Going beyond Hollywood - what's stopping us?

Recently, I watched a few Bengali movies – which were surely among the some of the best that I have seen. I particularly liked Satyajit Ray’s Jana Aranya (The middleman), and Rituparno Ghosh’s Utsab (The festival). I was wondering why movies like these do not get a wider audience. Couple of reasons sprang to my mind.

The first one is the marketing and distribution muscle that regional movies (or even movies from developing world) typically lack. The converse of the same reason explains why Hollywood flicks are so popular all over the world – despite a lot of them being mindless assaults on your senses (particularly the ones that trickle down into Indian theatres).

However, there are some studios like The Criterion Collection  which aims to release on DVD such rare gems from all over the world. Ray is exactly the kind of director whose movies Criterion would typically bring out – his movies are world-class, have not been widely distributed, most discs that are available are of bad picture and sound quality – things that Criterion does a good job of rectifying. But even they seem to have studiously neglected Indian movies. I wonder what may be the reason – piracy? 

One other reason behind relative popularity of movies from different countries may be rooted in the communication styles of those countries. While I was watching the Bengali movies – I was noticing that there are plenty of subtleties in communication that I will miss if I do not know the language. There are obviously local references that work only if you know that culture and language intimately – but I mean something more than that. More often than not, in Bengali movies – communication is implicit, messages are often left unsaid, the words are unspoken. Contrast that with the American way of communication – messages are direct, explicit. Even if you are from a different culture, you have no problem following the nuances.

Over time, however, this cultural imbalance is gradually being bridged. Studios like Criterion are helping, so are online stores like Amazon where search features and buyer reviews make such movies much more easy to find. Now even in Landmark stores you can see a section on DVDs of world movies.  Sathyam cinemas in Chennai used to have something called Pure Cinema, where they used to screen good movies from all over the world once a week (they seem to have scrapped this now – not sure why). We also have World Movies channel over cable – which does have some good foreign language movies. Hope we see more commercial initiatives like this – if there is a good movie to watch, or a good book to read – language should not a barrier!

'Das Experiment' and Indian philosophy

Today I watched a fantastic German movie – ‘Das Experiment’, which is based on the famous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment. It was a simulation (or role-play), where a group of volunteers were assigned the roles of prisoners and guards – and the experimenters wanted to observe how much the assigned roles influence the behavior of the individuals.

The answer, as it disturbingly turned out – was too much, so that the volunteers almost completely took on the roles as real as the experiment progressed. While on the first day most volunteers treated the simulation with humor and detachment, over the next few days their behavior seemed to personify the roles that they were assigned. Some of the ‘guards’ turned abusive, sadistic – and the ‘prisoners’ showed signs of extreme depression and stress. The situation worsened to the extent that the experiment had to be stopped midway.

 Das experiment is loosely based on the same research – and it does a brutally convincing job of portraying the simulation. It makes you wonder about human nature – and how much we are really the product of our environment. Based on the conclusion of the experiment, the answer would be – almost entirely.

 The movie made me wonder about the thin line separating the roles that we are assigned by society, and our real selves. To take that statement to its logical extension – it makes me wonder if we have a ‘real self’ at all. If something so explicit as an experiment or game can change people’s behavior in a few days – obviously a long-standing role, designation, stereotyping can have the same effect. This also explains how so many apparently normal people become evil instruments of the Nazi regime during the second world war.

 May be we shouldn’t identify ourselves so much with our roles – and have a bit more detachment in the way we perform those? Ancient Indian philosophy told us much the same thing, about the illusory nature of our societal roles, and the value of detachment. It’s amazing how different disciplines – philosophy, psychology, science etc. has a way of converging to the same truth.

My best journeys

Ever wondered what are some of your best journeys? I have had many enjoyable train or plane trips with friends and colleagues – but a few that I look back with fond memory are the ones where I travelled alone. While fun and chitchat with others may be pleasant activities – sometimes our most cherished memories are of times that are spent with ourselves.

 I remember the Jet Airways flight that I took from Bombay to Calcutta – in the summer of 2002. I resigned from I-Sec, and was to join Irevna in two weeks. I was leaving behind the worries of the old job, and the joining date at the new job is still some time away – so the next two weeks promised to be blissful. I was leaving Bombay as well – a city I passionately hated. Overall, I felt very much at peace. The almost empty flight added to the tranquil experience. That was a journey where everything felt nice and perfect – the food, the air-hostesses, the dark sky outside.

 My other favourite journeys were to do with two absorbing cinemas that I watched on my laptop on those trips. One was a evening flight from Chennai to Delhi – where I watched Hotel Rwanda for the first time. Chennai-Delhi is a long, 2 hour 45 minute journey, but I was so totally immersed in the movie, I hardly noticed. Towards the last one hour – they dim the light in the aircraft, which is just as well, as you do not want anybody to notice if tears come to your eyes at the end of the movie. This still remains one of most moving cinemas that I ever watched.

 Recently, after one of my Bangalore trips, I came back by Shatabdi to Chennai. I managed to watch two movies in the train – one of which, ‘Do the right thing’, stayed with me for many days after my viewing, making sure I will always remember this trip with fondness. It is a story about a neighborhood where racial tensions erupt, resulting in tragic consequences. In spite of the heavy subject, two-thirds of the movie is fun – where you get to know the characters with all their idiosyncrasies. You like some of them, you are amused by some of the others – but you really do not feel that any of them is evil, which is why the ending is particularly unfortunate. This movie is a reminder that sometimes circumstances can turn a bunch of good, well-meaning people into adversaries.

 There are experiences that transport you to another world for a brief while. While the real ones come only rarely to our lives, movies are great substitutes, and they are plentiful.

Heard of Ajit Singh lately?

Does the name Ajit Singh ring a bell? If yes, you must have seen the name somewhere in the newspaper in the past few days in connection with the trust vote that the government faces.

I am not an avid reader of newspapers – I just scan the headlines for a minute or two every morning. Couple of days back – I saw the name of Ajit Singh in one of the lead stories related to the trust vote – and thought, was this not the same guy who was in the news in the previous trust vote, and the one before that, and the one before that as well? Even when I was at school, I remember a discussion among my uncles related to a trust vote where Ajit Singh prominently featured – it was not clear which party he is going to switch to, or which coalition he is going to support! He has the ability to remain in obscurity forever (I reckon this does not require any special ability), but emerge in news exactly when there is a evenly balanced trust vote, where one vote is going to make a difference!

Pretty amusing that more than a decade has passed, but some things just do not change!

Fear eats the soul

Do you find it easier to connect to an idea when you know the person behind it well? I often do. For example, the fact that John Maynard Keynes led a colorful life made me more interested in his economic theories. (he was a speculator who lost most of his money in 1929 crash, but recouped again later, he married a Russian ballerina). The fact that renowned game theorist Von Neumann died of cancer due to his exposure to radiation during the atomic bomb tests and was the inspiration behind the famous Kubrick character Dr Strangelove – makes me more interested in game theory. I guess this has some implication for learning (and consequently teaching) – where abstract ideas can be made to come to life by connecting them with the people who created them.

Actually, it is a movie that started this train of thought - ‘Ali: Fear eats the soul’ by German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. I read a short Fassbinder biography somewhere a few days back – he died at the age of 37 through a cocktail of sleeping pills and cocaine, he was bisexual with many failed relationships (with one male lover actually hanging himself in jail) and had a fairly troubled childhood. In between all of these, in a short career, he managed to direct a prodigious number of films and TV series. It all sounded intriguing – and I thought I must watch some of his movies that I have in my collection.

This resulted in me viewing ‘Ali: Fear eats the soul’ – one of his more famous movies, during the last weekend. The story was about a German widow, falling in love with a younger man from Morocco – and facing wide disapproval of society. Even though this uses the context of another time and another country, but the theme is pretty universal – we would have seen plenty of Hindi movies with similar themes for sure. It was handled pretty efficiently and clinically though – there is a not a wasted moment here in this movie. You would certainly expect that from a director who has been this prolific.

Nice introduction to Fassbinder – may be I will watch some of his other movies next weekend.

A clockwork orange and movie snobs

Following Vidya’s post about Rushdie, and her inability to comprehend why people like his novels – let me write about a movie, supposedly a masterpiece, but I failed to fathom why. This is ‘A clockwork orange’, by Stanley Kubrick.

This movie is currently rated at 50th in the IMDB list of top movies of all time, and is hailed by many critics as a masterpiece, a satirical social commentary. Well, a social commentary of what kind of society? The hero of the film, Alex, goes on committing sickening acts of brutality, rape and violence – without any ostensible reason whatsoever. Its not like he is forced into crime due to his background, or he commits crime to earn a livelihood – he just does it for the fun of it. Then he gets thrown in jail, and is released from the prison with a condition that he will take a treatment which will make him incapable of violence – he will feel sick whenever he is about to commit an act of violence. Then Kubrick shows us how difficult it becomes for him to survive in the external world. There is some oblique point or two about the perils of mind control.

Just what is the point? You just put a bunch of crazy scenes together, along with a half-baked idea about mind control – and it becomes a masterpiece? I guess most people call it a masterpiece just because Kubrick made it – and think they would be seen as stupid, or not ‘cultured’ enough, if they do not get the point of the movie.

There is another set of infuriating commentary about movies that the same snobs make – about camera angles (“See how Kurosawa is pointing the camera at a 90 degree angle towards the clouds, to give us the message of ….”), and symbolisms (“Bergman wanted to give a message about the transience of life by the broken ink-bottle in that scene…”).

Come on, can’t we just watch movies and be moved by simple human emotions?

Movies as a learning device

There are two things I am currently passionate about – movies and learning. By learning – I do not mean I am trying to learn (which may also be true), but more about what drives learning, and how to impart it well. Often my twin passion of learning and movies intersect – and that makes for some fascinating possibilities.

Let me first talk about more concrete subjects like history, economics or sciences. History was always thought to be such a boring subject in the schools – and that’s a pity – because history is full of stories (stories by definition should be more interesting than abstract theory). And there is clearly a lot to learn from history – whatever mistakes you are making today, have already been made many times over in the past! Similarly, Economics was also considered drab – but it is a subject that helps you explain the world around, and can solve real-life issues.

Something like history certainly can be taught much better through movies. For example – there are nice movies about American presidents (Young Mr Lincoln, JFK, Nixon), there are intensely absorbing movies about World War II (Schindler’s list, The pianist, Downfall – to name a few). For the story of Indian independence, we have Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi, and some others. We do not really need to have movies on exact topics of history – it is enough as long as they generate the learning appetite for different historical periods, so that there is a desire to learn more.

Other than concrete subjects like these, movies can be powerful tool in teaching ‘softer’ topics like leadership, communication, ethics etc. There are numerous movies which can illustrate various elements of leadership – my personal favorites are Hotel Rwanda and Gandhi. Negotiation and group dynamics can be demonstrated through 12 angry men (we have a Hindi version – Ek ruka hua faisla). Ethical issues and breaches are made much more vivid in movies like Judgment at Nuremberg or Wall Street. (or a particularly black and white demonstration of ethical slide – see the documentary on Enron). I remember we had training sessions on presentation delivery using speeches from various movies – Al Pacino’s speech in the Scent of a woman, and Michael Douglas’ “Greed is good” speech in Wall street.

We spent better part of our student days mugging Ampere’s law, the exact date for the battle of Panipat and such other nonsense – when learning could have been so much more fun.

The Decalogue

This is a movie I am currently watching (actually, a series of 10 movies – 50 mins each, originally made for Polish TV). These are short films by the Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski – loosely based on the ten commandments, but basically more on the lives of simple people, often facing difficult choices. There is no overt moral, ethical or religious discussions – but just simple stories of people that we immediately identify with.

It is highly critically acclaimed – Stanley Kubrick said that the Decalogue is the only masterpiece that he could name in his lifetime – and it is not difficult to see why. Till now I managed to watch 5 episodes – and each one of them pack a lot of story and drama within their 50 mins, than an ordinary movie will do in 2-3 hours. The drama is never overt, dialogue-based, or based on racy action – it is just tightly knit human stories. I would soon finish the other 5 episodes, but I do not want to rush through them – just want to relish them at a slow pace.

This film gets a very high rating of 9.2 from IMDB. I would not talk about the stories here – there are many forums which give the stories and some sort of review. My personal favourite is the review of Roger Ebert – I take the liberty to quote from what he has to say:

“These are not characters involved in the simpleminded struggles of Hollywood plots. They are adults, for the most part outside organized religion, faced with situations in their own lives that require them to make moral choices. You shouldn't watch the films all at once, but one at a time. Then if you are lucky and have someone to talk with, you discuss them, and learn about yourself. Or if you are alone, you discuss them with yourself, as so many of Kieslowski's characters do.”

Lessons from entrepreneurship

Well, I have been on my own for the last 7 months - thought I will pen down some of the initial impressions about entrepreneurship that struck me the most, but nobody told me before :)
1. Prepare for a long haul: Patience and persistence will be the key virtues. I probably came in with an idea that everything will immediately fall in place - the marketplace is waiting to embrace my proposition. That normally does not happen - things move at their own pace.
2. Every day is judgment day: Initially, since small issues can have big impact on your business - every day is full of ups and downs. I often wonder now - what were all those worries and crises that I faced as an employee? Life as an employee does indeed look very peaceful, in retrospect.
3. You are the most powerless person on earth: An early entrepreneur has no power whatsoever - grovel in front of clients, be hopelessly dependent on your employees, and sometimes even your suppliers (whom YOU are paying money) will not give you importance, as you are too small for their business!
4. Overestimating the short-term, and underestimating the long-term: Somebody mentions this to me - it immediately rang a bell. As somebody who is starting out, we tend to overestimate how quickly things will be successful. Also, at the initial stage, we typically have no clue about how big a venture can eventually become. (While I can vouch for the first error, I have certainly no proof to offer for the second, as of now!)
5. Your proposition may turn out to be different compared to your original idea: Ideas get tested in the marketplace, and we often tweak them to offer what the market wants. Eventually, the business you are doing may be somewhat different from what you envisaged at the beginning.
6. Getting a business moving is much more difficult compared to running it: This is obvious - Newton's law of intertia (was there is law like that?). Which is why several successful managers/leaders may fail as entrepreneurs - because it is a different ballgame.
7. Flexibility has a flip-side: You may have the option of not going to office, taking holidays whenever you want - but your mind will not take a holiday. Thoughts of business will be in your mind, even when you are watching a movie on a Sunday!

Those are my seven lessons for the last seven months. Now that I read it again - they look particularly gloomy. Watch out for another post with the silver-linings soon!