Mesmerized.

I saw Ozu's heartrending Tokyo Story for the fifth time few days back. Again, I am speechless, again I am mesmerized. Writing about this film will not do any good, any analysis is superfluous, any interpretation will not suffice. So, I will just put a dialogue and a still (Noriko's) from the film. Try to find it and do see it at least once in your lifetime. I can't recommend it more.

Kyoko: Isn't life disappointing?
Noriko: [smiles] Yes, it is.

Tokyo Story quietly stands like an oldman remembering a simple story of generations, family and people, but it is stunningly contemporary. Heart ruptures silently after watching this masterpiece, cinema seldom satisfies you this much, simple images don't resonate better than this.

Finale

Sins of the red hand and regrets of a loser,
Came closer in the night of doom.
Joy of living and the anguish of being,
Joined hands in the hour of gloom.

Hope seemed a foolish self justification,
Faith bade its last good bye.
Broken links stopped praying for lost cause,
Heart burst without a single sigh.

For us, there is no death, cried in refrain,
For us, there is no life either.
For we, the children of dust and lust,
Nor mind can kill us, heart neither.

Fell in the array of dim bright lights,
Saw the confusion in every passing breath.
Closed little light in my feeble fist,
Before the final dance of death.

This Day, That Year.

Today my blog completed a year. A year back I started it with a moderate amount of enthusiasm, probably just above the critical mark required for it and started burbling. What I gained, if anything ?, I think nothing substantial which cannot be done without a blog. On the flip side, I do neglected my regular work and worked on weekends to write long babbling on movies. Do I feel bad about it. No, on the contrary, all those posts in all their naivety and stupidly look immensely dear to me, like a slice of time, a slit to past, little but intense light coming through them. I was almost sure that this blog cannot go for long ( I bet to myself for three months and I happily lost). The question is what kept me-the-lazy-pig posting at least once a week and sometimes more so. When I look it in some perspective, lot of stupid observations come up. For the best or worst for my blog, I started with negative reactions from almost all who knew me and read my blog. The main reason for it was my blog is very different from what I am. The people who knew me, found it too distant and pretentious. They all found it a farce, to some extent it was too. But as I moved on and I made it a point to write what ever I feel like and don't model it to any particular reader's taste except me, I whole-heartedly decided to be self-indulgent, again I don't know it was for good or bad. My love for movies, and hate of plethora of other things gave me some ideas to jot down the thoughts every now and then. It looks on some more contemplation that I forced myself to some extend to keep blogging against the tide, and mainly because to change the idea that I am not only pretentious , but I am consistently so and probably there is some truth in it and this is more near to my actual self.

I would not like to think what would become of this blog a year hence. I never thought it will be my-movie-mouthpiece when I started it, actually I didn't post anything on movies for about three months or so. What I feel good is that there is so much to see, experience and write on the things I love, and there is so much hidden in the past posts to rethink.

Kafka's Metamorphosis

I feel so very small to write anything about it, I sense a deep sense of fear plunging in, that sometimes say what if you said something that refers to something stupid to a piece of art that you revere in totality, a piece of art, so horridly blurred with nightmarish fantasy and so clearly delineated, so powerfully behold the spirit of a poor fellow, a black and white story, so very elegantly painted, so meticulously done. Gregor Samsa turns to a gaint bug one fine morning. This happens in very first line of Metamorphosis. What else, so what, please don't ask these stupid questions. A poor guy has every right to turn to what ever filth, he wants to. Let him do that. Pity is a first emotion that Metamorphosis evokes, pity of entrapment and alienation, a pity of ritualistic living, a pity of powerlessness, a pity of how a beautiful body gets transformed to a heavy, grotesque bug, an insect of no respect. what a shame, what a pitiful sight. Gregor, the sole bread winner has to get up and go to work, earn money for the family, so that they can survive. The family of a Gregor has ghostly appearance more than the transformed Gregor himself. They look at Gregor as a old circus animal entrapped in four walls through three doors, calling and pounding doors at him to perform to bring them some pennies to them. No one think of Gregor and his new persona and why it happened, why he transformed into a bug, by his will or by some force. What does this all signify, if at all. Why are we subjected to the details of the nightmare that Gregor is having, why should we, Gregor should be let alone to die in peace, but a reader can be on any side of the wall, outside the room with Gregor's circus family, or inside the wall with Gregor. The power is such that we tend to move either side. Those who somehow cross that boundary are, in my humble opinion, great readers. I did cross the line, but not very consistently, not very frequently though.



On whole of the story, a feeling of entrapping hovers. The first indication is Gregor's job that he hate and want to leave, but to pay his family debts he continues. Second is the transformation (rather entrapment) of Gregor into a insect body, and third is Gregor's imprisonment in a dark room. These all signify a sense of solitude that Gregor is experiencing and how this solitude grows and become more painful and fatal.

Metamorphosis very clearly describes how we become increasing indifferent to others pain with time if it becomes even the slightest hurdle in our so-called daily routine and how our neglected pain can grow exponentially wasting us altogether. Gregor's sister, Grete is a very interesting character to understand in that respect, part from Gregor. A loving sister, transforms into deaf and blind lady unable to connect to Gregor. One of themes of Metamorphosis is inability to express oneself, Grete, mother and father are so horrified by Gregor they just stopped seeing and communicating with him, Gregor, too, on the other hand, being turned to an insect is unable to express himself, it was fully supplemented by neglect shown by the family. All the characters show their repressed feeling in one way or the other. Especially father, whose anger results in the 'Apple incident', which ultimately become calamitous to Gregor. Kafka uses Gregor's transformation as an indication of transformation of all the characters involved.

From one perspective Metamorphosis looks the analysis of transformation, from other look it seems like deconstruction of society in general and a family in particular, but from all angles Metamorphosis is a scrutiny of being human being pushed to live and survive. When I read Metamorphosis for the first time, I was more taken over my Gregor's plight and his family's increasing indifference to him. On the second time, it reflected much more, the feeling of insecurity and fear of every character and the longing of Gregor to get his position back in the family resonated. There is a very brilliant scene in Metamorphosis, one of my favorites, the violin scene, where Gregor comes out to hear the violin his sister,Grete is playing. It may be the most emotional [not melodramatic in any sense] scene of the whole story. The reaction of the family to Gregor's return from dark room brings more rejection for him and a final fatal unanimous decision by family. This scene shows Gregor's last effort to gain some love from his estranged family. What makes this scene and whole story so riveting is that fact that how misunderstood and helpless, speechless and loathsome Gregor is, and this feeling vibrates all over the story but culminates into this episode.

The end of the story is nothing short than perfect and stoically yet brilliantly breaks apart all the mush and goodness attached to the concepts of society and family. While coming to the end, I had a feeling that the story also started with a unwritten paragraph about normalcy of everyday life, the sweet weather and bird chirping. This full cycle gives, Metamorphosis a completeness, an integrity of structure and sense that everything is fine on surface and lots of Gregor's are trapped in dark chambers.

For more detailed, coherent and intellectual discussion on Metamorphosis, read Vladamir Nabokov's notes here ( These notes are very interesting, detailed and incisive, although I cannot disagree more with him when Nabokov says ...[Music] belongs to a more primitive, more animal form in the scale of arts than literature or painting..., I think music in the 'Violin sequence' is used mostly because it is the sound only that Gregor can register in his dark room and it can take him out. In fact sound plays a very important role in the whole story.]

All of those, who haven't still read it, can find it here. Here is a nice animation of story.

Love-4

Its long time that her affair has come to a logical end. Time heals most of the wounds, mental, physical, metaphysical. Now she feels a tickling feeling all over the body, full of nostalgia, full of childlike titillation. Has it ended, or just buried, what will happen if she meets him again, near a shopping mall, while buying those red flowers for gift to some unknown acquaintance. Nothing will happen, nothing should happen, mind is now occupied with all types of worldly worries, all types of domestic desires, all the layers of happiness, all the air of busyness. Yet at night, one or twice in a blue moon, she adores her affair like a scented secret. It all looked pleasant, all looked so very childish. Never will she be able to feel the anger in such a raw form, everything is ordinary, subdued, life is slow and sweet, a life of stagnation can give rest and this rest may be seen as pleasure, pleasure of simplification of life.

That day when it was a relatively bad weather, she was crossing the road, she realized that she just wanted to run, run as hard as she could, but she just stopped and laughed at the stupidity of the thought, madness of yesteryears was good to laugh at and giggle to, but not worth practicing. Her one hand is full of packets of newly bought clothes, and the other with a light colored purse that helped buy them. She was thoroughly occupied with stuff, which may look mundane, but that is necessary to live. There were times when she wanted to weep like the wind that brings rain with itself, it all calmed down now.

Later at night, one of those blue moons appeared, she thought of those days, they looked so distant, and therefore so sweet, she thought to her, how all the bitterness is gone, how she has hold herself upright in those days of pain and agony, it just looked like the reminiscence of some previous life or a dream she was once part of, where she was given a bitter part, but that's all she could have done. She opened a book near the table lamp and tried to close her eyes, she saw his youthful face with anger and love mixed together, she cannot figure out what this all mean to her now. She switched off the lamp and later put it on. That night she slept with lights on.

The Death of a Blog

I have not written on any of the movies I am seeing and I really feel bad about it. Bad, not because my blog seems dying but because when you see one movie after the other and don't jot down about the previous movie, the virgin experience of movie viewing is lost all together. We can always see those movies again, and if they qualify to be good movies, they should give us more and more insight onto themselves on repeated viewing, but the first pure experience is lost some where and its difficult, rather impossible to recollect it once its two or three days past, given that you have moved to another cinematic experience. All in all it is not a good feeling to leave what you love and not even leave the traces of it on your blog so that at a latter day, when you see that piece of art again, you can reflect more clearly with greater pleasure. Also once I see a movie, I cannot hold myself to read the good, bad, ugly or whatever reviews I can find and it corrupts your pure (which may be incorrect or naive) views on the movie and this leads to a concoction of world wide views, necessarily not yours, and you loose interest in due course too. Again you feel bad.

I thought I will write about The Trial the day I saw it, but I couldn't gather much time (rather initiative) to do so and now I feel totally lost to write about it. I am planning to see it gain shortly and write about it then, but I know it will not be the same, I have lost all my thoughts and messed them with other in the meanwhile and therefore I feel so bad about them.

One more movie, which I thoroughly enjoyed and even started to scribble about was Red, but I refused to post it then, decided to post it when I will complete the Color Trilogy and now its all lost somewhere. I feel that I have lost my rustic thoughts, and did severe injustice to them. One other movie which I loved to the core, and wanted to write about was Nights of Cabiria, but I consoled myself just by writing a poem and a post on Cabiria. There are several more such type of instances where my laziness pushed my thoughts to their natural death.

For some time, I am reading some extraordinary stuff, I felt so good the day I read Kafka's A Hunger Artist, but I couldn't gather much thought to write about it, see this is a different problem from one discussed above, here I am falling short of ideas at the first place. This is my second concern, the dearth of ideas to write upon, I thought to write about some topics like 'the meta-movies I have seen', and 'the relationship between films and literature' (Although I feel acutely uneducated on this), 'the genesis of an idea', 'the endings of commercial cinema', 'Calvin's Philosophy' and so forth but nothing materialized, I have uncompleted drafts of some of them which I consider unworthy of posting even on my stupid blog. Of late, you must have seen me, pumping oxygen though silly poems to my blog in coma :)

Lets see, if I am able to break out of this circle of void and scribble something, that at least I can enjoy !

The Unseen Drop

Has the color of color died or the paper was too smooth,
Poor fellow tried to show all what he could see with naked eyes.
He again painted with different colors, may be it would show,
Is it color or paper or the dead soul, that refused to register.

A voilin cried in perfection all night to symphonies of masters,
No one stopped by to drop a tear or eye to its passion.
They all danced laughing to the screams from the other side,
Voilin played the music feeding his soul, fasting all night

A penman scribbed his absurd agonies on parched paper for ages,
He thought to store them in a place, away from heat of the sun.
Wisemen came with sweet lullabies, wrote on stone in calligraphy,
Penman died someday, thinking of a story, in the heat of the sun.

Dreams

Something that is locked in the vast fantasy of our heads and yet to come out is a dream. There are chances that once it comes out of your mind, it may be turn into what it is supposed to be or to something totally different, but most of the times it loses its lustre by coming out of womb. We, the mother of the dreams, bearing the pains of nurturing them, feel, is this my dream, so horribly different from its perception and conception. Dreams walk just one step ahead of us, you can't catch them by running on skates. You can possibly get them if you stand still and let them reveal themselves. When people say 'Follow you Dreams', it looks nice, but probably it has most dreadfully misunderstood cliché, just beaten by the oldie 'Believe in Yourself'. What are we supposed to mean when we say a flamboyant banality like 'Follow your Dreams', is it to follow whatever lead to your dreams, go grab it from neck till they suffocate and succumb to your fist. Before moving on, let me make clear that when I talk about dream, I am not talking about aims, ambitions or aspirations, first of all they stink of corporate jargon and second, dreams are as fragile, as uniquely colored and as elevating as an air bubble ever to share the same closed space as ambition. Aims and ambitions looks only like a constrained/trivial solution of the equation of dream.

For me 'Follow your Dreams' means enjoy your dreams with a responsibility to nurture them, let them grow up in your tiny heads feeding them with some reality so that they can survive on being delivered. But this simplification also doesn't help, especially in those cases where dreams are driven by the labor pains of passion or the other times when your dreams become too heavy to carry, sort of a extended pregnancy with rotten fetus. You need to take it out, at times to save you, other times to relieve you from pain, yet other times to satisfy you. Dreams are born babies only, they have to take the weather by themselves. They lose their form, their baby smile, their innocence very soon and can't be called even a dream afterwards. Its reality, a grain of dust in the enormous stadium with crazy crowd and razzmatazz. Even though your dream is not dead, it is lost. So what you get by having a dream that is going to get lost or turn into a something grotesque anyway. Apparently you get lots of pain and disappointment, but you have your share of, what I can call, happiness, the peaks of pleasure. Dreams teach you to look inside, to create, to understand, to observe the pain, to comprehend the real world, to search for the beautiful truth, to sometimes die in peace, and to live with hidden smiles of the courage that you have ever dreamt !

For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come -Hamlet

Tiny Blades

The gates of tiny blades, the light on the green grass
The dirt of earth below, a foot pressed it all

The soul of night and the son of darkness, sang together
The spirit of dawn, the sister of light, spoiled it all

The unrest of mind, the buses of thought, wandered, waved
The necessity of life, the ruler of might, aligned it all

The burning hearts, the turning clocks, around my side
The whorl of fire, those two stones, flamed it all