In the last few years, we have had to bid goodbye to many familiar things, as technology marches on inexorably. The baby boomers are discovering rheumatism and we are writing bedtime stories about paper books, DVDs and a truly free internet for our grandchildren. So it is no wonder that 2011 was heavily nostalgic on the movie front: Midnight in Paris with its cotton-gathering hero, The Descendents with its protagonist who labours under the weight of his ancestors’ deeds and the expectations of his descendents, The Tree of Life with its narrator who remembers the horror and innocence of childhood and Hugo with its touching tribute to Georges Méliès.  The Artist went one step further with its wonderfully satirical throwback to the silent film era.

How many film aficionados have you met, who don’t list at least five silent films among their favourite films? And how many times have you told them that the only reason silent movies existed was because they hadn’t found a way to stick sound to the picture, not because it was a superior story-telling device. The moment they found the technology to do so, they abandoned silent films and ushered in one of the most glorious and exuberant eras in film: musicals.  Why would you want to watch people mugging at the camera when you can watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers fire up the screen instead? Well, Michel Hazanavicius presents a strong case for the former, having had over a century’s worth of cinematic cautionary tales warn and inspire him.  Is it not said that hindsight is 20/20? So too was The Artist with its beautifully arranged scenes and simple plot that always threatens but never actually falls into the trap of rose-tinting the past.  Perhaps the original silent films were constrained in their imagination and plot due to lack of technology and because the art was very new, but after watching this film, my interest in silent films has been piqued.  A well-executed and well-intentioned film, Hazanavicius reminds us that sound often obscures our ability to see.

Jean Dujardin plays a famous silent film star at his peak. He is entranced by a spunky, ambitious woman, Bérénice Bejo who manages to worm her way into Hollywood and hitches her wagon to the rising star of the talkies. Dujardin on the other hand, becomes a has-been and doesn’t even realize it.

Simplicity has been called the crowning reward of art; the ultimate sophistication. If you take away dialogue and noise which tend to dissemble and even take away the over-the-top gesticulations associated with silent films, what you are left with are little gestures, longing glances and lip quivers which tell you the whole story.  After so many bloated films with enormous budgets, lavish sets and costumes and self-indulgent dialogue, The Artist with its spartan aesthetic was satiating.  There is a scene when Dujardin, the famous star of a film and Bejo, a set extra are filming a scene in a room full of dancers.  We giggle when Dujardin, is so captivated by Bejo’s beauty, that he absent-mindedly forgets his role and then we sigh when they forget that the camera is rolling and dance together unmindful of the rest of the world. Or a scene when Bejo, sitting in her plush luxury car secretly purchases everything put up for auction by a tired, angry and destitute Dujardin and manages to convey love, concern and guilt without having to say word.

There were a number of hat-tips to Singin’ in the Rain, a film about the introduction of talking films and one of the cheekiest and most enjoyable digs at studio bosses, starlets and Hollywood in general. But I was also reminded of another film about silent films: the darker and tragic Sunset Boulevard, a critique of Hollywood’s flagrant use-and-throw attitude with its people.  Dujardin’s fading celebrity more closely mimicked Norma Desmond’s dangerous self-obsession and inability to flow with the current than Gene Kelly’s Don Lockwood who, despite being uncomfortable with the new technology, admits defeat when he sees the overwhelming response to talkies. Singin’ in the Rain is a happy story because Don swallows his pride and takes diction lessons. He accepts criticism of his silent film style of acting and instead concentrates on his strengths: song and dance. Norma Desmond failed, not because she was old but because she thought she was more important than the art itself.  While this film could have captured Dujardin’s catharsis better, Dujardin does a fantastic job with his character.

Truth be told, I was not swept away by the film when I watched it. It was good, it did everything right but was it enough, I wondered. But weeks after watching it, I find myself dwelling on scenes, some of which were composed like paintings or I find myself thinking of Dujardin’s range as an actor or even some particularly clever title cards.  Some would say that my growing regard for the film may be related to the growing number of awards it has been racking up and because it is a very likely winner in the Best Director, Actor and Picture categories this Oscar season, but that’s nonsense. This year, my heart and inconsequential vote are with Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. But then, simplicity really ought to be a more popular virtue in Hollywood and I hope that it is encouraged by suitably rewarding The Artist with golden naked men.

Human girl child, 2 years old, head bashed in, with human bite marks.

Bitten. By another being, a human being.

Indeed, it was shocking. Dogs bite people. Dogs biting children are stories which will always get pride of place in newspapers. But, do people bite babies? From one newspaper’s pride of place in the ‘flyer’ position, the tragic story spread, swiftly, like a vampire’s bite, to garner massive, daily press coverage.

Since then, many facets of the story have been reported, stressed and re-enacted. The baby was a victim- bitten by, and bashed by, a teenage mother. The teenage mother herself was a victim of a purported trafficking racket. The child has siblings, also victims of an awful, exploitative adult world.

Which we learn in high-resolution photographic detail, day after day.

Each story of this baby- called Falak, and ‘battered baby’ in equitable alternates, is accompanied with a high-resolution picture. You can see the baby has been bitten, each welt lovingly captured. You can see the pathetic size of the victim, as the pictures capture the length of a body that is mostly uncovered, almost naked. You see the eyes tightly, painfully scrunched up. What you probably can’t see are her eyes wincing as cameras go off, or grimacing over a fresh photo shoot she has not sanctioned.

I want to fervently stress at this point that I am happy the press has taken up the issue of Falak with the gusto, and the outrage, it deserves. Undoubtedly, this has inflamed the police into taking action that spans many states and requires differing levels of investigation and intervention.

But surely coverage with the particular brand of moral outrage this case calls for, can be accomplished without an accompanying, high-res picture of the incapacitated victim?

If you look at your childhood pictures, you will most probably find a black and white shot of you as a baby or toddler: dimpled cheeks, dimpled arms and legs, wearing, for all purposes, nothing. That’s because we have been taught to believe that notions of privacy differ for toddlers and adults, and for toddlers and children. After a certain age, pictures of children appear in sepia tones, usually covered up in embarrassing costumes- bow ties for boys, poofy tutus for girls; but covered up all the same. There is, in the middle-class psyche, an unspoken cut-off date which dictates collectively- now is when the child needs to be covered up in all photos, and more significantly, now is when the child needs some privacy.

Possibly, this middle class cut-off line can explain why it seems to be permissible to publish pictures in high-resolution, different on most days, of a battered baby, daily. Unfortunately for Falak, she doesn’t seem to be at the magic cut-off date yet.

And then, I have to pause.

This is the same nation which gushes over the Bachchan family, which decides not to publish, sell, or otherwise ‘expose’ pictures of a new baby in their family.  This is seen as virtuous and wholesome. In the international columns, accolades have been given to the French media for not publishing pictures of celebrity children.

Why is Falak different?

Today, there is no doubt that Falak is a celebrity, whether of her choosing or not. Undoubtedly too, her celebrityhood has been decided by reporters covering her, and the media has become her spokesperson. Does it stand to follow then, that there is to be no moderation in the particular tone adopted by the spokesperson?

It is not merely a question of the personal and private space of an abandoned child. It is also not a question of the privacy accorded to adulthood and infancy.  It is simply a case of what should be acceptable or not.  Clearly, Falak’s case stands for many why’s- underage rape, violence against women, unwanted pregnancy, trafficking. But why is it acceptable to publish invasive, aggressively taken pictures of Falak to drive home all those points- problems of which Falak is a symptom?

Even if the pictures were all taken in one day, I do not believe her now too familiar face and her battered body need to stand daily as an accurate, all-consuming representation of the violence against women.

I have searched for a moderation of view: a long shot, a blurry image, even an arty picture of a tiny hand on a pillow. And yet all I find are detailed, gruesome closeups of the tiny face and the unfortunate body. I have to wonder- what life will this girl grow up to lead, after this proprietary, unflinching watch?

I want to end on this thought: Nigella Lawson, food connoisseur, has refuted claims that photos of her with food trickling down her face, in high-res, multicolour detail, are pornographic. I wonder if Falak, and those defending her, will stop to ponder on similar questions.

Image: from bumptobaby.blogspot.in

But what really catapulted the story to public attention was the finding that resveratrol, a molecule found in red wine, might do this. The presence of a (relatively) cheap, edible substance universally consumed, savored and culturally revered that might slow down aging naturally led to unprecedented public attention. The French and Italians might say “I told you so”, but suddenly the holy grail of medical science seemed to be within reach. As usual though, the initial euphoria gradually gave way to a more cautious and tempered belief in the benefits of red wine in mitigating the ill effects of age, and indeed in the whole field of caloric restriction itself. The complete story is fascinating and too convoluted to recount here, but the simple fact of the matter is that the biology of aging is much more complex than we imagined and the initial breakthroughs have not been as unambiguous as they seemed. Not surprisingly, ascribing something as complex as aging and its attendant physiological changes to the action of a single family of genes and proteins has turned out to be simplistic at best (as a comparison, even obesity is thought to be caused by dozens of genes with overlapping effects). In addition, anti-aging effects that got the attention of the New York Times turned out to be significant only in “lower” animals and not in mammals. As it stands today, while research on caloric restriction undoubtedly has great potential, many complications need to be ironed out before the initial optimism can be justified. Curiously, much of the high-profile work in the area can be traced in various forms to a single laboratory at MIT. A recent article in Science does a great job detailing the personalities, the findings and the controversies that sprang from this and other laboratories’ work; the entire saga seems fit for a Sinclair Lewis novel.

But whatever the scientific status of the field, its high-profile nature and its potentially revolutionary implications promised ample funding for interested researchers, and over the years it has attracted both highly visible as well as lesser known scientists. One of the individuals who waded into resveratrol territory was Dipak Das of the University of Connecticut Medical School. Over the last few years Das  published several papers detailing the beneficial effects of resveratrol in possibly preventing or mitigating oxidative damage caused in cardiovascular and neurological diseases. While most of his research has been published in low-impact journals, it seems that Das was on his way to a lucrative research career involving resveratrol and its role in health and disease.

Until now. It seems that somewhere along the road, he started committing fraud on a massive scale, the likes of which haven’t been seen in some time in biomedical research. It started when an anonymous tipster tipped off the university about fabrication in some of Das’s papers. The university then launched its own probe and formed a review committee. For the past two years the committee has been working in the shadows with the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) and last week they released their findings in a 50-page document. The findings indicate wholesale fraud, manipulation of results and deliberate doctoring of critical data on a shockingly regular basis between 2002 to 2009.

Much of the fabrication centers around Western blots, a research tool that’s universally used in all aspects of biological research. The Western blot is to biology what spectroscopy is to chemistry and physics. It essentially detects the presence and identity of specific biomolecules, especially proteins. The proteins appear as dark bands on a white background with different lanes representing different proteins. Western blots are absolutely indispensable in confirming the identity of a novel or unknown protein, and I think it’s safe to say that most biomedical researchers who have won Nobel Prizes have used these tools in their research. In case of Das, the report has found dozens of Western blots to be grossly manipulated using image manipulation software.

There are two aspects of the report that bear closer scrutiny. One is the sheer number of Western blots found to have been doctored. The committee examined 26 papers and cited no less than 88 figures which appear to be manipulated (there were also several that appeared normal). This is a staggering amount of manipulation and rules out accidental oversight. Das would have to be involved in a concerted, conscious and deliberate effort to tamper with so much data. It’s quite clear that the magnitude of the manipulation alone points strongly to purposeful fraud.

The second aspect of the report concerns the great difficulty of detecting the fraud. Western blots seem to notoriously amenable to manipulation; they prominently featured in another recent high-profile case of fraud in India involving Gopal Kundu of the National Center for Cell Science (NCCS). In the report on Das’s work, single bands of proteins in Western blots have been enlarged and their borders further magnified to show the contrast between the background for that particular band and for others, indicating that the band in question was copied and pasted. Image manipulation software can sometimes produce such artifacts and some of the data appears like it could also have been the result of negligence or sloppy editing, but the number of such instances again rules out merely these possibilities. But the difficulty of discerning the doctored data also indicates more generally how difficult it can be to detect fraud in science. Even experienced specialists, let alone laymen or researchers from other fields, wouldn’t have thought to look for these minute differences which are evident only in retrospect. To demonstrate the process, at one point in the report the committee actually depicts a mock manipulation protocol where bands are edited or appended to other bands from totally different experiments. The subtleties in the data make it clear that even in the future it would be relatively easy for researchers to get away with this kind of manipulation. What these cases point to is the need for automated systems (“counter-software”, if you will) that could detect such fine anomalies in submitted Western blots or other presentations and try to separate artifacts from real red flags. In this case of course, the verdict is unanimous. At the end of the report, the committee finds unambiguous evidence of “unequivocal image manipulation, splicing, background erase and duplication” in a vast number of cases resulting in both data fabrication and falsification.

The debacle is ending in ways that such unfortunate scenarios usually end. The university has already begun proceedings to fire Das from his position. It is very likely that he will never be able to do research again, and that’s probably the way it should be given the extent of his fraud. Sadly, Das has not made things any easier by accusing university and department officials of racist prejudice. When you have to resort to such allegations in the face of massive evidence detailing your dishonesty, you only make your guilt seem more likely.

Ultimately this episode speaks as much about the culture of scientific research as it does about the transgressions of a particular researcher. We may not know for some time why Das felt like committing fraud on such a massive scale, but I suspect that the high-profile nature of anti-aging research and the funding that such research commands may have had at least something to do with it. In the last few years, resveratrol, caloric restriction and sirtuins have made it into the public discourse about science like few other topics. The possibility of harnessing all this data to solve the ultimate mystery of aging has ensured both sensationalist news items and eager funding agencies wanting to enable the next breakthrough. When you work in such high-profile fields, it is more tempting to fabricate your results to snare more funding. In this particular case, Das’s work was deemed to be low-impact and peripheral to the field and so the damage might be negligible, but in someone else’s hands it could well be extensive. The case of Jan Schon immediately comes to mind.

The other reason underlying Das’s behavior might simply have been the complexities of biology. Das has been at the university since 1984 and got tenure in 1993, so it’s curious why he decided to fabricate results in the last decade or so. I am quite ready to believe that his work on the complex effects of resveratrol on disease may have run into roadblocks, prompting him to start making up results that he wanted to see but which he didn’t. Most research these days and especially biomedical research is a complex game. In some ways we are trying to bite off more than we can chew. In such cases wishful thinking can dominate, and when expected results don’t pan out because of the complexity of the system under consideration, it becomes easier to succumb to desperation and temptation. The resveratrol story may fit into this paradigm, with initial reports suggesting a tantalizingly simple connection between the drugs and aging and more recent reports questioning this connection. Yet again, nature is not just more complex than we imagine, but it is more complex than we can imagine.

The only remedy for avoiding such debacles may be more acute vigilance, self-policing and an honest willingness to accept failures. And some modesty before nature may be in order here.

Now, Pahars, back in the day – I am not too old, I’d like to believe, but I still love the phrase – was one of my favorites. I’d say I loved him to bits if only I hadn’t completely forgotten him after he left Southampton in 2006, or maybe after they dropped a division by finished bottom in 2004-05. But thinking back now, it’s easy to remember that he was a gem.

Pahars, as you may or may not know, was little. He wasn’t little like Messi or Xavi, but little enough for his Latvian nationality to make him little – “The Little Latvian” they called him. This was a moniker that as peremptory rule commentators had to use every time he scored a goal. “Pahars is in,” they would scream, “And the Little Latvian has pulled it back for Southampton.” The Little Latvian also happened to be a cheeky little fella’. He once nonchalantly nutmegged the mighty Jaap Stam and scored coolly past Massimo Taibi – “wonderfully well done by the Little Latvian,” the commentator said, on this occasion. He also scored two goals against Everton in a season-ending fixture in 1999 that kept the Saints in the league; the first a calm left footed finish, and the second a stopping header – a brace that firmly entrenched him in Saints folklore.

Pahars was the antithesis of Duncan Ferguson, or Big Dunc, the former Everton centre forward, who happily for me doesn’t often pop up in my dreams. Pahars had a sudden burst of pace (as he showed in this jinky run and finish against Wimbledon), but he was mostly all brain and niftiness – Saints fans, I’m sure will remember his goal against their old enemy, Portsmouth, with much fondness: a lovely curler into the bottom left corner. Wikipedia tells me that he scored only 43 goals for Southampton, but I’d like to believe this is some kind of conspiracy theory. For he always seemed to pop up in the box, unnoticed, and with insouciant grace.

Wikipedia also tells me that he is now the manager at Skonto, a Latvian club that sadly isn’t little. They’ve won the Virsliga – the Latvian Higher League – 14 times since 1992. It’s difficult to imagine, Pahars suited and booted, looking all managerly, screaming at the fourth official, and making Rafa Benitez-like finger drawings, but that’s neither the Pahars that I know, nor the one that I want to know. He is “Oh Lord Marian” to the Saints fans. To me, he is – well you guessed it – The Little Latvian.

Post Script: I’d like to believe, this is the first in a series of posts on sportsmen, from the past, who crop up in random conversations, dreams or otherwise. Maybe the next post will be on Little Kalu or Big Niall Quinn.

At least, these were the words I had planned on writing before Murray’s semifinal against Novak Djokovic last Friday. Not that any of this has changed since, but what Murray showed in the loss to Djokovic, in a contest that had everything one can hope to see in a tennis match – sweat, toil, pain, will, brilliance, drama, you name it – was that maybe we are set for an even more glorious order at the top of men’s tennis – one that will accord space for a narrative of far greater mythical proportions.

For a year now, Murray, obviously an immensely talented ball striker, endowed with an almost uncanny grasp of the geometry of a tennis court – I dare say, a facet of the game in which he is more gifted than any of the top three players – has stayed firmly rooted outside the oligarchy at the top; not so far outside it for him to take solace in the impossibility of the pursuit, but tantalizingly and cruelly close to it. Prior to this year’s Australian Open, Murray had reached, at least, the semifinal in six of the last eight grand slams, losing twice in the final, both times in Melbourne. It was clear that he belonged in the top four just as much as he didn’t in the top three. It must have been a brutal, lonely place to be.

Professional athletes devote almost all their formative years to a singular pursuit, as indeed Murray has to tennis for nearly all 24 years of his life. Murray and Djokovic played each other for the first time when they were both 13, at Les Petits, a match that Murray remembers winning 6-1, 6-0. A decade later, in the Australian Open final in 2011, a match that Murray went into, perhaps, on equal footing with Djokovic, the Serb trounced him in straight sets, 6-4, 6-2, 6-3. While Djokovic seemed to relish the occasion, Murray crumbled under the spotlight. This was clutch time, and Murray wasn’t up for it. It was his chance at greatness, and he had blown it. No doubt, Djokovic played astonishingly well, and would have, perhaps, defeated anybody on the day, but Murray’s implosion was inexplicable.

Since then – and prior to the ongoing Australian Open – Murray had lost to Nadal in the semifinals of the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open. Apart from the first set of the Wimbledon semifinal, which he won by playing some inspired, attacking tennis that ran counter to his natural instincts, Murray has never quite looked like he has belonged in the company of the top three. He has been commandingly conquered on each occasion. Indeed much of this has to do with Djokovic and Nadal’s own brilliance, but the manner of the losses, when considering Murray’s talents mean that the intangibles have to be questioned – the supreme, untouchable mental fortitude that each of the top three brings to the tennis court that have seemed non-existent in the Scot.

It’s not that Murray can’t beat these players – he has shown several times in Master’s tournaments, and twice in Grand Slams (both times against Rafael Nadal) – that he is fully capable of defeating any of the top three, and that he can do so authoritatively. In the biggest stage, though, his lack of confidence has often exhibited itself as much as a state as it is a trait. This is not to say that he is incapable of overcoming any mental frailties, or that even a failure to do so would make him a lesser player, but until Friday’s semifinal, there was little to indicate that he would, in fact, play the opponent and not the occasion. But on Friday, Murray, for large periods, played as though the shackles had been broken, as though he finally believed in his abilities. At the end of the first set, which Djokovic won 6-3, it really did feel like déjà vu, and even more so when he went up 2-0 in the second set. In 2011, having lost the first set 4-6, Murray crumbled in the second, littering the set with unforced errors; there seemed to be an utter lack of purpose behind any of his stroke-play – forehands, limp and aimless, either found the net or went wide and long; his usually lethal backhand curiously went off-radar, and even his on-court movement took on a lethargic turn.

But this year in the phases that followed the early slip in the second set, he was imperious – there were long, punishing rallies that the Murray of last year may have found a way to lose, but here he stood steadfast, showcasing unbelievable defensive skills, and when the opportunity presented itself, an ability to finish the point with dazzling accuracy and purpose. He even threw in a majestic, Sampras-esque overhead for, good measure. There was a sudden burst of courage in his game plan – groundstrokes were struck with greater depth, and the drop shots, which appeared perfunctory last year, were executed with a precise purpose. Consider this point when Murray out-Djokoviced Djokovic, for instance, at 15-30, 3-4: in evidence was a splendid amalgam of razor sharp defensive skills – twenty strokes into the rally, Murray lunged on his backhand side to keep the ball in play with Gumby-like elasticity – and supreme on-court nous – by constantly varying the angles and the spin on his strokes – to force the Serb into submission. There was more of that in the third set too. In the tiebreak with Djokovic serving at 3-5, Murray produced a rally of astounding virtuosity, sending him from corner to corner before finishing with a roaring forehand into the open court. It was clear proof that Murray had the perceptible goods necessary to defeat Djokovic; his forehand, often considered his weakest stroke, was struck with fluidity, and he found improbable angles that put even Djokovic outside his comfort zone – the Serb, seemingly, can reach any ball, but when Murray landed his cross-court forehands within the service box, spinning away from the court, Djokovic struggled to reach them with enough time to make a meaningful return.

But after going two sets to one up, the familiar Murray-meltdown was back. This was his chance to impose himself on the occasion, but here he was collapsing, wayward with his groundstrokes, and even choosing to drive-volley when the overhead was the simpler option, and finding himself broken in the first game. Murray’s disintegration, unhappily for him, coincided with Djokovic finding his rhythm, and the next thing we knew, the defending champion was up 5-2 in the deciding set.

After somehow holding the next game, though, and with Djokovic serving for the match, Murray broke to love. It was beautiful, clinical tennis. Murray was showing that deep down inside him he had the ability to fight back against the world’s number one player in the fifth set of a Grand Slam semifinal – it was the intangible that for so long, we thought Murray lacked. Ultimately, Djokovic, astoundingly brilliant at 6-5 broke to win the contest, a gladiatorial battle that will go down as one of the finest matches of the year, but it wasn’t the final game where Murray had lost it. It was his inability to turn a supreme front-running position into a position of unassailable reach in the fourth set that cost him. It’s difficult to imagine that either Djokovic or Nadal would have played as poorly as Murray did in the set, but those aren’t the moments that Murray wants to remember from this match, for unlike his prior appearances in the final stages of a Grand Slam, here he showed the spunk for battle. It seemed he too – like Nadal, Federer and Djokovic – could summon a magical prowess when most needed. For all the frailties that he displayed, Murray had also made a mental step-up.

It was only a little over a year ago when it appeared there would be no challenging the Federer-Nadal duopoly at the top, but here we are, with one of sport’s greatest ever tri-valries. Murray on Friday, whether it had anything to do with his new coach, Ivan Lendl – who himself lost his first five grand slam finals – or not, showed a sudden thirst for the occasion. Unlike last year, he was savoring the stage. He seemed to intrinsically believe that he could beat Djokovic in a major semifinal. Hopefully, it is that conviction, which Murray will retain from this contest, and, not the implosion in the fourth set, and, who knows – if it isn’t too greedy of us to ask – perhaps the rivalry at the top of men’s tennis could become even more implausibly grand.

]]> http://www.criticaltwenties.in/sport/andy-murray-and-the-clutch-question/feed 2 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/mediapopularculture/puss-in-boots-2011 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/mediapopularculture/puss-in-boots-2011#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:12:28 +0000 Lekha http://www.criticaltwenties.in/?p=4470

2011 will forever be known as the Year When Pixar Misread Its Audience With Disastrous Effect. Fortunately for DreamWorks Animation, some executive put down his foot and refused to greenlight Grandpa Shrek Once Again.  The response to Shrek Forever After made it very clear that all the goodwill earned by Shrek and its smart sequels had been definitively squandered, which is why a spin-off film was a terribly risky venture. But DreamWorks cleverly chose to make your film about the one thing the internet is incapable of dinging: THE CUTEST WIDDLE KITTY CATS IN THE WORLD OHMYGOD SO FUZZY I WANT TO SNUGGLE WITH THEM.  And also stars the suavest cat since Macavity.

Voiced by Antonio Banderas, Puss in Boots (who, *snigger* is known as Cat in Boots in some countries for “cultural” reasons) is a hard-bitten outlaw on the run, drinks shots of milk through gritted teeth and woos the ladies with his sweet flamenco moves.  He is approached by the morally flexible Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis) with an offer Puss cant resist: a dangerous quest for magic beans! And as if Puss needed any more convincing, Humpty’s partner-in-crime, Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) charms her way into Puss’s heart.

While it did drag in some parts, overall, the script was very funny and the plot held its ground. The film was far less formulaic than its predecessors and it worked well as a spin-off.  It must’ve taken monumental willpower on their part to not shoehorn in Shrek characters. Yes, they did the usual Shrek thing of fairy-tale-characters-with-a-twist, but none of that over the top, caricature-ish Rumpelstiltskin stuff. Jack and Jill are murderous outlaws with marital problems; Humpty Dumpty is… well, Zach Galifianakis shaped like an egg, and they pulled it off.

There were plenty of cheeky references to the actors’ filmography like Desperado and The Mask of Zorro which was a cute touch without getting obnoxious. Most critics complain about the ubiquity of pop culture references in a film for children, but I guess you’ve got to throw a bone to the baby-sitting adults/ Peter Pans in the audience.

While the verdict is “wit, visual sparkle and effervescent charm”, will this film win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature?  Technical brilliance is always appreciated, but this prize does not reward the technology as much as the the creative use of technology. Which is exactly what Shrek, Spirited Away, Wall-E, Wallace & Gromit, Ratatouille and Happy Feet had in common– they were wonderful, touching stories which were made remarkable with the use of animation. Similarly, despite having brilliant effects and the best use of 3D in recent times, How to Train Your Dragon with its cliched plot was beaten by the heartrending story in Toy Story 3. Puss in Boots has not managed to set itself apart from the fun but somewhat predictable heap of animated films and no heart strings whatsoever were pulled (except when Puss does his Big Kitty Eyes thing).  So I’m leaning towards a ‘no’.

Soon we reach Mahim where I live near the dargah of Makhdoom Ali Mahimi, a sufi saint of the 14^th century. It was during the Mahim fair, and processions sprung from the dargah onto the streets, green lights flashing and speakers screaming, the intoxication of song in the air and white robed men dancing in wild enchantment, moving through the lanes where women and children indulged in succulent kababs.

While I got off, the cab driver looked around in disgust. Then turns to me and says, this naach gaana this disfiguring of Islam, this is wrong! This should never happen. These people will go to hell.  I pay him and say, the Makhdoomi precedes Deoband, maybe you should let us be.

Satanic!

The media has been up in arms, and the liberal heart broken at India’s capitulation to the crackpots who didn’t want Salman Rushdie at the Jaipur Literary Festival. Further investigations reveal that Salman Rushdie has in the past come and gone unhindered, and suddenly now we have crackpots all over the place who want to kill him if he sets foot. The more tolerant of the lot have promised to stage a passionate and hopefully, violent protest. Everyone is confused, the organizers cautious, 3 governments are exchanging notes and 2 of them advising the highest caution. Some say even the governments are intimidating the writer ostensibly, to keep the peace lest the country fall apart. This is not jihad, this is internal resurrection.  This is not cross border terrorism, this is religious sensitivity.

What beats me is why we are aghast at the so-called religious fundamentalists, the Darul-Ulooms and the SIMIs. Why we think that this has something to do with religion, or religious fundamentalism. Why the beards and trisuls fool us so easily, that we train our liberal bazookas diligently at these religion crazed idiots. Organized religion is certainly a problem, but surely only some of the religious are indulging in being offended? What is it about them that makes them offended? Or as some like to put it, why should we respect their right to be offended?

Those of us who measure progress with GDP figures, investor friendliness, social harmony, and the Human Development Index often overlook the difference between progress economic and of civilization. In our obsession with building on the numbers and respecting everyone’s ‘sensitivities’ we have forgotten some of the basic ideas that history has taught us. What matters most and what we often fail to realize in our theoretical rigmarole is that civilization is measured by its ideas, and well-being be it economic or social is premised on the constant advancement of thought. In the past, whole civilizations have met their end once they stopped nurturing free movement and evolution of ideas. What leads societies to stifle ideas, to withdraw their support for their nurture, and clamp down on their growth?

It is not religious fundamentalism. Religious fundamentalism is only a symptom of a certain kind of insecurity, an intellectual laziness. The same kind of insecurity suffered by every person, every cult which fears ideas, thought and free discourse. Offence is caused because the offended feel the waves of thought will capsize their boat. More unfortunate is the fact that very often, the waves don’t mean to capsize the boat and never will, and hence I refer to it as ‘insecurity’ and not fear. Why are they insecure? Is it because new ideas will displace the old? Why should we indulge this insecurity? The question is irrelevant and self defeating. As a society, if we don’t allow free discourse, competition between ideas, entrenched and fledgling, how would we be in a position to judge their relative merit? We would be like my cab driver who constantly runs in disgust from cinema, music and ideas in the fear that it will shake his boat. The boat his father locked him up in, and which he feels his children should suffer. A pathetic man who cannot think for himself, and who has outsourced his mind, who waxes eloquent on Deoband which has given him the word of God, giving him an excuse to otherwise miss the plot.

In Jaipur, all we have done is indulge the most insecure among us in the name of keeping the peace, and democracy. If this is what the most number of us want, and this is what democracy dictates, we should also consider what the point is of having a democracy in the first place, if it does not allow its constituents to think for themselves. Instead of raising an army to protect those among us who think, who write, who express and who question, we are shaming ourselves by helplessly throwing up our hands in the air for accommodating those of us who wish to convert the rest to the creed of the intellectually bankrupt.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Armie Hammer as J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson

The first rule of Hollywood Biopic-Making is, dig deep into the life of any protagonist and you will either find mommy issues (serial killers) or a momma’s boy (troubled hero).  Never fails to add a touch of drama on the Character Development front.  If you’re gunning for Oscar gold, you could throw in a nice, gritty descent into drug addiction hell.  But be warned: this wont work if your film is set in the 20s because you cant waste classy pinstriped suits and vintage atmosphere on the cesspit of drug abuse. It simply wont fit into the gangster-flapper-fedora aesthetic.  But never fear, there’s always the option of portraying obsessiveness bordering on mental illness with bonus points for homosexuality.

Besides, embroidering the truth for the sake of a good story has been a long-standing tradition among minstrels, raconteurs and now, film-makers. Which is why I’ve never really understood why people criticize a biopic for inaccuracies.  The aim of a biopic cannot be to merely narrate the events in a person’s life because two hours could never do justice to a life’s worth of experience.  A biopic is as much about the storyteller as it is about the subject, and the truth is at best, a minor selling point and at worst, irrelevant.

J. Edgar Hoover was the founder and director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He is credited for recognizing the importance of a centralised criminal investigation agency, the value of forensic evidence and for placing ‘G-Men’ in the cool corner of the pop-culture map, thereby becoming single-handedly responsible for an entire genre of TV shows.  This film tell Hoover’s story from his POV; a conceited braggart who convinced himself that he saved America from the Bolsheviks and numerous untold threats.  But as shaky as his memories are,  is his conclusion so very wrong, the movie asks us.  He may not have personally arrested John Dillinger as he would have us believe, but does that make him any less influential?  He may have exaggerated his involvement in high profile incidents, but the fact remains that he was director of the FBI for 48 years and could not be budged by six Presidents.  When you’ve done stuff like that, what’s a white lie here or a tall tale there?

The film succeeded as a compelling story by defining Hoover by the Lindbergh baby case. Not only did the case help the then-fledgling FBI amass enormous powers, but is also a perfect analogy for Hoover’s life.  Just as the evidence against Hauptmann (which, at the time, was termed “overwhelming”) has been re-examined and many troubling questions have been raised, so too has Hoover’s legacy.  Was he a forward thinking genius or a paranoid loony trying to justify his Bureau’s existence by spotting villains in every shadow? Did he innovate investigation or did he crucify  privacy at the altar of national security? As this film tells it, a little bit of both.

While films with straight actors portraying gay characters are labelled ‘Oscar bait‘, I am mindful of the fact that no discussion of Hoover is complete without mention of his relationship with Clyde Tolson.  Unfortunately,  too little is known about Hoover, who was so scrupulous about his keeping his desk and personal life squeaky clean.  Unsubstantiated gossip from the Walter Winchell ilk have sufficiently muddied the waters to make it impossible to ever have a clear picture.  What little we know is coloured by our perceptions of that bygone era.  The film-makers thus had a daunting task in interpreting their relationship: they couldn’t ignore the rumours nor have made him an effeminate cross-dresser who attended wild gay orgies.  No doubt the 20s were the decadent years and the orgies must’ve been buckets of fun, but I find it hard to believe that a man who understood the value of even one little slip-up in the blackmail market and a man whose position in D.C. was nowhere close to untouchable, would put on his pink tutu and head out to the nearest party.  Of course, one could name a number of present day public figures who were caught with their (literal and figurative) pants down and who should’ve all known better.  But there is simply no satisfying end to this discussion and the only fair way to judge this film would be on its ability to tell a convincing story, rather than its ability to tell the true story.  There were rumours that the film would be substantially de-gayed, but the end result was a touching and convincing portrayal of Tolson and Hoover’s relationship.  They beautifully reconciled Hoover’s seemingly contradictory sides: his conservative views and his obvious affection for Tolson.

Coming to the actors,  old person make-up is always a gamble and the payoff is rarely worth the risk. That said, Dicaprio pulled it off with panache.  After the shock of the first few minutes, I stopped seeing the makeup and only saw J. Edgar.  Poor Armie had a much harder time getting away with it.  Cosmetic troubles notwithstanding, Leo and Armie were both superb in their roles and they shared a wonderful camaraderie. Despite playing a reticent sidekick, Armie managed to not get overshadowed by Leo’s forceful performance.

Armie, getting the short end of the foundation stick.

A few hours ago, the Oscar nominees for 2012 were unveiled and J. Edgar has been properly screwed over, despite dangling Academy baits like Dame Judy and Clint Eastwood.  Could it be that the Academy can see the hook on which the bait is presented? Or could it be that the film pissed off the Democrats by showing Hoover in a sympathetic light and the Republicans by making Hoover gay?  Or because the whole film was not greater than the sum of its parts?  Personally, I think the G-men were involved.