In a Free State

I was reading Amitav Ghosh’s ‘Confessions of a Xenophile’ the other day, and could see him equally confessing about his admiration towards the Noble Laureate V.S. Naipaul and his works. I felt like reading at least one of Naipaul's works. The office library had his booker winner of 1971, ‘In a Free State’. A Political, Socio-Economical (Existentialism? I’m no critic. I can’t say. But definitely looks like one) work of serious fiction, which talks thru narrating the woes of immigrants who lose themselves, or searching themselves in vein in another part of the world where they don’t belong to. It consists of three different novellas of similar theme with a prologue and epilogue. One of these characters is not exactly in a search of a fortune but rather for freedom, and naturally he has nothing much to grieve about what he leaves behind. But when he eventually gets dwelled into the new world without much of a massive effort, he still falls into a philosophically meaningless existence. (One out of Many). In another tale, the man sacrifices his own happiness for the selfless indianite protector feeling (which would not quite work in the foreign atmosphere) towards his irresponsible sibling, and gradually leads himself to astray(Tell me whom to Kill). The third tale talks about a man who loses himself in another continent, being thrown into the world of ethnic struggles and getting involved a bit too much into the violent after-effects of a forced power transition, in a self driven fashion towards devastation(In a Free State). These tales don’t talk about any special immigrant. It’s about all type of immigrants and their woes. It could be an Indian in a white’s world, or a white in a black’s world. I felt Naipaul uses strong narrations with a flavor of Black humor and dry sarcasm. But one thing is for sure; that once you start reading it, you can hardly put it down. Especially the first two tales will assure you the simplicity and readability and It gets so complicated and so dry but yet readable when you reach into the main story ‘In a Free Sate’. You get confused why it’s called a novel as it’s a collection of stories where the individual characters never meet each other. But when you observe it as a whole, it makes complete sense. It’s a single story. It’s a story of people, who don’t require a name or about the people whose name don’t make any difference.
This is how the story ‘One Out of Many’ ends;
“I was once part of the flow, never thinking of myself as a presence. Then I looked in the mirror and decided to be free. All that of my freedom has brought me is the knowledge that I have a face and have a body, that I must feed this body and clothe this body for a certain number of years. Then it will be over.”

Leon- the Professional

I was not sure when Leon was released(1994 ;-) Now I know) . I am not sure how many times this movie had been remade into Indian languages; bolly/tolly/molly/kolly-wood?? But I am sure; this is a little piece of classic action flick, one should not miss. Most of the stylish action movies tend to have that regular pick of romantic relationship with a spicy flavor of lust Interwoven to the main plot. But here you see an illiterate man who describes himself 'the Cleaner' moves around the city, cleaning the baddies with a little pretty girl child holding to his hand. The mysterious man may remind you of the classic 'Blondie' of GBU or the ‘Guitarist' of Desperado. He maintains a low profile to avoid the unwanted attention until she meets the girl which would give him a shocking transition from machine to a man. There is something mysterious about the relationship between these two characters. We see there's a father -child relationship as clear as a summer’s sky. But we still get a hilarious moment in the movie when the girl denies this fact to the world, with a little cute devilish grin of hers. I found Leon a superb work. Every single thing about the movie had flair of beauty in it. You see the beauty in the unexpected and often unwanted but still-not-ugly visit of Aphrodite in the adolescent child. You see an e element of tranquility in the act of calisthenics which our cleaner does time to time and there’s this serene beauty of relationship between man to the plant which in fact works as a perfect metaphor of all goodness our man carries with him. The absolute baddie played by Gary Oldman is better than the best, and i loved the way he confronts the girl in her quest of vengeance describing her to his compatriot as, the girl who had "good intentions to send me straight to the morgue" with an expressionless face.

The progression of the girl by learning the art of cleaning and the other tricks of the trade to survive was beautifully crafted. Remember the scene, where the girl whispers for Leon to open his door as she knew that her family was being massacred and it was the only chance for her survival and the art of emotional blackmailing she tries when Leon was not ready to adopt her. The same trick she repeats with the school principal shows how quickly she adapts to the massive changes in the path of her life. Was it not a perfect way to end a movie show Matilda planting the very best friend and soul of Leon in the school garden saying,’ I guess we would be happy here’ ? I just loved it. I even loved Danny ‘the keeper’ of Leon's fortune, who would boast all the time about himself as He’s like a bank. or even better than that. Leon’s a clean entertainer with an aesthetic sense of beauty. Natalie Portman, Jean Reno , Gary Oldman, Luc Besson ; a great team; and it worked so well.

The 'Tradition':: Fiddler on the Roof!

Good, beautiful Stuff!! And "On the Other hand" :-) , I just loved Topol in his amazing brilliance and flexibility in reflecting, rather subtle emotions. His character, "the Milkman" was so wonderful, so funny , so mystical and have got great philosophical depth with an interestingly compromising approach to the life and its unexpected changes.

He's so sarcastic, so hilarious especially in his conversations with God.

Chaim Topol was nominated for Oscar in 1972 for his performance in this movie and had also won golden globe for the same. Its so learned that he had to get special permissions to attend award functions as he was serving israel army in those years.

For people who enjoy musicals like 'Sound of Music', 'Fiddler on the Roof' wil be a treat. And those who love the art of acting, Topol would be great catch. And if you don't fall into both of these categories but enjoy a good bit of camera work, you have got a great deal to be happy about as the movie was shot in beautiful locations in yugoslavia to get the feel of Jewish life in the tsarist Pre-Revolutionary Russia of late 19th century!

Thanks to my late Night shifts and the privilege of 'Work from home' facility, I have just seen my first movie of the year,2009.

"Matchmaker, Matchmaker,
Make me a match,
Find me a find,
catch me a catch
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
Look through your book,
And make me a perfect match..."

And I would love to watch it another ten times just to see him talking about 'Tradition' and what the 'Good book' says.... :-)

(have a look at Topol from the movie and in his real life snaps. He still lives in Israel and leading quite successful and healthy life.)