Titanic's Art Will Go On (And On) |
25 years since its release, James Cameron's Titanic is still just as grand and glorious as it was at first sight, writes Joshua Muyiwa. |
GROWING UP in my grandparents' care in the Bangalore of the '90s, the world wasn't kept at arm's length from me. Instead, their attitude to most things was, 'it hasn't killed us yet, it won't kill you either'. But also, they were at that stage in their lives where I just became another thing to take along everywhere they went. My Nepali grandmother Dewaki is a full-on film freak; she'll watch anything from the trashy to the top-rated. And she'll have an opinion on all of it. From the beginning, I was her favourite movie-watching companion. Mostly because I actually liked her constant colourful commentary, never-ever complained about it, and the fact that (for a long time) my social calendar was entirely at her mercy. However, there were some movies — few and far between — that even she acknowledged had to be watched in total silence. Her compliance to this rule wasn't ever a submission to the spectators' shushing her at the cinema, but rather a result of being awestruck, swept up into the world of the film. Watching the James Cameron-directed, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet starrer Titanic at Urvashi Theatre was one such time. |
WHILE THESE sequences were still sublime, and clearly directed by a perfectionist, for me the movie always started — according to the time-stamp — at 20 minutes and 56 seconds in. A door opens. A white gloved hand reaches out to another gloved hand to step out of a car. The top shot of a giant purple hat embellished with an even bigger bow, worn on the slant. The reveal of the fresh-face and red lips of Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater. It is a 10-second shot. But that's the beginning of this film for me. I still had the air knocked out of me on each viewing, this week. Even a quarter of a century later, this film still hits all of the right spots, even the hard to reach ones. Each frame is fabulous and flawless, the story-telling is smart and solid, the acting is pitch perfect, the music could coax blood out of a stone. Everything blends together to create something awesome. And it still is. |
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The Dark Gospels Of Darren Aronofsky |
Aronofsky's filmography could well be considered a career-long reckoning with the unknowable (death, God) and the unattainable (immortality, perfection), writes Prahlad Srihari. |
THE TITLE of Darren Aronofsky's latest film The Whale is a triple entendre. First, it is a sly nod towards its housebound 600-pound protagonist Charlie (Brendan Fraser) whose depression and self-loathing have pushed him to eat himself into an early grave. Second, it is a reference to a student essay on Moby Dick whose passages Charlie reads aloud to calm himself. Third, it alludes to Jonah's fate in the Old Testament: grief is swallowing Charlie whole and the apartment he confines himself to starts to feel like the belly of a beast. Outside the window, rains lash down relentlessly, divining the arrival of an allegorical flood like something out of Genesis. The films of Aronofsky have always been awash in a sea of Judeo-Christian imagery and allegory. In a career spanning 25 years, the American writer-director has built a body of work around self-destructive protagonists who find themselves trapped in a conflict between their delusions and reality, their faith and reason. Faith, be it in God or self, is forever being questioned and challenged. Mathematicians, junkies, wrestlers, ballerinas and shut-ins are driven to the edge of sanity by their singular obsessions (perfection, drugs, omniscience, immortality). Aronofsky treats his characters as martyrs grasping for redemption, attempting to defy their fate and the will of God itself. Redemption doesn't come easy. Some get closer than others. In the so-close-yet-so-far futility of it all, we come to feel in concert a deep sense of their despair. |
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