An Education (2009)

This is my first movie review and I will be trying to write this without looking at imdb or rottentomatoes or even wikipedia for that matter so you’ll have to forgive me if my review is far fetched and distorts the movie in terms of facts.

Directed by Lone Scherfig, An Education is a movie about the growing up of Jenny, played by Carey Mulligan. The movie is a fluid tale set in 1970s England. The cinematography of the movie is perfect. It does not overwhelm the movie but it does create the perfect setting for the movie and is the clear winner in the movie, aside from Carey Mulligan that is. Through Jenny, the audience is exposed to the primary theme of the movie; the need for education and its relevance in a society which is very strongly influenced by other elements as well.

Jenny is a high-school girl aspiring to make it to Oxford. Pushed on by an overbearing father who leaves no stone unturned in his ambition for his daughter, Jenny dwells in her “shell” until she meets David, who shows her the high life. His con business notwithstanding, Jenny decides to marry him and abandon her education for it only to be left stranded when she realizes that he is a serial adulterer. She proceeds to work again towards her original goal and succeeds to this end.

The performance of Alfred Molina as the father is spot on and all the other characters seem to pale in comparison to both Jenny and her father.

The screenplay of the movie is also hard to criticize and Jenny’s in particular stand out such as her response to Ms. Stubbs where she says, “I feel very old but not very wise”. The dialogue between Mrs. Walters, the headmistress, and Jenny where they the latter expresses her view on education put forth the theme of the movie very lucidly.

I found that the movie lacked in terms of editing. It could have been much sharper at many places. Though the movie is set at a relatively convenient pace, the scenes were unnecessarily long at times and this was the only serious fault that I found with the movie.

This movie has the much more convenient debate of achieving success through education vis-à-vis con, I feel that it could have been a little less judgmental of the latter in terms of the categorical rejection of it. The fact that the story showed Jenny to have achieved success through the tried and tested methods of hard work, though reassuring to the faithful, is a criticism of out of the box approaches.

The movie also raises the theme of our perceptions of what bourgeois means to us and how quickly it can transcend into uncouth. David’s dialogue with Jenny turns the tables on his high society character when he criticizes her for being too bourgeois.

All in all, the movie is definitely worth a watch for some good performances and more than good background score and cinematography.

My rating – 8/10

Love?

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.

-Theseus, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This is what Shakespeare had to say on the topic of lovers.

It’s funny how the virtues of ubiquity, omnipresence, omnipotence, world turningness and so much more is attributed to love and yet when it comes to putting it into words, all we’ve reached thus far is that it is what happens when a couple of pheromones, dopamine and oxytocin form a potent enough amalgamation to trigger the pleasure center of the brain. The other more widely accepted understanding of love is that it is the delirious euphoria that brings with it tornadoes and typhoons capable of ravaging entire villages and gentle breezes that can barely support a feather. But neither the winds nor the chemicals are of any help to the millions of people out there who weather the tribulations of relationships and “love”

Be it the frenzies of lust that devour young couples or the pails of silence that fill the hearts of the more wizened, love manifests itself in many ways. How then, are two mortals meant to realize if what they feel is an entwinement of their souls that outlasts the sun and the stars or the ephemeral fling of a moth to a fire.

And then there are the doubts. “What is love?” “Will this love last?” “Has the love faded out?” To answer all this, the answer to one question suffices.

“Am I in love?”. The answer can come from something as innocuous as “Radha Kaise Na Jale” from Lagaan . Love is when all the songs make sense.

Can you feel the love tonight?

I have many Eureka moments, from solving an elusive problem in my sleep to figuring out where I kept the car keys during my bath. This time, I was staring mindlessly at the newspaper (read : Woods Gate – current count at 9 mistresses for anyone keeping track) for 2 hours when it all struck me, marriage is probably one of the most futile of all the institutions devised by man.

So as is with any problem, the diagnosis starts with the origin. Now dumasses that cavemen (yes, MEN) were, they decided to put into effect a system called marriage, wherein they thought that they were saving the hides(quite literally) of themselves and their future sons. They said that within marriage, a cavechick couldn’t let it loose with other suitors and hence reduce the competition. Reduce competition my ass! What’s the purpose of reducing competition if it brings in so much complacency that the guy barfed all the time and the chick, well, put on some holiday weight :) But look at how it ended, the men had to club their women and drag ‘em by their hair into their caves!

Since Google will ever give numbers only for the US, a little bit of research told me that their marriage industry is worth 45 billion dollars annually, with an additional 10 billion dollars to be gained from legalizing LSBT marriages and divorce industry around 25 billion dollars. This comes out to around around 100 billion dollars that the citizens of USA spend on just marrying and taking care of the ramifications. An additional 45 billion dollars worth of pre nup is transacted due to marriages and with Tiger going the way he is, all this may well multiply manifold. Would I be wrong in saying that ATLEAST a trillion dollars is spent on marriages world wide, and India is just a 54 billion dollar economy.

I am not against marriage per se. I find it nice that people can celebrate their love by legally binding themselves to each other till death does the part but when society declares this to be an obligation on us, that’s when my problem arises. It is when people use marriage as a security against affairs or a redundancy for an accident that ticks me off. What is the purpose of making the men deaf and women naggers when the same man and woman wooed and courted each other so very gracefully just one wedding ring earlier?

Also, what is up with the English Language. Why would you call it ‘wedding’, ’marriage’, ‘matrimony’. I mean how cumbersome is it to use them. It may well be social acclimatization but methinks calling marriage a fling might work better. Replace the word husband by boyfriend and wife by girlfriend. That should bring a little freshness into the entire thing. Isn’t “Tom and Nancy a happily flinged couple” a lot cooler that them being “happily wedded”. A lil sense of humour goes a long way in easing the trouble of marriage.

Da Vinci said, “Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.”

PS – The author is not responsible for your partner refusing to marry you after reading this awesome post.

Food for thought

So here I am making up for the 4 months of not posting. Lets look at the life of the average Joe. He lives in a house, has a job to make ends meet, sends his children to school and watches porn when his wife is not around, follows many different social norms (religion, God, atheism, Facebook etc.). He wakes up, brushes his teeth, has a bath, gets clothed and leaves for work, lives in drudgery for the ensuing 8-14 hours, comes back, grouses about the same and doesn’t know what to do when Tur Dal prices touch Rs. 100.

This Joe worked his ass off, or probably not, in college and caused a truckload of worry to himself and his family, friends. My friend, Bill Waterson has spent a lifetime trying to educate us all of this of which I can quote but one for lack of space

Consider that, this Joe 300 years ago during the Renaissance. He didn’t have the mobile phones to damage his brain cells causing brain cancer, the television and computer damaging his eyes, the need to go to work everyday and work for someone else all the time feeling inferior and yet trying to establish oneself through things as important as resumes. Yes, neither did he have the medicine to make you live up to 80 years or the power to travel the entire world in a day.

This man was born and he was taught by a mentor, most probably his father or a neighbour on all matters regarding science, math, geography, religion and the like. Then, since money was not as much of a driving force, he CHOSE what he wanted to do in life by spending a couple of years figuring himself out. Then he lived his passion and had children who did the same. Most probably, he did not see the icy vastness of the Antarctic or did not taste the spices of India but bless him , he lived.

For us, it has become almost impossible to conjure up a utopia where we live, everyday hence putting the Self Empowerment guys out of business. Good Riddens! Where people question everything, right from why we wear clothes to why we have developed the concept of money to why we exist. Where a child is not made to bend his brow due to a bag but where his smile is allowed to choose whether he wants to be taught Biology anymore.

I could go on trashing religion and banks and So, what would you rather have, a gaggle of world “leaders” arguing over reversing the damage coupled the marvel of information technology or no Google or Nokia or Xerox but being a couple of degrees higher on the Maslow’s pyramid.

William Wallace said, “ Everyone dies but not everyone lives”.

Sound of Boredom

The shortfalls of having a 3 month long vacation where you do nothing consequential is that you feel as worthless as an ant in a colony with a broken leg...and 2 missing due to the bug holocaust of ancient lore when the blitzkrieg by the fog happened...emasculated at his girlfriend sleeping with everyone he ever knew(Ah, the joys of being the Queen)...whose right testicle is a litter smaller than the left...who recently discovered that it wasn't about the Queen ever for him.

BUT, the Section 377 for him is the abundance of the Internet, with vast knowledge and unbound wisdom, and the list of sites that comes up when on one of your bouts of wallowing in self pity, you type "I am bored" on google. From a red dot that refuses to quit(read: http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=9644),you know you want to try so go ahead.

So, Uncylopedia(http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page) to My Parents joined facebook(http://myparentsjoinedfacebook.com/). PS - Check the one on myparentsjoinedfacebook where the mom gets a sex slave after having added her daughter to her friends' list.The travails of social networking never will cease to amaze. And for all those with as much of a left half as a peanut, check http://www.captainexcelsior.com/ .

That's pretty much it for now. Just realized other people may be writing about this blog along the same vein so minions, LEAVE

Of Flying Pigs

Welcome to my very first blog. For all those who I might have managed to convince to read this piece, I will know whether you have read it, it has a user count.

This is not about social issues and neither is it me raving on about what I do or did. This will be about how the glass would look were it full mostly because I am tired of people saying that it is half empty or half full. I do not expect you to be intelligible to read this but if you are a troll(), then  this is NOT YOU PLACE. GO AWAY( )

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