Great Movie: 13 Conversations About One Thing

It is very easy to make a movie about happiness. It is very tempting to sermonize to take life a moment at a time and take nothing for granted. Not that such an approach or such an intention is to be dismissed off as just dumbing it down for the audience or being afraid to be realistic. We often see film makers start with characters who are radical, but we can see them disappointingly shy away from letting their characters' lives take turns that would have been inevitable for them if they existed in a real world. They redeem these characters from themselves and their demons for a happy ending or to endear them to the audience. Take "As good as it gets" for example. In that movie, Jack Nicholson is a man who in real life can never have a relationship, thanks to the 765320462 insults he manages to throw at anyone he meets, in just a couple of minutes. People like these, the victims of their own mentalities can never afford to have another person sympathize for them even if they themselves painfully try to not be themselves. But the audience love such transformations and miracles, and thats what tempts filmmakers to trade off their movie's reality for popular appeal. While critics might express their disappointment, people feel rewarded for the dose of assurance they get that hope wins and everything will be alright in life, anyway. Of-course I am sure that the cinematic-climax of "As good as it gets" is responsible for the public appeal and acceptance of an otherwise depressing film.

This is the reason why I liked, appreciated and fell in love with this film "13 Conversations about one thing". The theme of the movie is "Happiness", and the story (if it can be called a story) is about how happiness plays with humans. May be happiness has no intention of playing with our lives, but we are so hellbent on being happy all the time and dismiss off any other state of mind as being robbed off by life. "Happiness is not the norm" say some yogis, whose logic is that all the feelings including happiness, grief, sorrow, anger and sadness are more or less the ripples of the waves the activity of life creates (and thus they convince that crest follows trough). But man always prefers to be smiling, happy, successful, loved, warm and beautiful. And this expectation is what makes life so disappointing and confusing, given the way life presents itself as the time given to man to do what he wants to do. That's what this movie discusses.

We meet several characters in this film all of whom have one and only one obvious goal, happiness. We meet a lawyer in a bar( Matthew McConaughey) who celebrates his victory with booze and is in no mood to give "Luck" its due acknowledgement and even dismisses if off as a sorry excuse of losers. He argues with a pessimist that life is not as complicated as they say and that conscious actions and decisions govern the outcomes we enjoy or suffer, and nothing more or less than that. It is not very surprising to see someone who is enjoying the privilege of getting what they deserve from life, completely dismiss the impact of things that are not in an individual's control and yet manage to change his game. Ironically, he on his way home hits a girl and seriously injures her and presumes she is dead. He helplessly watches his own life being shred to pieces and is painfully made to observe the powerlessness of his decisions or the order that he presumes is in the world, to redeem him from the claws of fate. What does this imply? Nothing. That's why I liked this movie.

In another story, we come across a girl who tells her friend how she is saved from death and how that made her think that there is a reason why she is given a second chance. She talks about a vision she had when she was drowning, and it all sounds convincing to her till she gets hit by Matthew McConnaughey's car. Her life is pushed back to years and she cannot do anything about it, except to try in vain to find a "reason" behind this. What does it imply? Nothing. There are some other characters and events in this film that present different journeys and stories but no conclusions can be made from their stories.

There is no message conveyed here, no redemption arrived at, no meaning of life found out. What does this film portray? Reality. The way man cons himself to believe that it all makes sense in someway or the other. Good people suffer, and bad people prosper, and not much can one do to prevent it. People who are happy till then, will be turned upside down suddenly and lose so much. They might manage to crawl back to where they have been pushed away from but so many years will be blown off from their lives, and they do not stand there with any compensation except with a lesson that they presume life taught them. I never came across a man who made use of a "lesson" that life taught them, for any substantial achievement. I know an old man who is cheated by his friends and is taken advantage of. He used to tell me that life taught him never to trust anyone, but he never again had money enough to use that precaution, neither did he live long after that. The "lesson" that he thought life taught him, proved to be a lesson that could have benefited if had not been taught. In other words, not a lesson at all.

The movie presents the world around us, as it is. There are lucky people, who get parties from life. There are not so lucky people who are denied things but who work and manage to get what they are not given. And then there are unlucky people who try but not succeed. There are people from whom everything is taken away, just as they begin to appreciate it. There are people for whom it is impossible even to try. Yes, and a million other cases exist. Some guys believe that there is a higher consciousness sitting above the clouds that takes the responsibility of managing who should get what. And some comment that no such entity exists and that if it is true it should be despised for its sadism rather than being looked at with reverence.

Films like these might  be hard to digest for those who share "Life is Beautiful" wallpapers and "Keep Smiling" quotes on Facebook, but I saw very few films that came as close to the reality of life. The director chooses to capture the game rather than trying to drive it. Rather than telling fairy tales about happiness it just makes us look at life as we should. Not with reverence, or not with despise but with an acknowledgement of the sense that no matter how it is, our only option is to deal with it and carry forward. May be not all who watch this movie might agree with me. "You didn't get it, idiot" they might say. But whats important is, it makes us have our own conclusion, by not giving a conclusion. Long live great cinema.

GREAT FILM: THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

Agent Starling is a trainee at the FBI and her boss Jack Crawford gives her an assignment, to talk to Dr. Hannibal Lecter (nick named Hanniball-the-Cannibal) who has been serving life in a mental institution. A psychopath killer named Buffalo Bill is on the run in the city killing women and skinning them. And Crawford sends Starling to talk to Hannibal as he beliueves Hannibal might offer some insight into Buffalo Bill's psyche which might help them get closer to catching Bill.

Dr. Hannibal is not some mere psychopath. He was a psychiatrist, a very good one indeed and his love for the science to read people's minds is intense but not as intense as his taste for people's livers and kidneys taken raw out of their bodies and dripping with blood. He is primarily a cannibal who is aided with his wonderful ability to manipulate people's minds. The deep and dark areas of human mind are no secret to him. Just by talking to Agent Starling for five minutes, he tells her native place, her insecurities and hence  her repressions. He considers himself highly intellectual way above than the people around him. And he is right. While sending Starling to Hannibal, Crawford warns Starling not to reveal anything about her personal life to him. "Trust me, you don't want Hannibal inside your head" he says to her.

"Crawford sent a trainee to me?" Hannibal says. And why would the FBI boss send a trainee when he can send an expert in criminal psychology? Because they are no good to Hannibal, and all the previous attempts by the best of psychiatrists to analyse and hence conquer Hannibal are blown to pieces by Hannibal's mastery in psychiatry and his crude insults. Here is a man, who knows all the tricks. Crawford believes that this new  serial killer Buffalo Bill whom they are failing to trace can be unlocked only when they can gain some insight into his psyche, and the best person who can take them into the killer's mind is none other than this veteran cannibal genius.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter, who has never co operated with investigation so far, and who insults his investigators to the core and remains silent, chooses to talk to Starling. She approaches him, not with the confidence and arrogance of  an FBI agent but as a student who regards her master as a man of great understanding. When she initially greets Hannibal, we see in his wide open eyes an amusement. And he is happy to get a subject, with whose mind he can play. He entertains her because he sees no agenda behind her approach but a polite attempt to "dissect" him. Crawford knows that if he tells her the purpose even before she talks to Hannibal, he would not have talked to her. "He would have toyed with you and went to silence". Because what Hannibal wants is a subject, but not a situation where he is being subjected to basic level standard psychological examination. That's why Starling's  questionnaire disappoints him. " You think you can dissect me with this blunt little tool?" he asks her, looking at her questionnaire.

When she is desperate to catch Buffalo Bill and seeks Hannibal's help, he doesn't simply offer her a visual of Bill's head charitably, but he asks her to take him to her past. He asks her to tell her about her past in exchange for his diagnosis on Bill's case.  He simply asks her to put herself in a position where she doesn't want to be at all, and smiles seeing her helpless from having no other option. But his offer is not sadistic. Here we meet a man who has been locked inside a cell for 8 years and the only way he can get out is through other people's minds. Hannibal knows the limitations to his good behavior, and others' as well. Unlike the Joker in The Dark Knight, he doesn't want to celebrate it. He simply coexists with society to the extent where tolerance fades out of significance and the only question that matters is who is smarter and quicker. He likes Clarice, for reasons best known to him. May be because he smells from her a similar childhood to his. This psychiatrist, for whom the mind is not a puzzle but a text book is disconnected from the morals and ethics of civilized society and hence is free to do whatever he wishes.

We like his character, not because we begin to sympathize with him but because he likes and helps Clarice, with whom we identify. His character design is enchanting, not only because he is a man-eating psychiatrist but because we feel as much thrilled as Clarice when there is only a glass between the prey and the predator and given the glass breaks the predator wont even think for a second to rip her heart out and eat, yet a conversation goes on where both of them keep down their predator-prey roles and shift to master and student roles.

Clarice, on the other hand is a less complex character. She has a painful experience in her childhood when she tried to save a lamb from being slaughtered but failed. From then on wards she was being haunted by nightmares involving the cries of the lambs, and all she seeks is their silence. (Hence the title). However in her present adult mind, the lambs are the victims of crime and she hopes to silence them by saving them from the slaughterers.

"The silence of the lambs" remains a classic to this day and will continue to be. It is not usual for a horror film to derive its strength from character study rather than from genre thrills. Its not easy to forget the performances of Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster. And the entrance shot of Dr. Lecter, to this day, stands unbeatable.

Why "A"?

Some films aren't as much about the story as they are about the characters. Not that the characters have a story to tell, but some films' characters lift the burden of connecting with the audience from the shoulders of the twists and turns in the story and they carry it with a conviction. And such characters do not occupy the movie universe but inhabit a real universe, so that they have the weaknesses, aspirations, ramblings and temptations of an everyday average man.

In the film "A" we meet two characters whose chat is so casual and sounds so unimportant but that small conversation tells everything about them. Let me name them for you. Lets call them "The good guy", "The bad guy" and "The boss".  Now as the topic has come up, why didn't I name them? They don't have names in the movie, which is because I chose to present them as representations of the contradicting personalities inside a same person. Just think once. How many times do we want to do something and not want to do the same thing at the same time? Many times right? Similarly, we pack some jealousy towards the people we love most. We root for the bad guys whom we don't want to see in the society. We all have a wild side inside, which we tried to tame and failed but can smell its presence in the dark prisons of our mind. And in spits of anger, or burst of happiness we can see them trying to unleash outside. That's why these unnamed characters inhabit the same abandoned bungalow trying to reason with each other and trying to control each other, just like the contradicting personalities and emotions inside our minds. In a way, the abandoned building represents our dark motives and obsessions and these characters represent our motivations, temptations and dilemmas regarding them.

Back to the point again. The conversation. In the conversation, the good guy (Or the hero) tries to say that "If one shouldn't become the joker, there is no option but to leave the game". He clearly meant their criminal life, when he said "game" but the bad guy is too dumb to catch the reference, and we can see a sad smile on the good guy's face as he lacks a companion who tries to understand what he says. And the bad guy then says "You don't deserve to be here. You deserve more. I can see that you are smart. But since I am not as smart as you, I cannot acknowledge it. Many of us are not in their rightful places in this world. This is an unjust world." Now how does the bad guy know that he is dumber? How does an intellectually inferior person say all this intelligent analysis?  Remember that all of this is a dream inside the good guy's head. His thoughts are playing with each other in his subconscious and this dream is staging the conflicts his thoughts are carrying. It shows that the dreamer is being tormented by his self elation that holds himself in high regard in his mind but in reality chooses to make money by killing people. this is the reason for the conflict in his mind.

After they decide on who should kill and who should watch, the good guy wants to see who is inside. But the bad guy wants just to finish his task, not because he is cruel but because he is afraid of the truth. I represented the truth just as in real life. Truth is always covered. Truth is always expressed in an abstract way. Truth is never an absolute. Here, the truth is the face inside the mask. The good guy wants to face the truth, but the bad guy warns him that if the truth is unmasked, it will take away our comfort. The bad guy represents our psychological repressions and the way our mind cons us to protect us from the heat of truth's flame. The bad guy chooses to let the truth pass away than to look into its eyes as he fears that it will shatter his life. The bad guy prefers a comfortable and convenient lie to the disturbing truth. The bad guy is our eye when we look at the mirror and choose to tilt our head in an angle in which we look beautiful. The bad guy is our photo shopping skill. The bad guy is our unwavering trust in our cheating girlfriends. The bad guy is our belief that everything in this life makes sense and the reason it appears otherwise, is because we cant figure it out. The bad guy is our idol in the temple. The good guy is our science, The good guy is our inclination towards reason, The good guy is our dare with which we agree that life has no inherent meaning and whatever meaning it has is imparted by us. The good guy is our gut telling us that we are just animals who can think. The good guy is our atheism.

The film introduces the characters as two guys sitting in front of a horrifying building playing cards(deciding their chances). It is underlined with a mournful music which the movie begins with. The music establishes the characters as two unfortunate guys risking their lives to chance.

The frequently underlined fact in this movie is the probability that king becomes a joker, which actually means the cruel and unexpected twists and turns that fate presents in a game of crime. And that no one's position is unexposed to chance and fate. The good guy is so terrified of the power of the uncertainty of chance that he dreams of a King card to have a joker on the backside.
While the good guy is making a critical choice, we can see light dancing behind his head as if it is trying to get inside into his head. This is the subconscious representation of wisdom trying to enlighten his mind.

While the bad guy points out that no one has the power to handle the truth, we see the truth (The masked face) being handled by the

good guy with care. The cards being shuffled is played as a suggestion as they unmask the boss, as this indicates the intensity of the probability and chance that it could be anyone.




As a bottom line I would say that my film is a man's dilemma between choica and chance. Thats the reason we show a coin

(representing chance which he cannot control) and the good guy at a cross roads (representing choice which he can decide on).  While the cards thrown at the boss' face by the good guy symbolises his quit to the game, the shot where he runs away, alone explains the theme of the entire movie


I wanted to tell this story, and I told it. Forgive the bad lighting, as we shot the entire film on natural lighting only. And our camera is an age old iphone.

And finally "Why "A"? "

The characters are represented by cards. The boss is the king, the bad guy is the joker and the good guy is the ace. When you place "A" at the starting of the sequence, its value is one. But when you place the ace at the end, it is greater than the king. When the good guy leaves the bungalow (The criminal world), he crossed the sequence and became greater than the king. The king becomes the joker in the end.