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Home is where the heart is…
When I was about three years old, I would refuse to eat a single meal unless my parents played Gitanjali. I watched it almost everyday until we left India, it was my first film, and it is why Mani Ratnam seems to have an especially close association to my memories of home. Watching his films, the pangs of missing are so strong I can feel them in the pit of my stomach, ropes pulling at my heart, and tears that well in my eyes. Every frame is a reminder of home, depicted with a mix of accuracy and nostalgia. It is not what Ratnam does, but what he doesn’t do. He doesn’t change India, he doesn’t cover her in glitter and glamour, nor does he search for melodrama. His lens captures her natural beauty, the rural villages, her people, her soul, drawing human drama from reality. His films radiate with a love for India that is incomprehensible. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and to me, there is no place on earth more beautiful than home. There are no people on earth more beautiful than at home. In all its colorful pieces, from the cold touch of temple marble to the old ladies chewing paan, India is home.
I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why I despise a majority of Bollywood films. Most Indians are fanatical about every hip shake on a foreign moutain. What is wrong with me? Am I not Indian enough to understand? They are beautiful looking films about beautiful looking people, by any measure. But they have no soul. They have no heart and lack an essential human element. My despise extends beyond Bollywood to most Telegu and Tollywood films I grew up watching. Overly violent, bloody, melodramas that can stir up powerful emotions, but again lack soul and a human connection. India has a handful of good directors that do not get the credit or recognition they deserve. Mani Ratnam is one of them. He has a unique ability to both satisfy Indian audiences and make a thought-provoking film, a feat very few can accomplish. The Bollywood machine churns out glamorous and extravagant films with super-star actresses and chiseled actors living in mansions. Bollywood has been looking to the west for so long that it has forgotten what India is. Ratnam has been successful making movies about Indian issues, that take place in rural areas, shot in India, with Indian actors that actually look like Indians. Kannathil Muthamittal is such a film and has instantly become one of my favorite Ratnam films, along with Gitanjali and Roja.
The story of Kannathil Muthamittal takes place between Sri Lanka and Madras. Shyama, a Sri Lankan woman played by Nandita Das, is forced to abandon her baby in an Indian refugee camp in Rameswaram due to civil war. Her husband disappears early in the marriage due to ties with the LTTE. A family in Madras adopts the baby girl, Amudha, who at the age of nine is told of her adoption. A confused child, she desperately seeks to see her real mother. The family travels through Sri Lanka in search of the girl’s mother. The separation of child from mother is an interesting theme in Indian cinema and literitature. India is the land of the mother, she provides us sustenance, food, water, and allows to earn a living. She has, in essence, lost two of her children to war and strife: Pakistan and Sri Lanka. A war in the north and a war in the south, it pains to see a country separated by fighting. No country is perfect and co-existence has proven to be the most difficult task for human beings. Drowning the truth in sugary celluloid, as most of Bollywood does, only ignores the existence of the problem. Ratnam acknowledges these feuds and still sees only the best in people, no matter their circumstances. There is abundant beauty in India, and there is good in people, even if it is buried under decades of hatred. Who needs the streets of Amsterdam or the Swiss Alps to sing of love? Just watch the sun set over the coconut trees on the banks of the Godavri or the fishermen drifting into the harbor in Cochin and you will understand the love of mother India that binds us together, as we are all her children.
While the civil war in Sri Lanka has recently reached it’s bitter end, one can only wonder how long peace lasts, it is our nature. Ratnam draws some fascinating themes from this story, along with interesting characters. The adoptive father is a Tamil writer who fights with words and not bullets. The family’s guide is a Sinhalese man who is almost killed by the LTTE. The adoptive mother is a fair-skinned TV news reporter, while the real mother and Amudha are dark-skinned: a point that is especially explored in the film. Amudha is a child born from violence, she is the hope of peace brought to and protected in India. She seems to have always felt like an outsider, more so once told of her adoption. As war rages on, her innocence slowly withers during her ventures through Sri Lanka. She meets all people in her path with an unbiased kindness only capable in a child. When an LTTE suicide bomber speaks with her in a park, she asks him why his Tamil is funny. He smirks at her innocence, but is captivated at her simple and perhaps ideal view of the world. Both skin color and the Tamil language serve as a way to bind the characters together but also as a way of discrimination. There are many other themes that Ratnam explores in Kannathil Muthamittal, much beyond the scope of this journal. Watching the film, one will understand how well Ratnam films work on two-levels: a seemingly simple drama to appease audience demands with complex and thought-provoking themes underlying it. Pay close attention to the music and lyrics, as they are never ordinary Bollywood junk, and Ratnam uses his songs for a very specific purpose.
This has been the year of learning in my life, the year of numerous self inquisitions. I have been walking around for years with a void in my chest, searching for something, anything, to fill it with. While somethings fixed it temporarily, the void has never been really filled. I realized that home is where the heart is, and I left my heart in India a long time ago. Since I first opened my eyes to the azure painted walls of a hospital room in Bangalore, to the brown skinned gazes of my family, I gave my heart away under the auspices of colorful incarnations of Vishnu. Now on the other side of the world, after a journey of wonderful sights and people, I find myself missing home. I may never be whole again until I go back, but it isn’t time yet. Until then, the images and characters of Mani Ratnam will suffice.
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T.S. Eliot.
“If you’re the kind of person looking for romance or escapism or some fantasy figure to save the day…guess what? You’ve got the wrong movie.”
During the graphic novel revolution of the 70s, Harvey Pekar wrote a series of graphic novels titled American Splendor. I knew nothing of him until this film, but he was a huge success in the underground comic book scene and changed the idea of hero comics. He thought of superhero comics as “phony bullshit,” so the novels were about his life, his everyday battles, illustrated by his friends. He was the hero of his story much like we are heroes of our own lives. The film translates his story on the big screen, resulting in a quirky and off-beat biopic.
If I had to describe Pekar’s personality, perfectly depicted by Paul Giamitta, it would be the bastard child of Debbie Downer. Cynic would be an understatement. At the mid-point of his life, divorced twice, alone, out of shape, and a dead-end file clerk job. An avid reader and collector, his loneliness eats away at him. His misery is so pungent that it’s humorous. Pekar had no reason to exist, or so it seemed. In a crisis of purpose, he yearned to leave his mark on the world. Something to be remembered by, a purpose to his vain existence.
A turning point in a man’s his life, when he wonders “how he got to be second rate,” and faces an overwhleming feeling of futility. A realization that you are one of billions of people, so what is your life worth? You didn’t get fame or fortune and didn’t find the love of your life. You didn’t accomplish your dreams, life didn’t pan out as you planned, and you’ll be forgetten as fast as the ink dries on your death certificate. You lived and died and the world didn’t even blink an eye. It’s a foreboding realization, powerful enough that it provoked Pekar to write American Splendor.
We are familiar with this story and character in films such as Synecdoche, NY and American Beauty. However, American Splendor presents them in simpler terms, without the drama of a cheerleading lolita or a psychedelically grand production of life. The film finds simple drama in everyday life. Like his novels, Pekar fights his ordinary life one day a time. His argument against superhero comics is similar to arguments against movies like Synecdoche, NY: why the phony intricate stories when “ordinary life is pretty complex stuff?”
American Splendor was refreshing in style, characters, and simplicity. Part narrative, part documentary, it presented an interesting perspective on life, through the eyes of a cynic. The film was no phony, nor were the characters. The fact that Pekar is a real person only increases my affinity for this film. It isn’t a film for everyone, often slow and untidy. However, it is uplifting in it’s own way, despite the introduction, and it’s comforting to know that all ended well for Harvey Pekar.
I don’t want to lose you…th…
Adventureland was a surprisingly good film. Contrary to the grossly misleading trailer, it’s not a campy Reaganized Superbad. Set in the late 80s, the film is a coming of age tale of summer love. Jesse Eisenberg naturally plays the awkward James, Bill Hader plays the hilarious park manager Bobby, and Kristen Stewart is mesmerizing. I debated whether or not to write about this one. It wasn’t a complicated film, but it sparked thinking, and nothing good ever comes from thinking. From devil’s workshop…
There is a breed of fantasy that can be dangerous. The worst Star Wars ever inflicted is a twisted ankle from light-saber training in your parent’s basement. Dangerous fantasy inflicts inside, in the form of regret and yearning. While this maybe a personal experience, films are nonetheless a powerful medium of expression. They can effect us in unimaginable ways.
Adventureland is that dangerous breed of fantasy, only sharpened by Stewart. Directed and written by Greg Mottola, director of Superbad, Adventureland is a serious and at times dark film. Moments of immaturity breakup an otherwise bitter story. The theme park is a familiar place for our generation; a protected bubble of friendships, relationships, and tomfoolery. The world outside the park is just as familiar; to us it seems dark, real, and painful.
The park closes and we must eventually leave. At first our assumptions are correct, but slowly and surely we find happiness outside, often in each other. The film captures a nostalgia for simpler times, harken back to frivolous youth and tornadoes of summer love. A whirlwind of confusion, anger, heartache, and joy that only a young heart can survive. The last summer love, in American Pie or Adventureland, is the terminal vestige of our youth. These films fulfill our guilty pleasure to relive.
Whether it’s 1987 or 2007, that summer will elude us for the rest of our lives. A ray of innocent and free-falling memory. Time stops. Dysfunctional peripheral vision. In awe of such energy and infatuation that even watching water boil is the most interesting thing in the world. Summer passes and the winds of change blow, fading leaves of memories fall and cover in snow. We grow up, we grow apart, and no matter how perfect it was, we learn that “nobody ever wins a big ass panda.”
You’re fired if they do.
