Asgari Bai

 

Documentary on Asgari Bai, the rare exponent of Dhrupad in Hindustani Classical music. Dhrupad is one of the ancient ragas in classical music and as far my limited knowledge of listening to Dhrupad, i have heard only male singers rendering it, most famous being the Dagar brothers. Asgari Bai was a court musician during the royal times in the pre Independence India. She became the main singer of the Orchha dynasty in the Bundelkhand region. By the time this documentary was made, she was quite old, 86 years of age, and the best years were behind her. There were no performance by her during the documentary nor are there very many youtube videos of her singing. One link i got in youtube was this one

Documentary is nicely made by Brahmand Singh, the doyen of documentary film makers in India. You can watch the documentary at this link

A Crude Awakening - The Oil Crash

 Absorbing documentary about Oil - its history, its development through the ages, its role in the society, including Oil as War, Oil as Politics, oil developing the world, so much of petro products being consumed by people all over the world. It talks of the oil fields that were there in Baku, Texas, Venezuala - all finished, all ghost towns over there. Oil as war tool when Saddan Hussain invaded Kuwait but even otherwise almost all wars have been about oil. US goes into war with Iraq over the so called weapons of mass destruction when it was all about securing oil assets and securing oil contracts for George Bush's Republican friends. The conflict in Darfur in South Sudan was all about oil discoveries with the military using force to clear families staying there.  There are some lovely live footages including one of a smiling Adolf Hitler (which is rare, indeed). Baku produced all that oil that was used by the German army. The film gives a realistic picture of the forthcoming shortage of oil in the world, with the world running out of oil reserves. Alternate sources of energy like wind power, solar, bio diesel, are all too puny in quantity and too much expensive to be affordable. Same applies to electric energy one expert says that even if you hybridised all the automobile vehicles in the world today, still we will be requiring as much oil as we are consuming today. Oil is virtually ruling the world which is why we see so much influence in the middle east. Then there are problems with OPEC and the production in Saudi Arabia is not growing that much to be of comfort to the world.  Very feeble or practically nil attempt being made to enforce democracy in the middle east - reason - oil. Very rich documentary with lots of expert voices, lots of live footages and material. Well made documentary. 

Available on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odCZpBPfFQk

Picture taken from internet, not with a view to violating copyright. 

 

Mahanagar

Classic Satyajit Ray movie "Mahanagar" made in 1963 in black and white once again a woman centric movie by the master, after "Kanchenjunga" which was made in 1962 also a woman oriented movie. Quite a genius to make a woman centric movie in the 60s, advanced thinking for the ages. This one is a beautiful film with traces of psychological drama in it, but Ray brilliantly picks it up towards the end. Brilliant performance by Madhabi Mukherjee in the main role of Arati the demure wife of Subrata Mazumdar, the banker who is just making by with his salary with old parents to take care of plus his kid and a sister as well. They live in a old ramshackle house with no fans and no cooking gas. His father is a retired teacher and likes to play the crossword in order to win some prize money. Then they decide that Arati can work to supplement the income of the family. She applies and secures a job as well and becomes quite a star performer in her company. Then all hell breaks loose because it is a patriarchal family system, how can a women go out and work, a silent war rages on between the elderly in laws and the woman. But pangs of jealousy and guilt start hurting the husband, this is where Anil Chatterjee as the husband has performed a bravura role. The wife starts earning more, starts wearing lipstick, sun glasses, appoints maid for the house, meets other gentleman in a cafe, all of which troubles the husband. The husband also loses his job because of a run in his bank. There is one shot in the movie, when Arati is eating and leaves the plate on the floor and asks her husband to do something in a subtly higher voice.  The transformation of Arati as demure, house bound, insecure woman to a confident, courageous, bold woman is quite brilliant and subtle and Madhabi has done her part quite brilliantly in that. At this juncture, Ray takes the script down to show the decay in the husband and when i think he would go for the complete melt down of the husband, but that does not happen. There is one instance in the end, when the husband says to the wife "if you succumb what will happen to us". Ray has controlled the pace in the movie quite brilliantly. The final shot is fitting in that he pans over a city with tall buildings, the only time, the movie refers to its title "Mahanagar" meaning big city.  Beautifully made movie which has the master's stamp all over it. 

Picture taken from the internet and not with an intention to violate the copyright. 

 

Roshni

Nice sweet documentary on a Himachal girl who lives in a village in Himachal Pradesh and aspires to travel to a big city like Mumbai once. The documentary shows life in the villages are self sufficient with their own produce and own water. They live a contented life, with the TV being possibly the only link to the other world. In between the documentary shows a Sanskrit teacher talking about the values etc. which i thought was a bit out of context. Then there was a lengthy interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva, the renowned environmental activist about food being corrupted with western thoughts coming in with genetic engineering distorting the natural food system. The visuals are quite good and does inspire to leave the city life and go back to the villages. After all, if there is wifi available in the villages, then no problem in working from the villages and occasionally travelling to the city for business or negotiations. With the covid situation, even the business discussions are being carried out online with anybody sitting anywhere in the world. 

Okay documentary, but goes a little wayward in the middle. This was on Amazon Prime Video.

Picture taken from the internet and used for representational purposes only not with an intention to violating copyright. 

Persona

A Swedish psychological drama movie (1966) written & directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson. The film starts with some weird images juxtaposed with each other. Liv Ullmann who is Elisabeth Vogler in the movie is in a hospital with an apparently nervous break down. She is a theater actor and during the staging of one play she freezes for one minute fully. The doctor thinks she is mentally sound but arranges for Elma (Bibi Andersson in a brilliant role) to be assigned to her. Then the doctor arranges for Elisabeth to be put up in the doctor's sea side house and assigns Elma to be with her full time. Nurse Elma talks and talks and opens up with her admiration of the actor and various other personal details but Elisabeth does not utter a single word throughout the movie. Over a period of time, the identity of both the personalities inter mingle with each other and super impose one over the other. Nurse Alma then narrates all that is wrong with Elisabeth which has led to her present condition, her guilt complex with not caring for her son. Brilliant movie it gets on one's nerves and quite scary for Nurse Alma to be in the position she was. Multiple interpretations have emerged of the context of the movie including possible lesbian under tones. Imagine you are in close contact with somebody and you talk but the other just listens without talking at all - after some time, it will get on one's nerves surely. 

Image is taken from internet for representational purposes only and not with an intention of violating copyright. 

The Old Man and the Sea

A classic from Ernest Hemingway for which he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Its a simple story told in a simple form, of an old man a fisherman Santiago and considered unlucky in fishing circles because he has gone 84 days without a catch. A young kid is with him and enamoured of him but his family forbids him to go fishing with the old man. The next day i.e. 85th day the old man ventures far out to the sea in search of that elusive catch and manages to snare a big fish but the fish takes him around the ocean for two days and two nights all the while battling the old man for his strength and endurance. The old man respects the fish, starts talking to the fish but by the third day, the fish also gets tired and starts circling closer to the boat which is when the old man kills the fish with his harpoon. He ties the fish with a lasso around the boat since it would have been impossible for him to haul it on the boat since he was tired and also he was alone. But when he killed the fish, the blood attracts some sharks nearby and they attack the fish relentlessly. It is a metaphorical book, you can look at it from the view of the old man or the fish. The old man battles bravely but the fish is also equal to him. He has a great sense of justice towards the fish. Also towards Joe DiMaggio the famous baseball player whom he adores and whose father was a fisherman. So when he loses the harpoon and the knife, he uses the club against the sharks the DiMaggio way. In all the old man kills 5 or more sharks. All the time he feels the absence of the boy, and talks aloud that if the boy had been there, it would have helped him. In the end he is left with only the head, the tail and the skeleton of the great marlin. Goodreads 5/5.

The picture is taken from the internet and used only for representational purposes and not with an intention of violating its copyright. 

 

Bacurau

A Brazilian film directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles. Bacurau is a fictional village in a town called Serra Verde in Brazil. The matriarch of the town Carmelito dies at age 94 and everyone gathers for her funeral including her grand daughter Teresa (Barbara Colen) who has come from abroad. Then strange things start happening in the village. The local politician from Serra Verde one Tony Jr. comes a calling to the village but gets a cold response. That is because he has dammed the water supply to the village, which now has to depend upon the tanker coming to supply water to the village. Then suddenly the cell signals go off, power supply goes off, the water tanker is shot at with bullets, all the while the villagers are clueless as to what is happening. There are drones to be seen near the village and more villagers are killed. Horses are left loose onto the village. In the end it is a fight to the finish. They recruit the help of Lunga (Silvero Pereira) who is a gangster but unreconciled with the villagers. Ending is a Quentin Tarantino style shoot out which is quite brilliant. The story is well made, characters are all fine, there is suspense until the very end. Most of the characters are germane to the story. 

This film won the Jury prize at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.