The times they are a changing…my friend!

This Saturday, or rather on 8^th Feb, I walked in to the multiplex to watch two movies that had piqued my interest for a long time. One was Jojo Rabbit, directed by mad-genius Taika Waititi and the other was Parasite, a movie whose praise everyone was singing but a director whose work I wasn’t familiar with. So, with no expectations but a lot of excitement, I grabbed my cheese popcorn for a fun evening. 5 hrs later, MIND BLOWN! To be absolutely candid, I was familiar with Taika Waitti’s work as I’m a massive fan. ‘What we do in the Shadows’ is one of those rare movies that is saved on my laptop because it’s my stress-buster movie. I wasn’t familiar with Taika’s work before 2017….I know I know. It’s a crime and how could I call myself a film-aficionado if I wasn’t aware of the one of the great masters of cinema. But to be honest, I had Tim Burton, guys! Burton’s cinema is art for adults. After watching WWDITS, the first thought I had was, ‘Thank god we have someone to pick up the helm after Burton’. That’s how good Taika is.

Watching Jojo Rabbit was a happy experience because it was one of those rare instances where the book and the movie adaptation of it, are both phenomenal. I couldn’t thank Christine Leunens enough for writing it but I couldn’t think of a more-suited director to adapt it. Taika’s sheer genius lies in the fact that he doesn’t go overboard with his ideas; nor does he tries to spoon-feed his audience by interjecting pops to tell them how they should react to a particular scene or a character. Rater he respects his audience enough to let them go through their personal array of emotions. And that attribute in any director is a remarkable quality.

When movies are adapted from books, the director himself/herself is so in love with the literature that they go overboard with the whole script often missing out on the nuance and the charm of the story. I guess somehow they forget that what reads good doesn’t necessarily transpire good on reel. We’ve had so many Frankensteins’ and Draculas’ and don’t even get me started on the holy trinity of the ‘vamp-human-werewolf’ genre. I mean seriously, why? Why rake out movies which we would need a lifetime to forget, let alone forgive? Other than a few directors like Peter Jackson, the quarto-directors of Harry Porter, the trio of the Bourne series among others, not many have managed well, to be honest. So it’s always nerve-wrecking to go and watch a movie adapted from a book, especially if you are also an avid literature fan.

But coming back to the present, after reading Caging Skies (twice – hearing it on Google Play via a very automated voice that would actually make the voice in OTIS elevators sound like a Beethoven symphony, and once just reading it), I thought, well no better director could’ve picked it up. Jojo Rabbit was everything that it promised to be and more. The movie is not just a satire but also a dialogue on human endeavor. And what we as a collective whole can achieve if we can learn to be a bit more brave. The one scene that truly moved me to tears was when the two Nazi home-sexual officers joined the fight against the American soldiers, but in their true identities. What a liberating moment that was to witness. When did we last think that courage had those colors too! That in order to be brave one didn’t need to hide behind one’s sexuality but have that conviction in your heart (We all know how during Hitler’s regime homosexuals were persecuted and we have all read stories about how people tried to hide it; that how it was better to be a Jew than to be person with a different sexual preference) And that transition from just being soldiers who babysit kids because they were not deemed to be perfect to fight a war, to soldiers who would fight the enemy bravely because in the end they were soldiers and always will be, that transition was so effortlessly put across, I had to give it up to Taika for that. What a vison!

So after being cautiously overwhelmed by the first, I walked into the latter thinking if this movie was capable enough to erase the halo left by Jojo Rabbit. And what a surprise I was in for! From the very first scene the movie set its tone – a tone of intrigue, a tone of originality, a tone of mystery. A family of four, living in the basement, with the kids sitting on the toilet as that’s the only place where one can catch a proper Wi-Fi signal, to a pest control vehicle showing up for fumigation and the father telling to keep the windows open as it will help get rid of any pests in the house – that’s what Asia is about, to be honest. Having lived extensively in this part of the world most of my life, I’m more than happy to break the myth that ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ had set. It’s true that a certain percentage of what transpired in the movie does in fact exist in this part….but that part is like a grain of sand on your finger. So negligible a percentage that you wouldn’t notice it unless you head up to the posher parts of the city or sometimes to the posher homes. 

The rest of us live various comparative or superlative degrees of what Bong Joo-ho’s movies depicts on-screen.  Let me toss you an example. Sex and the City or rather the lives of Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte is not the life of an average American. Similarly, Crazy Rich Asians is not what an average Asian is all about! (You can thank me later for providing you this clarity) Parasite makes you think deeper about the class-barrier but not just in a revolutionary manner as many movies have done time and again. Rather the originality of Bong Joo is that he makes you think but in the most candid and humane manner. There are so many scenes in the movie that will make you question the Glass-Door – something that we all experience or have experienced in our everyday lives and see happening to ourselves or someone we know, but have ever failed so tragically to point it out. If for nothing, one should watch Parasite just for the fact that we have the privilege of watching something that in a couple of years will become a cult-classic.

And so what does Bong Joon-Ho’s Oscar for the Best Picture actually mean? Well to start off, it certainly means a new and braver era of cinema. So many movies in the past three-four decade were amazing, brilliant pieces of work…especially in years where no good nominations in the mainstream Best Picture category even came close to them. Yet they didn’t win the Best Picture award. They were either lucky to be noticed and nominated or they won an Oscar as the Best Foreign Picture, which was basically a side win because not many care about it. Like how many of us have watched ‘Blue is the warmest color’ or ‘Amore’ or ‘Amelia’ or even ‘A Fantastic Woman’? I, for one, watched Roma (Best Foreign Language Picture’2019) three weeks back. Yup! That how much we care or are interested in Foreign Language Pictures. This win changes that - regional directors will now dare to dream bigger and grander; scripts that were mostly rejected or shelved will now be brought to fruition; investments and backing in foreign language movies will rise; a better and new genre of artists will find work and representation on screen irrespective of color or nationality; indigenous stories will find a platform and we, the viewers and the audience will witness cinema for what cinema could, would and should have always been – a dream we spin with open eyes and an open mind.

(All images courtesy: Pinterest)