Widening Horizons - In Bruges

For every overrated big budget Hollywood blockbuster, there are three smaller films that, despite critical acclaim and awards, don't manage to garner the kind of following that they really deserve. One such film is Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's first, In Bruges.

The reason I chose this film, (besides the fact that it is one of my all time favourites) is that it is one of the most economical and airtight screenplays I have encountered, and engages you almost effortlessly. McDonagh also brings an extremely unique touch to every character and almost every scene in the film with a flair for dialogue that is so typical of playwrights, establishing himself as the Irish Tarantino with only his first film.

The film kicks off with a voice-over prologue, a strict no-no according to most experts of the trade, but gifted writers, especially playwrights, continue to prove that they can break all rules and create a product better than most. The voice-over, while serving the primary purpose of building intrigue about the back story, also maintains the unity of space, making sure that from the first image you see, you're in Bruges.

The economy with which the film has been written is also seen in the way the character of our man, Ray (Colin Farrell), and that of his friend and mentor, Ken (Brendan Gleeson aka Mad-Eye Moody) is established. Two hitmen - one, a man-child that throws tantrums, drags his feet when he's asked to do something he doesn't want to do, and always wants to have his way, and the other, a father figure with a surprising love for history and culture - essentially two likeable and empathetic characters.

Yes, the strangeness of this contradiction is obvious, but it is this very contradiction that makes the film beautiful, for contradiction within character is where the root of all good drama lies. Apart from these two, we also have their boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes aka Voldemort. See the irony? I'm pretty sure it was intentional), who is seen for the first time after more than half the film is done, and yet we already know everything we need to about him through a voice-mail and a phone conversation.

What makes these characters so complete and believable? The answer lies in the fact that while they're part of a pretty strange world that may not seem real, they are convincing and realistic, because the writer knows them and their world inside out, and is therefore able to make this very specific, minute, and almost chaotic world seem like a cosmos with universal resonance.

Big words and technical terms having been used, there is actually a very simply reason why this film works so well. This is its primary theme - guilt and redemption. The raw power of this theme has fuelled some of the greatest works in literature, theatre, and cinema for centuries. From the guilt that destroyed Macbeth from within, to Andy Dufresne's redemption of the Shawshank variety, this theme has asked questions deep enough to have most of us at a loss for words.

An empathetic hitman inadvertently kills a little boy while on a job. He is stuck in his own purgatory, unable to come to terms with what he has done, with all sorts of questions about sins and the afterlife, because no matter what he does, he will always have killed the little boy. Nothing he does will make that go away, unless maybe, he goes away?

It is the way the question has been asked, and not how it has been answered that makes this film special. Being in Bruges, the painting The Last Judgement, and the setup of the Don't Look Now homage film-within-a-film that pays off with the costumes of the actors reflecting the painting, may all seem like additions just to make the film look good and add humourous moments, but actually constitute a very conscious ploy by McDonagh to add symbolistic imagery to the film.

The narrative has been structured in a slightly unusual manner, but one that is a prerequisite for the film's tone. The same story could easily be used to make the most serious drama film, but McDonagh has treated it like a dark comedy, a genre that is probably the most reflective of the reality of our world, where there is a lighter side to almost everything, and even in the darkest depths of despair, there is generally something that can cheer you up.

There is definitely something to be said about the uncanny inclination that almost all writers with a penchant for verbosity have towards inserting pop-cultural references and meta humour in their work. In McDonagh's case, these include several references to Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now and a homage to Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. While the former is done in a pretty simplistic way, the latter is in the form of a brilliant six and a half minute one-shot scene.

So beautifully designed and completely engrossing is this phone conversation between Ken and Harry, that it took me close to ten viewings to actually notice that it had no cuts. From the ludicrousness of what Ken has to do due to Harry's absurd and exasperating demands, to the grave turn that puts Ken in one helluva predicament, this scene's brilliance lies in the fact that it draws absolutely no attention to the writer-director despite doing so much for the narrative.

Just like the rest of the film, the ending moves away from clichés and is quite refreshing in most ways. While Ray's character, both protagonist and antagonist, reaches a resolution that is most natural, by finding the only way that could come close to assuaging his guilt, his fate remains uncertain, for his purgatory could turn into hell if he is forced to spend the entire rest of eternity in Bruges.

Add to all this some great performances from the cast, especially Farrell and Gleeson, the most gorgeous purgatory possible, and the most hauntingly ethereal score you would hear, In Bruges is one of the most satisfying cinema experiences of the century so far and deserves to be remembered as such for generations to come.

Busting Perceptions - The Dark Knight

As far as perception busting goes, there is no Hollywood filmmaker that needs it more than our beloved Christopher Nolan, and no film that needs it more than his so-called magnum opus, The Dark Knight.

This film is widely regarded by critics to be the best superhero film ever made, and one of the best films of the 2000s, but most importantly, its fandom could give religious fanatics a run for their money. While it is impossible to pinpoint genesis of this fervour, what I will do, in my humble way, is expose this cult classic for what it really is.
 
Nolan's greatest strength is not his directorial prowess, nor is it his skill as a writer. It is his ability to make the audience believe that he is a lot smarter than he actually is, so that when something doesn't make sense, the viewers, instead of seeing what is right in front of them and saying that it doesn't work, rack their brains trying to look for answers that even Nolan's genius mind cannot provide. Now this is much, much tougher than it sounds, and he deserves a lot more credit than Keyser Soze.

How Nolan accomplishes this is very simple - he packs every single moment in his films with action that moves slightly faster than sound, until it is bursting at the seams. The effect is that the audience knows what is happening, but does not have even a second to really think about why it is happening.

This particular feature of his films, while present even in his best work, Memento, is more and more pronounced in his later films, until the point where this shock, awe, and quickly-shift-focus-to-the-next-scene-before-you-can-think-about-the-last-one approach fails miserably in the abomination that is The Dark Knight Rises.

Since it would really suck if I bored the pants off of everyone with only my second post, I'm not going to delve into every single thing that is wrong with the film like a bitter spouse going through his/her partner's flaws with a fine-toothed comb. What I will do is talk about several scenes and/or points in the story which are either so badly done that they stick out like sore thumbs, or simply do not work at all.

To begin with, there is the poorly written courtroom scene where Harvey Dent is introduced for the first time, which serves no purpose except to let the audience know that Harvey Dent is just as witty and clever as every other major character in every Nolan film. Before you assume that I'm being petty and anal, there is a reason I started with this seemingly minor scene.

This scene, along with every other bad scene in the film, is symptomatic of a writer's biggest struggle, which is to make the story flow organically from the characters and situations without the writer's hand being visible behind the steering wheel. The mobster's gun, for some bizarre reason, doesn't fire, giving Harvey Dent a chance to say something cool and clever, thereby establishing a character trait that could've been done in a hundred other ways.

While the scene mentioned above is just character exposition and does not have a bearing on the plot of the film, making the same mistake in key scenes that move the story forward is fatal, which Nolan has done around seven times too many in this film.

From Lau's interrogation scene (where he claims that the money is the only reason he's still alive, but promises to testify against the entire mob simply because if he hands them the money, the mob would not have any to hire the Joker, and Nolan would be in a pickle), to the preposterously outlandish fingerprinting technique (a plot device that has absolutely no significance or requirement in the plot), Nolan is screaming from the rooftops to all intelligent viewers that this film is not for them!

But alas, intelligent viewers are a rare species in today's world, so Nolan decides to crank the stupidity up a notch by actually asking his audience to believe that Gordon managed to fake his death at a public event that was crawling with cops, seemingly without any help whatsoever from anyone, for a reason as lame as "I couldn't risk by family's safety", which he is still doing by the way, as the entire mob, not to mention the Joker's henchmen, are still free!

The real reason? You guessed it! Nolan needs to move the story forward, and what better way to do it than his shock, awe, and screw all logic approach? After all, why bother to come up with smarter scenes when you can have the "twenty-year cop" be stupid enough (which he's allowed to be, since he's not a main character) to get sucked into a fistfight with a psychotic genius of a villain who is clearly unaffected by physical injury, and sweep it under the rug with the amazing technique called intercutting.

Anyway, moving on to the coup de grâce, the Joker's supposedly brilliant 'social experiment', which is set up by Gordon's (read: Nolan's) inexplicable decision to transfer the prisoners in the ferry. While logical errors are often commonplace, even acceptable in big budget Hollywood films as long as there's a trade-off, this entire sequence fails on a much deeper level.

Despite all the thematic nuances of The Dark Knight trilogy that show us how dark its world, which is supposed to be a reflection of our world (the USP of the series), really is, I don't think Nolan truly understands how dark today's world actually is. A boat full of innocent civilians, or a boat full of violent criminals of what is supposed to be the most crime infested city in the world?

Are you kidding me? Is that actually supposed to be a choice, worthy of the climax of one of the most acclaimed and zealously loved films of the century? For those of you who live in denial, like Nolan expects you to, let me break this down for you. You're on your way home from work when you get kidnapped by a psycho who tells you that the only way you will live is if you shoot a known rapist in the head.

If this is like Sophie's Choice for you, then I really, really want to meet you, so that I can sell you to a museum for a boatload (pun intended) of money. Ten contrivances can be forgiven, but when a film's climax lacks emotional logic, it is simply unacceptable that the film goes on to garner as much praise as this one.

One hardly needs Freud to understand why everyone is blind to the countless grave flaws in this film. The reason is simple - as I mentioned above, the fast-paced nature of the film doesn't allow time to really absorb why something has happened on the first, second, or even third viewing, and let's face it, no one wants to admit that amidst a group of people because no one wants to look stupid. Instead, one convinces oneself that even the dumbest things in the film, such as its ending, make perfect sense.

Yes, blunders are a dime a dozen in this film. From the hitherto unseen big, scary prisoner that randomly comes in from nowhere during the crucial boat scene, to the Joker's ridiculous assumption that mobsters are criminals not for money or power, but because they like to do bad things, Nolan has taken too many liberties.

But hidden amidst all this chaos, there is one thing in the film that works. This is its central situation - will Batman be able to prevent the Joker from winning the 'battle for Gotham's soul'? Or will the Joker succeed in proving his point, which is that no one is incorruptible?

These questions have the potential to strike dramatic gold, but unfortunately come in only in the final act of the film, masked by the various errors in screenplay. If it wasn't for that, The Dark Knight had the potential to be one of the most unique superhero films, for it is a film in which the primary antagonist effectively wins, something which is never seen in mainstream Hollywood films.

But ifs and buts are not candy and nuts, and therefore, The Dark Knight, despite all its underlying potential, is far from being even remotely worthy of the acclaim and following it has. It is a heavily contrived and amateurishly written film that deserves, at best, to be remembered as a slightly above average Hollywood popcorn thriller, only by virtue of some crisp dialogue, a few stellar performances, and Hans Zimmer's hair-raising score. The fact that it is thought to be much more speaks volumes about cinema viewers today and Nolan's incredible ability to pull the wool over their eyes.

The Beginning

So, I had grand plans for this blog. The idea of it has been moving around in my head for a while now. A blog about films. But no, that's not enough. I have a lot more to say about a lot more, not because I feel that it needs to be read (which I do), but also because when there's too much in my head, it leads to sleepless nights, something I'm not very good at dealing with compared to most people.

Last night, I lay awake in bed for hours, a repeat of the two before that. My brain was in overdrive. If life were a film (something I pray for every single day), I probably would've gotten out of bed and punched out, in a couple of thousand words, everything that was keeping me up, from the woes of the Indian cricket team, to everything in life that provokes my mind into tormenting me in new and awesome ways every day and night.

However, I was forced to abandon this Jerry Maguiresque idea and save it for the morning after - a constant, painful reminder that life is not a film, and definitely not Jerry Maguire. To quote the master, Alfred Hitchcock, "drama is life with the dull bits cut out", and therefore the least we can do to fill up the dull bits is digest food for a million thoughts that lead to the interesting ones.

I'm sure that at this point, the three or four people that are reading this (those who are close enough to me that I can actually demand that they read what I write, and therefore have no choice) are wondering when the hell I will get to the point, or whether I even have one. The answer to that is, I honestly don't know.

On second thought, I do know, and it can be explained very easily in Jerry Maguire lingo - the things we think and do not say (once again reaffirming my belief that all problems in life can be solved, not with potatoes, but by looking at them as struggles of beloved characters in good films).

Anyway, getting past my ADD and moving on. I have been witness to herds of elephants in all sorts of rooms, and I have to say, that my patience for not talking about them wears thinner everyday. I look for a vent and I look for a vent, but there isn't one nearly as big as I need. So until I find a better one, this will have to do.

On the other hand, being fully aware of the disastrous consequences of using a public forum as a vent (especially in, ahem, these dark times), I realise that I will have to strike a balance. Along with the occasional post about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, there will also be in-depth analyses of films and television shows, busting popular perceptions that often (read: always) result from human weaknesses that make some of us succumb to lame things like peer pressure and Groupthink.

Apart from this, there will also be posts about the third passion of my life - cricket. Yes, cricket. This will be my humble attempt, which is almost certainly doomed to fail, to beat the wannabe out of you elitist snobs that go bananas over a league being played seven thousand kilometres away, of a sport that no one in your country outside your little cliques gives a rat's fart about, but are almost allergic to what is the de facto national sport of your country, the second most popular in the world by the way, and possibly the most complex sport on the planet.

All sarcasm aside, I really hope this preamble is good enough to get people to read this blog, as a few of my life goals are attached to it, even though I haven't exactly figured out what those are. Your comments and feedback would be appreciated, but not if you have something mind-numbingly stupid or extremely lame to say. If what I have to say has any resonance with you, kindly share my posts with others, because I'm told that popularity counts for a lot in this world, even though I'm not really counting on it.

Yep, that's about it.