The Absurd & The Real = Life

I saw 2 movies - one absurd & one real - both by master storytellers. 

Aki Kaurismaki directed ‘Leningrad Cowboys Go America’ is a story of a struggling Siberian rock band leaves home in the lonely tundra to tour the United States because, as they’re told, “they’ll buy anything there.” The musicians bravely venture across the States, carrying a bandmate and some beer in a coffin, and sporting hairdos resembling unicorn horns.

For somebody to even think of a plot like this you have to be really super mad but executing or giving shape to it the production design is a crazy. You just have to see the poster to understand the hard work needed to keep the hair in the form of unicorn 😂. There is no story, it’s just a band traveling from manhattan to mexico and doing small gigs earning money which the manager keeps for himself. Like old black and white silent movies, a black slide comes in between and mentions a chapter title. It’s absurd but you can miss it.

Raging Bull By Martin Scorsese 

The last 3 lines of the review below captures my feeling after seeing the movie - ”When I first saw Raging Bull, I came out of the cinema simultaneously exhausted and yet supercharged with energy, as if I could throw buses across the street. It still makes me feel like that”

Made in 19 80 in monochrome it’s a masterclass in all departments of movie making. Growing up on staple Rocky series and posters, all of us were big fans of Sly. I had a huge poster of Rocky in my room and everytime I would look at it I would feel ‘Yes I can also win”. 

But Raging Bull which is based on Jake La Motta (person and book) a middle weight champion of 19 40’s has more to do with his psychotic personality and his downfall and less with boxing. Yes boxing is integral to this story but so is his personal life where he loses out on his brother - both leave him and go and ends up running a club doing funny acts & then jailed. Especially because of monochrome it has that 19 40’s / 50’s touch. 

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/apr/12/raging-bull-review-still-packs-a-punch-like-no-boxing-movie-before-or-since 

Both the movies reflect my life which is having too many of raging bull moments and very less of Leningard Cowboy moments but I guess just like the movies it will pass.

Mr. Jones

For 2 - 3 nights after I watched Mr. Jones, the imaged which were like B&W photographs kept floating in front of me. Shots of snow fields stretched till your eyes could see or just a tree or houses in snow - but stark like made out of logs. The place - Russia / Ukraine. Movies have a way of transporting you to a world so you can experience it sitting in your living room. Beautifully shot, especially the Ukrainian part this movie was like postcards stitched together.

The story is about a welsh journalist who visits Russia and wants to report about the great famine raging in much of USSR particularly Kazakisthan & Ukraine. A famine which Moscow was trying to conceal and the primary cause for it was the collectivization of land / farming. Known as Holdomor (you can google the word) this was the only eye witness account of someone who had visited these parts of Russia. These states were targeted specifically also because they did not want to bow to Moscow. There were lot of discussion in terming this as genocide. 

House in Ukraine

But that is just a political nomenclature issue, the film showcases the suffering of the people of Ukraine. People dying because there is nothing to eat. In one of the scenes Mr. Jones enters a house which is absolutely normal, there are empty plates and utensils, and when he goes inside the bedroom there are 2 old couple lying in the bed fully dressed and under the cover - dead. In another scene people start eating bark of the tree as that is the only thing available in knee deep snow.

This was in 1933 - we are in 2023 and It’s like a deja vu. Almost 100 years later the same thing is repeated in Ukraine (& Gaza). Simply as an unaware political guy I am only shocked that millions of people died last time and again millions will die for land and control. I don’t even want to understand or do something about it. I just turn my face away.

But death of millions - it’s something difficult to turn away. But I do, we have to move on and do our bit and my bit was to clear the empty plastic bottle lying in the walkway and make the road litter free.