'Annayum Rasoolum' ... A meticulously and beautifully shot tragedy.

I am not able to recall those exact lines from a Greek play that I had studied back in school, though I have narrowed it down to it being from either Oedipus Rex, or Antigone, where the chorus defines tragedy as not something unhappy, but rather something predestined, that has to be fulfilled at any costs. It is filled with tension, speculation, drama, but never sadness.
This definition of tragedy somewhat outlines the 2013 Malayalam hit, Annayum Rasoolum, a love story (amidst a lot of other things) between a Christian girl and a Muslim boy.  Beautifully shot in Kochi and it's adjacent islands, the director, Rajeev Ravi shows us life of the working class and subsequently the Christian culture that thrives there.  

Compared to the colourful and scenic Kochi of Martin Prakkat's Charlie, here the city is teeming with activity from fish markets to bazaars to the residential areas and its people are painted in colours of grey, blues, greens, and browns. Only Anna's (Andrea Jeremiah) saris of pink and yellow stand out amidst them. Take the scene when Anna asks Rasool (an excellent Fahad Fasil) to meet her outside of work, the subsequent shot is an birds eye view of the busy street, where both of them make their way through, and we can easily spot Anna in her yellow sari, but it becomes harder to find Rasool in all that hustle and bustle.

Scenes indoors are mostly shot from behind a curtain, or from a corner of a wall evoking a feeling of being watched, especially Anna, who we mostly see from behind her room curtain. 
Such scenes of loneliness, silence or helplessness are further amplified with background conversations that don't involve the main leads. Take the scene on the ferry, when Andrea is contemplating on whether to message Rasool, and as she does so, in the background, the ferry owner and Anna's neighbour haggle about the payments. On Rasool's side, the tv blares out news, as he stands by the window and replies to Anna. Even when Francis and his mother visit Anna's house, we watch Anna making tea, but hear Francis's proposal in the background to marry her at the same time. All this makes the scenes more authentic and more spontaneous, like on one of the ferry rides, a stranger asks Rasool, after he gets off the phone how he knows Bharthan, and comments that he is close friends with him. This isn't necessary in anyway for the plot, but small inserts like this, makes the screen come more alive.

Battle of the Bastards

It was high time I jumped on the bandwagon and watched Game of Thrones. So in midst of exams, holiday shopping, moving houses, and all the packing, and re-packing and packing, I still found myself enough time to sit down five to six hours a day, to finish all six seasons right before the holidays started.

The show (as a whole) is beyond phenomenal, there is no doubt about that, but there is one episode in particular I would like to talk about - Episode 9 of season six, - Battle of the bastards.
It is a simple good vs. evil fight, resolved on the battle field, but excellently shows the chaos, the confusion, the brutality and the implementation of the battle strategies on the actual scene of the fight. The allies and the enemies all look the same, and for some time we are as confused as Jon Snow on who exactly to fight. These are just men in mud, charging and killing one another. The bodies around him grow in heaps and the limb less ones twitch and groan in pain, but the fighting goes on - that's the reality of war.

So far in the series, such a exhaustive battle scene isn't shown. Daenerys conquers three cities through her words and her show of dragons and never does resolve to fighting. We never see Rob Stark fighting, but alone hear his praise. The battle of the Black Water was a test of wits - winning without actually fighting, and the war between Stannis and the Boltons was a mere shot from the sky, because it was very evident on who was going to win.

So now, we have the favourite character who has risen from the dead, and the other loathed, by us and the people on screen, and we all want him dead as soon as possible.
Both are bastards and both want Winterfell. Jon Snow has a smaller army, an array of wildings and soldiers from his allies in the North while Ramsay Bolton has a bigger army, a hostage and also excellent battle strategy, making us want to root for Jon Snow even more.

First, *spoiler* Rickon Stark is killed, an arrow through his heart, on an empty battlefield, minutes before Jon Snow can save him. Jon is enraged and charges into battle, first on horseback, and then on foot and the background score heightens the tension. We see him alone on the field, and the Calvary approaching him, and just when we think it's all over, the allies are fighting by him. The music abruptly stops, and the cling and clang of the swords take over.

So far Jon has only fought in snow; the vast, empty white landscapes that are stained with blood after a fight. And now here he is in all the muck, and the dirt and the confusion and chaos. Ramsey's army on the other hand is well prepared. The scene where there corner Jon Snow and his men in a circular trap is ingenious. Jon is pushed deep down in the stampede as the Ramsey's men charge forward. He pushes himself up and comes out straining for breath, like coming out of water. Not far away from him, Ramsay is still clean, and hasn't found the need to get down from his horse yet. You detest him, but you need to appreciate the characters intelligence.

All hope is lost at this point, but after a period of tense silence, a horn blows, and from a distance, comes Little Finger's army charging forward.
Jon and Ramsey's fight eventually ends in an one on one, and several punches to Ramsey's face is as satisfying to us as it to Jon Snow and Sansa. There is one particular moment towards the end that really shows us how grown Sansa has become, in terms of her mindset. When Ramsey's own hounds devour him, she looks on, first with a flicker of pain, and looks away, but immediately turns back and relishes the moment of triumph.

On one side, you can call it a predictable episode; you know who is going to win, and who is going to die. But the dip and rise of suspense and tension is consistently maintained, making us root for Jon Snow throughout. The visuals are stunning, and the brutality on the scene of battle is true to life.

A trilogy of a sort...

I spent my weekend binge watching three of Asghar Farhadi's movies - A Separation, About Elly and The Past. 

All three are beautifully directed suspense dramas, that revolve around a certain change or incident in the family, and the domino effect that falls upon the family and friends.
In both About Elly and The Past, the character that is the eye of the storm, is physically absent, but their presence is felt through repeated conversations involving them, and what they did,what they felt. 

What I loved most (in all three movies) was how the truth unfolds through conversations, arguments, confrontations, between family members, friends, colleagues, revealing the little grey area between the black and white of right, and wrong, or true and false.
All movies are devoid of any background score, and relies entirely on the weather, the cries of children, the cluttering of crockery; creating a sense of being with the characters, and not letting the viewers decide what they should feel.

I am not going reveal more, but if you love a slice of life dramas, Farhadi's movies are a must watch.

Love and lessons from the idiot box.

I love(d) movies. I was a Wikipedia page containing information about the upcoming releases, remembering most of the minute details. Every Friday, on the way back from school, I had a habit of checking out the new film posters being put up at PVR. I would check out the clothes the actors would don, the hairstyles, the songs, and the outdoor locations. Now, I have fallen in love with the art of film making.

I cultivated the habit of reading movie reviews (before or) after watching a movie, which has helped me in paying more attention to the dialogues, the development of characters, the setting, the motifs and the most important - the reason why a particular scene is staged in that particular way. What does it tell us about those people on screens, or about their lives?

With the frequently occurring holidays, I watched and re watched a few movies. The first one that I watched was Rachel Getting Married, which I noticed running on the tv, when I was flipping between the channels. It is a beautifully made film on the ongoings during a wedding preparation between a dysfunctional American family. It deals with the family coming to terms with a tragic accident that occurred in the past. The film is evenly paced, giving importance to the friction caused between the family members with the preparations and the events as the background.  My favourite scene was the wedding rehearsal dinner, where we get a glimpse of all the people invited to the wedding through the toasts that they present to the to be wed couple. Later on, I watched Monte Carlo starring Selena Gomez. It contains no fusses. It is predictable, cute and keeps us smiling throughout. I remember the first time I watched it. I was (actually still am!) a huge Selena Gomez fan, and my eyes were literally on her the whole time. When I watched it this time around, I felt like finally saw the movie as a whole, not just Selena Gomez (or her gorgeous hair.) 

Few days later, I re watched Dil Chahta Hain with my room mate. This time it was less about what was on the screen, but more of what we felt when we watched this as kids. We reminisced the early 2000's, the loose clothing, the flip mobile phones, and of course the movie's songs. I watched Lucy, a sort of a creepy but mind blowing sci-fi thriller, that kept me very curious on how the rest of the film was going to be executed, once the set problem is caused. 

These are of course a few of the many I watched in the past few weeks, but I learnt that not everything I watch has to imitate the life that revolves around us. Sometimes, you require a bit of predictability, a spoonful of the past or a gust of the impending tragedy to move your heart. It certainly isn't necessary to pick your favourite type of genre. I enjoy all, maybe some more than others, but I am willing to experiment with more varied genres.

PS: I have already stuck a list titled, 'Movies to watch', on my wall, which already has more than twenty films.