There Will Be Blood (P.T. Anderson, 2007)

Few cinematic epics are as unflinchingly grim and forthright in their vision of the Western world as P.T. Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood”. Fewer still can imbue such a picture with fresh satirical jabs. Alan Ball nailed it with American Beauty. Tarantino pastiched his way through the pulp of 70’s Pop Culture. Anderson joins this burgeoning league of artists who snarkily question, often through humour as dark as their subjects, the foundations of the American Empire. Described by many as a relentless critique of the “idea of America”, “There Will Be Blood” charts the serendipitous but nonetheless inevitable collision course of the two strongest cultural currents in the West: Capitalism and Religion.

Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis) is a fledgling, albeit immensely dedicated, oilman of the Rockefeller era. During the first few minutes, blood, sweat and oil dance on a face taut with stoicism. His eyes burn sheer will as he drags his freshly broken frame miles across the wilderness. This is an image of America that has often been glossed over, especially in the Colonially-incubated East; an image of heated rock and icy gales and nightmarish landscapes, where the only future lay in the rivers of black gold flowing underneath. Later on in the film, Daniel’s moral compass shifts and goes places, but these impossible initial hurdles and his struggles in overcoming them and building a better world still echo, however faintly, until the end.

As Daniel assembles a small crew to work on the extraction of oil, the tinkering of crude machinery - a tenet that will dominate the visual language of the rest of the film - makes an ominous entrance. When one of his workers meets with a fatal accident -  the first in a series of casualties of an empire in the making - Daniel adopts his son in what appears to be an act of fraternal kindness. Daniel’s hard work soon pays off, and we watch as an American dream - one of the very first ones - finds its wings. Pieces of lands are bought off and drilled into and, one acre at a time, the industrial revolution spreads like wildfire into God’s blessed country. The small town landowners are promised all the perks of an investment in oil: health care, education, equal rights. Plainview’s demeanor, however, has all the signs of a shrewd, ulterior motive. “Can everything here be got?”, Plainview smugly asks a real estate agent, not much later in the film.

Plainview, who goes around Utah pitching leases for land when he’s not drilling for oil, crosses paths with Paul Sunday, a staunch Christian and a self-proclaimed vehicle of God. Sunday proposes a symbiotic partnership that, quite predictably, goes awry. The violent dynamic that ensues forms the heart of the film. Sparks fly; consumerism clashes with social conventions and science has a stand-off with belief. As the two characters duel it out with each other, bashing long-held values and ideals, all that is left standing is the ugly head of opportunism. The stench of megalomania is pungent. How could there not be blood?

Not a lot of films released today fully appreciate the significance of “Prosody” in their art. Form and story often lie in disparate fragments. Seldom does a fully interwoven whole of style and substance like “TWBB” come along. On top of all its cultural and historical complexity, Anderson has every film department firing on all fours. The most apparent of these elements is Robert Elswit’s Oscar - Winning cinematography. Wide shots of endless, sweeping landscapes interspersed with close-ups haggard and lean. Bright, sunny skies bearing down on hard shadows and barren wastelands. In almost all of their squabbles, Plainview and Sunday share a single frame, driving home the utter incompatibility of their individual philosophies. The camera is almost never static, always clubbed to slow tracks or dollies, and the resulting momentum is palpably forceful. It’s a scenic picture that Elswit paints with a palette of mildly saturated hues, with just the right smattering of crimson.

Apart from the obligatory accuracy in production design that would accompany a historical piece of such scale and significance, the sound work is another area where Anderson strikes gold. The first human sound in the film is the piercing cry of a soon-to-be orphaned baby. It’s a sound that is soon lost in a web of other sonic intrusions, of clanking metal, rhythmic drilling, and all the cacophonia that go together with the slow advent of urbanization. It is a soundscape that sits on the fence between urban dystopia and rustic idyll, one that toes the fringes of familiarity well enough to be unsettling. As with the camera, the sound holds Plainview’s son H.W. in contempt. Throughout the film, his voice is silenced in more than one way. In the widely lauded Oil Derrick explosion scene, a distraught H.W. complains to his father about his sudden deafness. “I can’t hear my voice”, he tells a shockingly indifferent Plainview, and we are left to wonder if he was talking in literal terms. Seeping in and out from in between the story and the characters are the discordant orchestral compositions by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. The tense unnerving score, a droning monotone that would feel right at home in a Shyamalan thriller, drenches the movie in the ominous dawn of the twentieth century.

Anderson’s film stands as an achievement in skill, both theatrical and technical; its merits, however, exceed the usual benchmarks of a well-made history piece and go on to tap into the cultural tenets of the era that have survived over the decades. Bigotry, tribalism, unabashed misogyny (at one point, Plainview publicly christens Sunday’s kid sister “The Daughter of the Mountains”, just to offend the Church’s patriarchal sensibilities), all issues that movies today grapple with, but never quite as shrewdly as in “Blood”. It’s also a testament to great directorial skill that a film of such an allegorical nature still retains, right till the end, a dedication to crafting a tapestry of original, quirky, wicked characters that feel as scary and hilarious as the corporate behemoths of today.

An Icy Experience

You feel particularly bored on a Saturday night. You’re alone in the house. It’s raining outside. T.V. repulses you. In your half-awakened state of ennui, you casually happen to chance upon a 75 minute documentary on “the undeniable evidence of Global Warming”. Mundane, to say the least. The incessant bombardment of environmentalism has left you feeling nauseous. Nevertheless, you go ahead and press “play”.

The short opening sequence of “Chasing Ice” gives you precisely that: a confused overflow of information from pumped-up news anchors and screeching scientists, heated discussions, a debate that has made a fruitless journey of almost two centuries. Through the fast fades and intercuttings, you almost hear director Jeff Orlowski say, “This is not what this film is about.” Cut to black, and the actual movie starts.

We follow in the footsteps of James Balog, an acclaimed nature photographer, as he prepares to embark on his most ambitious project to date: capturing the very essence of climate change in a long sequence of images. He and his trusted team set up more than a dozen cameras across climate-change affected regions in the arctic, as reported by scientists. This is not a man who will make do with capricious statistics and flimsy computer models. Human see, human believe. Wasting no time in sermonizing, he directly puts us on the shores of Iceland, where you see the first human-induced “calvings” of the magnificent glaciers. From hereon, we are led on a journey of the arctic shelves. We see time lapse images of ice hopelessly melting, receding, collapsing with earth-shattering intensity. And yet, the overall film refrains from the usual didacticism ubiquitous in nature documentaries. Instead, it takes on the tone of a men-on-a-mission thrill ride, showing us real-life characters struggle, fail and struggle again with dogged perseverance. They scale fast-melting mountains of ice, rappel down bottomless crevices and take multiple knee surgeries in stride. They simply want the world to see. And boy, do they succeed. Some of the sequences filmed in Greenland had me emotionally confused - the images are both terrifying and ridiculously beautiful. As the ice sheets fell one by one, I wondered how many lives each little piece of ice would endanger in the not too distant future. Balog does provide some numbers, but we find them redundant; the visuals speak volumes, and the eerie background score fills in the harmonics.

The spirit of “Chasing Ice” is summed up perfectly by Balog himself as he prepares for a stunning nocturnal photo session: “[Night Photography] places your mind on the surface of a planet. You’re no longer a human being walking around in the regular world. You’re a human animal, striding along the surface of a planet that’s out in the middle of a galaxy.”

Yes, it’s all been drilled into our heads before, but never quite like this.

Deux-less

Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina” is, without exaggeration, the scariest science fiction movie of the past decade. The well-worn theme of inexorable human ambition is given a fresh, new direction; it is examined, dissected and questioned like never before. The movie’s release couldn’t have been more timely, what with Internet giants obsessing over the development of A.I., quantum computing and the transcendence of Moore’s law seemingly just around the corner, and that ever-widening ridge between our technological achievements and our floundering ethical values. It is a wake-up call, a doomsday warning bell, a slap in the face of the complacent technologist that resides within each of us today.

The film has only three major characters, two of which - Nathan Bateman and Caleb Smith - complement each other in their personalities. Caleb is shy, considerate, impulsive. He is steeped in idealism, and quotes philosophers and scientists frequently. Nathan is cold, irreverent, moody. His extreme devotion to the development of A.I. has blinded him to the dire repercussions of “playing God”. The third character, Ava, is a robot, and hence represents intelligence of a more collective than individual kind. It is both intriguing and disturbing to watch the two individuals grapple with the collective in their own different ways.

We see the world through the eyes of Caleb, a young programming prodigy. We are Caleb. We see him winning a lottery and getting the chance to spend a week with his genius employer, Nathan. He is neither overly happy with the news nor amazed. Just plain baffled. As he flies over his host’s scenic “estate” like a young Jonathan Harker on his way to visit Count Dracula, we get a sense of foreboding in the uncontrolled wilderness of the surroundings; this is not going to end well. This feeling stays with us throughout the movie as we watch the clueless Caleb try to struggle past hurdle after psychological hurdle: Meeting and testing an advanced A.I. for the first time, finding out that he empathizes with her, dealing with the contradicting statements made by Nathan the creator and Ava, his creation, and above all, questioning his own moral compass. Each new twist to the plot only adds to Caleb’s growing discomfort, and therefore, to our discomfort.

For mainstream Science Fiction fare, Ex Machina shows quite some dexterity in its application of visual grammar. Nathan’s abode is spartan but rustically rocky, where classical piano tunes play over waterfalls gushing not a hundred meters away. A marvelous Pollack shares the building with a robot. Ominous long shots of fog-covered gorges and mountains are intercut with static views of the mansion’s monolithic rooms. Here, man is taking a stand against nature, and deep inside, we know that nature will find a subversive way around. Nathan’s mansion also teems with glass and other reflective surfaces, and reflections, shadows and mirror images galore.

This is where we find Ex Machina at its darkest, at the dichotomy that lies at the heart of the film. Here is a movie that is full of life and simultaneously completely devoid of it. At times, it seems to fill us with hope, only to have us dragged back into the abyss of uncertainty and despair. The world of Ex Machina is a universe that is as hopelessly dual as ours, one where renewed freedom and self-discovery seem to go together with ignorance and desolation.

For hours after watching “Ex Machina” I found it difficult to focus my thoughts onto my daily routine. I’m not even sure if I “like” it. Indeed, it is not an easy watch. And that, rather than mere personal like or dislike, is the true litmus test here; if you find yourself unsettled enough at the end of the movie, I believe Garland’s efforts have paid off.

Random Paragraph #2

Wrote this after reading a fascinating chapter on universal order and entropy from Paul Davies's "The Origin Of Life". 


Physicists worldwide are reluctantly conceding that the more man pushes forth the frontiers of the natural sciences and inquires into the structure of the universe, the less it seems to make 'sense'. This is to say that there appears to be a complete breakdown of order the deeper we move into nature. The second law of thermodynamics is receiving scientific reverence like never before, and consequently, chaos is now seen to be inherent in the very fabric of space-time.

Also, the cosmos of myriad spiraling galaxies containing billions of stars gives in to its counterpart, chaos, not only (seemingly) at the subatomic level, but also in matters concerning the human psyche. The excessive and exorbitant violence of the thermonuclear furnaces of deep space is in stark contrast with the seed of violence that seems to have germinated in the human mind. The former is a violence that maintains and propagates order; the latter is the source of a chaotic sub-universe incapable of even comprehending order, much less of forming it.

Control is one concept that crops up while delving into this problem. After all, we've always confused control with what we call 'order'. Yet, we can argue that they are, in fact, poles apart. Control is always localized, disparate; order knows no boundaries. Control springs forth from a source and requires a controller, whereas order simply is. This quandary also explains our eternal obsession with proving or disproving the existence of a God, rather than seeing that the creation and the 'creator' are inseparable. 

Random Paragraph

The following is a paragraph that I originally wrote at 2 A.M. one morning amidst a bout of frenzy-filled insomnia. 

Between the sky-high cliffs, in the midst of gushing, turbulent waters, lies the entrance to the interior of the mountain, where untold treasures await discovery. The ambiance in this region is electric with an awe-inspiring mystery to it, and the mere sight of this monument evokes in one a rapturous, almost divine, wonder for the distant past.

As one steers through the small crevice that the water cuts in between the rocks, one comes across large paintings splayed out over the inner walls of the cliff. Most of them seem to depict different species of creatures indigenous to that region . But some appear to contain peculiar abstract forms that demand closer inspection. The passage can only be navigated by moonlight, although the irregular recurrence of lamp-holders attached to the rocks suggests that the path, at some point in the primordial, may have been a well-lit one.

'On Creativity' by David Bohm (Routledge Classics)

Book Review

'On Creativity' is a collection of five essays covering topics ranging from creativity and imagination to science and order, authored by renowned 20th century philosopher and theoretical physicist David Bohm.

1) On creativity - Bohm starts off his book by taking on one of the most ambitious and formidable questions in the history of human thought : What is creativity? He begins by taking the case of a scientist, and talks about how conventional thinking suggests that scientific creativity is only contained in the invention of new machines and in the derivation of mathematical formulae. He questions this popular definition of creativity and appends it by saying that the juice of scientific creativity lies in the discovery and perception of order in the universe. At this point, Bohm challenges the notion of the very existence of disorder. "What is commonly called 'disorder'", he writes, "is merely an inappropriate name for what is actually a certain rather complex kind of order that is difficult to describe in full detail."(A statement that clearly reflects Bohm's unorthodox views on Quantum Mechanics.) 

All problems and confusion arise, then, not from disorder, but from a clash of different orders unable to work together. In other words, a breach in 'harmony'. The solution to this lies in a deep and penetrating human insight that stretches far beyond memory and knowledge accumulated over the years. According to Bohm, this insight cannot be reached by thought. The source of this insight, he then reasons, must be complete attention to the entire movement of thought. Readers familiar with the Krishnamurti-Bohm correspondences will clearly see K's influence on Bohm's thought here. He concludes the essay by saying that the act of perceiving this movement is the birthing ground of true originality and creativity, which go far beyond the limited fields of science and art, and concern human society as a whole.


                                        [To be continued]

La Soufriere (Werner Herzog, 1976)

Movie Review

As the camera slowly hovers over the lush green expanse of the mountain, its slopes caressed by a constant flux of toxic gases, the faint sounds of trickling streams and rivulets give way to a foreboding piece of classical music, which gradually diminishes as the camera now switches to a poor peasant lying at the base of the mountain. This short 60-odd second segment appears about halfway through Werner Herzog's "La Soufriere", and at this point in the picture the viewer is left in no doubt with regards to the critical acclaim that it has garnered.

All of 30 minutes in its total runtime, "La Soufriere" is a visual report shot in 1976 documenting the impending eruption of the eponymous caldera, located on the island of Saint Vincent in the Windward islands of the Caribbean. Towards the end of August in that year, it had become clear to volcanologists that an earth-shattering explosion, "possessing the power of 5 or 6 atomic bombs", was inevitable. Thus, 75,000 inhabitants comprising the whole southern part of the island were evacuated. That is, except 3 impoverished peasants near the slope of the mountain, who refused to be evacuated against all odds. Mr. Herzog, ever on the look-out for eccentric environments and even more eccentric characters, seized the opportunity to travel to the island, churning out a valuable piece of art in the process.

Upon arrival into the town, Herzog spends some time filming the streets in the full glory of their eerily complete desolation, now and then focusing on eerie aspects such as still-running traffic lights and television sets, a bunch of clueless pigs, a pair of donkeys wandering aimlessly, and the rotting carcasses of starved dogs. A true depiction of a ghost town, "almost resembling a spooky science fiction locale", that rivals any fictional counterpart ever captured on celluloid at the time. Add to this Herzog's restrained and gracious monologue, and it's impossible not to share his sense of awe for the grandiosity of nature. Going one step further, in a trademark breach of laws and circumvention of roadblocks, the team ascends the mountain, and casually films an active volcano while standing right on top of it.

But the juice of the film comes later, with the introduction of our three adamant protagonists. The first one is found sleeping at the foothills of the mountain, and when interviewed, exhibits not a shred of fear, inspite of being fully aware of the gravity of the situation. He says that he has found his inner peace, and is ready to embrace death. The same goes for the other two equally nonchalant natives. The brief scene with the folk song is a nice touch, providing a strong contrast against the looming peril. It is interesting to note here that Herzog dubs both, his own questions, and the peasants' answers, in his own voice. It is one of those things that separates this film from your standard Nat-Geo fare, with Herzog the observer stretching himself to become one with the observed in his pursuit of "ecstatic truth".

The volcano never erupts, however, and for another filmmaker in Herzog's place, this would have been a major let-down. Instead, the film takes on a fresh sense of irony, as well as of humanity. As the film ends along the notes of a loud and triumphant orchestral piece, Herzog narrates : "In my memory, it is not the volcano that remains, but the neglect and oblivion in which those black people lived."

One of the Bavarian Auteur's overlooked gems.