Ashok Mundhada

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I saw the 2012 Hollywood movie “Jack Reacher” yesterday. Starring Tom Cruise, the movie had received lukewarm response in the US but was a global success. I personally liked the movie. The beginning is spine chilling and the end is a typical Hollywood/ Bollywood action movie denouement. In between, you have enough drama & suspense to keep you glued. Based on Lee Child's 2005 novel “One Shot”, the motion picture has some interesting dialogues. Here is an example, “There are four types of people who join the military. For some, it's a family trade. Others are patriots, eager to serve. Next, you have those who just need a job. Then there's the kind who want a legal means of killing other people.” Now, this is what I have always believed & said. Of course, the fourth category will be in minority but the third category will have maximum population. I myself personally know at least half a dozen soldiers who joined army just because they needed a job & army was one of the many options they explored. That is why in a democratic republic the most important person is the common man/Individual rather than a soldier/ minister/ bureaucrat/ engineer. Towards the end, the movie takes a dig at the corruption prevailing in the construction industry in the name of development. “They build bridges no one needs. Highways no one uses. They're like a cancer. A cell that won't stop growing.”( Defense counselor Helen Rodin )

I watched an acclaimed 2007 Hollywood movie “THERE WILL BE BLOOD” yesterday. Starring the legendary actor Daniel Day-Lewis in lead role, the film depicts the meteoric rise & finally the fall of an American capitalist Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis). Set in the early decades of the 20th century, the film revolves around Daniel Plainview & his antagonist, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) who is a preacher & a faith healer. Daniel Plainview is depicted as a hardworking, risk taking, ambitious but ruthless person who strikes oil in his quest for silver. Plainview wants a California land that sits on an ocean of oil. Paul Sunday, Eli’s twin brother, leads Plainview to his father’s goat farm, smooth sailing until Paul’s younger brother, the preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), puts religion directly in Plainview’s path. The ensuing battle between the ignorant armies of greed and bogus evangelism powers the film. All praise to the baby-faced Dano for bringing sly cunning and unexpected ferocity to his character. Daniel adopts an infant, H.W., when the boy’s father dies in a well accident, working for him. The baby brings him as close as he ever comes to love. By the time H.W. is nine, Plainview is using him as a shill. Nothing like the illusion of family values to fool the suckers (general public). The ploy reminded me of the recent barrage of family based advertisements on the Indian electronic Media featuring the mother & the kid & appealing to the family safety/ sentiment. As he succeeds, Daniel becomes more & more ruthless, selfish & cynical. On the other hand, Eli, the self-proclaimed servant of God, is as ruthless, selfish & cynical as they come & makes Daniel hate the whole mankind even more. No movie in recent times has attacked organized religion’s hypocrisy more effectively. There can be no debate about Day-Lewis’s phenomenal performance with microscopic precision that won him an Oscar. His triumph is in taking us see ourselves in Plainview, no matter how much we want to turn away. His enemies are man and God and in the film’s final section, full of scorching brutality, Plainview takes his revenge on BOTH. His last words are a mix of satisfaction & jubilation: “I’m finished”! “God is a superstition!” Preacher Eli Sunday towards the end. Based on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel ‘Oil’, There Will Be Blood hits hard & leaves one dumbstruck. The movie was a financial success, but not a blockbuster.

I saw Martin Scorsese’s 2002 hit, “Gangs of New York” yesterday. The movie was nominated for as many as 9 Oscars; though it didn’t get any in the end (it did get 3 golden globe awards though). Based on true situation and mostly true characters, the violent film depicts NYC of the American civil war era when rival gangs having scant respect for the law, ruled the roost. The star-cast boasts of big names like Leonardo DiCaprio (as Amsterdam Vallon) & Cameron Diaz (as Jenny Everdeane) but it is Daniel Day-Lewis as gang leader Bill "The Butcher" Cutting in his roles as a crime boss and political kingmaker who steals the limelight & makes all others look like “also rans”. Jim Broadbent as Democratic party politician William "Boss" Tweed, proves that politicians across the globe belong to a unique league of their own, unscrupulous & corrupt to the core. “The appearance of law must be upheld, especially while it's being broken.”(Democrat William Tweed) The movie ends with the real-life New York Draft Riots of 1863 & its ruthless crushing by the federal forces under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln. It once again reminds you of the remarkable transformation of the United States from a fragmented, lawless society to a great secular, democratic, republic. [Concluding lines of the movie] Amsterdam Vallon: “And no matter what they did to build this city up again, for the rest of time, it will be like no-one even knew we were ever here.” True to his words, the last scene shows New York a 100 years later. As if all that the movie showed, never happened! Yet another chapter in history, gone with the wind!

I saw “Citizen Kane” the other day. Needless to say, I liked Orson Welles’s masterpiece on the life & times of Charles Foster Kane, a newspaper baron. The movie depicts the simplicity & happiness associated with our childhood & the complexity associated with our adulthood, marked by material pursuit, loneliness & a sad feeling of emptiness inside, in spite of apparently possessing everything. Young Charles Foster Kane has socialistic ideals that inevitably get drowned as he meets more & more people & starts feeling the urge for ‘Power’, to mould the society as per his whims & fancies, according to what he considers ‘right’. Unable to mould the people as per his wishes, overpowered by a growing sense of ‘I’ & ‘Me’, he starts collecting statues that stand still & can’t argue. The dictator (there is one inside everyone) in him comes to the fore when he tries to portray his lady love & second wife Susan as a new singing sensation using his wealth & newspaper empire but fails miserably. Unable to come to terms with his failures to mould the world as he sees it, he withdraws in to his farmhouse/castle ‘Xanadu’, built on 49000 acres of land in Florida, with Susan. Fed up with her loneliness & the whims of her husband, Susan finally walks out on Kane, turning him in to a virtual recluse. The controversial media baron dies in Xanadu, surrounded by his antique possessions (that only symbolize his loneliness rather than projecting him as connoisseur, he didn’t even bother to unpack many of his pride possessions!!), reminiscing about his childhood, the only period in his life when he really used to be happy! Winner of an Oscar, the film is considered to be among the best ever by most critics.