the Story of Us

An elderly couple from the town of Onomichi traveling to the contemporary city of Tokyo, to congregate with their children, to spend time with them in Tokyo. In return they are sidelined by the children, as they are busy with their selfishness or to say in a proverbial tone, the time demands them to be like this. Only their widowed daughter-in-law seems genuinely pleased to see them, takes a day off from her job and expends a day with the couple for sight seeing. The couple leaves Tokyo and the audience faces the fractured countenance of culture, tradition and generations, overruled by modernization and self-absorbed consumerism.

This is an effortless languidly paced yet poignant story of mankind. Nothing is spectacular but the film spreads its wings slowly in a quite customary grace, with its mundane dialogues, undemanding mannerism, and subtle gestures. Without any external mechanism Ozu creates an environment of the familiar family structure around the viewers. We Indians might find resemblance of this story with a zillion other Indian narrations, in movies, theatres or novels etc. but in Tokyo Story, nothing is overcooked, there is no peripheral catalyst to ask about or to show reasons for the dysfunctional family constitution.

As a typical Yasujiro Ozu endeavor, he breaks the laws of normal camera angles or movements. Except one shot (the camera follows a brick wall and moves to the evicted couple) the camera never in motion, stands immobile and edits short shots entering the characters in detail. As the conventional Japanese populace always sit on the ground (whether to talk or to eat or in customary works) Ozu uses a very low height for the camera.

Throughout the movie, there is a persistent motion of elements; the ships, the train, the bus or the younger generation, however the frames never move. Perhaps, Ozu wanted to demonstrate the gorgeousness of life still remain in simplicity or in slow going, but this is too demanding from today’s world which is over infested with fast eating consumerism or slow poisoning self pompous attitudes of us.

Tokyo monogatari (Tokyo Story - 1953)
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu

Persona: Appearances and Existence

Though entirely sane in body and mind, actor Elisabet Vogler abruptly stopped communicating with anyone. She was taken to a hospital where Nurse Alma will look after her. Vogler’s doctor decided that the hospital of a less use, so she lent her beautiful beach house at Faro to Elisabet, Alma also went with her for Elisabet’s healing process. Sooner, Elisabet and Alma get friendly and their personalities started to slide into each other. They get trapped into other; lose their individual roles gifted and start playing the character of the other woman.

Bergman always commented that his movies are basically poetry in images. As my favoritism, Persona proves that most. Persona is a pristine blend of real intellect and illustrative metaphors. From the standpoint of Elisabet, she used to maintain her Persona throughout her life (that’s what we perform every day, maintain our dissimilar countenances and appearances for different paradigms) but when she wanted to disapprove she ceased all contacts with the external world, by silence. Here, silence is truth.

While Alma started reading Elisabet during the learning process, she projected herself into the other character. Truly, in our real world, what we believe in a different person is greatly due to the acknowledgment of that person, like we have estimated ourselves into their survival, wearing the Persona or the mask of the other.

Persona shows the visual brilliances where Alma is slowly getting entrapped into Elisabet, whether it is the dream sequence (with Mr. Vogler) or in the coveted sequences of monologues. Bergman’s long standing celebrated cinematographer Sven Nykvist brilliantly took continuous long close shots of the two actor’s faces, keeping each half of the face in dark and in light. As the movie progresses (may be it’s by my mistake or no matter what) I feel both the faces look similar.

The last long monologue is masterfully crafted when Alma conversed about Elisabet’s past life, the same dialogues been shot from two angles, once showing Elisabet’s face and then Alma’s. Alma talked about her personal viewpoint, comments about how Elisabet neglected her child. Then at the end, both their faces suddenly merged into one!

Bergman was privileged with these two gifted actors (Liv Ullman as Elisabet and Bibi Andersson as Alma). In the entire movie Liv Ullman uttered only few words (nothing…nothing...) and kept a Persona of torment and tragedy. Her silence as a blank is truer than anything. Bibi Andersson is remarkable and perfect as her other Bergman ventures (the seventh seal, all these women, wild strawberries etc.) in showing her mental distresses and of course in the scene while she is slithered in other persona, but trying to return.

The film starts with some very chaotic shots which Bergman left for the audience. For instance, it shows some reels of a silent movie, a spider (the spider-god from his chamber trilogy?), and a crucifixion (from his undying question on existence of god?), a kid places his hand on a blurred face of a woman (Elisabet’s son or Alma’s unborn child?) and so on.

Well the above, is my explanation. I am also wearing a Persona to think as I am.

Persona is a haunting brilliant masterpiece from the living legend.

Persona (1966)

Directed By : Ingmer Bergman

Love is a...

Three anecdotes are in a zigzag movement. No correlation as such, no overlapping or any connection. All three stories are tied up in different threads but meet in a same shot, which approach to the viewers in different intervals. Everything finally summed up Amores Perros.

One story focuses on a young mother and her association to her brother-in-law. The second narrates about an ad-businessman who leaves his family for a gorgeous model. In the third a disillusioned ex-revolutionary, playing his criminal trade and obsessed about his daughter.

This was the introductory feature film of Gonzales Inarritu and no doubt he mastered the art of visceral excitements and cinematic dynamism in his earliest. It never pauses to hold a viewer's concentration, simply as a result of the pulsating energy it displays and the coarse tension it manages to sustain, over two and half hours. All the three stories have a canine motif and are connected by a horrendous car accident; you can comment that’s the only bond between the threes.

The movie is pessimist; the ending of Amores Perros is depressing: no one really comes out as the winner and everybody's hopes are banished. The end shots of all the three stories are breathtaking. Octavio’s (acted by Garcia Barnal) futile wait in bus stop for his sister-in-law, Valeria (the model) in the wheel chair with her amputated leg verifies her poster in the billboard (again a futile attempt, the billboard says “disponible” means space-available), El Chivo (the revolutionary) records his last statements for his daughter, but the recorder stops before he can remark “I love you, my little girl”.

Out of the three narrations, my ballot walks off for the second story, involving the businessman and the model. Their love dies unborn, the sufferings and distresses are metaphoric with their lost dog.

Though the ambiance of the movie as a whole is grim and unpleasant; the kinetic technique of Amores Perros is dazzlingly remarkable. It is a vibrant demonstration of pure filmmaking styles: many of the sequences were edited for more than thirty times, even the screenplay was tailored with thirty six drafts in beginning!

You might feel repulsive about Amores Perros due to the rough gloomy gory detail of human life. However, that is the movie’s premier asset.

Love, as the title designated, does not triumph.

Amores Perros
(Love is a Bitch - 2000)
Directed By : Alejandro González Iñárritu