Kaleidoscope 2010

With the season for film awards, we can hope to watch some acclaimed international films in the fray for the most prestigious awards in the film world. The Golden Globes in January had interesting results. The Best Actor’s award was given to Colin Firth for his brilliant performance of a stammering King George VI in The King’s Speech. The Best Actress Award was clinched by Black Swan’s leading actress Natalie Portman, who stunned the world with her versatile performance of a timid and nervous ballerina transforming into her haunting and seductive alter-ego symbolized by the black swan. The Golden Globe award for Best Motion Picture - Drama was given to The Social Network with its fast paced narrative and its excellent editing that straddles various time frames in a linear sequence without losing clarity. While Inception was hugely popular in 2010, it remained only a nominee for all the major categories and failed to impress the Golden Globe critics. The BAFTA awards (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) went largely to the same films as the Golden Globes, revealing a vein of similarity with its American counterpart in its taste for celluloid art. The King’s Speech was a sure winner in the category of Best Film even as Colin Firth swept away a BAFTA award in the Best Actor category. The King’s Speech also won Supporting Actor and Actress award for Geoffrey Rush as the King’s speech therapist and Helena Bonham Carter as the queen. The Best Actress BAFTA award was given again to Natalie Portman for Black Swan. Inception received the Special Visual Effects and also the Best Sound BAFTA award while The Social Network got its share of recognition through the Best Editing award.

The Academy Awards better known as the Oscars are known to be every actor and director’s dream. The recent ceremony had largely predictable results, with Portman and Firth winning Best Actress and Actor categories. Some critics rated the The Social Network as a more skillfully crafted film than The King’s Speech however, they noted that the theme of a social networking site taking off globally would hardly be one fit for an Academy Award. Again, The King’s Speech reaped its share of glory with an Oscar award for Best Picture.

The 36th annual César Awards known to be the French equivalent of the Oscars were held on February 25th. They were presented by the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma. The Best Film winner was a 2010 French drama directed by Xavier Beauvois called Of gods and Men (Des Hommes et des Dieux), starring Lamber Wilson and Michael Londsale, who won a Best Supporting Actor award. The Best Actor award was clinched by Eric Elmosino for his performance in Gainsbourg while Sara Forestier won Best Actress for Les Noms des Gens. Best Supporting Actress went to Anne Alvaro for Le Bruit des Glacons.

The two films The King’s Speech and Black Swan which have been the most acclaimed films of the year, have some of the best performances when it comes to individual talents. Here is a little background into these films:

The King’s Speech: This is a film about King George VI of England who has no choice but to assume the throne as his elder brother abdicates in order to marry. George ‘Bertie’ suffers from a deep rooted inferiority complex because of his stammer and dreads the office of the king which requires meeting people and making speeches in front of large audiences. His stammer becomes a matter of concern to his loving wife Queen Elizabeth I and she sets out to find someone who can help him. She finds Lionel Logue, an unconventional speech therapist, who helps Bertie overcome his fears and to find his voice. In a memorable scene from the film, Lionel asks Bertie to read a passage aloud as he simultaneously plays loud music. Bertie cannot hear his own voice and is overwhelmed with pessimism halfway through the passage although he does not know that not hearing his own voice has made him read the passage flawlessly. The unconventional speech sessions which involve the king spewing a long string of swear words in order to relax his muscles are some of the funniest scenes of the film. In conclusion, this film is not only an original take on a piece of history, it portrays with skill the mutual dependence of a king and his subjects. It gracefully acknowledges that kings are also human.

Black Swan: As the title and the image suggest, the association of ballet and swan brings to mind nothing else but Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. This is a film about a ballerina, Nina Sayers played by Portman, who is a dancer in a New York City Ballet company run by Thomas Leroy (Cassel). Ballet is her only passion and she lives her life under the vigilant and controlling eye of her mother and former ballerina Erica Sayers. Things start to change in Nina’s life as she gets selected to play the lead in Leroy’s new season production of Swan Lake. However, she has competition in the form of Lily, a new dancer. Swan Lake in an original interpretation requires a dancer who can play both the White Swan with innocence and grace, and the Black Swan, who represents guile and sensuality. Nina fits the White Swan role perfectly but Lily is the personification of the Black Swan. As the two young dancers expand their rivalry into a twisted friendship, Nina begins to get more in touch with her dark side - a recklessness that threatens to destroy her. In a sequence of surreal events whose reality is left for the audience to decide, Nina glimpses her dark side through tangible reflections that are independent of her in the mirror. She hallucinates and commits murder as the black swan consumes her only to fight with her own dark side. As the Swan Lake performance comes to an end with the death of the white swan, Portman herself succumbs to the black swan as her purity and innocence are forced to die with the white swan. This is also a veritable cinematography masterpiece as the director explores the various relations with white and black.

Faustus

Je l’ai perdue dans les ténèbres d’une nuit sans sommeil

Dans un rêve doré qui était au mirage pareil

Dans le silence gelé qui chuchote dans un cimetière

Dans la froideur d’une rancune des mots amers

Parmi les cendres et la poussière d’un monde noirci

Pesant sur ma conscience comme un fardeau alourdi

Dans une volute soudaine d’une bougie étouffée

Dans le débris d’un champ de bataille déserté

Entre les haleines glacées d’une haine intense

Dans une tempête de rage, sans but, ni sens

A la bifurcation du chemin de la vie

Dans un instant sceptique et de désespoir dans l’esprit

Au fond d’un abîme dans le royaume des ombres

Dans un labyrinthe sinueux d’un enfer sombre

Je l’ai perdue à un petit moment de sourire…

J’ai perdue mon âme à la recherche d’un désir.

Something..

Something about your eyes reminds me

Of dim candlelight that leaps in flecks

in the white silence of a church,

the sad quiet air that settles in the calm of twilit streets,

the kind hands of my grandmother withdrawn  

in the recesses of her lap.

Now the shadows come out in bouquets,

monochrome flowers in a monochrome memory...

Like wisps of a dream edging on the verge of reality,

Dark, unknown, patient, groping for existence

like unborn children.

Something about your eyes

Brings to mind that waking state between

language and cognition,

where words hinge not on concepts

but flashes, images, colours and life

that is lived in the mind..

something about your eyes,

lives independently of you

like a dream half dreamt

that leaps and takes flight

from the boughs of your mind.

I am not yours..

I am not yours

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love -- put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

-Sarah Teasdale

Il Pleure..

Il pleure dans mon coeur

Comme il pleut sur la ville ;

Quelle est cette langueur

Qui pénètre mon cœur ?

Ô bruit doux de la pluie

Par terre et sur les toits !

Pour un cœur qui s'ennuie

Ô le chant de la pluie !

Il pleure sans raison

Dans ce coeur qui écœure.

Quoi ! nulle trahison ?...

Ce deuil est sans raison.

C'est bien la pire peine

De ne savoir pourquoi

Sans amour et sans haine

Mon cœur a tant de peine !

-Arthur Rimbaud

A Noiseless Silent Spider

A Noiseless, patient spider,
I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them--ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,--seeking the spheres, to
connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form'd--till the ductile anchor
hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

-Walt Whitman

The Hairy Ape

When Eugene O'Neil wrote The Hairy Ape in 1922, he was already a well known American playwright with the publication of two consecutive Pulitzer winning plays such as Beyond the Horizon (1920) and Anna Christie (1921). His Emperor Jones (1920) which came in between the Pulitzer plays shared a similar vision as that of The Hairy Ape which was essentialy a tragic vision of man struggling to "belong." In The Hairy Ape, O' Neil vividly presents the loneliness of an individual who can belong neither in society nor in nature. The frustration and anger of this sense of outcaste turns him into a savage animal which only reinforces his awkward conspicuosness in any class and condemns him to alienation. Yank is a strong fire stoker in a ship and is the strongest voice among the other men, spurring and edging them on against the frustration of their hard labour while the upper classes, shown through Mildred and her aunt, sit comfortably on the deck and looking at smoke patterns in the sky.

Yank and Paddy compare visions of the lower classes from within. Yank makes a priviledge and an opportunity for flaunting his superiority out of the injustice of labour. While Paddy protests and condems the ill treatement of the lower classes, Yank maintains status quo by convincing his shipmates that they are the ones who 'belong' as they are the ones who move and give speed to the ship. They carry the weight of upper class frivolities and pay for their expensive luxuries.

The hypocrasies of the upper classes is equally revealed through Mildred who has taken up 'Sociology' in college and wants to help 'the other half.' Her relationship with her Aunt is fraught with an animaline sense of kinship and she is rude and even slaps her before leaving. O' Neil seems to suggest that no matter how much we evolve, or how high the classes might seem we shall always bear traces of the savage within us.

Mildred can afford to be philanthropic as long as it suits her fancy and feeds her illusion of doing something for society. However, the moment she actually comes in contact with the fire stokers, she is shocked out of her wits and runs out immediately as she sees Yank brandishing a shovel over his head and cursing an engineer for blowing a whistle intermittenly.

Mildred also represents the idleness of the upper classes; even though she has a vague idea that she wants to contribute something to the world, she had no clue how she can be useful. It this is dilemma that seems to prevail in a lot of priviledged minds, too priviledged to have ever seen the necessity to work. Her Aunt on the other hand is the picture of caution and expresses every standard in conformity with her classes and the typical sterotype of the upholder of the tradition of capitalism.

The scene of Yank encountering people after church is a powerful scene as nobody listens to him and scoffs him with a 'I beg your pardon.' The greatest irony is also seen when the most vociferous champions of justice of his own class fail to recognise him and turn him out thinking him to be a spy. The International Workers of the World is a simple organisation, much to Yank's dismay who expects something dramatic in proportion with his own anger and eagerness for vengence on Mildred who never reenters the play after the initial encounter.