocked Up’ – has her moments, shaped by Charlyne Yi. Jason (Segel) retains keeps his flirtation with Debbie going as her physical trainer. There is an exciting scene in the film where he, along with Ronnie (Chris O’Dowd), one of Pete’s disapproving employees at the label, rates Desi against Debbie. Jason says she’s a seven who can become an eleven at best, as opposed to Debbie, who, he believes, has hit a twelve. This, for all we know, could be Apatow’s present to his wife, Ms. Mann, for her actual fortieth. 

I had called ‘the Five-Year Engagement’ and ‘This is 40’ as two of last year’s best that Hollywood had produced. I believe they are. Firstly, there hasn’t been much to compare them with. Secondly, like I said, Apatow strengthens his kind of filmmaking, retaining the influence of classic comic routines, yet giving his actors enough liberty that it almost looks like improv – which works for a film as this, where they’re either playing themselves or someone else as real. Third of all, Apatow – as both producer and director – has been consistently giving us comedies in the spirit of Hollywood storytelling, rooting themselves in both the romantic ideal of the dysfunctional marriage/relationship/household, and of dysfunction as it really is, presented in a vague self-parody. The effect, needless to say, is delightful – perhaps as delightful as a cupcake sneaked out from under your wife’s nose, or the little puff on a cigarette and a mint after, which your husband’s never going to know about. It’s a twelve on ten.

THE BEST TITLE FOR THE SAFEST BET

DIRECTED BY COLIN TREVORROW 

STARRING: AUBREY PLAZA, MARK DUPLASS, JAKE JOHNSON, KARAN SONI, JENICA BERGERE with MARY LYNN RAJSKUB and KRISTEN BELL 

If I have a problem with mumblecore, I’d have a problem with every film that is a part and representative of it. Accepting such a film, then, becomes a problem. It’s the bane of genre-filmmaking, in essence. The genre needs sanction for the film to gain appreciation. A lot of gems are left out in their compulsiveness to stick to stereotype. There have been the rarer ones who have chosen to defy. It really is a matter of choice. 

‘Safety not Guaranteed’ – winner of the Screenplay prize at Sundance last year, which was the reason I chose to watch it – is a film that’s a product of its genre, out and out. It’s a flag bearer of a nation I’m at war with. The whole, typical indie stereotype, you know? A first-person narration with a musical score by some folksy, obscure band, shot on steadicam in the manner of artificially flavoured reality. Every character in the film is heavily made up, Darius (Aubrey Plaza) speaks like Diablo Cody wrote her lines, in a teen movie that has crossed borders and gone deeper, rendering depth useless. 

All along, I had to bear in mind that the film had won writing honours. Not filmmaking honours, writing honours. The dialogues engage with you as much as the characters engage with each other, and – this can be said for sure about the film – they do engage with each other. In that, I mean that none of them recite their lines like it’s an assignment, with Arnav (Karan Soni) being a possible exception. He’s there to fit the one-Indian-per-movie quota, or so you think for most of the time. But there are a few precious moments when you give in to his presence. He isn’t merely a plot device, even though he could’ve been an interesting use of one, if only. 

There’s nothing too incredible about the film. It’s perhaps the subtlest handling of time-travel ever – which stresses on everything but the actual act. What makes these people want to go back? Which time do they want to go back to? What do they want to do over there? It’s not frivolous science-fiction that plays with the odds. It’s a human endeavour – the coming out of characters who struggle to express themselves. To learn a little more about Kenneth, Darius must earn his trust. And vice-versa. He’s looking for a partner to time-travel with. Why does he want one? You would answer his question. He does too, when he really needn’t. 

Mark Duplass (director of such films as Cyrus and Jeff, who lives at Home with brother Jay) is Kenneth. He’s an extension of Ryan Gosling’s Lars Lindstrom in ‘Lars and the Real Girl.’ He wants to time-travel. He knows he can. He’s suspect and a news-item, and Aubrey Plaza’s deadpan Darius is the investigative journalist who smiles so rare it’s flattering, almost seductive, when she does. Again, commendable, if not for the fact that it’s a stereotype, lately – thanks to the likes of Greta Gerwig. 

Darius needs to play along to know more about Kenneth. She plays along to cure him, perhaps – in the lines of Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson) in ‘Lars and the Real Girl.’ And there’s also the tiniest (obvious) possibility that she isn’t playing along and actually believes in his fantasy. Like Jesse and Leslie in ‘Bridge to Terebithia.’ What’s good about the film is that it enunciates neither of these possibilities as stronger than the other, which gives the viewer as open-minded an experience as you would want it to. 

Neat bundles of bravado, humour and vulnerability, we have two of those vying for pride of position. One, obviously, is Duplass, at the centre of action. The other is Jake Johnson, who plays Jeff Schwensen, the reporter/bum who takes a couple of interns to Washington so he can track an old love of his. She’s called Liz (Jenica Bergere) and he talks to her on Facebook. He has pictures of her from when she was 18, when she was skinny and blonde; attractive, in short. Now, she’s 38, grown-up and past a lot of shit. His coming to terms with Liz is a sort of coming to terms with himself and the fact that he is, in fact, aging. In this process, his character shows as much of a transition as that of Kenneth, when he warms up to the woman. 

But then he’s reminded that it’s always going to be cold in Washington. He embraces it. He has no choice but that. 

As seems to be an ongoing theme, ‘Safety not Guaranteed’ is a film about trust, almost obviously. It’s a struggle against insecurity that believes in a human victory. It’s as watertight as ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ in its science-fiction element, in the fact that it doesn’t speak much about it. If I could time-travel, I’d stop mumblecore from happening. I would break the indie tradition. And then, a film like ‘Goodbye Solo’ would have happened, which is perhaps mankind’s most sincere attempt at exploring life, loss and death. And that would tell me that my mission has been successful, even before I had gone.

DJANGO BEGINS, RUNS LOOSE, KNOWS NO LIMITS

DIRECTED BY QUENTIN TARANTINO 

STARRING: JAMIE FOXX, CHRISTOPH WALTZ, LEONARDO DICAPRIO, KERRY WASHINGTON, DON JOHNSON, DENNIS CHRISTOPHER, LAURA CAYOUETTE, AMBER TAMBLYN with FRANCO NERO, BRUCE DERN, QUENTIN TARANTINO and SAMUEL L. JACKSON 

Kamal Haasan – in the context of the recent ‘Viswaroopam’ mix-up – called cinema an ‘aerated drink’ – something you drink if you want to, where to take it or not is a choice you own. While I could see where he was coming from, I couldn’t agree with his statement. Not one bit. Cinema is both cause and effect of how things are, how people are; how they thought and acted, communicating what they had intended to communicate through the film, and having made it in the first place. 

Having said that, I’ve always had trouble situating Quentin Tarantino in the present day, as controversial as that’s going to sound – uncontroversial if construed as stupid, which would further be a downfall. There’s no doubt that Tarantino – who, along with the Coen Brothers, undoubtedly personifies the wit and wackiness of here and now – is as much a symbol of current consciousness as one can be. A stretch of imagination might even canvas him to be exactly what post-modernism in cinema is all about, for he is someone who reinterprets the past in the style of the present and is constantly aware that he does. And in his awareness of the fact that he’s retelling, he finds a story of his own to tell. 

I’m fresh from a discussion on filmmakers of the present day with special focus on Tarantino as somebody who’s bothersome in the fact that his disregard for real-world issues doesn’t come across as problematic, per se. Genre-filmmaking gives him that comfort. He isn’t a continuation from yesterday’s trouble at the office or today’s misunderstanding at home that people tend to run away from. A Tarantino film begins and ends on film-reel. Or whichever digital device has come to replace it. His writing and technique are bottles adorned with gems of ideas that bear his signature as he pours a drink he had collected in droplets from what had percolated through grains of sand, of time gone by. 

It’s a 1961 Chateau Cheval-Blanc. And he would waste it on KFC and a bag of fries as he asks you to be tasteful. 

‘Django Unchained’ had its defining moment somewhere near its 150th minute, when Broomhilda Von Shaft (Kerry Washington) – a captured black woman, a slave – trembles at the sound of footsteps, and clings to her blanket like it could save her from whatever it is that whoever was to come would be capable of. The door bursts open, its frame is a spotlight on the wall. We see the silhouette of a man wearing a hat. Until ‘Django Unchained’ happened, there would’ve been a hundred percent chance that that man was white, in the manner of a John Wayne or a Clint Eastwood, or an Eli Wallach, at least. “It’s me, baby,” says the shadow/silhouette. It’s a black man who goes by the name of Django Freeman (Jamie Foxx), thanks to a doctor who was crazy enough to have hated slavery in pre-Civil-War times. 

Christoph Waltz plays that doctor – Dr. Eric Schultz, a dentist who has quit his profession to round up corpses and earn himself a reward. He is a bounty hunter. Django gets comfortable playing deputy for the span of an hour and a half, with the doctor being rather gun-in-cheek with his humour. What he can’t beat, he blows off. And when he can’t blow it off, he talks his way ahead. There’s one encounter where he kills a sheriff to get to negotiate with the U.S. Marshall. His profession, he says, is about “getting paid for killing white people.” Nothing could excite dear Django more. 

Bounty-hunting with Dr. Schultz has very few rules, all of which are of utmost importance. Every con needs them to play characters they shouldn’t break. Django’s first mission requires him to identify and help exterminate three men known as the ‘Brittle Brothers.’ Freed from slavery for God knows how long, Django is allowed to wear clothes as he sees fit – which he takes to a level that one of the women slaves at the plantation shows surprise that he chose to wear it and wasn’t forced into it. He’s allowed a gun as long as he’d use it. And Dr. Schultz has something like an elephant-rifle that can’t fire without pulling some entrails out to trouble the censor board with instances of gore. 

If the first con is to show how good the two of them are, the second comes to show how evenly they could be matched. Dr. Schultz crosses work boundaries to ask Django about his sweetheart. He tells him about the Siegfried-Brünnhilde legend, and how Siegfried climbed a mountain, tamed a dragon and walked through a ring of fire to rescue his beloved. Every German, he says, would give anything to help a Siegfried get his Brünnhilde back. Over dinner on the rocks, they plan their next con. 

This time, the Doctor and Django play a Mandingo trader, and a slaver – a sort of wrestling consultant, crisp and cut-throat like an army commander – as they find out that Broomhilda had been sold to Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) from ‘Candyland’, an estate down in Mississippi. Django throws caution to the winds as he treats the wrestlers (whom he had come to inspect) like dogs as real dogs maul one such called D’Artagnan – a wrestler who dies to show us what Calvin is capable of. Dr. Schultz does his share in asking for ‘Hildi’ the moment he arrives at Calvin’s doorstep. 

Two scenes captured my attention at Candyland. The moment they – the Doctor, Django and Calvin – get there, Calvin tells Steven (Samuel L. Jackson), an Alfred of sorts, that “that is Django” and they’re supposed to hate each other. Steven, probably a bleach away from being inducted into the white-man-hall-of-fame, doesn’t think twice. He has no reason on his own to hate Django. But then, there’s the fact that he’s the Big Man’s property, making littler men little. It could also be a tussle between the privileged and the liberated. Still, he hates Django until the end, for the simple reason that the white man asked him to. 

The other scene – one DiCaprio tries to make his own, losing out to a hammer and a bang – is skulduggery in a literal sense. It’s the typical Tarantino threat being dished out, the quintessential offer he won’t let you refuse. The scene almost plays out like a joke. I did something I wasn’t supposed to do and was amused with the result. Christoph Waltz, as we all know, shot to fame for playing a Nazi tyrant in ‘Inglorious Basterds.’ DiCaprio, on the other hand, is as soft as Hollywood can get. This in mind, what we get is an inversion. In a showcase of ruthlessness and one’s ability to intimidate in the Tarantino brand of terror, DiCaprio does well. Waltz tells him so. Like I said, the scene plays out like an inside joke, ending with another one of those ‘foot massage’ things that Tarantino had popularized with ‘Pulp Fiction’ and a revelation that Alexandre Dumas was actually black. 

With Django playing apprentice to a rock-star for two-thirds of the film’s length, ‘Django Unchained’ works as a beginning story. There’s the classic case of “I’ve taught you everything you know” minus the betrayal. What these two men share both exemplify and redefine chemistry in the film sense of the word. They aren’t master and disciple. They aren’t brothers. You could call them friends, but there hasn’t been a test of faith. What starts off as a ‘you win, I win’ proposal takes a host of detours and lands up in a safe little place in your heart and the heart of cinema itself. The film is about a hero rising. The Doctor helps the film on its way by helping the hero do what he ought to do – rise. Every German, like he says, would give anything to help a Siegfried. A Tarantino character would be German, find a Siegfried and give his life to help his cause for the sake of the film. This is as pure as friendship can get. 

The shot-taking and camera speak of a man who is defined by his trade. It’s like he sits in front of a big-screen monitor when the shot is being taken and talks to his cinematographer on a walkie-talkie from there. Every sequence overstays its time, its elegance stretched to the limit. In one such is a wounded man caught in the crossfire as a shootout happens. Every bullet that goes astray ends up hitting him. It happens once. Twice. Three times. Four times. Five times. You think you’ve gotten the point when Tarantino makes that man tell you that you have, indeed, gotten the point. It’s ‘overkill’ in every sense of the word, done with panache. The literal sense too, if you get what I’m saying. A mortally-wounded man being shot at again and again and again, for splashes of blood and whimpers you think you’ve had enough of. You get what I’m saying? 

Which brings me back to the point of film being an ‘aerated drink.’ It’s not Tarantino’s definition. His wouldn’t be too far from it either. It reminds me of what Fatih Akin said to explain ‘Soul Kitchen’ – an exciting film – after something like ‘the Edge of Heaven.’ “I could really use the restaurant as a symbol for filmmaking,” he said. “The chef is much like a director, cooking and improvising. The owner of a restaurant is much like the producer of a film. The customers are like audiences; the dishes are like films. You even have film-critics with the critics of the restaurant.” As creator of this simulation, Akin manifests himself in the chef, the central character who spices the dishes with whatever he wants them to have; whatever they ask for. Dinners turn into orgies where music takes centre-stage. A health inspector and a shark (who’s after the restaurant) pair up and the chef actually films them ‘at it’ on his camera-phone. 

“All you do is criticize, criticize, criticize,” says Tarantino, through the man whose wife made the masks, in the scene with the Ku Klux Klan – possibly one of the weakest of scenes. Another comes at the end when Django cons a bunch of Australians, Tarantino one among them. He tricks them into giving him a gun so he can shoot them with it. In the line of fire, Tarantino holds a bag of dynamite and explodes. Why did he have to take the dynamite from the saddle? So he can hold it in front when he gets shot at. So he can explode with it. Hitchcock said there’s excitement in the suspense that precedes a bang than the bang itself. Tarantino could go to war with him. He’d tell you he’s going to shoot you in the knee and he’d shoot you there to show you he can still get you excited about it. 

‘Django Unchained’ is yet another guilty pleasure from the man who specializes in them and delivers them like pizza. The only one who can make two black men wrestling for their lives more erotic than a temptress named Sheba who waits for her prey. You know you don’t need it. You know it’s bad for you. Like a dead horse on an open wound, as he would say. A ten on ten, where the scale is not yours.

RIGHT UPPERCUT WITH GENTLE BLUE EYES

 

DIRECTED BY SHAWN LEVY 

STARRING: HUGH JACKMAN, DAKOTA GOYO, EVANGELINE LILY, ANTHONY MACKIE, OLGA FONDA, KARL YUNE with KEVIN DURAND, JAMES REBHORN and HOPE DAVIS 

The closest association ‘Real Steel’ might have with the Oscars is that both happen to take place in the same country. That, or it might’ve been nominated for a couple of technical awards – like sound mixing or editing or special effects, because the film is a fairly good audio-visual achievement. In the event of my Oscar-lead-up, I should probably have picked up a ‘Best Film’ nominee from the past that I hadn’t discussed – like ‘War Horse’ or ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’ – or even bothered watching. 

The last film I took up to analyze – David O. Russell’s ‘the Silver Linings Playbook’ (scroll down for review or click here) – found myself at an all-time low on the review-scale. I found out what was going wrong. This year, I find, has had very little to inspire. Every year, I try to catch up on the ‘best films’ made with one desire – to come across something that can truly represent this generation, this era, this paradigm to completion, and not merely on a technological scale. 

‘Life of Pi’ was supposed to be that movie. It didn’t work for me. ‘Argo’ would be Hollywood's pride, mixing the studio-picture with American consciousness. Tarantino hasn’t ever attempted to dissociate himself from the film world and represent humanity on the whole. ‘Lincoln’, again, sounds like a mix of both – of classic Hollywood storytelling and American values. I would not go to the lengths of calling these films jingoistic, but you get what I’m saying, right? 

There’s a whole lot of absentees. Ramin Bahrani – without whom it’s been a painful three years – needs to come back. So do Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden. It’s too soon to expect Thomas McCarthy, after ‘Win Win’ the year before last – delightful; one of the year’s best, easily. Alexander Payne has a film coming soon, set in his hometown. It’s the second time I’ve referred to him on a review, in two days. Not good. 

I’ve always loved cinema. I hate to sound distinguishing, but for someone who loves film, I haven’t been content. I think the creative world can do better. There’s a lot of films I haven’t watched. There’s a lot of films I don’t even have access to. Given that, maybe I’m selling it short. But that’s only because I don’t have the luxury of patience. It’s been a year since I’ve had a film experience that’s made me truly belong. The last time I had that was when I watched Marc Webb’s ‘the Amazing Spider-Man’ – a story of youth, mortality and crazy romance. In a world where superhero movies have bitter, morbid love stories, it was a kiss of life exchanged between young guns firing at the same time. 

Contrast that with a film that kept saying “life’s hard enough as it is,” ‘the Silver Linings Playbook’ made it harder. I struggle with down-to-earth fiction. I think it takes a tall story to really bring one down to the ground. That, or life itself. I think it’s a thin line – I’m actually debating it inside my head. What Woody Allen could do with ‘Midnight in Paris’, he didn’t do with ‘Manhattan.’ 

Okay, that's not quite true. It's out of order as well. I can’t discuss filmmaking trends with Allen as an example, even if he has shown changes with time (at his own pace). 

The point of contention is this. On the one hand, a slight stretch of imagination in a film that promises reality seems unforgivable. On the other, we have those that never attempt to come close to the ground and yet find a way to appeal to the deepest of your senses. 

‘Real Steel’ is one such film. It’s set in a future that looks like the past. Culture gets accentuated – human beings get more rustic as robots resemble them to the best of their ability. Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) manages one that’s as untrustworthy as he is – it takes a good, solid beating, he can’t patch it up anymore. He moves on. One more to the dirty pile. Son Max Kenton (Dakota Goyo) arrives, bringing with him this ancient-looking, puny specimen that shows some traits they hadn’t seen in robots before – the ability to obey and understand, the latter kept a secret throughout the film, part of a punch-line. 

He calls the robot ‘Atom.’ It looks nice and friendly. If it had lips, it would smile. Max shares a bond with it that’s neither made to sound too special, nor left unstated. He brings it to Charlie, a washed-out boxer from the golden era, made in Hollywood. Deep in debt and no robot to spare, Charlie is pretty much ‘anything goes.’ He goes with Atom, teaching him boxing in something that’s, interestingly, called the ‘shadow mode.’ It means the robot would imitate anything that he does, where what it does is mere shadow. 

I spoke about jingoism, right? Well, the bad guy here is a bot called Zeus that has Darth Vader written all over it – in a film that’s all about father and son, it could’ve well been Atom’s dad, for all you know. Zeus is of Japanese design – made by this man called Tak Mashido (Karl Yune) – and is managed by a Russian tycoon called Farra Lemkova (Olga Fonda), two people who might as well have been talking exhibits in a display of stereotypes. There’s a cowboy who calls a black man (Anthony Mackie) ‘homey’ who calls him ‘partner’ in return. They bond over a hundred grand the partner wouldn’t cough up. 

Alright, one too many challengers in one too many big fights over the years. Agreed. ‘Real Steel’ almost faithfully (deliberately?) follows ‘Rocky’ with its plotline. ‘Rocky’ was the everyday man’s struggle for recognition. ‘Real Steel’ is a man’s search for himself, there being no surprise in the place where he finds himself again. The robot has twinkling blue eyes that seem to invite you into its depths. So does the boy. It’s not the first time that Shawn Levy has handled something like this – he directed ‘Night at the Museum’ and its sequel, both of which stick to the theme of man discovering himself in something seemingly inanimate. “I just want you to fight for me,” says Max, in the scene just before the last act. Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) didn’t need to be told this. Neither does Charlie, but then Max has the bigger mouth. 

There are places where ‘Real Steel’ exasperates you with its faith in Hollywood clichés. But it has an undercurrent that’s fairly consistent. What can’t win a fist-fight beats you with a show of heart, in the manner of saying too much as opposed to never saying what needs to be said. 

To Mr. Levy and the ‘Real Steel’ camp, technology is about holograms and fancy screens where the wires don’t show. Atom is an old-timer even in that respect. He steams up like a bad radiator, his wires spark and his eyes flicker as he staggers like he’s disorientated – at one point, the commentator actually uses that word, with quite a bit of ‘almost-human’ references thrown in as well. Somehow, you wish it was a little under-played a little. Like ‘Cinderella Man’ maybe. Jim Braddock (Russell Crowe) would make a fair Charlie, give or take a few pounds. And I’m most definitely not comparing boxing styles here. 

‘Real Steel’ is ‘Rocky’ with Adrian replaced by a brat to make it more about men than before. Where, among a bunch of beasts and bureaucrats, man triumphs. Well, almost triumphs, with scope for betterment – betterment that means getting together, holding close to those who matter as Hollywood defines them, in a world that won’t go beyond the boxing ring. It’s a sturdy-but-modest piece of furniture with a load of varnish it could’ve done without. And it passes woodshop, with honours.

The film played on TV when I desperately thought I needed a break from this year’s monotony and the overflowing list of films I’m yet to watch. It’s the tall film I thought I needed to bring me back to ground level. Having sparred with robots, I should – hopefully – be able to deal with humans better now.