The vastly mysterious thing – the human mind. Thousands and thousands or should I say billions of people from the start of human race have tried to explore the length, width and depth of the human mind. The human mind is a something like an elephant in the story of “the elephant and five blind men”. Everyone who tries discovers a new dimensions of it. One of the most interesting and historically most influential part of human mind and its working is the human relationships. This single element has caused the rise of entire civilizations and destruction of those same civilizations. It was ought to be explored by artists from all ages of time. Everybody tried to explore different threads of it and whenever someone thought he had found something, an entirely new thing would crop up. Everyone is right and yet ironically, everyone is wrong. Cinema is one of the mediums of art of the modern world for expressions. It is used as a tool of entertainment as well as education, but base of Cinema lies in characters and their interrelations. Basically, cinema is a medium that is most dependent on human relationships. Historically, it is being used to explore the vast variety of human relationships, from Akira Kurosawa, Kryzstof Kieslowski/Piesciwicz, Alfred Hitchcock to Satyajit Ray and from Woody Allen to Sumitra Bhave / Anurag Kashyap; every director had his own story to tell. Everyone of these had a different thread to show. Not only these, there are several masters whom I am not quite remembering on the tip of my tongue.
The reason why I am talking all this is my sudden realization of how difficult it is to understand life and human relationships. How narrowly we think while labeling human relationships. After watching a few good films over the last two weekends, my already stirred up psyche reached new levels of oscillations. I have been heavily influenced my many films before as I try to delve deep into everyone of them. If I do not understand the movie, I read about it from famous critics and Cine-Experts and try to get it into perspective. I actually like almost every film (unless it is made purely for showing the loss to evade tax) for something in it. I try to gather something from each film. That’s why I can never write a review for any film. I tried in vain some time back, but its just not my field. Thus I have decided that I would only write in brief about films that I like and that will be it.
The movies that I saw last week were Anuranan (A Bengali film) and Christmas in August (A Korean Film). They both explore the tenderest of human relationships.
Anuranan meaning resonance in Bengali, is a well executed film set in Urban area. Due to this its appeal may reach a shorter audience, but the way it depicts the understanding of human relationships by its protagonist (Played by Rahul Bose) is out of this world. Especially the monologue recorded by his character in the penultimate scene is well written. Actually, I saw the movie dubbed in Hindi, I guess the original Bengali dialogues must be really superb and a treat for those who understand Bengali. The film shows us the futility of labelling relationships and the horrific effects it may have on other important parts of life.
Christmas in August is a wonderfully simple film set in some small town in South Korea. It is a story of a man in his mid thirties, who knows he has a terminal illness and he will die anytime soon. Its the story of how he deals with the illness and his relationships (family, friends, ex-crush and love). The tender story can make any tough person shed some tears in the end, in the process teaching an important lesson. Relationships are the real treasure that we can have in our life as a human.
There are lot many films that have influenced me as much or more than these two films (like Devrai [Marathi film by Sumitra Bhave/Sunil Sukathankar] ), but since these two I saw in a short span of time, one after the other; the impact was deeper and I had to write the experience down. I have tried to avoid the details of the plot in both the films. I strongly recommend them both.