"Touching The Void"

Touching the Void is the story of a true life mountaineering adventure. In 1985, two young British climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates made an attempt on the West face of the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes which was a route that had never been successfully climbed. The climb and the return journey have since become one of the most enduring tales of the mountaineering community.

The climb is challenging and dangerous, but they succeed in reaching the summit. However, as any mountaineer will tell you, reaching the summit is less than half the battle - most accidents and deaths happen on the way down. And it is no different for Simpson and Yates. Bad weather and poor planning has them in trouble right away, but disaster strikes when Simpson has a fall and breaks his right leg at the knee while they are still very high on the mountain. That is pretty much a death sentence and Simpson is almost resigned to it when they come up with a strategy of Yates lowering Simpson down the mountain in 300 foot sections. It is not easy, but they make progress until Simpson falls into a crevasse. Yates, who is sitting way above him on the mountain and supporting Simpson's weight has no way of telling what happened and eventually does the only thing he could practically do: cut the rope, causing Joe to fall further into the crevasse with no hope of climbing out with a broken leg and no food or water.
What follows is an astonishing tale of survival - both on the part of Simpson and Yates. It is also an examination of what really matters and the power of the mind over matter. Yates returned from the trip to a predictable storm of criticism over his decision to 'cut the rope' (and indeed, is still known as "The Guy Who Cut the Rope"), but Joe Simpson always defended him staunchly. He finally wrote this book in 1998, largely to defend his friend. The book is well written, but looking up mountaineering terms ahead of time (or keeping a dictionary handy) will make for easier reading.
Simpson and Yates returned to Peru in 2002 to film a documentary style recreation of their climb and far from being cathartic, Simpson had a terrible time during the filming and was later diagnosed to be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) - 17 years after his harrowing journey. The movie version is also to be recommended - it glosses over a number of details as all movie versions do, but the impact is more visceral and seeing the mountains and crevasse and hearing Joe and Simon talk gives it a great deal of verisimilitude.
Compelling and engrossing though the story is, we must accept that it is at best an ersatz experience for the lay reader - by Simpson's own account, he could not find the words to express the utter desolation of those 4 days on the Siula Grande.

Dream Layers

I swear I am not making this up. I don't have dreams that often (or at least ones that I can recall the next morning), but lately I have been having a few that seem to involve playing baseball, but with a random set of rules. And apparently this is after I had joined the army. As if this wasn't strange enough, last night really upped the ante.
It started off with the usual baseball-with-strange-rules (this is not that unexpected since the boys and I play a mini baseball game indoors on a regular basis). Then I am driving away from the game and the boys are with me and suddenly I realize that we had left Malini behind. So I whip the car around real fast and end up climbing the curb. As I speed away, I think I hit somebody. I stop and come back, but in the gathering dark, there is nobody to be seen. I am rather shaken as I make my way back to the field only to see Malini waiting, totally relaxed - like I had never left. And the boys are with her. I turn around and sure enough, the boys are not in the car. I realize with a start that the whole driving away had only been a dream. Malini and the boys climb in and we start driving away and all of sudden I don't recognize where I am - somewhere on the east coast, maybe? Oh no, this had been another dream! I am immediately aware that I have just experienced a dream-within-a-dream and start describing this to Malini and realize that she is no longer there. I feel a sense of discomfort (wanted to pee, no doubt) and open my eyes and now I am finally in familiar environs - in our bedroom with Malini curled up next to me. And it dawns on me that I had just experienced a third layer of dreaming. Fortunately that was the end - I fell back into a deep sleep and had almost forgotten about this until just now. What was striking was the strong feeling that I was popping up a 'level' each time I realized that I was in a dream. Maybe there is something to this Inception business? Or maybe, somebody wants me to believe in the premise of the movie and is trying to plant the idea in my head....?

"Inception"

In Agatha Christie's Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, Christie's famed Belgian detective is on the trail of what he defines as the "perfect" murderer - one who doesn't actually commit the crime on their own, but instead makes other people commit murder by the instilling the idea into them via words and suggestions. 35 years after the publication of that novel, Christopher Nolan (of Memento and Batman Begins fame) has made a movie with essentially the same idea, but with a lot more technical mumbo-jumbo thrown in. Inception finds a special group of thieves (led by Leonardo Di Caprio's Cobb) attempting to instill an idea into their target's mind (a process that is called "inception") by invading his dreams. This is in contrast to their normal skill of extracting secrets from peoples heads using the same approach - invading their dreams. Inception is supposedly fraught with risk, but the motivation for Cobb to take on this risk is that he would then be able to return to the US where he is currently wanted for the murder of his wife, Mal. That is the basic plot, but the execution is anything but simple. There are layers of complexity and indeed layers of dreams. Not unlike the shaving razor wars of increasing number of blades, we go from dreams to dreams within dreams, and all the way to dreams within dreams within dreams within dreams. At some point, we the viewer give up trying to figure out which layer we are on and just go along for the ride.

And it is mostly an entertaining ride, especially if you can ignore the earnest and somewhat repetitive dialogs. The characters are dead serious about their roles and never acknowledge the absurdity of their situations. There is a resolute attempt to project an air of normalcy - it seems that everybody knows about dream invasion and extraction and indeed some folks go so far as to train themselves to defend against it. The concept is clearly futuristic and so very SciFi but all the action all seems to take place in present time - this grates on a subtle level.

The inspiration of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is obvious in a fight that takes place in a hotel corridor, but under zero gravity. Many of the effects are quite impressive, but we have stopped taking the plot seriously long before the end of the movie. Indeed, it can fairly be said that a Bond movie broke out in the middle of a Nolan movie. There is very little attempt to explain the various plot elements and we are asked to take a lot on faith. Not coincidentally, some character or the other is regularly asking somebody else to "take a leap of faith" with them.

Throughout, there are hints of secrets withheld and they are faithfully unraveled towards the end, but they had no impact - I shrugged and waited for the story to move on. The ending is another attempt to salvage the mystery element, but feels more like a cheap trick. I am a big fan of Memento and that was the major reason I went for this movie, but Nolan does not fulfill that promise. It was famously said of Memento that the cast and crew were convinced that the tale hung together after they physically rearranged the screenplay and re-read it. I strongly doubt that any such permutation of the script will help with this one. The movie is full of thrills, spills, and inane dialog, but an engrossing work it is not. I suggest waiting for the DVD.

Another Triumph for Petit

A quick update to my post-Oscar post to note the best documentary win for Man on Wire. If you were watching, the guy who ran up to the stage after the producers was the man who pulled off the high wire act - Philippe Petit. He gave a short, joyful speech, did a little magic trick with a coin that one of his old friends had given him and ended with an impromptu stunt - balancing the Oscar statue on his chin. Doing street magic and juggling acts is of course how he paid for his various 'unauthorized' tight rope walks.

Slumdog Rules!

I have not seen "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and it is quite unlikely that I will actively seek it out. It is not the sort of movie that immediately appeals to me and its trailers and early reviews left me disinterested. However, as I watched the Oscar ceremonies last night (fast-forwarding through a Tivo-ed version), it was obvious that the evening was essentially a showdown between 'BB' and Slumdog Millionaire, which I wrote about. Any category in which only one of them was present was almost always won by that one - the significant exception being of course Brad Pitt (who was at most third-best - behind Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke). And when they went head-to-head, as they did in almost every significant category (except all of the actor/actress ones), SM came out the winner.

This year's Oscars had a predictable quality to them, with most of the winners being fairly obvious. Heath Ledger for best supporting actor, 'Jai Ho' for best song (the other nominees were another SM/Rahman number and a lukewarm offering from Wall-E), Kate Winslet for best actress, and Wall-E for best animation were all pretty much a given, with the only suspense perhaps being the presence of Meryl Streep in competition to Kate Winslet.

It was exciting to see AR Rahman win twice and close out his (decidedly tepid) acceptance speech with a dedication in tamil. His invocation of the "Mere paas ma hai" dialog probably left most of the audience mystified, but was intimately familiar as the recurring rejoinder to our poker-time banter. Equally heart-warming was the award for sound mixing that went to a well-spoken Resul Pookutty, who Malini informed me is from Kerala. It is probably safe to say that these are the first people from Kerala or TamilNadu to win an Oscar.

I attribute this clean sweep by SM to a couple of reasons: The lesser one is the conventional quality of the competition - it was hard to see any of the other nominees (other than BB, of course) winning. They just were not 'big' enough. And my guess is that even BB faded when pitted against the exuberance of SM. The greater reason I believe is that it is the perfect feel-good movie for these troubled times. While SM is not a Bollywood movie, it is very much in the style of one and Bollywood has been perfecting the art of feel-good escapism for many decades now. Of course, it could just be that it is a very good movie.

"Tare Zameen Par"

Movies like these irritate me. They offer facile solutions to complex problems while trying to pass off an essentially commercial venture as high minded social commentary. Now that I got that off my chest, I can settle down to a less strident discussion.


Malini was watching Tare Zameen Par (TZP) last Saturday night and I sat through it as well (albeit with partial attention since I was working on my computer at the same time). It is the story of a kid with dyslexia and the attempts of a caring art teacher to rescue him. It is a fairly decent directorial debut for Aamir Khan and quite watchable even if entirely predictable. What drew me in was not the story telling, but the performance of a wonderful child actor (Darsheel Safary) and the emotional tug of rescuing a young boy who is unable to speak for himself. Now that I have two sons myself, I find such stories to have a much stronger pull. Most of the characters are caricatures - the father who is unable to see past his beliefs, the mother who is sympathetic, but unable or unwilling to stand up to her husband, school teachers who are en masse unable to detect any problem with the boy beyond laziness and truancy. There is the handicapped smart kid, who has the heart of gold, the over achieving older brother, and finally of course the character of Aamir Khan - the idealistic substitute teacher who coincidentally had the same life story as the child at the center of the movie.

The story and characters all have a fairy tale quality - everybody is sketched in black or white until the resolution when everybody is redeemed and all is fine and dandy with the world. The climax involves a group painting contest to which most of the teachers arrive reluctantly, but, to a person, love the whole thing and leave with the commitment to take further lessons. I use the word 'climax' loosely since it is obvious from the moment the contest is announced as to what is about to happen. In a transparent ploy to add some tension, they even have the kid arrive late to the contest - there is much "Where is Ishaan?" "Has anybody seen Ishaan?" etc, but nothing much comes of it. The boy shows up eventually and starts painting and we learn nothing about his prior absence. There is at least one bothersome factual error - the character of Aamir Khan cites Da Vinci's use of mirror writing as another case of a creative mind who had problems with the use of language. This is bogus since Da Vinci wrote plenty of stuff in straight text and while theories abound about his reasons for using mirror text, none of them border on dyslexia as a cause. This is pretty poor for somebody (Aamir Khan) who has the reputation of being a perfectionist.

I do recognize that the making of this movie has cast more light on the insensitivity to "special needs" children and in general, it is better that this movie has been made than if it were not. However, there is no excusing the fact that the director took the easy way out in delivering the message: the story would have been that much more powerful if the child did not have such obviously above average talent and was not surrounded by such a cast of uncaring family and teachers. But then, he also wants people to watch the movie.

"Man on Wire"

Man on Wire is a 2008 documentary about the Frenchman Philippe Petit who in August 1974 walked on a high wire strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Apart from the obvious dangers of such an act, it was a most daring escapade - it was not officially approved and had to be pulled off almost in the manner of a bank heist.

Philippe had set his sights on walking between the towers pretty much from the moment the plans for the towers were announced - almost seeing it as his destiny to do so. He had already pulled off some spectacular high wire acts before - between the towers of the Notre Dame in Paris, across the top of the Sydney harbor bridge, etc, but walking between the WTC towers was unparalleled in scope and scale. First there was the meticulous planning for stringing a cable across the two towers that were 140'apart and 110 (more than 1000') stories high. Then there was the small matter of doing all this in secrecy - they had to sneak in with almost a ton of equipment (the cable alone weighed 450 lbs, the balancing pole another 55) and setup on the roofs with nobody catching them. It helped that the towers were not actually finished and there were no occupants above the 86th floor. This part of the story is itself so incredible and to Petit was far more challenging than the walk itself. There are numerous near misses and it is a near miracle that Philippe gets to step on to the wire at all. But step he does and in glorious fashion: He is on the wire for 45 minutes completing 8 crossings in all. In between he lay down, genuflected, and ended the walk by running across.

The documentary, which is based on Petit's 2002 book "To Reach the Clouds" tells the story of the planning, execution, and aftermath of the walk through interviews, actual footage of the walk, and staged recreations of several key moments. All the key people are interviewed and the recreations often bring home the point very effectively. He and his friends were obviously arrested after the performance, but were unconditionally pardoned and Petit was even given a life time pass to the observation deck of the WTC. Indeed, his high wire act is credited with popularizing the towers themselves which at the time were not well liked and struggling to find tenants. His instant fame brought him plenty of offers for movies, book deals, and endorsements, but he declined them all. He settled down in New York and makes his living by doing a few paid, high wire acts each year.

The documentary won a number of awards last year and is nominated for an Oscar. It is an extraordinary story - what drives a man to such extremes? It takes an effort of will to even grasp the enormity of the challenge, let alone understand it. In the documentary, he summarizes his philosophy of life thus - to push all boundaries and challenge all conventions. At which point, all of life becomes a high wire act.

The police sergeant who was dispatched to get him down from the wire said later on how he just had to stand by and watch and he realized that he was seeing something that nobody before had seen and that nobody in the future is likely to witness. They sound particularly prophetic today, given that the towers no longer stand.

"Gran Torino"

The previews suggested a sort of Unforgiven Redux - aging gunslinger reluctantly resorts to his old tricks after he is given no other options - but, I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, there is some familiar material here - after all, Eastwood is aging and he almost can't help playing a tough guy, but the denouement, when it comes, is unexpected and courageous even.

Gran Torino is the story of a Korean war veteran Walt Kowalski(played by Eastwood) who is almost the last remaining white guy in a neighborhood of an unnamed mid-western town that is largely occupied by people from the far-east, in particular from the Hmong community. The film opens with the funeral of his wife and wastes no time in establishing Walt's distaste for his asian neighbors. Racial epithets are freely thrown around - gooks, slope-eyes, etc are par for the course. However, Walt is an equal opportunity offender - he is equally frank in expressing his dislike for the Catholic church and the idea of going to confessional with an young priest. He has an uneasy relationship with his two sons and they are mostly glad to avoid him.

Walt meets his match in the young Hmong girl, Sue, who lives next door. Sue is not impressed by Walt's tough guy talk and dishes it right back to him. Her brother, Thao, slight and studious, is much more timid and inevitably, his relationship with Walt takes center stage. It is the relationship he never had with his sons. The neighborhood is terrorized by gangs and when one of them threatens Thao and his family, Walt steps in, without ever meaning to. Being tough and menacing seems to come so naturally to Eastwood and we are soon cheering him along with the rest of the community. Even as things begin to look up, one has a sense of unease - we know and expect something to give. When the hammer falls, it is abrupt and shocking and the tension is built up in subtly before it is released in appropriate fashion. Too late you realize that it is a masterful game of poker and that you have been had. Eastwood who directed and co-wrote the movie puts his unmistakable stamp on the movie.

Serious as most of the movie is, there is some unexpected humor thrown in - in the repartee between Walt and his long time barber, in Walt's grudging acceptance of the food that he receives as gifts, in the 'education' of Thao.

The Gran Torino of the title is a Ford model from the early 70's that Walt (who worked on the Ford assembly line most of his life) maintains in mint condition. It has a recurring presence in the movie and what happens to it is a thinly veiled metaphor for the progress of Walt's character.

It is an enjoyable movie, but I am not entirely sure that it rises above all the cliches and stereotypes it incorporates. Perhaps all of that is a deliberate artifice - this is a commercial movie after all - and it does achieve a certain lyricism at times. Highly recommended.

"The Reader"

Apart from "Slumdog Millionaire" (review), I also saw "The Reader" last week. (What else do you do when the family is away and the office is closed?) While it does not rise to the heights of that movie (no doubt because I did not personally identify with this movie like I did with Slumdog), it is still a very good movie. It is based on a 1995 German book of the same name and tells the story of an older woman who has a summer fling with a young boy. The affair ends somewhat mysteriously and it is a decade later, when as a law student the boy encounters the woman who is now the defendant in a war crimes trial. The mystery itself is fairly obvious, although the young man takes his time coming to a conscious realization of it. (There are enough hints that he has grasped the idea at a subconscious level.)

Kate Winslet plays the woman (Hanna Schmitz) and Ralph Fiennes and David Kross play the old and young versions of the boy (Michael Berg), respectively. Fiennes gets top billing, but David Kross gets most of the screen time and important scenes with Kate Winslet. The relationship between the two of them is depicted fairly explicitly, most likely to underscore the impact that this affair has on Michael Berg throughout his life. Kate Winslet is far removed from her star turn in 'Titanic', but is convincing in the role. Interestingly, while the movie is in entirely in English, the characters spoke with German accents throughout - an artifice that is usually dispensed with after a few scenes in most movies.

As in all stories, one waits for redemption - after the affair ends, after the trial ends and while it does arrive, it is not quite exactly what you would expect. Even so, it is oddly satisfying because it seems to be appropriate. The movie is a small slice in time - the story of two people that is indeed relevant to only them, but it does make for an enjoyable movie.

There are some parallels to Slumdog. The character of Hanna has the same compelling honesty, although her underlying motivation is quite different. And just like Slumdog was evocative to me, some scenes in The Reader did the same for the La Jolla audience that I saw the movie with. At one point in the movie somebody asks, "Is there a Jewish organization for that?" A knowing laugh echoed through the theater when the reply came back: "There must be. There is a Jewish organization for everything."

"Slumdog Millionaire"

The fade to black at the end of a movie has the same effect as the double bell that signals 'seat belts off' after a plane lands - people rise almost simultaneously from their seats. Nothing captures the experience of watching 'Slumdog Millionaire' as the fact that almost nobody in the theater stirred when the movie ended and the credits started to roll. Even after the credits were all done and the house lights came up, the audience seemed reluctant to move - everybody wanted to hold on to the magic of the moment.

The movie, based on a book ('Q&A') by Vikas Swarup, tells the story of a boy from the slums of Mumbai who went on to have great success in the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." Along the way he is accused of cheating and flashbacks to his life provide the basis for his defense. The movie features some very good acting, especially by the little kids that play the young versions of the three main protagonists. Music by A.R. Rahman elevates almost any movie and does not disappoint here either.

However, it is not the story or the acting or the music that sets this movie apart - it is how the movie is made. I am guessing this is mostly the director's (Danny Boyle) skill, but the cinematographer also has to be commended. The movie traverses through some of the worst that India has to offer, but presents them clear eyed and without cloying emotion or passing judgments. Sitting amongst an audience that was overwhelmingly non-Indian, I cringed during some scenes, but never did I feel that it was an unfair portrayal. In fact, this kind of honest depiction is what is often missing from many of our social discourse, caught up as we all tend be in being PC. Boyle manages to capture the tumult, exuberance, and human tragedy that life in India is with just a few telling details. It was like being on a roller coaster - plunging you into the experience and emotion without a break. While it does not compare in terms of scope or literary achievement, it is somewhat reminiscent of Rushdie's "Midnight's Children."

It is ultimately a love story, but just as much about fraternal bonds as about the childhood sweethearts. In the beginning there is something disingenuous about the character of Jamal (the slumdog millionaire) - one wonders if this is just another take on a 'Forest Gump' role - but soon the movie rises above that and Jamal is revealed as a purposeful young man who has a strong grasp on what really matters.

Towards the end of the movie, there is a scene in which people are gathering outside an electronics show room to watch the final stages of the fictional TV show that is at the center of the movie. This scene was so evocative that it brought a smile to my face - I identified with it almost immediately and I was home. That and several other scenes like it alone are worth going to see the movie, but I am also willing to wager that the story and the telling of it will equally affect you.

Quantum of Solace - Bond 1G

Saw the new Bond movie last night and thought it was interesting enough to write about. Bond is probably the longest running movie series and although it looked to be in serious jeopardy with Timothy Dalton, it got back on track with Pierce Brosnan and has taken a turn towards almost serious movie making with the casting of Daniel Craig. A typical Bond movie is mostly fluff and about easy, low stress entertainment. It demands little of the viewer except to sit back and marvel at the stunts and gadgets. The mood is never heavy and while world annihilation is always on the cards, it is always done with a smirk, a wink and nudge of the elbow. Not so with QOS.

The average Bond movie fan (and I would be one) expects 3 'Gs' in every edition - Girls, Gadgets, and Goons. You get only one of them - Goons - in QOS. There are two characters that would fit the 'Girls' role, but while one spends all her time brooding and plotting revenge, a brief glimpse of the other's bare back is offered before she is rather unceremoniously drowned in crude oil. As for gadgets, there are exactly zero. The MI6 crew does make like John King and wave their hands over a large touch screen surface, but that is in-house and hardly counts as a Bond gadget. Now that I think about it, Bond does have a cell phone that is able to track a GPS tagged person and take close-up photos from across a stadium, but that seems almost mainstream these days.

There is almost no plot to speak of and unlike most other Bond movies, there is a lack of expansiveness - no sense of anything momentous or larger than life. It is less Ludlum and more Le Carre. Bond may be licensed to kill (& he certainly does plenty of that), but he may in fact be better off with a construction license - he is a one man wrecking ball in this movie. Almost every fight/stunt involved smashing walls, buildings, roads, tunnels, furniture, windows, you name it. The metaphor was stretched further - some of the action is set amidst actual construction.

There is a lot of action in the movie, but much of it is filmed so close up that it is very difficult to follow exactly what is going on. Perversely, this actually has the effect of putting the viewer in the midst of the action and may in fact have a greater impact. Of course, it also allows the director to not quite have to show how Bond gets away or finishes the action. Bond, being Bond, does go through most of the movie in a suit (once even in a tux, that in spite of being 'borrowed' from somebody else, fits him like a bespoke one), coming out of several intense action scenes with his outfit undisturbed. The locale tends to move around quite a bit - Italy, Haiti, London, Bolivia, Russia are all featured, but it is not always clear how Bond got from Point A to Point B, often seemingly instantaneously. The general lack of logic (or even any attempt at it) is rather stunning.

Why then do I still like the movie? Viewed as a traditional Bond movie, it is a failure. However, it is still a well made movie and ultimately the various elements add up to give a satisfying experience. It is going to fall apart if you try to dissect it even a little bit, but if you leave it alone, then I think you will like it. The filmmakers seem particularly prescient - the movie captures the zeitgeist almost perfectly and that gives it, despite all the obvious flaws, a visceral quality. Daniel Craig brings an increased physicality to the role, but his Bond is also mature enough to not actually enjoy the action. Even in the one mildly romantic scene he seems more duty-bound than entitled. Many of the settings are quite spectacular and in particular the desert scenes in Bolivia really stood out (especially after my recent visit to the Death Valley).

It would seem that the filmmakers are trying to break free from usual tropes of a Bond movie - a martini makes one fleeting appearance and I don't think he ever says, "Bond, James Bond." This portends a new arc for the Bond franchise and it would be interesting to see if this gives it a fresh lease of life or is just the last sputter of a dying fire.