Caligula - Tinto Brass

Year : 1978

Country : Italy/USA

The original screenplay for Caligula was written by the novelist Gore Vidal with assistance from the Italian filmaker Roberto Rossellini.Their intention was to create a historical drama on a modest budget.However when finding financial backing for their film became a problem,they turned to media mogul and Penthouse magazine founder Bob Guccione.Guccione agreed to finance the project on two conditions:

1.That the film would be transformed into a flamboyant, luxurious spectacle akin to Hollywood's sword and sandal epics of the 1950s and 1960s like Ben Hur and Spartacus;

2.and that sex would be added to the script in order to promote Guccione's magazine i.e Penthouse. Both Vidal and Rossellini agreed and the Caligula project was launched.

Later on Gore Vidal was sacked by Guccione after he objected to the way the film was turning out and subsequently even Tinto Brass,the director was sacked,so that the film was hijacked completely by Bob Guccione,the founder of the Penthouse magazine. He ordered 6 minutes of hardcore sex to be added during post production featuring his Penthouse models for promotional purposes.
After it's completion ,virtually every big name associated with the film made an effort to distance themselves from it. Author Gore Vidal actually sued (with mixed results) to have his name removed from the film, and when the stars saw the film their reactions varied from loudly voiced disgust to strategic silence. What they wanted, of course, was for it to go away.Director Tinto Brass too launched a protest campaign against the film when he saw the final product.for what he saw was certainly not what he had wanted it to become.

I have nothing against sex on screen, or nudity , incest or extreme violence on screen or just about anything else on screen, as long as it all comes together and makes a good film.
Caligula seems like a kitschy mix of a pantomime,a broadway musical,a David Lynch like surrealistic piece and a historical epic.Viewer opinions will of course vary about the film.Some will like it others won't but some things that most people will agree about are:

1.The dialogue is corny, the history is poorly told and the transitions from scene to scene feel disjointed and out of place.

2.The sets were pretty nasty and poorly done.Cheap and trashy. Instead of conveying a period feel, they screamed "we just threw this together in a few minutes".The costumes looked like they'd been bought from the general store across the street,despite the fact that this was the most expensive film of it's time.

Now coming to the historical aspect of the film,it is very much true that Caius Caligula was a madman and a tyrant.but his excesses were certainly no worse than those of his predecessors or successors.the film focuses completely on these maniacal monstrosities perpetrated by Caligula and overlooks these important historical facts:

1.That caligula went "mad" only after hs mysterious illness during the second year of his reign and that prior to this he was a moderate ruler who is credited with the invasion and annexation of mauritania to the roman empire besides making attempts to expand roman control over brittanica.he is also known for initiating a few reforms which were completed duing the reigns of his successors.this is more than what many a glorious monarch in history can be credited with.

2.Caesonia portrayed by helen mirren is presented as caligula's wife along with drusilla his sister. caligula married caesonia long after the death of his sister.

Caligula as a film has it's moments.it is a cinematic milestone of sorts which must be watched by every cinephile and form their own opinions about it.But it could most certainly have ended up as a much better film had the producer not decided to fire the scriptwriter and the director and turn the film into a promotional vehicle for a porn magazine.

La Vie De Jesus - Bruno Dumont

Year : 1997

Country : France


The first thing you notice about the film is the scenery.It's beautiful.Long,slow takes of lush green rolling fields and meadows and a beaten dirt track running through them.The setting is a small nondescript French town on the Belgian border.

Freddie is a young man who hangs out with his bunch of friends who are all unemployed and have nothing to do except ride around on their bikes.The film is stark and there isn't much dialogue.And that's probably because the people don't really have much to talk about. They all seem trapped in their lives. In a way this is a film about the sheer painful ennui of existence in a small town.
The camera often focuses on Freddy and he always has a distant look on his face looking away into the distance and you wonder what he's thinking?He's epileptic and unemployed and maybe wants to get away from his mundane existence but probably isn't smart enough to express it in words.

And then the other thing you notice about the film is the impending sense of doom. You know this isn't a feel good film and as the tension starts to build you know it's going to explode in violence.It makes you squirm.And yet when the end does come it isn't as bad as it could have been. The director spares you the horror of a brutal murder.It would simply have been too much take.

The film crawls along at slow pace as we absorb the lives of Freddy and his gang and suddenly the monotony gets brutally shaken up by a couple of explicit sex scenes which,after the lulling pace of the narrative suddenly jar you back into attention.

This is a beautiful film that will leave you disturbed.Bruno Dumont has captured his characters with a lot of depth even though, surprisingly ,none of the actors is a professional.

pulijanmam - winner of the national award

malayalam film maker priyanandanan's film 'pulijanmam' won the best film award at the 54th national film awards. this is his 2nd film. his previous film 'neythukaran' won the national award for best actor. a great achievement that has gone largely unnoticed , even by the miniscule cinephile community in the country. there was virtually no media coverage , which was very surprising , given all the brainless trash the national media busies itself in peddling in the absence of any real news to report. for 'pulijanmam' the recognition only managed to carry it from obscurity to oblivion. if virtually no one in the country had seen it before it got the award , then maybe a handful of jury members and a few others in their circles got to watch it after.for the rest , it doesnt even exist. this is disappointing. more than that,it's heart breaking. there is an increasing cinema consciousness among the middle class which hitherto recognised hollywood as the frontier of cinematic adventure. the names of akira kurosawa and ingmar bergman are becoming known.the works of david lynch and pedro almodovar are being sought. then why this apathy towards our own cine masters?the oscars and the cannes and the venice film festivals will all create a good amount of buzz but the greatest celebration of the finest in indian cinema passes by unheralded and unnoticed. the reason is not too difficult to fathom. like all arts, the cinematic sphere too is populated by a thick layer of snobbery. too many connoisseurs, but only a handful that see the beauty behind the form.simply put , a malayalam film doesnt seem as cool or as chic as say a french new wave. priyananwhatsisname doesnt sound as as fancy as andrei tarkovsky.
at the heart of it all is the age old colonial mindset , our ancient inferiority complex. our subconscious , but firm belief that all things foreign are superior to all things indian. a very sorry state of affairs. as a lover an admirer of cinema, one can only hope that the makers of 'pulijanmam' make the film available on the web so that it may reach a wider audience and garner the appreciation that is its due.

has abdul subhan qureshi , better known as tauqeer, become the ned kelly of india? or more aptly , doesnt he resemble a jason bourne or some other dapper spy hero from a robert ludlum thriller? this guy hacks unsecured computer networks to send terror emails , knows how to make bombs and plant them and most importantly , knows how to play the cat and mouse game with not just the cops, but the entire might of the indian state!the home minister has egg all over his face and it wouldnt be surprising to know that he has the RAW , the IB , the military intelligence and who knows even the CIA hot on this man's trail. tauqeer is typical of the new face of terrorism that has surfaced post 9/11 - he's smart , highly educated , urbane and a tech wizard to boot. the encounter with the delhi police yesterday may have had an undesirable and a wholly unforeseen fallout - the creation of a legend.tauqeer's exploits so far are , no doubt ,remarkable. a well educated boy from a well to do family from a big city throws away a comfortable life and hits the road that leads to nowhere , with full awareness of his actions and its consequences.must've taken a lot of soul searching. for he wasnt a poor oppressed peasant left with no option but to rebel against the system like many outlaws of yore or a hungry man taken to banditry to feed himself , like the infamous dacoits. this was a man who had pretty much everything that is there to be had and yet he desires none of it. there can be no doubt that tauqeer knew that if he chose the path that he eventually did , he would be labelled a terrorist. that the rest of his life would be very short and that most of it would be spent running away from the law and the end , when it came, would be brutal. he must've known that once he takes the plunge , there shall be no rest for him, that every moment, whether awake or asleep he would have to strain his ears and watch his back. he must've had a fair enough idea what life would be like being a hunted man. and yet he decided to become a terrorist. imagine what it must be like to tell yourself "i'm going to become a terrorist".
tauqeer certainly must've won a few admirers among the general public with his cheeky yet astutely managed attack on the indian state. but with his daring escapade yesterday , i'm sure , he has won more than a few followers. young , impressionable minds who are going to look upto him as a hero. and if he manages to pull off a few more of such audacious stunts or even if he simply continues to evade capture , i'm afraid the hero might end up becoming a legend.
it won't be long before parallels begin to be drawn with che guevara - the legendary argentinian revolutionary who gave up his career as a doctor to become a flag bearer for communism and revolutions all over the world. guevara won cuba for fidel castro and was offered a high post there. but he spurned it and instead went to africa to fight there with the revolutionaries in congo. he was a restless soul and died fighting in bolivia in south america a few years later.
tauqeer aint no guevara. he is a dastardly coward who kills innocent people. and he deserves to be hanged for it. but let's not create any martyrs here.

why do people blog . and more importantly , why do people read blogs. isnt there already an abundance , or rather , an excess of stuff to read. don't people have books to read anymore? celebrity blogs are justifiable. the chance of geting a peek into the minds of famous people might seem irresistible to some. but what about all the rest of stuff floating out there on the web. blogging some say is cathartic. though some like me find it a real pain in the ass. too much of a strain on the already meagre mental and creative resources. so some people just vomit the contents of their heads on a blog pretty much like we used to keep diaries in the days of old.
it's hard to escape it. blogs are everywhere. and when some fad reaches such astounding levels of popularity so as to become a phenomenon , technophobes must once again gather all their energies and direct them , however unsuccessfully, towards attempting to catch up . like the fat boys at the end of the pack huffing and puffing on their rickety legs to catch up. and they've just been told that they gotta run another mile.
life was good before the internet. you could spend all your time reading books or listen to some good classic rock on all india radio and if it really came to that , even watch some tv.well times change. and laggards must struggle to catch up.
going by the mindboggling number of blogs on the internet it's hard not be amazed at this sudden deluge of creativity. never knew there were so many writers around . and so many readers as well.
whatever happened to the age old recreational pastime of reading a good book.if blogs are all that people are interested in reading then we might as well begin composing a requiem for the ' book'.