The Great Technicolor Dream

An event of the week before last makes this year a watershed in movie history for many. All right, it’s not that big a deal (in fact, I started this post last week, but left it midway because I didn’t feel like writing), but a stellar work of art and movie-making did get its due..

This event of great consequence relates to the Internet Movie Database – a very popular film website, and one whose widget I have unsuccessfully been trying to install on my blog for the past few months. The Shawshank Redemption finally toppled Godfather (and The Dark Knight) as the #1 movie of all time according to movie-watchers who frequent iMDB. Many of you might have your own favorite movies and scoff at this development, but I welcome and completely support it, so I thought it would be apt to write about the best movie I’ve seen (but don’t watch it too many times – the 3rd time was slightly boring).

The movie didn’t have much impact on the box office when it released – it just barely covered costs in its movie-hall earnings. Although nominated for 7 Oscars, it walked away with none. That’s not such a big deal in retrospect, because Pulp Fiction didn’t win much that year either – Forrest Gump trumped everyone else. But this movie slowly caught on to the movie-watcher’s imagination, spreading mainly through word-of-mouth to become the most-rented movie of 1995.

So why do I think this 1994 flick was more special than the rest? The usual suspects are, of course, fine acting, visionary direction and a superlative storyline. But delving deeper, I discover (and I can smugly say that I suspected this all along) something about the human psyche to which this movie appeals like not many others.

Hope is an interesting concept, a deep feeling. It pervades most of our daily lives when we are kids, but our store of hope dwindles ever so slowly but ever so surely, as the years in our lives increase. Which is a dismal thing to occur, for the one good thing that came out of Pandora’s Box is surely to be treasured. The Shawshank Redemption is all about hope – it could very well have had just that one word as its title (which would have presumably improved its box office chances – all that some movie-goers remembered of its name was ‘that rickshaw movie’). Andy Dufresne, a man sentenced to two life-terms in the Shawshank prison, is not guilty of the crime he has been convicted for. And he hopes for redemption – someday, he’ll be free again, and people will recognize his innocence. Whether he gets what he hopes for is another story, and I for one don’t want to be guilty of sparing anyone the amazing experience that this movie is – believe it or not, some people still haven’t seen it (but I know only one such person).

Many movies I have seen lose themselves in trying to execute too many plots and sub-plots – something that this was also in danger of doing. But the superb screenplay ensured that each and every subplot was executed with great finesse, and added something intangible to the poignancy of this epic depiction of one man’s stubbornness towards his fate. That’s one of the beauties of this film to me – the institutionalized librarian, the new kid on the prison block, Andy’s friendship with Red (Morgan Freeman in the role of his life); all made this movie truly memorable.

I especially like one scene (there were many others, but this is the one that lends itself least to the term ‘spoiler’). Andy’s perseverance in procuring resources for the fund’s library finally succeeds, and some old books and records come his way. He locks himself into the jailors’ office, and plays an opera duet on the speakers. The look of rapt enchantment in the eyes of all the prisoners is a testament to the pervasiveness of hope, of the belief that one’s lot will get better.

Red learns many things from Andy. In his eyes, Andy made a simple choice – get busy living, or get busy dying. True, pessimism ensures that you either expect the outcome or are pleasantly surprised. Optimism doesn’t afford such luxuries, but the feeling is its own reward. For that is what makes us human, pushes us to work and back everyday, hoping that some day, life will give us all we wish for.

I told someone recently that people grow up when they realize that their dreams aren’t going to come true. A trifle harsh, I knew. But I realize now that maybe, just maybe, growing up isn’t such a good thing.

Chaos – one reigns in it, one reins it in

So I saw the Dark Knight yesterday (finally), and I immediately rushed home to watch Batman Begins, so I could compare the two – it had been a very long time since I saw the first one. But to my dismay, I couldn't find it anywhere. So instead, let me try to talk about the sequel alone, for I know that when I get time to write again, I would have forgotten about this one as well.

At the very outset, let me opine that Christopher Nolan is brilliant. He doesn't disappoint one bit, and the movie is as spectacular and well-made as any in his illustrious past – Batman Begins, Prestige and Memento. He shows us yet again why Batman is probably the best superhero ever – he has Nolan directing his movies. All week, I kept hearing about how the Joker is simply the best one ever – he puts even Jack Nicholson to shame. I think I am inclined to agree with this – credit to both Heath Ledger and the director, who's made this franchise consistently darker than any other superhero series (I am not counting pretenders like The Crow or The Punisher in the same category). If you haven't seen the movie yet, please don't read this blog (I know the chances of this are slim, given the brilliance of the movie and my scant readership). Your time is much better invested in finding a compatible time when the movie is playing at a theater near you. Additionally, although I will do my utmost not to, I might give away some details that you would be much better off finding out on your own. But if you have seen it already, then go ahead unafraid.

Starting with the tagline, did anyone else surmise as to why it was 'Why … so … serious?'? I preferred the line on many movie posters in Mumbai – 'Welcome to a world with no rules'. Like Alfred and the mob boss told Bruce Wayne, the Joker has no rules. You might try to guess at his motivations, but you would be wrong. Case in point being what the Joker does with his share of the money which he so painstakingly stole back for the mob. Pure chaos, that's what he was about - pure absolute chaos, no sordid childhood, no jilting lover. Mixing pure evil and pithiness, he was a revelation – the scene outside the hospital (with the remote control) and in the prison (where he demanded his phone call) were amazing, or to use words from another recent movie – awesome (if you think you deserve a prize for guessing the name of this movie, then you better get out and get a life). And I bet all the Batmen of the world would be stumped if the Joker tells them, 'You complete me'. Move over Tom Cruise, we have a new romantic in town. I read somewhere that Ledger spent a month in isolation, planning the Joker's mannerisms, tone and voice. I have to say, he's got it spot on. His reaction to the Lieutenant's promotion was spontaneous, and not a part of the script – but everyone who saw the movie would admit that it perfectly added to the Joker's persona.

So what did I like best about the movie? There was no single sequence that clearly trumped, but I can readily name three.

First, the Joker – right from his chuckles as he was being beaten black and blue, to his spine-chilling 30 seconds with Rachel Dawes (I bet it felt a lot longer). They got it inch-perfect and created the stuff of legend.

Second, Harvey Dent's line to the Batman – 'Either die early a hero, or live long enough to be seen as a villain'. This troubles Bruce Wayne throughout the movie, for Batman never became more than an 'outlaw vigilante'. It couldn't be summed up better.

Third, the last 2 minutes. I would be the first one to agree that the new Commissioner's family made it a little melodramatic, but Batman says it the best it could – he is whatever Gotham wants him to be. Never before during his exploits did he ever become the hero that Gotham deserved. Or maybe it didn't.

Live forever … Or die trying

Immortality has gripped the senses of humankind for almost as long as history can remember. Philosophy-wise, Sophie's World (an excellent book by Jostein Gaarder) tells me that the Hellenistic period (circa 320 BC-150 BC) was the very first time that thinkers expounded on the subject of eternal life, and wondered what one would need to do to extend one's life on earth. Since then, many such thinkers have come and gone (evidently, they were as clueless as the rest of us). But that is not to say that there haven't been charlatans who've pretended to have first-hand knowledge of events long before their time. One of the more notable ones was the Comte de Saint-Germain in 18^th century France, who claimed to have lived for over 2000 years. His supposed pupil, Cagliostro, also claimed the same, famously making the ill-thought statement, 'Jesus should have taken my advice'. Ill-thought, because he was subsequently sentenced to death, and so ended his eternity. Many movies have also broached the subject, most recent being The Man from Earth (a decent low-budget 2007 movie). The movie that I shall talk about, however, is The Fountain, a 2006 movie by Darren Aronofsky (of Requiem for a Dream fame).

This movie follows three parallel stories (or two … or one, according to some interpretations). There's probably only one person who understands this very confusing movie completely, and that's Aronofsky (and even that is only an assumption). A look at his previous movies would lead us to very quickly dismiss this movie as 'weird', but aren't we all, at some level, weird? (One thing's clear, I'm probably weird too). So, coming back to the story, it follows the life of a doctor and his wife, who has terminal cancer. It also concerns an ancient fabled tree, which promises the gift of immortality (the Fountain of Life, as it were). The wife is penning a story of a Spanish Conquistador in search of this tree, and she dies with the last chapter unwritten. With her last breath, she tells her husband to finish it for her (to those of you who dismiss this movie as a Hindi potboiler right now, a fervent appeal to persist). But he's in search of immortality too, and only when he gives up trying to bring his wife back from the dead does he realize how to finish the story. What happens in between is very beautifully shot (on a low budget), and needs to be seen to be fully appreciated.

But of essence in the movie is its conclusion. Throughout the movie, the belief is that death is no more than a disease, one whose cure is still beyond the realms of human medicine. The Conquistador's Tree of Life is just a metaphor for this cure, this elixir of life. Like the character in his wife's book, the doctor is also besotted by this notion. But as cynical realists, the audience knows that the real question is not when the doctor will be successful, but rather, when failure will be accepted. Death is, after all, not a bad thing for us non-philosophers who are tired of our mundane lives or crappy jobs or empty schedules or full schedules or blogs with low readership (J). Anyway, the story ends in a manner that sums it up best. The Conquistador sure finds the Tree of Life. But of course, it's not what he thinks it is. See the movie, and let the end surprise you. This was one movie that kept me interested throughout, and yet satisfied me completely with its finale (The Departed is one movie that had only the former quality). And one thing I am sure of is that even the most imaginative of us will agree that no other end would have been more appropriate. A great movie which, unfortunately, won't promise Aronofsky immortality (you've probably not even heard of it before). But well tried, nevertheless…

Catch - 22

I have read a lot of books that haven't made an iota of difference to my life. These books have made me happy, sure, but only because I was done with them and wouldn't have to read them again. Catch 22, by Joseph Heller, isn't one of them. An incredible satire on the foolishness of war and the attached bureaucracy, it has been widely acknowledged as one of the most powerful books of the previous century. It was also the origin of the famous phrase (its name), and means a situation where there is no possible solution with a positive impact. One is, figuratively (and sometimes literally), stuck.

So what makes this book so great? The hero of the book, Yossarian, is a bombardier for the US Army in the War, and is stationed at the island of Pianosa. In describing his travails, the author makes a compelling point about the stupidity of war, and how all military actions are motivated by personal wishes of those in power, which are almost always silly. I read somewhere that the author himself was a bombardier during the war, so one can presume that the character is autobiographical, or the author's ideal of himself at the very least.

The character of Yossarian is best summed up by one of his exchanges with his camp doctor Doc Daneeka. He says that he doesn't want to fly missions anymore, because he didn't want to get killed. The doc (who was slightly more patriotic, given that he never had to fly) asked him what he thought would happen if everyone thought that way. To which Yossarian replies, 'Then I'd be a damned fool to want to fly, wouldn't I?' The character of Yossarian captured the imagination of millions of people, who always wondered whether or not he survived the war (doing my best to maintain ambivalence regarding the end of the book). Well, he did, which was confirmed by a later novel by the same author, Closing Time, which spoke of Yossarian's life after the war. This novel was clearly motivated by the public's strong interest in the hero, epitomized by some placard that the author saw someone holding somewhere, (I have absolutely no specific idea, as you no doubt guessed) saying 'Yossarian Lives!'.

But let me speak a bit more about the title. Readers come across catch 22 situations many times in the book. But the one situation that best exemplifies the title is the rule which says that an insane person need not fly missions. However, if an insane person were to come up to a military doctor and say that he was insane, such an action would be motivated by an urge to protect oneself, which is a highly rational and sane wish. In short, an insane person need not fly, but pointing this out would mean that the person is sane, as only sane people would have a strong desire not to fly. Being proven sane, the person would have to continue flying. Pretty impressive, huh! Yossarian thought so too, when he first heard it.

This kind of catch 22 is fairly similar to a problem in economics that we call The Prisoner's Dilemma. Consider two people, who have been captured by the police, and whom the police are attempting to get a confession out of. If neither confesses, both get a jail term of 2 years. If one of them confesses, however, the other gets a jail term of 10 years, while the confessor gets only 1 year. If both confess, they each get 5 years. The optimal solution here, for both prisoners, is for neither to confess. However, this will not happen, as there is a fear of the other prisoner betraying you. What always happens, (and there are economic terms for this of course, all of which sound really sophisticated) is that both prisoners confess, and get a jail term of 5 years. Thus, while this is clearly not the best combined decision, no other decision will ever be made, because the best independent decision for either prisoner is to confess. Kapish?

So please read the book, if you can. Or see the movie; it's an exhaustive take on the book. You won't regret it at all. However, there's another very hilarious character, whom I must mention. The mess officer of the camp, Milo Minderbinder, hits upon a fantastic plan to make money off the war. He uses restocking the mess as an excuse to fly around all over Europe, buying and selling stuff to collect margins for a 'syndicate', which no one knows whether one is a member of. Milo, of course, insists that 'everyone has a share'. Well, so Milo ends up with the entire cotton crop of Egypt, which he then tries to include in mess food (but he isn't a domineering tyrant, so he coats the cotton balls with chocolate syrup). In another absolutely ROFL moment, he and his accomplices take off in the camp's own planes, off the camp's own runway, to bombard the very same runway. Obviously, everyone on camp had a share in the contract which Milo entered into … with the Germans! Anyway, read this book, and tell me what you think.

It all started with a flip of a coin, 11 months ago…

I recently watched The Butterfly Effect. I must say, I think the director is very gifted (apart from, of course, the actors available to him… this movie top-lined Ashton Kutcher of That 70s' Show fame). The manner in which he tells the story is quite interesting, to say the least. I also saw Pi, another very good movie directed by Darren Aronofsky. He is more famous for a later movie, Requiem for a Dream, a movie I'll never see (I don't believe I can take depression of such a manic kind). His next movie, The Fountain, however, is a movie I watched, and found very interesting (expect a blog on that movie pretty soon, methinks).

Anyway, what connects Pi and The Butterfly Effect? Both touch, directly or indirectly, variants of a celebrated mathematical idea called the chaos theory (Pi talks more about chaos). And they both present very interesting ideas, which are worth exploring, at the very least (Fear not, for I shall do only that).

Chaos theory is a very catchy name for what is really a theory about the significant impact of initial conditions. No prizes for choosing the more glamorous one correctly (aap paanchvi paas se tez nahi hain). The theory says that changing the initial inputs to a process by very negligible amounts can sometimes have non-negligible effects on final conditions. What this means is that what seems to be a disorderly situation is actually a deterministic effect of some invisible changes in the manner in which things started. Therefore, and I think this is very interesting, chaos theory actually says that there is order in everything. One very good example of how initial conditions can affect what happens in the end is a Honda advertisement made a few years ago. The advertisement starts with a very harmless gear rolling into a slightly bigger one. The ad goes on for about 2 min, with every new auto component moving another, till, ultimately, an SUV moves a bit. Any slight change in the momentum of the first gear or its direction would probably have derailed the experiment long before culmination. And as expected, the ad-makers required 606 takes to get everything right. I don't know whether I can post YouTube videos here, so I'll just paste the link. Do go have a look.

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=g2VCfOC69jc

See what I mean? Anyway, The Butterfly Effect is named after the famous chaos theory quote: The flapping of a butterfly's wings can cause a typhoon halfway across the world. Cool, huh? Well, not exactly true, but you get the drift. The protagonist is a guy who realizes that he can alter his memories, and in so doing, can actually modify the past. Now, the few of us who saw Back to the Future III know that this is not really true; all he does is create a parallel universe. But hey, guys, this is just a movie! Allow the guy some directorial license! Jokes apart, the movie is about how this guy keeps going back in time, changing every little thing, but coming back to the present to find out that something else has gotten messed up. There's another discrepancy too, which we shall ignore (after I mention it, of course). None of the changes he makes (like killing a guy) are negligible in any manner of speaking. But the movie ends very well, and all in all, was a good investment of my time (not a very busy boy, am I?). The line of the movie, for me, was when this kid goes to meet his father in a psychiatric hospital. His father was put in there, for he suffered from the safe gift/curse (Spider-Man fan alert!) as his son, the protagonist. So he tells his father, 'I'll send you a post-card once I make everything right.' The father says, 'You'll never be able to do it, son, for your actions will always have unintended effects.' And then proceeds to try and kill him.

Pi is slightly different, in that it talks of chaos, not chaos theory. It's about a crazed mathematician who believes that numbers alone can explain all natural phenomena. The apparent chaos will clear away once one is able to see the numerical patterns. And his goal in life is to find such a pattern in the stock markets (something malicious-looking stock-pickers constantly hound him about). Somewhere along the way, a Jewish mathematician (also crazed, I am sure) starts trying to attract him towards the search for a 216-digit number that will unlock future prosperity. When our hero's computer spews a 216-digit error code (actually 218 digits – a directorial error), he begins to smell a connection, and the plot thickens considerably (and how, for one sees brains lying around in railway stations, and drills are no longer used just for making holes in walls). The underlying theme of this movie is the search for this elusive (and incredibly long) number that will help the protagonist see the whole world clearly (and give him Matrix-type powers too, I bet). Whether he gets it or not, is for you to see and find out.

Looking at things one way, we can see that the chaos theory does make a lot of sense. An example from the book Black Swan can be paraphrased as follows. A path of a billiard ball as it hits the sides of a billiards table can be calculated reasonably accurately for a few bounces by taking into account the coefficients of friction of the table and the sides, the coefficients of cohesion, etc. But new factors keep being introduced as the number of bounces off the sides increases, as their effects become important. For instance, after the 7^th bounce, the masses of the people standing next to the table become important. After the 50^th bounce, the movement of an electron at the edge of the universe will also make a tangible difference to the path. This is bad news for those among us who suffer from over-analysis (they have problems anyway). But let me also say that if lightning strikes you as you make your way to work tomorrow, rest assured, it's not because you left your residence at 9:00:23 a.m. as opposed to your usual 9:00:10 a.m. And of course, you're already dead, so it's a moot point.

Don’t Look Now, But There’s Money in the Trunk

Conspiracy theories make people rich. Not you and me, of course (unless you are paranoid or have an extensive imagination, in which case there's hope for you). The conspiracy theory industry makes millions of bucks a year, at the very least. This includes books, movies, lecture series, and even serialized newspaper reports.

Organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, which have been near-defunct for many years now, still make huge amounts in membership fees, presumably because at any point of time, there will always be some people seeing Birth of a Nation (a highly controversial movie, banned in many countries) for the first time. And I'm sure almost all of you remember the furor that rose in journalistic circles when Princess Diana died. The then-Premier of the UK, Tony Blair, had to publicly denounce the 'Diana Death Industry', as he put it, and even then, the gold rush was scarcely derailed.

There are numerous books, periodicals, etc that focus on such sensationalist theories. Don't take my word for it, search for the word conspiracy on Amazon.com. In fact, I read in an excellent article on the subject that a new edition of the afore-mentioned Protocols of the Elders of Zion is available on Amazon, and has sold at least 64000 copies, which is a pretty handsome number (for a book whose origins have been proven to be fake).

When we talk of movies, many conspiracy movies have done well. The Fugitive, Men in Black, and to a lesser extent, The Matrix (although people like the series for different reasons) are all examples of movies where someone suspects that life isn't all that ordinary at all. And surprises of surprises, they are right. The biggest fish of all, of course, is the X-Files franchise. This series made tons of money for its producers, and was even made into a movie.

This is, more or less, all that I have to say on the subject (and Thank God for that!). I hope I have managed to convince at least some readers that conspiracy theories need to be consumed with a ton of salt. Of course, maybe this is all a conspiracy too, hatched by some evil sociologist who's cashing on our gullibility by forming an international syndicate of conspiracy theorists …

The Truth is Out There! (haunting music in the background)

The above line, made hugely famous by the X-Files TV show, conjures up the equally famous background score to mind almost immediately. The innumerable number of subplots of the main one – that there is information about extra-terrestrials that the government is hiding – have helped the producers mint quite a bit of money. But more on that later (surprise surprise). For now, we'll move to something at least as interesting.

Let us look at a few conspiracy theories, and I'll try to show where they come up short. The Pearl Harbor conspiracy is fairly popular. The proponents say that US officials were aware of the imminent Japanese attack, but purposefully chose to do nothing. Such an allegation is based on two assumptions: that the US officials had all the necessary information, and that they consequently acted rationally. Graham Allison (of Rationality Theorem fame) found that while the government did have all the necessary information, this information was scattered across departments. The entire picture wasn't formed in time. Bureaucracy was thus the main reason for the government not acting in time. Also, some of the information was actually misunderstood – the harbor was on alert, but for Japanese sabotage, not an aerial attack.

The Bible Code, a book by Michael Drosnin, was fairly popular a few years ago. In this book, he shows that many things that happen today in the world have actually been coded into the Old Testament, i.e. the Torah, which is written in Hebrew. He uses a computer to find certain terms in the Torah, by searching rows, columns and diagonals. He also went on to show how the Bible predicts the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the then Premier of Israel. Now, this is not a true blue conspiracy theory, but it does have elements of one (if you receive a lot of forwards, you might be able to draw parallels with how one can fold a $1 bill in a certain manner to predict the 9/11 mishap). The problems with such a theory are equally obvious and startling. Such a finding is quite random, in the sense that if one looks in any voluminous book in an old language (which the Torah certainly is) one is bound to find a column or diagonal that matches a certain word. This is just plain old and simple probability. A similar error occurs in Zeitgeist, where the filmmaker says that the advent of Jesus was simply an announcement of the beginning of the age of Pisces (see the movie to understand what this means). He goes on to prove this by presenting approximately ten paragraphs from the New Testament that mention the words 'two' and 'fish', and mind you, they don't always occur together in these chosen lines. Consider an exercise, where one uses a computer to generate a million paragraphs randomly, using nouns and filler sentences that are present in the Bible. Any math professor (or student) will guarantee that in a million such randomly-generated paragraphs, one will be quite likely to find at least 10 with these two words in them. This is akin to the famous analogy coined by Nashim Nicholas Taleb in Fooled By Randomness, where he says that if one has a billion monkeys typing on typewriters, one of these monkeys will definitely end up writing the Hamlet (Although it is widely believed today that Shakespeare was a plagiarist, I in no way want to add to speculation that he kept a private army of lesser primates).

One last theory must be debunked, at least partially, before I call it a day. Let me move on to the Pentagon conspiracy. Proponents say that a Boeing never hit the Pentagon, as the only released photos show no sign of the debris that one would expect from a Boeing collision (of course, the reasons are more numerous, but this is the basic one). The fact that the FBI refused to release any security camera footage has added to the speculation. The simple reason (Occam's Razor) for the fact that the photographs show a shadow approaching the Pentagon, and then show the damage, is that the number of frames captured per second is less than that required to capture such a collision. And the simple reason for the lack of any debris is that probably the debris fell on spots that the camera didn't capture (recall the no evidence of disease = evidence of no disease fallacy).

So you see, conspiracy theories are, more often than not, simply an indication that somebody out there is making some elementary logical errors. As a consumer of such theories, one must curb one's appetite for sensationalism, if one wants to maintain a realistic perspective. But of course, there's one more angle to this long-winding story – the economic one. When we look at that, we'll probably understand the most emphatic reason yet for the existence of these amazing inventions of idle minds.