Movies I love : Mononoke Hime ( Princess Mononoke)

For a long time I have been wanting to write something about Hayao Miyazaki's wonderful Anime movies. But the fear of not being able to do justice to the material used to keep me from writing , but nevertheless here is an attempt - however lame it is, had to be done !

Mononoke Hime /Princess Mononoke (Japan 1997) , Dir : Hayao Miyazaki

This is a tale set in ancient Japan where forests still loomed large and was populated with large hordes of animals and birds. With forest spirits and animal Gods still dwelling there was a harmony between men and beasts. However industrial era was coming and with it men were getting stronger and bolder and were expanding like never before, destroying forests, setting up forges and factories and making metal. Thus setting up a conflict with forest and its dwellers.

The story begins with young prince Astaka of an eastern tribe who spots a strange foul creature moving through forest about to attack his village settlement . He bravely pursues the creature which turns out to be a demon-Boar God filled with wrath and hatred towards human race . He somehow manages to subdue the creature but his arm gets infected through contact with demon-God. He is told that to save himself from fully getting infected he has to travel west from where this demon God came and find out what drove the Boar God into becoming a demon filled with hatred and wrath and find a way to life the curse.

As Ashtaka travels across the kingdom on his steed ( a mountain elk ) he comes across wars and injustice / bandits and finds that his cursed arm can make him kill people effortlessly when they cross paths with him. As travels further he saves a few men from drowning , they are part a settlement on the verge of forest. This settlement is led by brave Lady Eboshi who has a troop of female warriors/bodygaurds , she has reclaimed some part of forest land had driven away lot of animals. She represents industrialization , equipped with ever improving technology her folk have set up a metal forge where they make weapons and tools but their biggest secret tool is gun. With help of lighter and more efficient guns , Lady Eboshi and her band of followers are now able to expand even further and claim more lands and achieve much more prosperity than they could ever dream of , but she has lot of rivals to contend with human and animal. Leading the attack on Eboshi and her men is Wolf Godess from across the river along with her two sons and an adopted daughter (a human girl) - San -who is Mononoke Hime to the villagers. San leads the wolves on multiple futile attacks on the human settlement as tensions keep mounting between humans and the animals.

But what sets Miyazaki's tale apart from all other representations of human-nature conflict is the way he sets up the confrontations by showing us the true nature of all participants , no one is entirely wrong/evil , they all have reasons for doing what they are doing. Lady Eboshi even though she is leading the drive against nature is not shown to be someone who is purely evil. She works for upliftment of women , to give them the status they deserve in society . In Lady Eboshi's township women work in the factory and have upper hand over men and they worship her and are willing to lay down their life for her. She also rehabilitates people cast away by society like lepers , by giving them shelter and work and helping them integrate and be part of the movement. This is what sets this story apart from similar stories in this genre like James Cameron's recent movie Avatar which had evil , greedy humans plundering a planet . Here all characters have sufficient motivations to do what they have to and no one is purely evil.

Ashtaka lands up in the middle of this conflict , but quickly realizes what is going on and tries in vain to stop the both parties. As Lady Eboshi and men from Emperor's army decide to team up to behead the Deer God , the ruler of the forest - a life giver - in order to completely end the era of forest Gods and start the era of men and machines , on the other side wild boars decide to fight the humans to death to prevent any further damage to forest . Now Ashtaka must team up with San (Mononoke Hime) and her wolf tribe to try and save the Deer God to maintain the delicate balance that exists between nature and its inhabitants.

Like most Miyazki movies the visuals (most of it hand-drawn) are enthralling , the colours , landscape and the sheer imagination take it to a whole new level . This is an epic movie , with sweeping landscapes , lush green forests with brilliantly imagined forest spirits , the battles between rampaging animals and humans is very well captured. This movie takes forward the constant pacifist theme in most Miyzaki movies along with message for living harmoniously with nature , this is truly one of the best efforts from the legendary animator.

Books I read - Nov/Dec

Just happened to read these two books which tread on the same territory - Afterlife . They almost validate Prof Dumbledore's line from Harry Potter-6 "To the well organised mind , death is but the next great adventure"

"The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold

Had heard a lot about this a while back and wanted to pick this up and read ... there was even a movie recently based on this book ... that reminded me to get this one . But the theme somehow put me off after buying the book and took a lot of effort to finally get started. However once I started it was a pretty neat read especially because of unique plot device - narration by a dead central character. This is story of Susie Salmon, a young girl who gets gruesomely raped and murdered in her neighborhood and her body is disposed off where no one can find her. The story is narrated by her spirit watching over her parents , school friends , neighbors and also her killer over a period of time . Susie Salmon watches her family/friends slowly come to grips with reality that their missing daughter/friend may never come back again . As Susie watches from above the once picture perfect family struggles to recover from the loss and move in different directions affecting each others lives and bonds of family get stretched. Its about relationships and coping with loss and its also about love and its power to heal wounds. Everyone affected by this loss deals with it in their own way , but in someway or other they heal and get back.

Young Susie is not sad or bitter but hopeful and optimistic and eager to know how people are doing and progressing in life and wishes they all move on , even though she herself will never be able to experience things people down below are experiencing. Inspite of a little surprising and a tad romantic ending this was a nice read. A significant departure from the kind of books I usually read , but this was worth it !

"Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger

I picked this one up as I had simply loved this author's previous book "The Time Traveller's Wife" which was a great read as was a about a character which took on the concept of time. Here once again Niffenegger is on similar territory as concept of life and death is re-examined/challenged this time.

Valentine and Julia Poole are 20 year old symmetric twins , they are identical and are in fact mirror images of each other .They suddenly inherit a big house in England overlooking Highland Cemetery from their recently deceased Aunt Elspeth who is buried in the same cemetery. But the condition for twins getting the house is that they should live for 1 year in the house and their mother (Aunt Elspeth's identical twin sister) and their father should not set foot in the house. As twins move from US to Britain , they enter a world of mysteries and dark secrets.They also meet a few eccentric neighbors including the enigmatic Robert who is working on his thesis on Highland cemetery and also happens to be their late Aunt's young lover. As one twin falls for Robert against the wishes of the other , cracks start appearing between the 'perfect' symmetric twins . In addition to all this Elspeth manages to return as ghost to her house and makes contact with her nieces . There is a delightful subplot involving another neighbor - Martin , who sets crossword puzzles for newspaper but whose life itself is a puzzle as he suffers from OCD and cannot leave his house and hence struggles to get in touch with world outside the house where the love of his life resides . Meanwhile Elspeth's ghost also goes through the same problem as she is bound to the house where the twins nows reside while she desires to move on and get close to Robert , who was the love of her life .Overall it seems a good place to lose one's mind and thats exactly what happens . What unravels is a shocking tale of love turning into obsession and degenerating into madness as the boundaries between life and death blur. The Highland Cemetery provides a great setting for this nice ghost story and it is described very well and almost feels like a character in the plot !

Social TV ?

A couple of days back 2 friends of mine called me up at night and started drunken rambling ... conversation was fun and secrets came out tumbling. In between all that fun , friend A was apparently trying to change the channel on TV and was not having any luck and started cursing and abusing the remote control. Then I heard a lot of laughter coming from friend B, who informed me that friend A was so wasted that he was trying to change the TV channel with his cellphone !!!

Now what if mobile phone ( read smartphone ) could actually act as remote ? TV viewing has changed a lot ... these days many a time I switch on the TV after being told to do so by friends. I usually get a lot of SMSes / phone calls from friends alerting me about something interesting on TV - mostly sporting events, occassionally some reality programs also - we watch the show/event and then SMS each other or call and discuss what happened.

Sometimes watching and sharing things with friends makes it a much superior viewing experience, these are the guys I used to watch these matches together sometime in life.... now what if we could connect better while watching ....

Yesterday there was this wonderful tennis match in ATP World tour final event , this was semi-final between Nadal and Murray and the match swung between both players , I watched it for a while told a few friends about the wonderful match and then switched off the TV after a while when I was sure Nadal was gonna win . I got a call from a friend telling me that match was still on and had this time Murray was leading. I subsequently texted a few other friends the scoreline. In fact I was in touch 6 friends during the match at 11 pm ... this was a non-grand slam tennis match .... during cricket matches ( esp major events ) the people you are in touch with are much higher.

I guess if my TV remote was on my cellphone and I could tell my friends about this really good tennis match going on this particular channel with match being interestingly poised ( perhaps an update on the score-line and why should tune in ) , then it would be really cool

Searched online for more on this and found this piece on Technology review website

Though they are talking about making TV remote a smart remote , though I would prefer doing away with it and having Mobile phone do the same task.

So efforts are actually on to make watching television something that viewers in different places can share and discuss. It wont be too far when your social network and television meet. That means my friend - who is a smart and successful Manager when sober - was not all that wrong when he tried to change channels with his smartphone , only problem was that he was a little ahead of time !

Books I read - Sep/Oct

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen - by Paul Torday

This is a brilliant political satire about a ludicrous idea of a sheik from Middle East to introduce Salmon fishing as a sport in the wadis of his desert nation. When international politics , government departments , inept bureaucrats and even British prime minister's office get on board the insanity reaches epic proportions and a dazed fisheries scientist finds himself in the middle of this ! This delightful novel pokes fun at British society , TV/news , the spin-meisters and politicians superbly.

Book begins with this idea of a Middle east billionaire to introduce salmon fishing in his country and interestingly uses letters and office memos , diary entries , report from House of commons , interrogation tapes and hilariously even intercepted Al Qaeda mails being used to move the story forward. The idea which began through correspondence through letters (and internal memos) from a firm representing the Sheik and fisheries dept and this scientist moves forward quickly and reaches the highest office in the country and the ridiculous idea catches the fancy of a few and becomes an order from dept and project of huge national importance ! The Sheik and the scientist bond well and he starts admiring and respecting the sheik and his vision and the idea actually seems to take off and the entire team starts "believing" Sheik's vision until absurdities of life catch up in the end. This is a really wonderful read. Somewhere along the line there is a lesson for some real world nations who too believe in such improbable ideas !

Ps : There is a movie being made on this book

A Short History of tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka

I picked up this book because of the title , the book is again a humorous account of how life changes for a middle aged Ukrainian immigrant in Britain when her mother dies and her extremely old father decides to marry a young Ukrainian woman who is clearly marrying only for her father's money and to get citizenship. The daughters plot and plan and fight to save the old man from clutches of "the evil painted Russian tart" and in process try to discover a family bond which never seemed to have existed. The story is narrated in a very light tone , but it does touch a lot of real serious stuff about relationships , loneliness , ageing , sibling rivalry , life in the communist nations , World war 2 , the hardships faced by these immigrants before and in UK. The title comes from the book this old father is writing about innovation in farm equipment and machinery in Ukraine , he notes how innovation which could have helped cultivate the world and create food got changed into wrong direction. Instead of tractors the focus moved to machines for war like tanks and instead of machines which tilled , machines which killed were created.

Happy Diwali folks !

India is shining this Diwali, economy is doing well, country is rapidly progressing, the sensex is trading at 21k and so on ... Even if you leave these indicators aside, overall there is a considerable improvement in standards of living, along with it the kind of celebrations during festivals have also become much grander. From the time I remember, Diwali/Deepavali used to be celebrated with people getting attired in new clothes, decorating their homes, getting together with family along with lot of sweets and lot of fireworks. When we were young the fireworks were the highlight, there were lot of safety concerns those days, perhaps all that made it more appealing and thrilling with that hint of danger involved !

In 80s and early 90s, the amount of crackers and other items were limited due to budgetary restrictions; But gradually as standards of living went up the ability to splurge on big festivals also went up and the amount of money spent on firecrackers, the options available and noise generated have also gone up quite a lot. Until a few years back, I have heard people mention with pride in Tamil Nadu, the amount of money they spent on buying crackers and other fireworks. This used to be some kind of indicator of social status , the louder and more colourful and longer your firecracker orgy, the more ahead you were in society or something on those lines !!!

I wonder how firecrackers, 'flowerpots' etc got included as part of celebration. My guess is that since this is a celebration of dispelling darkness and vanquishing the enemy, crackers are perhaps able to symbolize this well with the visual effect as well as the sound effect.

I live in a neighborhood which is dotted with so many high-rise flats where Diwali was celebrated with lots of crackers and firework display this year . I started writing this after seeing a few birds which had curled up in a corner in my balcony while the crackers were creating a huge din outside. Normally when I open the balcony door and step out these pigeons,if they were around fly away immediately, yesterday night i saw them cowering in a corner and then understood why !

While we celebrate we trouble so many of these innocent birds and animals who get so disturbed by the unnatural flashes of light and loud noises which totally scare and confuse them.

Fire-crackers may work symbolically and I do admit I enjoyed it when I was a kid, but the cons far outweigh whatever pros they offer . Kids these days have so many avenues for fun anyways ! Air and noise pollution affect everyone, especially the most vulnerable sections - Children and senior citizens and of course animals and birds in the area.

Thankfully more and more people are moving away from firecrackers of late . Govt also is enforcing rules more strictly. Today morning in my daily newspaper in the front page between various Ads for electronic goods and real estate projects managed to find a news item which mentioned that the level of noise pollution (due to fire-crackers ) during Diwali this year have been lower than last year. Hope the trend continues and we all realize that there are better ways to celebrate the festival of lights and prosperity and to spread joy and celebrate it with near and dear ones !

Indian retail comes of age !

When we were kids we were taken for a short 1 day or mostly half a day trips/picnics in school bus , one class at a time to some place inside the city. Aim was to have an outing and give kids a chance to learn and experience things outside their classrooms and books , the places you were taken to used to depend on how old you were. I remember going to see factories which had big machines , centers of science research , planetarium , parks , zoo , museums etc ( depending on what was available in the area). As you grew older , longer outings were planned for a few days with visits to some good holiday spot or a big city , but all these visits had at least one 'industrial visit' as part of the tour to ensure that parents are convinced that kids not only have fun , but also 'learn' something !

Last week , I had visited Bangalore and had to get a few essential household items , so decided to go to a Big Bazaar outlet nearby. This wasn't such a big outlet , it did have ground floor and first floor but this was by far the smallest store i have seen of the retail chain. Guess they have a store every few kms in B'lore . Now as we were entering , my mom and I noticed a long line of young students wearing blue and white uniform with a badge which proclaimed that they were from a school nearby gathering patiently outside the store ; We went in and saw a couple of teachers talking to someone inside the store. We were doing our shopping when we noticed the students entering slowly in a single file ,with teacher in tow constantly reminding them to be quiet and only to look and not touch what is on display. They went slowly through almost all aisles on both floors and were stopped once a while by teachers who kept explaining something And within 15-20 min they had covered the store and slowly moved out. The kids were apparently made 'aware' of super markets , how various items were stocked and got to observe how 'buying and selling' happened in markets !

Guess Indian retail industry really has come of age if 8 year olds are taken to educative field trips in middle class shopping centers ! Big Bazaar has joined the factories , reservoirs , museums as place to observe and learn for kids !!! This is probably a good indicator of how we have changed as a society , i remember things didn't look very rosy initially for organized retail , but slowly but steadily it has surely caught on with Indian middle class !

Enthiran - an experience !

Rajni movies have long ceased to be just a 'movie' .... its an event , almost like a festival in TN. This time whole national media seem to have woken up to it and have covered it in excruciating detail , so there is nothing more to be said on that front !

Context is everything , even in movies getting a perspective of where the movie is set and the reasons why it is made / who the movie is addressing helps in a little in appreciating the movie IMO. Rajni movies follow a certain story arc , contain a few staple items which make the day for die-hard fans , pack a little extra for normal viewers also and the sheer screen presence of the man takes care of the rest. There is always less logic and more magic . These movies are a showcase for the biggest star in the country and little else. So when he teamed with a good big-budget movie maker like Shankar last time , i felt we might get something more than a usual Rajni movie . We didnt , we did get a good value for money masala movie showcasing Rajni well , but this time they have made amends and how !

There are two kinds of science fiction in the world of cinema , really classy ones which are more concerned with the ideas and impact of these on the world and explore them and then there is the more commercial twin of sci-fi movies , the ones which use sci-fi as one the key plot devices but are basically entertainers , these are sci-fi movies made for masses. Enthiran is a very well made sci-fi mass movie . The movie is a story of a humanoid-android trying to fit in in to society , explored how emotions are the what distinguishes us from them and what could happen if that is changed unleashing sociological complications and unleashing of a Frankenstein like monster ! But this sci-fi drama has been embellished with enough masala content , situated in a good vs evil drama populated with some classic tamil movie characters in 'good' and 'noble' hearted hero and his lady love ( Aishwarya looking really awesome ) and with the brilliant as usual music by ARR unfurled on screen in usual Shankar fashion with most exotic locations and brilliant explosion of color

Shankar the director has delivered this time , setting up the canvas by staying true to sci-fi story and breaking technology down for masses. The Pros and Cons of Robots / Androids devoid of emotion are put across well and the special effects are the best ever for any Indian movie and is close to Hollywood standard !

Again the movie is what it is only because of one man , the superstar who appears in 3 roles in the movie. The good scientist who creates the robot intending it a machine which will save huma lives , the Robot Chitti played neatly Rajni which moves from machine to almost human ( neatly done ! ) and finally the best of the lot - the evil robot played brilliantly by Rajni. He seemed to have lapped up the chance to finally unleash some meanness and everything from the look to the famous 'walk' and the climatic showdown (aided hugely by brilliant conceived by Special effects ) make it a great performance. The movie is a great showcase for him and he is simply outstanding and shines in every frame he is in. Aishwarya looks great and does what is needed from heroine in Rajni movie !

The roles of villian (Danny) and comedians (Santhanam and Karunas) are wasted as Rajni did both with ease . Minor quibbles involve the length of the movie overall , could have been 15-20 minute shorter . I know im nit-picking but I wish they could remove a few songs as they seemed to be hampering the flow rather than adding any value. "Kilimanjaro" song was a good brilliantly shot but i felt it wasnt helping the story at all ! Also the fight sequences , though well executed seemed to drag a bit too long . Shankar seems to have done a bit of self reference with mention of a song in Jeans to describe Aishwarya Rai's beauty and reference to Mudhalvan slipped in ! But overall good stuff easily outweigh the bad and makes it a really good watch. I simply loved a few lines like 'nakkal - nickel ' and also that scene during a fight in first half when Robot-Rajni becomes magnetic and pulls all metal and becomes a God !

All in all a great entertainer , the Indian Avatar if you will ! 160 cr is a lot of money , I dont know how easy it will be to replicate such movies , but if this movie works ( it should ) then we can hope for more sci-fi movies and other high tech movies which will push the envelope and tell more entertaining and visually amazing stories. The economics of movie business has changed of late with new markets abroad and higher prices from multiplexes and release across the world - this movie is supposedly released at 2000 theaters world wide. Still the budget is really big for an Indian movie esp regional movie , very few stars have the power to pull off something like this and carry it through. Only way for such movies to work is to make it the way this one is made with something for classes and for the masses .This one was totally worth every rupee spent by the makers and more than worth the ticket price for audience . Can Ra.One and others do the same ? Lets hope it happens and we get more such entertainment spectacles.