This
trip to Goa… OFFICIAL… yes, this time it is an official holiday – planned, declared,
face booked, enjoyed and LIVED… and now on record here!
DIFFERENT…
after having been to Goa every season this year (since the VERY first time that
I have visited Goa in the first season this year) this trip was completely different
from the first trip and the trips later, for many reasons… the purpose
pronounces it all… in pursuit of a earnest purpose, a purpose called LIBERATION.
Yes, Liberation – Liberation from Nostalgia J
Watched
several movies – revealing and real reels, beginning with the premiere Life
of Pi, dreams and aspirations in animated South Korean movie Green
Days, the contentions, temptations and love of two adults with a family
of four kids in Everyday, ecological lessons (more informing and little
inspiring though) from Elemental, Beethoven and the
mysterious testament in the Night Across The Street, Confucius
to confuse (a Tibetan movie with profound philosophy, but sadly without
subtitles) and a pint of beer to ease one from confusions when at Macquinez
Palace.
Movies
that I enjoyed totally included a contemporary drama about courage, forgiveness
and love in the Samoan setting (with ‘products from China’ tags on all the
boxes) in Orator, the battle that marked history, enjoyed every role,
plot and dialogue in the documentary Fetih 1453 – The Battle of Two Empires,
the depiction of cosmopolitan character of Turkey in six short narratives in Do
Not Forget Me Istanbul – Half Moon Strangers, Mirko, Almost, Bolis,
The Jewish Girl, Otel(lo) and an Epilogue, on recomposing corpses and
other critical problems that plague the contemporary times in The Weight, Indignados
by Tony Gatlif demonstrating the resistance against the existing systems and
solidarity marches to express the feelings of the outraged.
The
Cutoff Man, a short movie shot in Israel,
definitely has huge lessons for me to take home – from the idea of being a
bureaucrat, to an employer, to an employee, to a neighbor, to a civilian, to a
wife, to a father, to being an UPRIGHT individual (like 'The Men Who Ruled India', recorded and described by Philip Mason as men who were 'minutely just and inflexibly upright'), et al, many ideas to carry
in my head. Not surprising, there were less than hundred people in the huge
auditorium of the Kala Academy to watch this movie. The reasons being too
obvious – The Cutoff Man is a movie sans chicks J
Samsara
screened in the section Soul of Asia, is truly, a soul-searching drama of a
Buddhist monk and his quest to find Enlightenment. Loaded with inner conflicts
between flesh and spirit of the monk, and his struggle to find enlightenment by
renouncing the world, and the struggle of his wife to keep the enlightened love
and life within her own world, the film traverses through many inner journeys. The final
questions raised by the monk’s wife highlight some fresh perspectives and address
many critical (FEMINIST) issues most eloquently: quoting the story of Yashodhara when Buddha
in search of Enlightenment has left Yashodhara who was still in her youth; reflecting if Yashodhara
had been a sufferer of pain, anger, loneliness and disillusionment; whether her feelings, emotions and existence mattered to Buddha; and on
parallel destinies – whether satisfying one thousand desires or conquering just
one desire is more important? Loved this film – a portrayal of truth and
human nature – the insanity of human stupidity and selfishness and the comfort to shelter one's own dirty self and polluted mind in the most convenient space with an assertive stance – even if the choice
is between infidelity and spirituality.
Having missed the mid-fest film, queued for the
last one before leaving Goa on Sunday. This movie came as a direct hit on my face with some
widely prevalent, harsh truths – revealing unto me as to why even highly educated
mothers (for whom I had utmost respect and immense admiration {till lately}, after I was shell-shocked by her courage to elope and marry the
man of her choice belonging to a lower caste, way back in early 80’s in a similar
setting) advice their accomplished sons to marry a girl at a certain
muhurth, only with a revealed plot-advice to divorce the girl a year later and engage most relaxedly in such lighter talks over phones, via messages and at homes.
Shot in a typical village in Tamil Nadu, the movie, Lessons In Forgetting,
exposes how deeply the Indian system has been structured around the MAN and the
imprints of a sickening hierarchy. Latently present in every aspect of our
lives and infused most inconspicuously into our psyche, this movie simply
depicted everything that inflicts our society.
Cheers...!
