Wednesday, January 21, 2009

The Perpetual Wound: Part 2-Dekalog:

(There may be spoilers ahead, but Decalogue is not about some plot, not about the visuals, not about the music but just the feel. It is like you are a silent narrator who observes without judging, maybe like the angels in “City of Angels”, being there but not involved.)

Let me set matters straight, Decalogue is not a movie in a conventional sense. It’s a series of ten separate one hour features knitted together with the thread of human suffering. Kieślowski, along with Piesiewicz, visualized this feature as his personal homage to the Ten Commandments passed on to Moses by the creator whom we so lovingly call with the three letter name, god. But the series is not a biblical account of the ten commandments it is more of a study of the various emotions that bring about grief, a rambling with the commandments as backdrop, placed just as a guide while the director and his crew paint a picture of a desolate society where each of these commandments are transgressed with a brutal candor.

The commandments are pretty straightforward but in Kieślowski’s hand it becomes something utterly profound and deep. You shall not worship other gods (Part 1) translates to a story of a father who looses his son in a freak incident at the lake. His crime, he built a computer that could predict when the ice would melt but like any device controlled by man, it can err and it did, making the son drown in the icy waters of the lake. The movie is about the guilt of a man and grief of a father on his only child's loss. The final scene with the father tumbling over the candles in the church, and the wax spilled over the virgin Mary’s eyes was poignant and tastefully done. Similar in taste is the second part (Not take god’s name in vain) about an old, grumpy doctor who observes disdainfully at a woman in his apartment whose husband is his patient and is in comma for long. The woman wants an opinion to whether her husband shall survive so that she can decide whether to keep the baby whose father is her husband’s best friend. This choice is the cause for her anxiety, her grief. She loves her husband, no doubt about it, but she wants the baby as well. It is the doctor’s answer that would make her decide and that forms the crux of this plot, the doctor being asked to play god, taking god’s name in vain.
Grief takes multiple facets in these series where people lie, kill, feel jealous, and feel roused. They get angry, they have incestuous feelings, some kidnap their kid sister and some don’t trust their brothers, they in a it create a plethora of alternative plots showcasing human folly and the resultant pain.

The fifth part, which was developed later into a full-length movie “A short film about killing”, is a take on capital punishment, with the director drawing parallels to the crime that of the killing of a cab driver to that of the punishment, society hanging the twenty one year old murderer. The movie begins brilliantly with images of some poisoned cockroaches feasting on some rotten bread. The scene moves to a dead rat, may be killed by some random cat, and then cuts to a cat hanging from the noose and boys running away with a jolly abandon. The central idea of the movie, the opposition to capital punishment, is emphasized at that particular point, Kieślowski with his violent portrayal of the act of murder and an equally despicable depiction of the hanging inside the jail barracks, likens the two and questions the morality of the acts. The sixth part, which was also developed as “A short film about love”, questions the morality in the act of love and ponders about lust and the inter-relation between the two. The movie about a small kid who spies on her beautiful neighbor is humiliated sexually by her when she finds out and he attempts to take his own life. Loneliness stands out in this feature, as well as in the previous one, as a precursor to grief, with the bleak white background, an tottering old woman and some chilling music, adding to the silent grief of all the characters, making it so very profound. This movie also shows how a perfect movie even if copied scene by scene doesn’t produce the same effect sans it soul. For the un-initiated this was copied into the disastrous “Ek choti si love story” which reduced the plot to a sleazy soft porn.

The genius of the director is shown in the seventh feature, which showcases the commandment, “thou shall not steal”. In the hands of any ordinary artist, it may have been just a clichéd enactment of a thief repenting or the like but Kieślowski makes it a bewitching performance of a young daughter who kidnaps her ‘sister’ who in reality is her daughter. The daughter(the one who kidnaps), who looks and seems eccentric, is dominated by her strong willed mother who has made the world convince that her grand daughter is actually her daughter. At that point, the viewer is wonderfully unsure of who the commandment applies to, the mother or the daughter. The fourth feature, (Thou shall respect your parents) is more shocking and brilliantly disturbing. It begins with a young pretty girl drenching an older man, may be in his forties and then the older man taking his revenge in a playful way. The keen eye can no doubt mark a spark of love and maybe a speck of sexual tension, and then suddenly out of the blue, he is introduced as the father. As the story progresses, the young lady discovers a letter in her father’s desk from her long dead mother where she mentions that, her father is actually not his birth father and all the repressed emotions suddenly comes to the hilt, swinging destructively to break their relationship. Both these features talk about grief resulting from deep-rooted passions pent up in human souls.

Guilt is an exciting vice which when comes to the surface produces a fascinating plethora of emotions. The Eight feature is about a professor of ethics who comes face to face with her past in the shape of an visiting professor who as a child was betrayed to the Nazis by the same professor. This unlikely interaction lays all their past ghosts to rest and give both a chance to survive with their trust in humanity rekindled.

The Ninth feature is about jealousy, it is about one man who, after having multiple partners, turns impotent one fine day and he requests his wife to find a lover. His wife responds that sex is just an act that she always found cumbersome but then she does take a lover. The husband, in spite of his previous statements, becomes jealous and starts spying on his wife who breaks up with him when she founds that out and he leaps over a bridge to end it all. Confused, but that is Kieślowski for you, betrayal here is two ways, the wife betrayed the trust by taking a lover, the husband betrayed her trust by questioning her love and his own faith. This feature draws a thin line and underlines the difference between love and the act of love. Dakalog three is about a cab driver who leaves his family during Christmas to help an ex lover search for his current partner. The entire feature has a sublime desire glowing in the background with the underlined tension between the ex lovers. Both the features showcase the difficulty in letting go, the grief and pain that is associated with every cease in an relationship.

Feature ten is about obsession, it is about two brothers who obsess over completing their dad’s stamp collection and in the process loose much more, one even his kidney. Bordering on comedy, this feature showcases filial differences and grief resulting from lack of trust.

The movie is a must watch with all its nuances, each beat necessary and every moment priceless. Developed primarily for ten different directors to direct, Kieślowski just couldn’t let go, like his characters he suffered from the grief of parting from his stories and he made each of them with different cinematographers trying to change the look and how he succeeded is for all to see.

There is one character that appears in each of his feature, just looking with a peering glance, not judging just observing, not a participant in the stories developing around him. There Kieślowski got us into the film, we are that man watching a movie not judging the characters but judging ourselves, hoping to become better, sometimes successful, sometimes without success. But the important thing is to at the least “try”.

Part 3: Grief from Bereavement

The perpetual wound : Part I

‘The pain of love is the pain of being alive; it is the perpetual wound’

I don’t remember when I heard of Maureen Duffy for the first time, even her name doesn’t register much, her times and work mean nothing to me, but this statement has remained engraved in me somewhere and peeps out with a smile, whenever I see some random movie with grief marking a character, with the old “I had told you so” smug look. You think it’s crazy that I imagine about words smiling and jeering, poking and pestering, please don’t, I am normal with some loony fascination with books and movies. But this blog is not about Maureen Duffy or “The words”, Sartre or otherwise, this blog is about grief and how movies have showcased this singular emotion in movie after movie, across time, space and language.
Grief is a potent weapon, an all-powerful one, with the power to decimate the million of opposition ahead, the power to annihilate the all-exhuming soul of one, the power to eradicate humanity as a whole. I remember watching a frail old woman spewing venom, literally spitting on the soldiers who had killed her son, destroyed her land, and made her desolate. But as promised, am not presenting an essay on grief, its about some of the movies which try to address the issue, not that it provides a solution, there cannot be any, but it shows people suffer from grief and their personal salvation and redemption.

Now that my resolve is made, my fingers dirtied, eyes twitching, brains (check the plural) racing, my mind is giving up. Coming so far I realize, I am without a structure, without any ideas of narration, without content and the more I think I am getting scared of the brick bats. Grief because of bereavement in itself can fill books, how on the earth, can I stop describing the tears of a mother who has just lost her teenaged child just because my self-imposed thousand word restriction is over. How different is this loss from that of an unmarried mother who had an abortion and is watching her four months fetus through a six inch thick glass vessel. The dead fetus, unmindful of her mother’s stare, swimming in the smelly formaldehyde, mistaking it for the womb that it was swimming in before, may have a different story altogether. If I can write about the story of that unwanted fetus, I would find myself in a completely different world linked just by the river of grief.

But this is a story I wish to tell; maybe this has to be in multiple parts covering the various types and movies that can soothe the abrasion and bring peace. Movies do have that alleviating effect; making you a voyeuristic stranger, letting you peep into the lives of others, create an impression of the omnipotent and omniscient god that we so long to become. I just hope these selections of movies help some random reader in coming to terms with their own individual ghost.

I have a self-imposed limit that I diligently follow, mostly unsuccessfully. So maybe it will be one movie in this first part and the following parts will cover all the types of grief, from bereavement to the empty nest syndrome, from trauma to the much-trivialized break ups. In accordance to my restriction, maybe will just review this one movie that is an amalgamation of all emotions fused together by a master craftsman who sadly is no more. And it is he, the Krzysztof Kieślowski that I dedicate this blog to, the man who maybe understood pain.

Part 2: Review of Movie Dekalog

Thursday, January 15, 2009

With her eyes:

Note:
This qawali sung by Aziz ahmed kahan Warsi is a cornerstone and a must hear for any qawal enthusiast. After realizing my incompetence at translating the master poetry, I take my leave by handing over the untranslated lyrics and a guide to urdu dictionary.
Do listen to Warsi singing this, and you will realize why Qawali intoxicates and makes it follower sway with rythm, with just some tabla and some claps.

Yeh Kisne Nigahon se (Qawali)

Yeh kisne nigahon se sagar pilaye,
Khudi par meri bekhudee banke chaye. (1)

Khabardar aye dil, Mecca me adab hai,
Kahin baadahnoshi pe dhabba na aaye. (2)

Kai baar ubhre, kai baar doobe
Kai baar toofan ke chakkar me aaye (3)

Kisi ki mohabbat ne aisa duboya
Bahut koshishein ki ubharne na paye. (4)

Mohabbat woh kya jisme khuddariyan ho
Ibadat woh kya jisme pabandiyan ho (5)

Hakikat me zaheer wohi bandagi hai
jahan sar jhuke aastan jhuk jaaye (6)

kai baar sahil se takrai kashti
kai baar takrake sahil pe aaye (7)

Talasho talab me woh lazzat mili hai
Dua kar raha hun ke manzil na aaye. (8)

Meanings: Urdu to English
Please use : http://www.geocities.com/urdudict/ for translating Urdu to English). Some FAQ meanings have been noted below:

Verse 1.
Be-khudee: Being besides Oneself, Intoxication, Rapture, Senseless
Verse 2.
Adab: Courtsey
Baadah noshi: Jollification, Festivity, Celebration
Verse 3.
Ubharna: Emerge, Jut
Verse 4.
Ibaadat: Prayers, Devotion
Khuddaarii: Self-Respect
Paa band : Restricted
5.
Verse 6.
Zaheer: Ally, Associate, Assistant
Aastaan: Abode, Threshold
Bandagi: Devotion, Worship, Service
Verse 7.
Sahil: river
Kashti: Boat
Verse 8.
Talaash: Look For, Inquiry, Search, Quest, Zetetic
Talab: Demand, Desire, Inquiry, Need, Pursuit, Quest, Request, Search, Want, Wish, Yen
Lazzat: Taste, Deliciousness, Joy, Pleasurable Experience, Relish, Pleasure Enjoyment, Flavour
Duaa: Blessing, Prayer, Wish