Employing the verse form, yours truly disseminates a canvas of emotions, inspired by landmark cinematic works recently watched by him.
***
PARIS, TEXAS(1984)
Lone stars leave their predicaments on the freeways.
Across these state lines and heatwaves, phone booths script tales about raggedy loners, their choices hanging like sweat beads on the brims of their fedoras.
The desert palms always sway in them.
***
WINGS OF DESIRE(1987)
Empaths falling with golden eves and morrows, You are Poetry and the Confessional.
Let Berlin be. It conserves its biennale for you.
***
ANATOMY OF A FALL(2023)
You are not a victim. That’s what they believe and say.
Till frostbites and cold hearts announce themselves with heavy mastheads.
The moral of the story never really comes. It always is a strangers’ battleground where those crossing boundaries butt in.
There are always losers on the lam.
***
DUNE- PART 2(2024)
On the port of call, a higher legend seethes and raves in the eye of the Sun.
On mounds of spices, in pools of cavernous secrets, Kings consecrate the second coming of a desert hawk.
These sand dunes have returned. From the deep into the eye of a storm.
***
AMERICAN FICTION(2023)
In the freedomland, our words fail us.
In this freedomland, the paperbacks and hardcovers don’t aim for the colour purple.
They sliver our skin and put garbled, marbled words in our mouth.
We all lose our voices in that conference of extremes.
The books are sold out and merely catered at the clubs.
In this freedomland, true poets find diminishing returns.
***
VOYAGE OF TIME(2016)
The master has lifted his chords and played the minor key.
The maestros have been bowed at and Time has assented.
Go with this voice. It alerts this land of mine of its own upstanding brilliance, gathering itself languidly.
***
THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION(1994)
My cell is beyond the open-air forks and lifts.
It has been there for quite some time.
Fallen angels shrink their body size to get me out of here.
Let them desist.
***
NOT WITHOUT MY DAUGHTER(1991)
Will there be a revolution against sedition.
Will there be the land of the free.
Or feet touching familiar soil and higher levels of human grace.
You may remember that scene from MARRIAGE STORY where Scarlet Johansson is told by her divorce lawyer( an excellent turn by Laura Dern) that in a marital relationship, the man’s faults can always be dismissed as a whim or one-off thing; but for the mother/wife/woman, to even admit to consuming a simple glass of wine can entail dereliction of duty. That’s just, in a nutshell, the world of hypocrisy we all occupy where women are supposed to be paragons of virtue.
In AUTUMN SONATA, that painful thought reached out to me as a perennially neglected, now 40 year old daughter ( Liv Ullmann) lashes out at her absent mother ( Ingrid Bergman); but that is before she composes herself and reasons with the complex dynamics of their interpersonal bond. This Ingmar Bergman chamber piece harnesses its indoor settings and sombre lighting hence to look at both sides, knowing it’s easy to pick one-dimensional rationales because we identify those points with our own parents. The genealogy of regrets runs through generations. But what really happens when a woman pursuing a successful career is held accountable for her own sense of self-definition? How can we look at one life and differing opinions without prejudice or gender bias in the same breath?
AUTUMN SONATA, within its silent frames, bubbles with multiplicity of emotions and can be relatable with any adult who has expressed disappointment with how our elders treat us. A gamut of viewpoints opens up a can of worms here, done with care, delicacy and poignant truth-telling. One scene, where the daughter fixates her gaze at her mother as she brilliantly plays the piano, courses through with despair, admiration, regret and unjustified malice balanced by the reverence a child has for a parent. All this is achieved by Ms. Ullmann’s depth of understanding and naturalistic expressions. In that moment, this personal account becomes sublimely universal. With excellent turns by LENA NYMAN and HALVAR BJORK too, AUTUMN SONATA stays with us.
**
THE MUDGE BOY (2003)
CAST: EMILE HIRSCH, RICHARD JENKINS, TOM GUIRY.
Looking at childhood and its ritualized aura of coming of age tropes can always make one touch low points of stereotypical categorization, overlooking the fabric of real conflicts and hardly is there an internalized tilt towards pushing the envelope further. Teenage sexuality is often a taboo topic but I guess by writing about it, we gradually break that mould. A movie that touches on those frayed nerves in singularly uncompromising tones is THE MUDGE BOY (2003)
The movie, which focuses on Duncan Mudge (Emile Hirsch), marks a departure from the adult world for him as in the very first scene we are witness to his mother’s untimely death. A world sans motherly love, compassion and fortitude is a barren, sterile foliage and a moral dump yard for us ; it is equally so for Duncan. It is the space where the fourteen year old farm boy finds himself placed, in a man’s menagerie alien to his soft and sombre demeanour ( how I hate it when the term ‘soft’ is peddled as a bad trait or one equated with weakness in the context of males because it makes no sense; the film hence tries to look at the very stereotypes attached with notions of boyhood starting from that point. I use it because it is a normal trait for both genders, as normal as inherent compassion and capacity for imagination)
This sudden rupture in familial security distances him further from his father, a man given to few words or expressions exhibiting his grief. Naturally, Mudge Sr.(Richard Jenkins) has to hold back his sentimental outpouring to stack up against the larger world and make a decent living as a rural farmer in a mechanized demographic. This masculine posture and emotional stance is society’s way of imputing his weak spots and riding the crest of gender specificity. To cry over his loss will earn him brickbats instead of sympathy. He has learnt this the hard way but it’s this mute flow of internal conditioning and stifling control that renders him completely absent from his son’s domain. His mother’s loss has been a colossal one and life-altering for him, especially at a critical juncture of his adolescence. This state of personal change is one of a profound identity crisis. Duncan, hence, reels under pressure and copes with this turnaround by dressing up in Mama’s suits and gowns, down to his ‘girlish’ timbre and mannerisms, much to his father’s dismay.
**
This rude awakening, however, is seen as a passing phase. Looking closely at the movie’s foregrounding, it’s evident Duncan’s introverted nature and lack of ‘masculine aggression’ gave the uncouth, brassy kids of his culture free reign to bully and sequester him. His so-called ‘queer'( a word used by others as an invective in reference to him) transformation further makes him a scapegoat. I’m glad today queer comes to be used as a collective embrace for those deemed by our closed-minded societies as odd or non-conforming to certain preconceived rules.
Duncan is so lonely hence that he has made friends with his solitude and sought perfect companionship with a non-human, the farm chicken simply named Chicken by him. His rare flashes of pure happiness are seen in the bird’s presence.
***
Within this quagmire, his friendship with the loutish and simultaneously tender Perry (Tom Guiry ) uncorks latent passions in both. Duncan eventually confounds Perry as the latter cannot curb his attraction towards him, a threat to his acquired bravado and ‘heterosexuality’. Society and worldly laws are at the back of his mind and we understand that. In a scene crackling with subtle erotic charge, Duncan touches and feels Perry’s rippling muscles when they both go swimming, their bare bodies serving their discovery as a train passes by, the clatter coinciding with the awkwardness and surge of sexual discovery in both. Perry recoils in that given moment, stunned and yet deeply touched by Duncan’s acknowledgement of his physical appeal. It’s one of the most practical assessments of adolescent desires bubbling to the surface and is subtly filmed, with great dignity befitting the age group it seeks to address. Perry defends, castigates and pines for the sweet and honest Duncan, who, he knows, is miles away from the dysfunction of his peers and his own abusive father. His contrasting mood swings and hormonal ticks make him term Duncan a faggot. Fear of a backlash and challenge to his assigned sexual status strain him. However, it comes to a head when he forces his physicality on the meek Duncan, in a disturbing episode that rattles both.
This motif of forbidden desires punctuates the story’s bold strokes and emphatic impact since it encapsulates everything that comes before and after. These young boys essentially grapple with terms of acceptance and future adult storm for their differences of orientation which inform them of their present status as well. The milieu they occupy is one of misogyny and male dominance. THE MUDGE BOY, to me then, is a powerful indictment of male ego from which Duncan is miles apart even though his own Pa acknowledges that “he can’t even get into trouble like a normal boy.” There is care and concern for him from the father who knows the ways of a big, bad world beyond that of the already constricting small town they live in.
**
The most tragic outcome of this crossfire ensues when Duncan, in a bid to prove his manliness, mangles the permanence of his deep bond with Chicken, a harrowing and heart- rending event that joins both father and son in an embrace of long overdue intimacy. It can symbolize building bridges and signaling bugles for Duncan’s human growth and also assent on the parent’s part irrespective of his orientation, opening up the vista for his future choices.
Director Michael Burke has an astute and sensitive eye for studying the depths of his characters’ predicaments. Struggling with sexuality is a normal though hushed strand of growing up and he looks at it not as a taboo but as a necessary, individual arc incremental to understanding the pain and dilemmas of souls like Duncan and Perry.
Shears of moral decorum and manhood constitute this teenage domain with parallel lines of urgency and an honest look, not a disapproving stare.
The three principal actors justify every nuance of this realistic and understated drama, essential for widening our horizons and worldviews. THE MUDGE BOY is as poignant and universal to a teenager as to an adult. Maybe Duncan’s life script had shown traces of his altered status prior to his mother’s death but his tragedy works as an outlet for sharing his concerns. The present state matters in his depiction.
***
13TH , STRONG ISLAND ( NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARIES – 2016, 2017) and I’M NOT YOUR NEGRO(2016)
‘Land of the Free’ as a concept to define the American consciousness has now been denuded of that fantastical paradigm. These three documentaries strip away the facade of equality, so vehemently endorsed in its regard, by harking back at how pop culture is as complicit in fanning divisions as racialized groups. In STRONG ISLAND, painful family recountings get captured on camera juxtaposed with other photographic imagery of better days, to corral a whole timeline of injustice passed down through generations, whether passively or explicitly.
Ava Duvernay, Yance Ford and Raoul Peck are brave new filmmakers who turn the gaze inwards before scattering the whole panorama of a nation interspersed with figures, events and the modern -day standpoint on race relations. Their treatment and storytelling will haunt us to the very bones.
***
THE VAST OF NIGHT(2020)
Behold then the gripping, nocturnal effect of THE VAST OF NIGHT, a film that toys with science fiction tropes and the very pertinent fears associated with extra-terrestrial life. But director Andrew Patterson turns the cliches on its head by making it a study of voice patterns, documenting opinions of people privy to the town’s prior history and through close ups, spare lighting and its absorbing 1950s setting successfully concocts an almost Hitchcockian style of visual hypnosis.
By further including the voice of an African American war veteran ( Bruce Davis) and a perpetually grieving mother ( Gail Cronauer), its two teenage protagonists ( Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz) end up becoming listeners trying to make head and tail of a mysterious signal on the radio, uncovering layers within a town of merely hundreds.
Extended scenes, tracking shots and a naturalistic rhythm make this an unique take on everything we have come to expect from a generic story such as this. I found this mode of storytelling here thoroughly engaging as also the no fuss style of performances being perfectly suited to a post- modern break with conventions.
The stormy residuals of a relationship that’s meant to sustain us beyond sundry other acquaintances and see us plainly as what we are and have become- that’s the painful and complex gloom that Alex Ross Perry’s QUEEN OF EARTH discovers in an intimate character study of two lifelong best friends( Elisabeth Moss and Katherine Waterston)
The way it’s shot and cinematographically delivered is a great showcase for the realism of the circumstances that befall two young women who, it seems, know each other inside out but have learnt how to resign when their own personal demons get the better of them. The remove that Waterston exercises from Moss as the latter’s mental state comes undone in real-time is then countered by the flashbacks that help us understand their mutual warmth, their interpersonal sense of trust as also the cracks in their bond that ultimately occurs owing to the men in their lives. The way both react to two individual men- strangers to one of them over the course of two summers in upstate New York,- calling Waterston with the nickname Jenny is a study of how it’s the outside world that threatens to bring them apart. Waterston acknowledges Moss’ innate ability as a “great artist” who has been engulfed by her maverick father’s legendary shadow- leading to a confrontation rife with unrealised potential from one and wounded amity from the other. It’s a realistic take on the toll that a deep bond can exact from both parties. The way Moss too calls out Waterston’s lack of effort and agency within her privileged bubble is a stark rejoinder to what is a charged moment in the presence of another man.
This particular man( Patrick Fugit of Almost Famous and Gone Girl fame) appears as a key chauvinist who taunts Moss over the intimate details of her relationship with her father, her present mental torments and in a way over the friction between her and her best friend. He represents society’s apathy at large in a sniggering arc that is menacingly realised as the psychological stakes become more pronounced. A canoe ride on the lake, a party where Moss unravels in the presence of distant and parasitic guests with insensitive opinions of their own and the way Moss calls the bastard out in a third act solo rant that plumbs the depths of her pain and her desire to make her friend realise how much she still holds her as the only one who can’t actually disappoint her are masterfully realised here.
Waterston’s observant presence- alternating between indifference, concern and internalised pain for the one she loves as her soulmate, with her breaking down over the other’s mental plummets- is like watching multiple women realise that each one of their kindred stands in their individual shoes in the face of social betrayals.
A strikingly shot flashback finds the two women reminiscence on the fraudulent ways of men. Yet the honesty and intimacy of their looks and words, the haunting residue of their stark looks as the other tells her story, is reiterated in another instance where one poses as a subject for a portrait while the painter is still shaken and numb.
The excellent musical score, the way it addresses tides of depression, generational legacy, contestations around nepotism( ironic here given Waterston’s own paternal legacy) and the raw emotions on display never lose touch with how even the strongest bonds break when faced with a lethal combination of all of the above.
The way that Moss reverses to a childlike voice when under utter duress is a window to her own unaddressed trauma from perhaps her youngest years here.
QUEEN OF EARTH lives by its words and its internalised look at two women standing in for millions of others. It’s riveting because you are left haunted by its scenario and performances. By how acutely it is wired into uncomfortable, discernible truths.
****
MADELINE’S MADELINE(2018)
The split in the title itself makes Josephine Decker’s riveting study of the innards of human behaviour stand out in a mostly intragender exploration of performance art altogether.
Helena Howard’s great lead arc as Madeline here isn’t just a compression or distilled journey into the interiority of performance. To me, it’s how the performative aspect of an individual life becomes almost like a coming of age rite of passage to navigate womanhood once the promise of innocence slips away in pre-adolescene itself. Decker, who has already given Elisabeth Moss the chance to go into the innards of resisting societal expectations associated with womanhood as iconic writer Shirley Jackson in SHIRLEY(2020), gets to the very stricken soul of a teenager as lines blur between her personal struggles with mental health and the universal reckoning with a mother(Miranda July) who wants the best for her while also navigating her issues as a single parent.
Madeline’s method acting experiments lead to her embodying a cat, modelled on her own beloved feline, as well as a turtle at the beach. Ultimately, these personal and artistic lines are soldered by her intellectually hawk-like, manipulative teacher ( Molly Parker); she moulds her biracial identity and her own influence on the impressionable young mind as fodder for a singular theatrical arc.
Ms.Decker is an excellent moulder of the way she seems to look at her own meta storytelling touches while blurring multiple lines here. The emotional nakedness of her station makes Madeline an artistic revelation but the adults around her hardly take the psychological stakes involved in letting her touch a raw nerve every time she’s on stage seriously. Even then, her sweetness, observance and the bittersweet stakes of her relationship with her mother gives her a full arc.
It’s the second half that completely transforms this screenplay. From the moment Madeline unravels at her mentor’s party and performs her routine as a cat to the next morning where her mother is made to join the troupe for improvisational takes on everyday behaviour, a sense of competition, resentment and hostility becomes palpable. Watch the photo shoot where Madeline’s biracial identity and her vulnerability in her mother’s presence ultimately lead to a raw solo scene where both their sufferings get played by her. There’s horror in how much a teenager can frighten her own mother by her hostile reactions, the way a generational clash is almost always inevitable. It’s easily one of the best piece of performance in modern cinema. Watching Helena/ Madeline blur lines as she breaks down while enacting her mother and then just resign and look like a wounded Bambi deer at those around her is haunting.
Then the appropriation of her tale by her mentor gets under our skin, leading to a climax that’s delivered by way of movement through dance.
MADELINE’S MADELINE is beautifully constructed where three women expose their vulnerabilities while in the name of art, personality clashes operate on passive-aggressive templates and also break open into the inner realm of the mind.
Long before Mean Girls(2004) and Pretty Persuasion (2005) was the Rose McGowan-Anne Heche starrer JAWBREAKER and this black and white short from Sofia Coppola- cinematic forays into the mind of intragender adolescents gaining social currency through general bad behaviour, contributing to a toxic herd mentality known infamously as the “clique”
In LICK THE STAR which is shorthand for a group of girls’ secret machinations skewing towards anti-social activities, everyone is a target, judgements are high and mighty while a clear leader- who dresses up, puts on make-up and acts desperately like an adult- masterminds others’ downfall. Until the sum total of this close-knit unit’s fallibility under the parentheses of survival and social standing in this ecosystem backfires.
The leader’s racist attitude ultimately ends up alienating her from the majority and she becomes the target of others’ ire. A bitter seed sows the same reaction as the one cruelly hurled by the resident “mean girl” to others.
This short is bitingly relevant and timeless in an environment where in lieu of education and constructive goals, peer pressure and a lack of individual resolve continue to build mountains of disdainful arcs among teenagers. Once the tables are turned, as in here, and the perpetrator becomes the punching bag, an urgent sense of sociality where one unit is traded for another- almost a facsimile- becomes a haunting reminder of how we grow up amid earliest spurts of evil. The saturated colour palette makes it a subversive picture decrying nostalgia and memories of sweet sixteen.
***
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SCENE NUMBER 6882(2005)
DIRECTOR: RUBEN OSTLUND
Ruben Ostlund’s short film is an examination of sociality in groups.
A small group of young adults comprising of both genders have a day out by a bridge, overlooking a water body in Sweden.
One of the “alpha males” decides to jump from the bridge to the waters below as an adventurous undertaking. There are peer pressure & taunts involved. The sage advice of a passing elderly gentleman asking them not to indulge in this reckless behaviour and the girls’ anxious concerns don’t pass muster.
The naturalism of the setting, the handheld video camera capturing this feat in aggression and the internalised futility of being spurred by coercive tactics in the name of enjoyment, to ultimately prove one’s manliness, all work in its favour to get its message across.
The playfulness of the gathering hence takes the form of an unexpected fall and an open ending.
***
THE FALL(2019)
DIRECTOR: JONATHAN GLAZER
Eerie soundscapes drawn from sociality verging on beastly human undertakings receive an appropriate depiction in THE FALL.
A tree being violently shaken, a man holding on to it as he’s surrounded by a mob, a lynching and the rope of the noose tracing its descent in a netherworld of darkness all unfold in the dead of night, in a sylvan hellhole.
Mica Levi’s musical expertise and Jonathan Glazer’s taut direction cue a vindictive masked populace that is the most terrifying since EYES WIDE SHUT and Laura Branigan’s SELF-CONTROL music video.
But the most haunting passage is when the survivor supposedly, like a creature of the night, attempts to claw back to earth. In the era of anarchy and rise of the far-right demonstrating the same animalistic tendencies with impunity, THE FALL is a journey into the subterranean reaches of evil.
**
THE LAST REPAIR SHOP(2023)
DIRECTORS: KRIS BOWERS & BEN PROUDFOOT
If one needed steadfast testimony of music literally building bridges then the diverse tales embedded in this Oscar winning documentary short are triumphant.
These individual voices are drawn from decades of experience. Among the four principal adult participants chronicled here are Paty Moreno- a Mexican immigrant and single mother of two who struggled for years but spurred on by her mother’s belief that she could be someone in life chased her American dream. She succeeded. Others like Steve Bagmanyan, Dana Atkinson and Duane Michaels countered ethnic persecution in native Europe, the fear of “coming out” in the ’70s and rampant bullying to build credible repertoires as musicians respectively, with the latter performing with the likes of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley among other legends.
They are all custodians of musical instruments and their upkeep in the titular repair shop- miracle workers whose deft, loving touch and painstaking dedication ensures that countless children in the Los Angeles area receive music education. Some of those kids make an appearance, many of these prodigiously contributing to orchestras.
The sweetest testimony that bookends the forty minute narrative comes from twelve year old Porche Brinker. As a young violinist, she is a picture of joy with her beaming smile. Yet a stirring hint of familial neglect comes from her. She has learnt that it’s the gift of music that will help her thrive. It’s what she holds on as the ultimate truth.
The final concert performance with all present relays the triumph of their musical spirit, forging a path through the mediocrity of conventional social forces.
These are pithy capsules on diverse works this cinephile has watched in recent times.
***
THE MISFITS(1961)
There is a region where mustangs roam free.
Not far from Reno’s gilded age, the battle of the sexes interlopes in this wild horse country.
There is a resistance building on the back of a ranch.
The mind swelters in Nevada’s dry, open valleys.
The heart may go first where no one has.
THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD(1965)
In this valley, the harvests will come like a rain of petals on blanched ground.
The Creator will languidly depose the face of Virtue here.
THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN(1981)
When she looks, the sea calls out to her.
With no lover in sight, no town to stand behind her, she knits the waves and the high tide’s spray with her eyebrows.
That frown challenges far-off rapids before the cascade.
Her remarkable stories will finally drown in the ocean in her eyes.
KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN(1985)
With the matches lit and the interiority of a life in parts, let me become the raconteur you’ll recall through the streets of Rio.
We became jailbirds when we gave up the key to those same old sentinels of ill-repute.
We hold a real chance here now more than ever.
It’s in our hands. The intimacy to be two men in love with each other’s kindnesses.
RAIN MAN(1988)
Brothers estranged. Men at odds.
Let us take these roads.
We have all the time in the world.
Let us become confidantes.
***
MISERY(1990)
It will make us talk to strangers.
It will make us scorn’s very own impersonation.
Plain, old victimhood. You must know that the battle in Hell is now earthbound.
Something will severely break in this hospice amongst God’s fallen and deranged dark angels.
THELMA AND LOUISE(1991)
They are Soul and Zest. They are the sun rising eternally from Arkansas’ fiery gut.
They are: drivers in Valhalla. Sisters of a different kind.
Tell the canyons they are coming.
They will flow as big and mighty as the Colorado.
IN HER SHOES(2005)
Go get them both to the world’s fair!!!
They will babble before the articulate moment.
They will sign up for the long haul but break their word.
At the end of the day, for all the distance and the unpredictable intents, they will be at each other’s banquets.
They are sisters. That is the sacred vow.
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE(2006)
Laugh Crack Mingle guffaws and tears.
This trip has been in the making for disheveled years.
If at the very last gasp before the final act a blatant truth tumbles out, don’t push it away.
Keep it with you because this pageant is the real freak show.
Just keep it together for the last dance before Innocence hurts.
HIDDEN FIGURES(2016)
The great blue guy above, how slyly he taunts you,
“All ye earthbound, ’tis a stretch for you to find your place in your own domain”
He had forgotten that the gospel of three had found residency aeons before.
It was only a matter of Time and Place as Opportunity breathed for them and they took it to their sisters. For Times ahead… To Places in a mind full of sky and earthly potential.
BRING ME SOME WATER, IF I WANTED TO, YOUR LITTLE SECRET, THIS MOMENT, REFUGEE by MELISSA ETHERIDGE
Melissa Etheridge is an eternal rockstar, a cultural entity- that is a fact. As I expand my engagement with her indelible discography, the above listed songs make a strong case for her being among the greatest voices in mainstream rock from the late twentieth century and then the millennium.
Take YOUR LITTLE SECRET alone- its hard rock riffs are beautifully offset by a bridge that sparkles with Ms. Etheridge’s trademark growl. The chorus then settles for a rough and tender cadence befitting the lyrics.
REFUGEE, another classic rock anthem from Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers which this writer adores, is handled with panache by her. Her voice suits its mode of expression without doubt.
All said and done, her power with the guitar only adds to her unrivalled legacy.
***
WALK ON BY by DIONNE WARWICK
A sweet, dulcet tune that crowns the classic retro epoch is actually a silken vocal showcase for the chameleonic metres that Dionne Warwick can adhere to so blissfully.
There’s something about this rhythm and blues tune, with its doo-wop bounce and strings, its backup vocals, that is special. Ms. Warwick’s originality and restraint give it an ethereal feel even as the wistful lyrics are lucid and like life’s many foibles predictable.
***
YOU BELONG TO ME by PATSY CLINE
I don’t think anyone can imbue lines with pure poetry the way Patsy Cline does.
A showcase for her extraordinary grasp on human emotions that call out to a globetrotting significant other, YOU BELONG TO ME is sublime, delivered musically with the warm felicity and minimal backdrop that one expects in a song from Ms. Cline.
Her talents with phrasing and delivery are breathtaking here. As usual.
***
THE PROMISE by TRACY CHAPMAN
Another warm, mostly acoustic take on the felicity of human relationships breaching markers of hesitation and societal expectations, THE PROMISE is a soulful ballad from the always enduring Tracy Chapman.
As her continuum of musical and cultural success wears new shades of somber hues, discovering this song means the world to this avid admirer.
This is what the word “pure” means when executed with the humility synonymous with Ms. Chapman.
***
CAN’T GET OUT OF THIS MOOD by SAMARA JOY
This contemporary jazz vocal performance by Samara Joy is a thing of wonder. A young songbird with a penchant for the improvisation and fluidity of the legendary form, Ms. Joy infuses it with more than a touch of the classic infections that make it unforgettable.
Also listen to her latest song TIGHT to marvel at the way she can make her voice bounce and breathlessly go from one octave to another with the flick of a finger. It’s all that jazz, with the instrumental alchemy and general musicality of a very high calibre.
72 SEASONS by METALLICA
Rancid, portentous and thrillingly addictive from the first guitar note, this heavy metal performance from the original rockstars is epic.
ENTER SANDMAN and MASTER OF PUPPETS has a worthy successor in the band’s canon, with its topical lyrics and verses built around humankind’s incendiary descent into hell, particularly potent to the toxic epoch that we live and breathe in.
DEAR INSECURITY by BRANDY CLARK, BRANDI CARLILE
Poignancy is hard to muster in a songwriting cycle where the predictability of our lives’ predilections can get cumbersome.
The familiar poignancy invested in DEAR INSECURITY is credited to two namesakes who bring the power of their collective voices and the emotional wallop occasioned by strings to it. It’s beautiful & understated.
I REMEMBER EVERYTHING by ZACH BRYAN, KACEY MUSGRAVES
Acoustic delights abound in this duet between two country singers who know how to turn the familiar, predictable rhythms of small-town life and universal experiences into comfort food for the soul.
***
TURN THE LIGHTS BACK ON by BILLY JOEL
Watching Mr. Joel perform his latest song at the 2024 Grammys made me instantly remind myself of the gentleman’s distinction with the piano and warm, fuzzy vocals.
He is after all the legend behind PIANO MAN, UPTOWN GIRL, NEW YORK STATE OF MIND.
Be mesmerised by resonant lyrics, beautiful vocals and a sense of effortless charm as you listen to the studio cut. It’s moving and heartwarming.
***
SACRED THE THREAD( LIVE AT RCA STUDIO A) by GRETA VAN FLEET
A clear standout from the lads’ latest album, this live studio version is proof that pure musicianship that digs deep to unravel the whole fount of one’s talents finds as many takers as one can expect.
Even as the larger culture trims and evens out the field with rank drivel. Songs like these make us believe in the power of words. In the power of creativity done justice.
In 2018, DOWN THE ROAD WHEREVER was a victory lap for Mark Knopfler. As an album, it was complete and cohesive, beloved to the sedate sound championed by the Dire Straits frontman and guitar virtuoso.
AHEAD OF THE GAME is the first taste of his upcoming album. It’s sedate, jazzy, holds the truth of lives bursting at the seams with rich inner impulses and has his usual gentility of presentation with the guitar.
It’s a great start for 2024.
WHAT WAS I MADE FOR? – BILLIE EILISH
With her brother as her equal as an artistic savant, Billie Eilish has made us aware of the rich inner lives she can help mould into a classic tune.
That it belongs on the Barbie original soundtrack is proof of not only the siblings’ innate understanding of societal standards but also projects an acute empathy for the way millions struggle to externalise their individuality in meaningful fashion.
As an eternal lover of piano ballads, WHAT WAS I MADE FOR? is a gift, its lyrical properties moulding the melody with vocal finesse.
I’M ONLY SLEEPING(Music Video) – THE BEATLES
This may be lesser Beatles fare but the visual treatment meted out to it is a swirl of memories, cultural implosion and that liminal state that keeps us from falling into a deep abyss of the soul.
It’s simple, uses colours and ideas excellently and elevates an obscure tune, justifying its Grammy win for Best Music Video.
MEETING THE MASTER( LIVE FROM RCA STUDIO A)- GRETA VAN FLEET
These lads have proven time and again how a great rock ensemble can produce instant euphoria in listeners and audiences.
This live performance strips the studio version of its instrumental suite and yet retains the magical alchemy of vocals, drums and guitars that makes MEETING THE MASTER a standout.
THE CHAIN(LIVE AT 2023 ROCK THE RYMAN)- LITTLE BIG TOWN
This eternally beloved tune always lets artists and devout listeners surrender to its hypnotic spell.
One of my favourite bands has now made the iconic tune its own, in grand fashion while displaying its collective identity as a sonically fluid unit that embraces country and rock without much effort.
GOLD DUST, A SORTA FAIRYTALE – TORI AMOS
A SORTA FAIRYTALE is already a clear-cut favourite, with its memorable chorus ingrained in my mind. It’s just that a new music video that has surfaced on Tori Amos’ official YouTube channel has channeled its position as a labour of love further for me.
A hitherto unknown tune GOLD DUST is what makes its visual treatment one of nostalgia and intimacy. It’s a gorgeous song- patient in its moments of caesura, instrumental minimalism and perfectly modulated vocals.
When the orchestral flourishes buffet the piano notes, it becomes a thing of beauty and empathy. Once again, Amos’ discography proves that there are gems studded in her cultural legacy, always waiting to be discovered and deeply felt by discerning listeners.
I KNEW YOU WHEN- LINDA RONSTADT
I had been pushing this tune out of my Linda Ronstadt songbook. I guess now was a better time than any other to finally take the plunge.
Hailing from her 1980s opener GET CLOSER that already boasts of the title rock hit, LIES and TELL HIM, I KNEW YOU WHEN finds the effortlessly sophisticated singer relishing her lines with a touch of soul, blues & rock.
But this is her moment to modulate the quivering whispers, the opening stabs of vocal performance and the smooth delivery on the bridge and chorus to vow us in continuity. Cohesion and clarity are paramount here. Be prepared especially to be blown away by her closing falsettos.
SEND IN THE CLOWNS – BARBRA STREISAND
This Sondheim classic has gone through many worthy iterations, with Judy Collins being a beacon for its angelic quality in terms of presentation and impassioned delivery.
The mantle includes Barbra Streisand’s flawlessly sung and enunciated take too. The lady has a way of making each nuance and shade count, every emotional part of the journey in song reach our hearts and souls.
It’s no different here. Full of pathos and beauty, SEND IN THE CLOWNS looks at life’s perpetual struggles with poetic lenses. A singer like Ms. Streisand makes those qualities real.
***
GRAMMYS 2024- FAST CAR, BOTH SIDES NOW, PROUD MARY & NOTHING COMPARES 2 U
We have reached an era where the Grammys are no longer broadcast on television, atleast that’s the way it has been in my domicile for few years.
Yet the music, the magic and the memories remain to be constants in our cultural heritage. The word ‘heritage’ actually befits this year’s ceremony. Thanks to the Recording Academy’s official Instagram page that uploaded all the live performances circa the 2024 event, I was touched to watch Ms. Joni Mitchell take to the Grammys stage for the very first time and perform her heart-tugging gold standard BOTH SIDES NOW. It was also a measure of Tracy Chapman’s universally beloved humility that she performed her classic tune FAST CAR with Luke Combs, the man who gave it a greater lease of life with his faithful take in 2023.
The two were in harmony together, denuded of glamour and letting the power of the song produce a cultural monument all too rarefied in our era. This is why we live to see another day. It’s a moment like this that shapes us.
Fantasia, riding on the renewed legacy of The Colour Purple as its poignant and resilient protagonist Celie, brought her A game to the extravaganza as she sang PROUD MARY in honour of the eternal rockstar Tina Turner while Annie Lennox’s voice became a tower of song as she not only paid homage to Sinead O’Connor with NOTHING COMPARES TO YOU but implored us to recognise the civil unrest and crimes of humanity in Palestine.
It was a night to remember indeed. It was a monument to generational talents and musical evolutions.
Below are pithy poetic encapsulations of some pivotal works from the last half a century of cinema.
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MOONSTRUCK(1987)
The bitter moon is a lonely hunter.
On the upper crusts of the sky, it hangs its fallen hopes to dry. Its light charms some folks, brings them lores to hang by open, wondrous windows.
Desire is courting Cupid, striking hearts in unlikely pairings in this sleepless city of half-lovers.
They are all fragments of a sky turned outside down.
***
MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969)
Tall, lanky average Joe. Desires court you towards a highway where the guilt of being a man of passion swells your Adam’s apple.
You swallow your pride like the heat in Texas swallows all of last night’s secrets from your aching limbs.
You hail your destiny with an outcaste’s pained company. The periphery of your life’s work is changing its crumpled notes. The currency of survival is bringing you to the waterfront.
The last bus blares its horns for you.
There are other counties to explore.
***
MRS. DALLOWAY(1997)
The circles have become crop marks on an Elysian field.
The plunge and the lark have exceeded this day’s reminiscence.
Someone stands by a door with exquisite carvings, crying for the last stifles of privilege and appearances.
Someone looks down at the spike on another doorway, inhibiting the courage of being alive.
London fields forfeit their grief for them.
***
WEST SIDE STORY(1961)
You can build castles in the air.
You can bring heaven down to the ghetto.
A brief moment will garland this procession of Joy.
No epiphanies can prosper when dancing feet sizzle on blocks of coal and New York receives Death as its untimely host.
***
THE MISSOURI BREAKS(1976)
The cowboys’ ballads have died. The age of valour has passed.
If in the oblivion of a summer, there are charged passions in a den of dissipation, there is Montana. A hard man’s domain.
Two of them, mercurial and heavy with a moral compass tilting westward, have now become doomed prophets of this domain.
***
JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG(1961)
An elder statesman presides over a city of rubble.
The others come and go. Their testimonies shaking the ground beneath our feet.
Giving the eyes and ears a crime that a whole age grapples with.
The chambers are alive. The cries and their evaporating circles deafen these halls.
Here is this cinephile sharing the joy, emotional terrains of multifaceted humanity through tales committed to the screen over a landscape of decades.
***
THE 400 BLOWS(1959)
Antoine Donel as envisioned by the auteur Francois Truffaut presents a timeless compression of autobiography and social commentary.
In a world like ours where adults make us creatures of habit and bad influences, project their deepest and darkest frustrations at us, adolescence gets hindered by a lack of commitment from those meant to look out for us.
By employing detachment from sentiments and presenting raw stakes for Doinel and his ilk, it’s a miracle how timely THE 400 BLOWS always will be. It doesn’t always take much to know that we are more often abandoned at an intersection of curiosity and little joys. Genetic markers cannot always offer an explanation for our miseries.
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE(1962)
Always clinically detached from human warmth and a commitment to mental health, purveyors of the establishment abandon us by turning a blind eye to what, in time, becomes generational misery.
Compressed emotional stakes, governmental manipulation add diabolical layers of complexity to a post War saga where mind control and parental pressures make marionettes out of recovering servicemen.
It’s a harrowing, haunting wasteland treated with a detached, hypnotic spell; a political intrigue cooked in nationalist backyards.
ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET (2023)
A twelve year old, her mother and her grandmother all find a profound sense of displacement in the world around them. Locations, cities, new faces and an environment of actual change gives them the space to alter perspectives about what’s to come.
This is a tale about the very real challenges of being female while stricken by an empty nest in one’s advanced years, exposure to impending identity crises of adolescence and the emotional lacuna of rejection by overzealous guardians.
Like THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN, Kelly Fremon Craig adapts the natural cadences of American life and makes them wholly universal to a collective being. The comical and the emotional all come from a place of inspired innocence and guilelessness regarding self-discovery.
THREE OF US(2022)
That bittersweet lull of middle class life where something extraordinary evades us and yet the company of decent individuals around us softens the blows of advancing years and dwindling mental faculties is at the heart of Avinash Arun’s excellent, marvelously subtle THE THREE OF US.
Little touches like a smile exchanged between childhood best friends when the formal manner of addressing them as adults gets in the way, the kindness of unknown persons who let you explore your childhood home, the casual charm of another friend saying that nobody leaves Konkan, marking your own homecoming with her unintentional warmth, a meeting with your school’s headstrong teacher, a beautiful dance recital invoking a vocational gift once cherished and the memory of a lost sibling attached with a well make this a work of true, unforced empathy.
Like his previously helmed, beloved KILLA, Mr. Arun knows the Konkan landscape and people like a lifeline. His masterful touch animates every scene, even the ones where the difficulty of communicating one’s insecurities, trauma and regrets hang like barely uttered whispers around individual memory. This is a tribute to the longevity of decent, empathetic individuals. It’s utterly naturalistic, a pure beacon of the cinematic form. Its composition is enduring.
PAIN AND GLORY(2019)
Pedro Almodovar’s dramatic heft is always centred around and threatened by the opague surfaces of family bonds and memory.
It is memorably registered here, in a screenplay imprinted with autobiographical details. Single takes, long conversations abound here. The preponderance of words, physical movement and stasis pervade. So do fragile artistic egos and workings of a prolific, brilliant mind.
The flashbacks to a bright and unique childhood stay with us while the present allows us to look at labours of love and melancholy that hardly warp the mind’s long, winding journey. The meta references are particularly clever and effusive.
AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER(2022)
There’s a reason this long-awaited sequel to a cultural behemoth hits home.
Its childlike innocence and guilelessness are ostensible counters to the relentless rampage of human greed bringing long-standing ecological and cultural erasure.
Buoyed by gripping special effects and immersive world-building, its parallels feel dangerously close to our current historic churn in legions of war and international relations.
***
GOOD THANKS, YOU? (2020)
It’s the same old story where the sociological burdens around physical assault gets to fall on the shoulders of the survivor.
In this short from rising filmmaker Molly Manning Walker, the editing choices mimic the rigmarole of interrogation and moral policing. The woman survivor is the hapless bystander who transitions to a victim owing to the same recycled concepts of when and where demanded from her.
It is also cognizant of how intimately abuse and consent can blur when the body becomes a source of domination from the men around us. In its quieter moments of unease and the little to no glimpses of the actual situation befalling the young woman here, this becomes an exercise in withholding graphic details in favour of a lingering, universal tryst with the same old binaries of guilt and shame for those seeking justice.
THE FAREWELL(2019)
Shuzhen Zhao and Awkwafina sculpt a bond so natural, so universally beloved here in Lulu Wang’s affecting dramedy that we identify wholly with the rest of the proceedings here.
Autobiographical in the details gleaned and shared here, it’s poised between impending tragedy and the wisdom inherited from our elders that eventually seep into the very core of who we are as individuals.
As THE FAREWELL won several awards in early 2020 and Ms. Zhao was unable to attend those ceremonies in America owing to the Covid outbreak back home in China, a reverse of the geographical distance, mortal apprehensions and a sense of profound longing brought this tale’s personal stakes closer to us.
It’s beautifully realised. Ms. Wang made something she knew. That’s the primary reason why both its immigrant identity and cultural ethos ring absolutely true without losing its sense of empathy at any turn.
CAPOTE(2005)
Philip Seymour Hoffman is so astounding in the breadth of humanity he espouses within one man’s quest for artistic and personal clarity that not one note feels out of place or delivered solely for dramatic effect.
He’s the life of the party, a natural wit, a man of passion and yet remains a vessel of exploration when the intersections of crime and marginalised identity haunt his very soul. What begins as a literary enterprise becomes a voyage into the dark landscapes of a nation divided by miles, class, hierarchies.
Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins, Jr., Chris Cooper and Bruce Greenwood leave their imprints here. Bennett Miller’s compositions and slow burn aesthetic are excellently suited to this tale borne from biographical legacies. Of those who live and die. Of those who recount and observe, write and narrate a society’s decline and complicity in the making of monsters quietly lurking in the shadows.
LILIES OF THE FIELD(1963)
In the unforgettably etched LILIES OF THE FIELD, Sidney Poitier and Lilia Skala build a place of banter, warmth and faith while remaining obstinate in their individual stands regarding who they are. They represent that tug between idealism and practicality.
Never has the pursuit of faith been this charming, joyful and secular than in this tale set in Arizona. It’s mostly about human interaction being the first step in building bridges and facilitating trust.
The building of this miniature family of nuns and a traveling handyman is sans glorious emotional highs or cinematographic flourishes. The collective filmmaking is lucid and classic.
Try singing Amen and not recalling this motley crew reveling in the spirit of camaraderie in that moment here.
An Awadh Boy's Panorama : tracing words on these filigreed, discerning fingertips. 