A film, a failure

How does the sweeping changes affected by war radically alter economic relations of people and, thereby, themselves. Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s oru pennum randanum (A woman and two men) is all about this. But, when one knows that the film maker has relied on Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai’s short stories, one hastens to read them. The reason: Adoor’s adaptation is an aesthetical failure.

The very first movie in the collection titled ‘kallante makan’ puts a damper on our lively interest what with its ‘dramatic’ dialogue and melodramatic treatment. I mean by this that rather than foregrounding the economic aspect that Adoor professes to focus on in the movie, he stresses on its emotional qualities. That is one reason why the film, as TV Chandran rightly says, appears to be more a TV serial. Nedumudi Venu and Jagannathan, with their ace acting skills, has solved the issue in the second movie albeit not perfectly. The tone of inappropriate dialogues and slow pace is draped over the whole texture of movie so much that one is forced not to see an Adoor Movie again.

But as I said earlier, the bearing of a war waged somewhere in the world upon the economy of fragile village is a compelling theme. But Adoor might as well tell people to read the books again and again rather than watch his drudgery.

Recession: Lessons we must learn

The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America
By William Kleinknecht
The world that Thomas L Friedman flattened four years ago is in the process of being round with governments all over the world adopting protective measures to help their respective economies. Conferences in business centres and cover stories in glossy magazines teach us the virtue of being economical and the drawbacks of expansionism.
Yes, like all misfortunes, the economic recession is a good teacher in many respects.
Debates and discussions on the slump generate ideas that are bifurcated to a great extent. On the one hand, there are those who staunchly oppose the liberalisation of economy, while on the other, the apologists of the paradigm who point their fingers at the mismanagement of a widely implemented policy.
American crime correspondent William Kleinknecht 'The Man Who Sold the World, Ronald Reagan and The Betrayal of Main street America' falls into the first category. The book takes the reader to 1980's when Ronal Reagan, America's 40th president, introduced policies that kicked off the deregulation of financial institutions. He freed banks from the state control and provided much leeway for private players the crucial financial affairs of the state. Reduction of government regulation in the economy terminated monetary discipline which resulted in large-scale exploitation and corruption (Satyam fraud is the latest Indian version of this situation). Followers of Reagonomics (Its Indian format is famously called Manmohonomics) all over the world took the policy to its extreme in 90's. The meltdown is one of its inevitable consequences.
The book raises some important questions regarding who is affected most by these policies at the backdrop of the meltdown: People who have no power to make their voice heard. It's in America's Main Street that its ordinary citizens live. Liberalisation gave policymakers and CEOs on Wall Street power and money and residents of Main Street were consequently left in the lurch. The argument is are important in the context of the World Bank's 'World Development Report 2009', which argues, as if no lesson was learnt, foe orienting wealth in urban areas.
How many Slumdogs in India can become millionaires in this economic paradigm?
It’s time our policy makers answered this question
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Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life
By John C Bogle
We tend to disapprove critiques on liberalisation as unrealistic 'Leftist propagandas. But Recession has seen the vanguards of liberalisation take a dig at the very system of which they have been a part. Their criticism is packed with information about the capitalist system in detail, although the manner they view it is rather apologetic.
Enough True Measures of Money, Business, and Life, authored by John Bogle, former CEO of Vanguard Group ( US-based Mutual fund enterprise), is one of such works.
The title of the book comes from an address that Bogle gave to the business students of the Georgetown University. Bogle talks about a chat between Joseph Heller, famous author of Catch 22, and his contemporary Kurt Vonnegut, famous for his novel, Breakfast of Champions at a party. Vonnegut said that their guest made money in a day that Heller's popular novel gave him in its whole market history. Heller retorted to this statement, "Yes, but I have something he will never have-Enough."
Bogle has sufficient arguments in the book against the controllers of the financial market. He focuses on the greed on the Wall Street and on how CEOs and financial managers created an economic system, which is neither transparent nor simple. "The system is marked by too much speculation not enough investment, too much complexity not enough simplicity. The bankers and financial institutions siphoned off the money entrusted to them by the investors," he writes.
If the 'vanguards' of market economy don't learn from the crisis the wisdom of Joseph Heller, the meltdown will definitely become a bad teacher.
Reviewed by Shameer KS

A banker in the fairy land

A Review of 'I was a Swiss Banker'

Directed by: Thomas Imbach

Writing credits: Jürg Hassler, Thomas Imbach, Eva Kammerer

Cast: Beat Marti, Laura Drasbæk, Anne-Grethe Bjarup Riis & Sandra Medina

Can dreams be deliberate and intentional? Or, to make the statement clearer, can we be creative with our dreams? A sci-fi article published in the Outlook magazine (about) five years ago made a comment that the day when one can customise one's dreams, as if they were desktops of a PC, with a few gadgets is not distant. But I didn't hear it ever happen. Still, overpowering even this great mental faculty remains a tantalising possibility. As reality is almost felt as a nightmare, it's time we kept our dreams as safe cushions to protect our fantasies.

'I was a Swiss Banker' is a cinematic venture to this end. Its storyline goes like this: Roger is a banker in the sense that he banks on the money of others for a living. He transports black money across the border to reinvest them, thus becoming a successful smuggler on whom bigwigs with nefarious interest depend. He is too optimistic to believe he will be caught in the net. But when his car was blocked by customs officers to frisk him, optimism coupled with flamboyance saves him. He drives the car past the check post with an air of nonchalance. When he gets cornered by the officials in a maddening pursuit, he takes a headlong plunge to the Lake Constance, which takes him to an entirely different universe inhabited by mermaids and witches.

Heli, a rapacious witch who knows how to fly a chopper, haunts Roger in his brave new world. He puts him through a test either to ultimately release him or, if he fails, to possess him. He should meet three ladies and choose one of them as his wife. Under Heli's surveillance, he meets Laura, a professional shepherdess with all feminine qualities to cheer him up; Sahar, a Turkish girl from his home town who is also adept at wiving a man like Roger ; and Helena who is sent by her father to be a mermaid to retrieve the money from Roger. Heli felicitously watches the entire scene with the confidence that Roger will fail the test. She has worn a wedding dress in anticipation. But Helena, a link connecting him to his past as 'Swiss banker', make him drift in the water uncaught.

What is the film with all its cinematogarhpic excellence all about? As all postmodern work of art should truly do, the film leaves much space for our inference. So let me have mine.

A world withstood by machinations has implanted in our mind the desire to be surreal. A friend of mine, whenever he fell out with his wife, used to come quickly to my room to pick up whatever fairy tales there were to cheer him up. When his wife filed a divorce suit against him, he went to a bookshop and purchased the entire Harry Potter volumes. Think of him as part of a more intricate political system which we nickname liberal or neo-liberal. Escape to fantasy world could be a solution.

'Swiss bank' is an ideal metaphor. Thomas Imbach conveys the meaning that one we are tightly protected by highly protected buildings like a bank, which pretends to ensure our safety.

Also the 'was' in 'I was a Swiss banker' is a metaphor. It means only customised dreams can be the best alternative.

(Pictures: Left: Movie poster, Centre: Roger followed by Heli, Right: Thomas Imbach)

By Shameer KS

Paradeshi: A daring vision of history

1

The war-like political scenario which emerged after the Mumbai terror attacks became a fitting background for my watching P T Kunjumuhammed's 'Paradesi' for the second time. The still festering wounds of partition have pushed a community to the edge of victimisation. The attacks gave a chance to the OCD-affected ultarnationalists of the country to be seriously suspicious of 'the shifting' allegiance of Muslims in the country. Significantly, the council of Imams (Muslim clerics) asked the members of the community to celebrate Eid-ul-Azha (Bakrid) on a low-key mode, wearing a black band around their fists, if possible. Even the orthodox Muslim factions have come out in the open, condemning the attacks. But none of these measures seems to have placated the 'nationalist' gods.
*Valiyakath Moosa (Mohanlal), Paradeshi's protagonist, is a staunch nationalist, who often boasts that his father Ahmed Sahib has sacrificed his life for the freedom of the country. But, for the state, he is a Pakistan spy. The prototype of an outsider dangling like a Democletus' sword atop the fragile security of the 'peaceful' motherland!
2

Valiyakath Moosa represents a class of Eranadan Muslims who bear the brunt of the Partition. They had been part of the unified India, belonging to the country's typical working class, when India's struggle for freedom was in its climax. They migrated to Karachi, then a busy commercial centre, to eke out a living mostly by selling beedis. The country was in the orgasm of freedom struggle and of the behind-the-scenes political mechinations.
The sharp sabre of imperialsim cut the country into two pieces. Pakistan was born (or miscarried). A people who had remained a single entity unified by the common factor of nationhood saw in one another an outsider. The pen which wrote the history of the sub-continent in blood rewrote the destiny of the those hapless Eranadan emigrants in Karachi. Most of them being illeterate, either they were untouched by politics or they conceived its emotional part (Like Kayi Abdul Rahman- Jagathy Sreekumar). Passport, a few papers of identity, crept into their inocent lives unawares.
Some of them decided to settle in Pakistan, possessing a Pak passport ( like the husband of Kaddesu- Lakshmi Gopalaswami). Some either tore them into pieces or burnt them into ashes. For them the soil of Eranadu was like the womb of their mothers.
The consequence of their choices becomes their destiny. Moosa and others like him live as fugitives. Buckled by the old age and a strong determination to brave challenges, they exist by giving tips to corrupt police officers. Kadeesu, left alone after her husband marries a Pakistani girl, leaves Karachi and, commits suicide, when she is forcibily deported. Kayi Abdul Rahiman and Usman takes a safer shelter of lunacy. Rayankka, a frail old man, is shot dead, when he decides to go back on the border.
Moosa's sharp memory pieces together the harrowing tales of this fraternity. Usha, a freelance journalist, file them togethr, only to be burnt by the authority. If something you write can ignite the inflated lies of the power that be, it will try its best either to sensationalise your journalism or to convert it into ashes. This is the film's short reminder on the media activism. Moosa's destiny ends nowhere, as much as the film doesn't end conventionally anywhere. The same destiny hovers around the Muslim community in the country in defiance of the will power and prayer of some patriotic Indians.
The charectors in the film are not fictionally fabricated. They live in Malabar, reminding us that the scars of the partition won't heal fast. That P T Kunjumuhammed took years to make the film, gathering valuable legal and other documents adds to Paradesi's credibility as a visual historic document.
3
I saw the film in company with my sister-in-law, who is an 8th standard student. From its beginning to end, she kept asking me several questions adout its plot. Despite my repeated explanations, she couldn't understand what the film was all about. Once it was over, I heard her heaving a sigh of relief. " It doesn't come anywhere near TwentyTwenty," she said.
We can ignore her comment as childish. But a majority of school children this writer talked to had almost the same opinion. Don't they belong to a community of viewers who should have roots deep in the history? Must their sense of history not grow at more rapid a pace than the life and technology? Shouldn't films on stunning historical facts do justice to their sensibility? Why can't the film have as much appeal on them as it has always on me?
Technically speaking, the creative indiscipline in sequencing scenes and shots in the film makes its narrative rather complex. For a school child, watching the movie is almost like reading a history textbook. It's a challenge for directors of daring works to make them accessable to all classes of viewers, irrespective of their age and erudition.
When I argued that 'Paradeshi' is one of the best 10 Malayalam films in the last 50 years, some of my friends tried to smother their giggles. But I believe none can ever counter my argument.

By Shameer KS

Death and rebirth of David Gale

By shameer KS
(A review of the film Life and Death of David Gale)

What makes one's life meaningful, a white-collar job with a hefty salary? A big flat at the centre of metropolis? Windows of opportunity for an epicurian post-retirement experience? Having a colourful pix appear on the front pages of newspapers? Awards and momentos, and, after death, obituries written by experts in leading news magazines?

Answers vary as per perceptions and the way you are born and brought up. But does it look much better that our desires get prolonged constantly? That we have always desires and values?
Fulfillment is not desirable for an activist in an unbalanced society.
*
The eponymous protagonist of the film, 'Life and Death of David Gale', has such a perception of life. 'Fantasies must be unrealistic. The moment you get what you seek you don't have want any more. In order to continuously exist desire must have its objects perepetually absent', he says in his classroom.
Only values that are based on a happiness in future can make our lives meaningful.
**
David Gale had such an idal. He was an activist with the Death Watch, an NGO working for the abolition of capital punishment. As a staunch campaigner, he articulated his politics, earning enemies. But when he was arrested for raping and murdering his fellow activist Constance, none gave him a chance of suspicion. He was earlier arrested and acquitted for raping his lady student. After all, Gale's sperm was there inside Constance's womb.The jury had all evidences to sentence the capital punishment. Gale is, by 'sheer coincidence', being dragged to a situation which his politics calls inhuman and undemocratic.
***
Investigative journalist Betzy ( Kate Winslet) gets the rare chance to interview Gale and bring the truth (if Gale's version of it really exists)into public. What happened in Gale's, as well as Constance's, life is revealed through a conversation between Gale and Betzy in jail and, in the climax, through a videotape, a proof valuable enough to acquit Gale. However, Betzy, who is unable to beat the time alloted to her, is also unable to save Gale.
****
The story only begins after Gale is executed. In the second transcript of the vediotape, we see how the storyline of the film merges with its phiolosophy
*****
There is uncertainity all around at the time when domination over people is getting newer political dimensions and justifications. Terms as revolutionary as democracy and freedom are widely misused to justify the greed of a few tycoons with a dozen adjectives. This uncertanity prevails over the sphere of activism by the metamorphosis of an activist into
unpredictable forms. What continues to happen in Palastine and Iraq happens in the life and death (With or without capital letters) of David Gale as well.

SPACESHIPS OF PLEADES: A HOAX?

SPACE SHIPS OF THE PLEADES: THE BILLY MEIER STORY
Kal K. Korff

Prometheus Books
New York
Pp 440, $ 25.95

1975- The year eventually appeared in the flying saucer (UFO) folklore as the time line of coming of an extraterrestrial prophet .Though no messiahs descended on earth from the abyss of heaven, an ill-educated farmer from a remote hamlet of Switzerland, Eduard Billy Meier became a celebrity overnight. He claimed that visitors from a planet of the constellation Pleiades ( karthika) landed on his estate and entrusted him with a new mission. In essence, a rescue operation bearing a ray of hope for the environmentally-degraded green planet earth. A large number of people who were already bothered in the coming ecocide were at least mentally- receptive towards anything that could provide a cosmic solace. So the dramatic declaration of Meier that he has been chosen as the Messenger who should lead the mankind to a new millennium captured the weird imagination of many westerners.

According to Meier’s version, his first alleged extraterrestrial contact occurred in 1942 at the age of five with an elderly extraterrestrial humanoid named Sfath. Wikipeadia, the most referred electronic encyclopedia records: “Contacts with Sfath allegedly lasted until 1953. From 1953 to 1964 Meier's alleged contacts continued with an extraterrestrial human woman named Asket. Meier claims that after an eleven year break, contacts resumed again (beginning on January 28, 1975) with an extraterrestrial human woman named Semjase the granddaughter of Sfath.”

Meier’s claim seems astonishing. He was instructed by the alien visitors to transcribe the conversations between them which have been later published in the German language. This interplanetary gospel is known as Contact Notes . Currently there are 9 volumes of the Contact Notes (titled Plejadisch-Plejarische Kontaktberichte) published. Some selected portions were translated into English; a four-volume Message from the Pleiades by Meier spokesman Wendelle Stevens.
These stunning revelations, though accepted by many at face value turned into a nightmare by the investigations of Kal Korff. The book ‘Spaceship of the Pleades’ narrates Korff's investigations in detail. Like many others , Korff also swallowed all these stories. For more than two decades he had been investigating various claims brought forward by different witnesses regarding the sighting of UFOs. In 1991,he arrived at Semjacy Silver Star Center where the so-called the extraterrestrial objects were exhibited. The unique collection consists of stones, metals, photographs and many other things claimed to have been brought from Pleades.
How did Meier produce the photographs of the alien spaceships? Kal Korff, the Sherlock Holmes of flying saucer world began running after this enigma till he gets an opening. Nearly one third of the book (pp 109-271 ) deals with the detailed examination of the photographs which were subjected to digital analysis , thus conducive to detect any conceivable manipulation and fakeness. Usually very often people forget the fact that photographic adulteration is comparatively easy to the extent that applying modern technics, a totally fraudulent motion picture can be devised instantly. Korff took all these into consideration when he x-rayed the Billy Meier photos which ultimately exposed the deception practiced and resulted in the formation of a documentary film broadcast by the Fox channel in their popular serial ‘Encounters’.
Investigation by the help of computer enhancement is better possible with the negatives than the photographs, but they were not available. Meier explained away the non-existence of the negatives saying that it got lost in the postal department, some were taken by the Crime Investigation Department and still others were given to the extraterrestrials as they return to the home planet. Amazingly, all negatives seem irretrievably lost. Very convenient indeed!.
Reputed investigating agencies, claimed Billy Meier , had checked the photographs thoroughly and had confirmed them to be genuine. Wendelle Stevens, the ring leader of Meier, asserted that the De Anza Systems of California had carried out detailed investigation on the two volumes of the ‘Journal of Photographs of the Pleiades’. In spite of all those tall claims, Korff decided to go ahead for the verification. He contacted with Mr.Wayne Heppler , the manager of De Anza Systems who informed that no such investigations were taken place at anytime by the company(pp 111-121 ). A number of such mythical claims turned out to be pure white lies.
Michael Taylor, another investigator of Meier story could not escape from similar conclusion: “The Meier photograph of the beautiful Pleiadian alien, Semjase, turned out to be a photocopy of a model from a Sears Catalog. Another one of Meier's photographs, where he allegedly traveled into the future aboard a Pleiadian Beamship to photograph the aftermath of a 9.0 earthquake in San Francisco showing the toppled Trans-America building, turned out to be a realistic looking painting from a geology magazine article about earthquakes. On top of these damning examples, every single one of Billy Meier's photographs of Pleiadian ships have been shown to be of third, fourth and even fifth generation(photographs of photographs). This means that he likely airbrushed suspension wires and other signs of fraud. There is not one example of an original, first generation Billy Meier photograph. On top of that, it has been shown that the reflections on some of the Pleiadian ships are not consistent with the position of the sun, indicating possible superimposition techniques. To top it off, a reporter found a bunch of miniature models exactly matching many of the Pleiadian ships shown in his photos. His ex-wife has come out to denounce him as a fraud as well. The evidence is overwhelming that whole Billy Meier story is unquestionably, absolutely, completely and totally 100% BOGUS. Case Closed!”
Initially, the Billy Meier case was considered irrefutable by many leading UFO experts but changed the whole scenario after the subtle probing of Korff. Walter Andrus, the director of MUFON, the biggest UFO investigation center in the world who attested the results and observed: “ Karl Korff must be congratulated for his determination and persistence in seeking the truth. His outstanding investigation is an exciting and yet intriguing expose of what opportunists has caused the most important U.F.O. case in history.” Jerome Clark, the Vice President of Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies stated that this book was the definite expose of the most ambitious hoax in UFO history.

Reviewed by

N.M Hussain

Cold Mountain: A pilgrimage from history to commune

It was in the month of June when Icame to read Charles Freizer's ' Cold Mountain". June is the foreplay of Monsoon's tryst with the Indian Subcontinent, August being its orgasm. We like to spend most of the time under blanket. Usually I choose fictions to read during the month as much as I like roasted cashew nut and a cup of black tea.
Coincidentally, the novel is all about the cosy laziness its characters desire to have during the peak of American Civil War. Laziness is a blessing when hyperactivity like war takes the toll of life in collectivity. In the novel the journey that the protagonist Inman undertakes by bunking compulsory military service, purportedly to meet his beloved Ada, takes him nearby the cold mountain, which symbolises yearning for laziness and collective living
*
June is the month when lovers meet and exchange memories albeit in a short span of time. Inman meets Ada and hands her the tales of travails he has undergone on his way to meet her. They build a future in the way they build fire to keep off coldness. But no fire can keep off winter, which is the destiny pervading in the novel throughout. We see, towards the end of the novel, the hopes of a bright future, when there is no fear of war, smoulder beneath the cold mountain. Inman, who overcame all difficulties during the journey resembling that of an epic hero, is wounded fatally in a climatic fight. Our struggle, ideal as it is, will be ultimately overpowered by Destiny
**
But can love be ever defeated? Inman dies not at the battlefield from where he escapes to a commune, but in the lap of Ada. She saw the wound beneath his neck, which reminds her of the sacrifice and recklessness that love brings about in human beings. It is this recklessness that gives Ada the the strength to exist in the loneliness.
***
Cold Mountain is more a sonnet than a novel. Even descriptions of sexual activity is rendered poetically. I don't think the novel is historical fiction, as some critics have pointed out. It is an escape from history, which is bitterness in every sense of the term
Reviewed by

Shameer KS

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