Ever since I have started watching movies, have been itching to write a film-review and since this blog is the only place where I can be GOD here is my ahmmm.... Humble beginning towards film-reviewing immortality...............
'A Clockwork Orange' is a movie that is as rare as Nonu makin a program .... Stanley Kubrick's pessimistic view of the near-future is embarrassingly perfect.Semi-inspired by Anthony Burgress' "A Clock-work Orange", a claim refuted by the director, this film is set in the near future and and follows a young hooligan,Alex DeLarge, who is imprisoned for murder and undergoes a new treatment which conditions his mind against violence and leaves him incapable to act on his own free will. The movie sets up an interesting premise which is frighteningly real, seeing the antics of the motley crew of White House, and the question of how far the government should go to control its citizens begs to be answered.The film grips you by the balls from the very first shot of the close-up of the protagonist's face and doesn't let go till the climax. A roller-coaster of emotions that will make you love & hate Alex's actions and in the end, leave you confused as a virgin on wedding night. . There have been films which have glorified violence (a.k.a Reservoir Dogs,Grand Theft Auto) and stories which have shown the blacker side of justice (a.k.a. Shawshank Redemption, Yugaandhar(for the uninitiated, itsa mithun-da flick), Clockwork Orange effectively seams in the the good and evil into a tight blend of morality and totalitarianism with Kubrick's trademark cynical & sadistic humor. All in all, a must watch .
Apocalypse Now by Copolla is a heart-burn. It gladdens and angers you at the same time and leaves you ambivalent in the end. Joseph Conrad's 'Heart Of Darkness' is the inspiration behind this flawed masterpiece. Shifting the setting from Conrad's imperial Africa to the war-ravaged Vietnam, Coppola had a who's who of star list at his disposal and about $30 million to burn. And he almost doesn't disappoint. The tale starts with a veteran Viet-soldier Captain Benjamin L. Willard ,played by Martin Sheen, who is given an order to execute Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Brando) who has apparently turned rogue seeing the violence and desperation of the land-scape of war-ravaged Vietnam and now controls a group of native viets, who consider him their king and terrorizes the land with his brutal and senseless massacres. He sets off in a boat in deeply 'Charlie' infested territory and the next one hour is a commentary on the war being fought and it is one of the most heart-felt pieces on the war that I have ever seen. Coppola's trade- mark genius for film making gives us memorable scenes like Robert Duvall's near-psychotic character Lt. Colonel Kilgore and the napalm bombing with 'Ode To Valkyries' in the back ground. Hardly any other film has been able to capture the essence of war as Coppola but that's where the good things end. Suddenly, after one hour into the film, Coppola remembers Conrad's treatise of journey into the human psyche, and he hastily introduces Brando as a king of a tribal kingdom and his monolithic temple of power with headless bodies and hanging skulls to give the sense of twisted power. Brando is brilliant in the few scenes that he has especially his intro scene and the part where he reads "The Hollow men" from his diary, but is case of too little,too late. In the end we can see the horror Brando sees, but can't empathise with him and that is where I think the film fails. But all in all, a beautifully made film with some heart-burning moments & visuals. Watch it for Brando in one of his brilliant performances since the Godfather, if nothing else.
"I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... But you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget.
And then I realized... Like I was shot... Like I was shot with a diamond... A diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... The genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... Trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... But they had the strength... The strength... To do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... And at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... Without passion... Without judgment... Without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us."
-Colonel Walter E. Kurtz
Movies i(This is a sure sign of how humble a being I am.. The 'i' is not in caps...So there.. :-p ) plan to see next:
Justice Chaudhary
Crash
The Motor-cycle Diaries
The Doors (i.e. after a one Mr.Pathan from Afghanistan sacrifices his bandwith away from his carnal satiations and actually downloads it for me...)
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