Guldasta

Au Revoir Les Enfants (Goodbye, Children) is set in German occupied France during the second world war. Directed by Louis Malle the movie draws on his childhood events of attending a Catholic school that harbours Jewish children.

The lead actors are two young boys played by Gaspard Manesse as the Catholic boy and Raphaël Fejtö as the Jewish boy. Like a slow cooked meal with attention to detail the movie is poignant and heroic without being melancholic or over-dramatic. The bonding between the two young boys is beautifully carved through realistic scenes of everyday school life. As the viewer is made aware that one of them is Jew, so is the Catholic boy. A sense of doom prevails in the background, never engulfing the movie or depriving it of its light heartedness. How real!

While the end will remain with you for a long time, what I take away from the movie is that love can blossom even in the face of death. The movie makes subtle statements about human behaviour. It uses the case of another young lad who works in the kitchen to make a point. A person of weak character is dangerous and one must be wary. Ample use of piano does justice to the theme and my favourite piano scene is when Jean Bonnet (the Jewish boy) plays it while his music teacher watches impressed. There is also the scene where the two boys play a piece together even while sirens of a possible bombing raid sound in the background. My thoughts went to the scene from Titanic where the musicians play on the deck even as the ship sinks. Music is such!

Au Revoir Les Enfants is in French and while the subtitles are sensitive, I am sure some fragrance is lost in translation. Nevertheless, a very worthwhile watch for its statement on innocence, bonding, and dignity.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

A woodcutter and a Priest sit stunned in what appears a dilapidated though majestic gate. Outside the wind and rain are lashing. They are joined by a character about whom we know nothing till the end. And a story is told. Of a man found dead in the forest and the four versions by four different people (a bandit, the dead man’s wife, the dead man, and the woodcutter) of how this man met his death.

Classic! Very allegorical. And very entertaining. Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 masterpiece Rashomon will keep your attention and leave you thinking. The use of shadows and light, the almost monotone background score, and some of the best face closeups I have seen add to the film’s credentials. There are parts which are rather crude, but they are so few and so far apart that it is easy to forgive.

Watch out for the scene where the bandit brings the wife into the wood clearing and she sees her husband in a certain state. The camera rolls slow and steady, no jerky angles or movement, no loud music, just a sense of tension. And also watch out for the look on the face of the husband when his wife cuts his ropes. I do not remember any other movie where a character displays an expression that is so indescribable.

Rashomon deals with human vices and our continuous fight to defeat, accept, or run from them. The four stories are unique and no attempt is made to solve the puzzle. Because the puzzle is not central to the plot. The stories are merely mediums to pose the greater questions about human nature. And even here, Rashomon does not give complete answers.

Storytelling has been important to human history. Our sense of good and evil, of love and hate, and everything else has been passed down the ages using stories. Rashomon is a respectable addition to the art of storytelling through moving images and sound. Recommended for viewing.

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Shichinin no samurai stands tall in the cinema landscape and is widely recognised to be Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece. Made in 1954, the movie has been copied widely and the story retold so often that an unknowing viewer might find the original masterpiece stale! Shichinin no samurai is a kaleidoscope of many endearing stories from the ages, David vs Goliath, love in the middle of battle, the vagabond with a loyal heart, the silent master, the wise leader, the jovial warrior, to name a few. The story is simple, set in late 16th century, peasants from a village hire seven samurais to fight the bandits who threaten to rob them of their crop and daughters.

The story is told in no great hurry and so the movie runs a good 207 minutes (3 hours, 27 minutes) long. There is no heroism, no mind numbing sword fights, no over arching theme of valour and sacrifice. No, there is none of the melodrama which is often thrown in for good measure to hold your attention. In Shichinin no samurai, the characters vary from cowards to the cautiously brave. Very real, very human. Since the movie was made more than half a century ago, I was not expecting any technical wizadry. And thank God for that. The Black&White tones enhance the drama, keeping your focus dead center on the characters and the story, and not their clothes or whatever. A good part of the climax is relentless fighting between the peasants and samurai on one side and the bandits on the other.  Again, very ordinary and very believable scenes. No one person is the hero. There is sludge, there are bows, arrows, spears, and muskets. There are horses. There is valour. There is loss and grief. And there is love. All thrown together into a heady mix, and yet each delineated.

I love movies that do a good job at fleshing out characters. And Shichinin no samurai is a winner in this. From the first samurai recruited to the seventh, they are each introduced in a setting that captures the essence of their individual characters. What surprises me is that not much time is spent on all of them, and yet one finds it easy to connect to each. Surely Kurosawa was a master of his craft!

I recommend Shichinin no samurai to anyone who wants to see not just an all time classic, but also one that is so great that some other great movies are mere retelling of it.