Never Let Me Go (2010)

Chitharanjan Das

This quiet and beautiful adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s science-fiction novel of the same name, shall forever count among those occasional cinematic classics that went largely unnoticed in the crowd of more mainstream offerings. The film is a sensory delight; soothing cinematography used on top of picturesque shots of the English countryside, in conjunction with violin and cello solos that serve to accentuate the particularly tragic moments. That apart, Never Let Me Go isn’t a very exciting movie; it does not hold back too many surprises, nor does it rely on spectacular special effects or CGI trickery, which we’ve come to associate with the science fiction genre.

“All of us will eventually meet our ends, without ever taking the time to really understand what we’ve lived through…”

Kathy, Tommy and Ruth are among many ‘special’ children growing up at the Hailsham boarding school, where their unfortunate fate is revealed to them at a very tender age by a concerned guardian. The children are clones being raised only for the purpose of donating their organs to support the life systems of normal human beings. After a maximum of four donations, the donor ‘completes’, reaching the end of her short life even before middle-age sets in. The largely impassive reaction of the children to this disturbing revelation is shocking, but representative of quiet submission to authority in an autocratic world.

The way in which the protagonists grapple with this heart-breaking reality for the rest of their lives forms the crux of the story, during the course of which their lives become permanently interwoven, courtesy a love-triangle. And love, once again finds its place as the single comforting element in a dystopic world. As a matter of fact, the movie makes a quiet comment on the expression of love and art as a means of living through emotionally trying times.

The only real secret that’s kept from the audiences, that of The Gallery, unleashes an overwhelming wave of tragedy as it unravels towards the end of the film, and in the process, extracts powerful performances from the lead actors. The actors deserve praise for imparting extremely human emotions to the clones, that serves to win over the sympathy of the audiences. Keira Knightley’s wiry frame adds an extra ounce of realism to the character she portrays in the later half of the film, that of the regretful, prematurely completing donor. Charlotte Rampling also does well to emphasize the cold and apathetic shades of ‘The Authority’ through her character Miss Emily.

The film presents an exaggerated view of the manner in which children around the world have to let go of their innocence before being thrown into the grind of everyday life, despite struggling to hold on. This also serves as an explanation for the title of both the movie and the book.

Never Let Me Go ends by drawing a chilling parallel between the short lives of clones and those of normal people. All of us will eventually meet our ends, without ever taking the time to really understand what we’ve lived through, and as a result will be left with the feeling of not having been given enough time to live.

Length  103 min
Stars  Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley
Director  Mark Romanek
Genre  Science Fiction, Drama, Romance

Skin deep society

 

Skin deep society

Nikhil Marathe

11th November 2010

Science fiction dystopias or comments about social order and personal behaviour is often a slightly exaggerated version of current society rather than mind-blowing new ideas. It serves as a watchdog for society’s intellectuals, highlighting possible future trends and how humans could destroy themselves.

A Clockwork Orange and Fight Club are introspective commentaries while Brazil and Fahrenheit 451 are more about society. The overarching theme is the meaning and limits of freedom.

Fight club is about a society obsessed with appearance. We see Edward deliberating over his apartment and furniture. Yet there is something missing in his life which leads to his insomnia. Palahniuk’s point about modern society is the sense of loneliness that is rampant. He asserts that capitalist society creates a world where possessions are given great value (Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.) while relationships are abhorred, workplace relationships are masked, meetings are highly formal and political correctness is above everything else. You are a cog in the giant capitalist machine. This lack of personal interaction breeds dissatisfaction and loneliness. Capitalism builds on this defect to create products and technology to fix that gap - no wonder that social sites like Facebook are so popular. In addition society looks down upon introverts, the constant message today is that parties and meetings and socialising is more important. Edward’s adventures and split personality are a result of his innate need to return to more visceral and basic needs. Tyler Durden says “What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women.” an assertion that society is trying to wipe out physical fights, raised voices and wars to become more civilized. But in that men are behaving against all evolutionary characteristics. Society is a cultural production machine which reifies and homogenises art of all forms, subsumes opposition, reflects the ideology of the incumbents, and perpetually maps out new physical and conceptual territories for conquest so that we can have an illusion of creativity and new interesting things while wallowing in unfreedom.

Where Fight Club is about physical and emotional lock down, Fahrenheit 451 takes an intellectual track. Censorship is after all a form of restricting personal freedom. Book bans happen because a certain section of society feels that it is morally wrong for people to read a book but enforces it on everyone, curbing the freedom of others. This detriment of personal knowledge and interpretations to follow social norms is taken to an extreme by banning all books in Fahrenheit. But it only expands on the current fear of criticism by society. Children who constantly read are referred to as nerds, outcasts, loners, and even weird. With such hostility aimed at those who do read, others simply do not wish to be the victim of such negativity. Children today are much happier being accepted by their peers than they are expanding their own literary prowess. Consequently, we have a declining literary vocation in our own society. The pinnacle of this declination is starkly presented in Bradbury’s novel. Television provides a medium to spread society and government approved content. In today’s society the media pushes various products on consumers as to increase their feelings of acceptance and equality. In Fahrenheit 451 one of the catalysts to the complete censorship of ideas is the demand of consumers to remove offensive products and ideas. The censorship is not just to protect people from insults but to censor thoughts and discussions. Meaningful discussions are frowned upon because anything meaningful is a threat to soceity where mediocrity is the norm. This aim for mediocrity is all around our society, where jobs are driven by money and not passion, where petty matters are more important than global threats because we are ensconced in protective illusions by our money and technology. So we classify people with limitless energy and creativity as people with ADHD and discourage bing too good at something. For example, a youth football league in Canada recently made a rule that any team which beats the other with more than 5 goals effecively loses the game! (for being too good).

A Clockwork Orange is the most outspoken film in its portrayal of violence and sexual abuse. But I believe that part of the reason for the great outcry it created, was that the leaders of social institutions were not comfortable with their truth being told to them so plainly, if in a exaggerated manner. Throughout the 1940s to 1960s social barriers were decreasing as religion loosened its hold and various laws like the ones banning abortion and homosexuality were repealed in Britain. A Clockwork Orange pushed the boundaries of permissible and proved that the old morality was going strong. There is nothing wrong with morality since it imposes certain social conventions which keep most people safe. What Burgess aimed for is to question if sciety should choose or should man have the free will to choose morality. To quote him

“Man is defined by his capacity to choose courses of moral action. If he chooses good, he must have the possibility of choosing evil instead. I was also saying that it is more acceptable for us to perform evil acts than to be conditioned into an ability only to perform what is socially acceptable.”

The film itself is the “books” of Fahrenheit since it was condemned by society for influencing people amorally. It showed a society where Pavlovian experimentation was used to impose morality. Rather than encouraging a sense of moral behaviour and choices from the very beginning, society was creating Clockwork Oranges. Such psychological conditioning is more appropriate for a totalitarian society since it comes as a cost to individual rights and dignities. Conditioning also cannot contend for all situations. Redemption is a complicated thing and change must be motivated from within rather than imposed from without if moral values are to be upheld.

Gilliam’s Brazil is a regimented society with ministries and departments. The ducts represent total dependence on the central government. Gilliam has mentioned that he has a distaste for authority and bureaucracy and all the additives that they breed. Even the architecture of the film evokes a highly complex system which is not manageable for one person. The air conditioning, the papers tubes and shared desks represent the aim for efficiency and control in capitalist society. This forces a reliance on others and a lack of freedom. It prevents someone from living outside of a system, however flawed it may be. Sam is in a constant battle with his environment, although most people seem to think it is good because they are not aware that they are trapped by modern conveniences. Sam’s effort to find freedom is visible in his dreams of flying, and of saving the lady – having control over his life.

In this manner all 4 works have attempted to make us see that going down the path of “for the greater good” by abolishing freedoms is not the right thing. This is what makes them influential rather than just creative landmarks.

Love as a counter to Dystopia

Nikhil Marathe, 200801011

20th August, 2010

Dystopic soceities are a mainstay of science fiction, owing to the various ways that they can be represented, people educated about its implications and the way it can be brought down.

Despite this, most science fiction dystopia's are not waste-lands. A dystopia is a perfect world, a utopia, according to its leaders and believers. It is only the reader, from his vantage point and existing social situation, who realizes the truth.

Love is almost always an enemy of dystopic societies and the societal structure ensures that love is beaten down at every step. For example, in Brave New World, there are no families, children are raised to hate certain classes and pregnancy is illegal. Instead sex is reduced to a trivial affair, where two parties indulge in it and go their separate ways. There are no permanent liaisons.

The reason love is denied are manifold. Dystopia requires a person to have dampened emotions since any emotion strong enough, threatens to lead the person to take drastic steps which affect the "illusion" of the dystopia. Since a dystopia is a totalitarian state with a ruling elite, but most of the population being "imprisoned", it is important to not let the illusion drop. Love is a very powerful emotion, and can often lead to action taken to safeguard that love. In the seminal dystopia's Brave New World and 1984, love is the reason the protagonist realizes the fallacy of his life and ends up questioning the ruling party.

Dystopia is also based on social equality and stratification. Social equality requires every person to live, eat and act the same. Yet, from generations of cultural references, love has acquired the need to be unique, that love is individual and special, and love requires some things to be done for no reason. This is a tragedy in a dystopic soceity, where productivity is of utmost importance, since the economy usually lies on a fine line. Love also breaks the social stratification which is necessary to keep soceity running smoothly. It breeds compassion among the different classes among the distrust which has been bred into the society about mingling with other classes. As long as certain people are not aware of what they are missing they will not question their life. But imagine the case where two people of a higher and lower class fall in love. Knowledge exchange happens and sows the seeds of discontent. In Metropolis, Freder and Maria's relationship begins the movement which leads to "head and hand coming together". In Blade Runner, Deckard's relationship with an illegal Replicant leads to problems for him.

A very important point in 1984 is the constant writing and rewriting of history. Love provides a powerful imperative to cherish the actual past, which causes inconsistencies with what the rules require a person to "remember". This facet of love also proves dangerous to a dystopia.

Love has led to the death of various dystopias in fiction. It was personal love in Metropolis, which led to Freder first crossing across social strata and then realizing the impostor Maria. In V for Vendetta (lightly based on 1984) it is V's love for humanity and freedom which causes him to attack dystopia. In the Matrix, it is free humanity's pride ( a form of love ) which causes them to continuously search for the One and free humans. Neo, who will break the Dystopic cycle is awakened from the dead by love.

So love comes in many forms and in every form it poses a threat to Dystopia which relies on everyone behaving according to rules and not according to emotions. Thus it is truly the antithesis of Dystopia.

Alien (1979) Movie Review [Spoiler Alert]

by Pavan Daxini

Ripley: Will you listen to me, Parker? Shut up!
Parker: Let’s hear it. Let’s hear it.
Ripley: It’s using the air shafts.
Parker: You don’t know that.
Ripley: That’s the only way. We’ll move in pairs. We’ll go step by step and cut off every bulkhead and every vent until we have it cornered. And then we’ll blow it the fuck out into space!

Set in an undated future, the 1979 science fiction Alien depicts the tale of a 7 member crew trapped with a barbarous Alien inside the commercial towing spaceship Nostromo. And it does it so in a most perturbing manner. The starkness of space, the gloomy atmosphere and the dark undertones all add up to a compelling movie experience.

Alien begins rather slowly, but it gains significant momentum in a few scenes. Nostromo, the commercial towing spaceship of the “Mother” Corporation, is set on its return course to Earth. Upon receiving a possible distress signal from an apparently desolate planet, the 7 member crew is woken up from their hibernation. The company policy forces them to investigate the source of the signal. Dannas, Lambart and Kane (3 of the crew members) bravely set out to investigate it. Surprisingly they find some remnants of an unoccupied spaceship on the hostile planet. Inside its chambers Kane comes into contact with some egg like objects. One of them burst open and an fibrous little creature throws itself at Kane.

Kane is taken into medical facility on the spaceship. After a while the creature disappears. Shortly it is found dead. Eh! No damage done. It’s almost too good to be true. Celebrations are in the air. The crew decides to throw Kane a grand dinner party. The normal dinnertime chit-chat is shortly interrupted. Kane starts choking and muzzling. Suddenly a creature spurts wide open from Kane’s chest, as if it were made of plastic, and evades into the more gloomier areas of the spaceship, leaving Kane dead as a rat. Shortly after Kane, it is Brett’s turn. All possible attempts of the remaining members of the crew to capture/kill this monster form the rest of the movie.
Director Ridley Scott’s well-honed talent of creating a dark/tensed environment only elevates the film to an entirely new level. In 1979 no technology existed for creating fancy computer generated images of the Alien. A lot of ‘manual’ effort had been put behind the very design of this creature. While a lot of parallel was drawn from real-world insects, a lot of things were derived from just fragments of pure imagination. That certainly contributes to the somewhat obscure ‘reality’ of the creature. Throughout the film a constant fear of an arcane entity is felt, which is successful in keeping the viewers on their toes.

Alien come with quite a handful of feminist intimations. (Maybe a first in a genre of Science Fiction?) It is one of the factors that make it ahead of its time.The simplest of them being the fact Ripley (a woman!) happens to be the only surviving character. In a rather controversial scene, she is shown in her mere underpants before she finally blows the Alien off into the space. A parallel to the old myth “The weakest of them shall defeat the death” could be drawn in reference to the particular scene. There might be other inferences too, but no tangible explanation has been provided by Mr. Scott in past 30 years since the release. Other intimations include the way Alien chooses Kane to conceive and latter give birth to its child. (By the way, Is the Alien male? Is it female? Or is from an altogether different gender? Again, no explanation is provided!). Even the preponderant corporation is named ‘Mother’.

Actually it is this Mother corporation that proves to be the main villain behind the misfortune of the Nostromo crew. Being a just another commercial ship, none of the crew members are sophisticated enough to handle the adversities of the mission. In fact Ash (the android planted between the unsuspecting members of the crew, in order to carry out direct orders given by ‘Mother’) imperturbably tells others when his identity is exposed

“I can’t lie to you about your chances, but…you have my sympathies. “

Ash has clear instructions that first mission priority is to bring Alien back home, while the crew is expendable. Ash argues that it is essential to bring Alien back to earth because ‘such a species has never been encountered with and they need to perform all kind of tests’. It seems a rather far-fetched logic and common sense doesn’t comply with it. (Is it worth the risks? Why send a commercial ship with unarmed crew?) As one of the crew member suspects, the Alien could be boon for military purposes. In such a case the future of whole humanity could be at stake. The underlined message is crystal clear; it would be the evil corporates’ money craving policies that would bring upon the Apocalypse (if ever) and not some random monster from outer space. It might even be much before we acquire technological prowess to manufacture giant spaceships traveling thousands of light-years. (Maybe is this the reason actual time-frame of the movie is never revealed?)

The name of spaceship Nostromo (derived from the famous 1904 novel Nostromo, by British novelist Joseph Conrad) means “our men” or “the third man” in Italian. It is interesting to know that there can be two interpretations of the term. Ash (the science officer) acts as a Nostromo for the Mother Corporation, while Ripely (the 3rd officer of the ship) could be the Nostromo for the rest of the crew-members.

In a movie which hugely rests on the performances, as there are no super-effects or fancy locations to keep the audience immersed, almost every actor does a solid job. Especially Sigourney Weaver is first rate portraying the role of Ripley. Set design (Ian Whittaker) is commendable. Background score (Jerry Goldsmith) attributes for most of the uneasiness felt throughout the film. The Cinematography (Derek Vanlint) is excellent for its time. The movie has a very strong visual feeling about it. The particular usage of light and shadows is remarkable. Especially in the scenes constituting the recovery of the lost alien, the foreign planet is captured magnificently by underexposed wide shots. On the flip-side the pacing could have been a little better, as several of the scenes add only to the length of the movie. Especially the long shots when one of the crew members searches empty halls trying to find a lost cat are very predictable. Many questions are left unanswered in the screenplay, leaving up to the viewer to have his/her own interpretations.

Overall Ridley Scott does manage to pull off an engaging as well as intelligent film which, as rightly said by many critics, happens to be much ahead of its time.

P.S. I almost forgot to mention. There is also a beautiful cat in the movie, what more can one ask for?

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) [Spoiler Alert]

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a title that does not hold back too much about the movie’s storyline. However, it does manage to conceal its heavily satirical undertones quite cleverly.

The credit roll is flashed against the picturesque backdrop of floating clouds. It is a vision of pleasant calm, though the speed at which the clouds move does indicate some sort of imminent danger. The opening scene of the movie is that of the protagonist Dr Miles Bennell involved in an animated exchange with a psychiatrist, trying to convince everyone around him of his sanity. The narration and flashback that ensues, constitutes the rest of the movie. The hero, attempting to warn people of some serious threat, and who is believed to be delirious by unsuspecting future victims of this threat, is arguably one of the most common threads of science fiction yarn.

Invasion beautifully captures a snapshot of the life and times of 50’s suburban America. It is a time when everyone knows everyone; a time when people drive around in neat cars and gas is cheap; a time when people can afford good clothes and big, beautiful houses. It is a time of great prosperity for middle class America, where everybody is going about their jobs without an inkling of regret or remorse. It’s a time of happiness; a time when people “want to love and be loved”, in the words of the heroine. Soon however, this land of joy and prosperity is faced with a threat; a threat that arrives in the form of alien seeds from the sky. And thus, the movie is set up in the classic rhetoric of an alien species posing a serious hazard to human life on earth.

Apart from being a strong way-of-life movie, it also explores a number of different themes, science-fictitious and otherwise. There is the concept of an invasion; the small suburb of Santa Mira being invaded by extra-terrestrial seeds being the case-in-point. These seeds thrive in their new environment, and slowly sprout into foaming, lettuce-shaped pods, which later develop human form by absorbing the traits and characteristics of an unsuspecting victim while s/he is sleeping. This leads one to the next major theme of the movie, that of emotions. The duplicated human form is somehow shown to replace the original almost entirely, except for the fact that it lacks emotions of any kind. This is portrayed as a major ethical problem, with Miles and his love interest Becky being shown debating with the aliens on the issue, in one of the scenes. Arguably the strongest of all emotions, love (the most popular emotion in Hollywood culture anyway) is juxtaposed, time and again, against the total absence of sentiment in the duplicated human species. In a situation such as the one shown in the motion picture, one of the worst developments is that you cannot trust anyone anymore. The gradual injection of paranoia into the lead characters is visible in a few scenes, when everyone from the telephone operator to the police officer to the local gas-man – people whom Miles used to wave hello to while walking past – could no longer be trusted.

Conformism and the consequences of non-conformism are immediately evident from the last few scenes of the movie. The state-of-affairs of the time at which the movie was made led to the general perception that it was intended as a cry against the tyranny of the McCarthy situation. The analogy between the spread of the alien species and that of the idea of communism is perhaps the most strikingly controversial aspect of the picture. Individualism, as opposed to totalitarianism is another obvious theme that the movie professes, not just in the way the lead characters refuse to be taken over by the alien species, but also in the manner that they handle (end) their respective married lives.

As a matter of personal opinion, I do believe the extra-terrestrial species should have been a little more sinister and novel in appearance. The movie could’ve used added imagination in this area -- seedpods are something that one sees everywhere, every day. There was a very evident and nagging lack of detail, especially when it came to the question of how exactly the pods took over the human form. The acting and screenplay gives one the feeling of reading the story straight out of a book at times. However, the fact that the makers of the film emerged with this sort of a classic with a small budget and without much use of technology, is quite commendable in itself. The background score is perfectly in accordance with the genre of the film, and a constant air of suspense and mystery occupies most of the scenes. After reading a reasonable bit about the American political situation in the 50’s, the satirical face of the movie begins to emerge and it’s not too difficult to believe that had the movie been edited in Technicolor, the title (especially the Body Snatchers bit) would have flashed on-screen in Communist Red, which is indeed the case with one of its posters.

Old Khichri

Is the Movie BLADERUNNER a tragic or even a pathetic meditation on the futility of human life.As Roy Batty states it:

'..
washed away like tears in the rain.'

Sebastian is aging faster than normal because of a glandular disease.

The Replicants are aging because of their programmes.

Death seems to limit, define and terminate all human endeavors.

Is there a 'lesson' to learn in this movie?

Is that the lesson?

And does anyone know where that white pigeon comes from?Sebastian?

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