CINEMATIC EXEMPLARS

cerebral writing on art, cinema and culture, Feature Essay 3 Minutes

NYAD(2023)

As a fish takes to water, Diana Nyad made swimming her destiny and sculpted one milestone after another across the high seas.

NYAD is the exceptional on-screen translation of her journey from a youth champion to a woman past her sixties who doesn’t let age and gender swamp her dreams of covering the arduous distance from Cuba to Florida. She is stubborn, confrontational, always on the lookout for a new day that could deliver her promise to the world. With lifelong best friend and coach Bonnie Stoll,  her zeal gets diffused in a saga of trials and logistical defeats brought on by the weather and health concerns. But their combined self- determination is infectious. 

Directors like Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin( of Oscar winning documentary Free Solo fame) give NYAD the sheer urgency and purposeful footing it needs. As if sports themed dramas are always great inspirational vehicles and a story like this lets us in on living, breathing individuals who have not let limitations of the body overpower their minds. It is a cinematic tribute that finds ways to honour the directing duo’s non-fiction antecedents too in the form of interviews, clips while also shedding the stigma around the titular subject’s past history with abuse as a teenage athlete. They sensitively let that traumatic past into the narrative, like a flotsam of memories but don’t let it linger. That’s how Nyad didn’t let its imprints deter her path to success in a world of men.



The interactive tide of emotions between Nyad and Bonnie is the heart of this screenplay. They have shared glories of being renowned athletes, of a life together as equals. Friends can often become the greatest familial unit. These two prove that by the example they set for each other. Annette Bening and Jodie Foster pour their life-forces into this lifelong bond that continues to be nurtured to this present day on a diurnal basis.

Like THE SWIMMERS last year, the story of two exceptionally courageous Syrian sisters who chased Olympic glory, NYAD makes us believe in the power of the human spirit to break barriers.

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CLEO FROM 5 TO 7(1962)

Agnes Varda’s best known full length feature is a beautifully structured two hour odyssey through an external Parisian landscape absorbing the titular protagonist’s inner unraveling.

What strikes me as particularly appealing is the almost improvisatory manner in which the camera moves along, observing people’s reactions as Corinne Marchand walks through the city. Every encounter is like she is viewing the cityscape dotted with cafes, curious faces and taxis anew. Like Nyad directors Elizabeth Chai and Jimmy Chin, Agnes Varda was primarily a documentarian. Her preoccupation hence with people and places takes on a spatially detached hue here. The reason being that a medical diagnosis has rendered Cleo’s mind asunder. She is breaking apart internally and that is reflected in her interactions, each chapterized here in order to lend urgency to the restless two hour window, preceding the results of her test.

From her meeting with a tarot card reader in the opening moments, positing an universal reckoning with superstition, to her time with a charming soldier in a beautiful park and then finally her meeting with the doctor at the hospital compound, CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 is a meditation on mortality.

Cleo goes to a cafe, to a hat store, to her home(where her stately movements are actually made to mimic that of the figure her name represents, i.e. Queen Cleopatra), interacts with her Girl Friday, her chief music director and another associate, sings a beautifully melancholic ballad. The first half is perfectly poised between jollity and apprehension. Michel Legrand, the legendary composer, is a natural as he plays himself and is a picture of good cheer.

A particular highlight is when she sings the heartfelt ballad ‘Sans Toi’, tracing her own mental and emotional state in real time, heightened by the manner in which Ms. Marchand’s profile is captured in an empathetic close-up by Varda.

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The second half is where she meets a friend, watches a silent Keatonesque short (starring the legendary duo of Anna Karina and Jean Luc Godard), takes a long walk, muses on the nature of life and art. Edith Piaf, the Algerian War, student protests and myriad conversations punctuating different moods within a cafe capture the mundane rhythms of a single day. Ms. Marchand is made to use the rhythms of her walks and her eyes to observe and somehow locate herself within these crowds. It’s a city she obviously knows. However, today, the ordinariness of the routine is coloured by her mortal musings.

A repository of experiences, ‘Cleo From 5 to 7’ unveils no dangers from others, from the many quarters of the city. The real danger is from a diagnosis that makes Cleo( like us) question her place in the immediate scheme of things. However, without succumbing to morbid platitudes or occurrences, the realism of the situational movements make it a unique achievement.




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NOTE: the clips are courtesy YouTube.

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I launch myself, with a searing, soaring passion for all domains verging on the writerly and creative with a beginner's appetite here and that's how I believe in adding meaning to each day. A lucky mascot of literature, cinema and culture, I come riding on spirited wings from the emblematic city of Lucknow where all those reside and thrive. My breeding ground and my mindscape all are committed to these three life forces. Cinema. Culture. Literature. But the biggest and all consuming parent to these is life that breeds them . There is the discovery that comes from expressing yourself, clear eyed and even mystical, when you come from a city like this. I am here to expand my worldviews, share my earliest inspirations and evolutions and go with the flow through the most accessible outlet there is : writing. Conventionally, my biography is that of a degree holder in English literature encompassing Undergraduate, Postgraduate and M Phil years and every possible experience of learning finer points of knowledge . I have already taken the plunge of creating a solid base for my works by publishing my poems and articles on the renowned worldwide community/ writing sanctuary Wattpad since 2015, a platform which is a miracle for anyone pursuing so much as a flash of wordplay and thoughts to spare. It has redefined my life and allows me to go strong. You can read my works there under the username MadMenWearingFedora / Prithvijeet. That is the springboard that catapulted me to a confident vocational revival. So here I am. Both originality and novelty are the key words to define this eternal student of life. So with the tip of the pen blessing my head and a new vigor, I welcome you all to my realm. AN AWADH BOY'S PANORAMA beckons.

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