Friday, June 11, 2010

Frailty(2001)

Hand of god, or an evil desire,
Lurking in the dark depths of your heart?
You want peace,or another fire,
To silence the joys yet to take birth?


Frailty is a strange tale of delusion and paranoia mixing with spirituality  and veiled by a thrilling background. First of all it needs to be stated that the content of this film may offend people who don't take a film as a film, and may also hurt some religious sentiments.

Now getting down to the plot, this starts with a young man visiting a FBI chief and telling that he knows the identity of a notorious murderer whose recent murders were becoming a menace for the police. And then he justifies his theory by revisiting his traumatic childhood and the bizarre nightmarish events that he had to encounter.But soon the tables turn, the prey becomes the predator and another side of the story unveils itself leaving the viewer in a dazed state.

The film is very well acted, the suspense element builds right from the beginning and doesn't let go at any time of the story. The semi-illuminated close ups, the haunting background score everything indicates at something ominous taking place, and it does; but not in an ominous way!!

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Paprika(2006)

 
The sun during midday will light up the dark night.
Night dreams of day.
Light dreams of darkness. 
But the ignorant sun will chase away the darkness
and burn the shadows... 
eventually burning itself!
The shade of the tree
with the flowers that bloom at night
is where the residents of darkness rest. 
The people of daytime are not allowed!

What happens when dream mixes with reality and their intermingling creating a world so unearthly, a dream so vivid, a nightmare so dark that the very fabric of the cosmos is being threatened by it?
This is what paprika is.A dream, two dreams, many many dreams all of which verge in on a huge delusional nightmare.


The main thread of the story is 'DC mini' a next generation technology which lets one to see his dreams and others to enter that dream. we have seen infinite times before that a virtually innocuous thing may turn deadly, and exactly that happens here. Dream terrorists rise, people penetrate into other people's dream and try to control them, and amidst all these our central characters run within dreams and realities whose distinction is being constantly blurred.

Paprika is not about reality and not about dream, it's about the mixture of the two and hence can't be totally comprehended by neither the conscious nor the subconscious mind. It will leave you in a dreamy state.

Recommended to all those who like David lynch's stuff, Miyazaki films, the fall, tim burton's big fish etc.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

21 Grams(2003)

The earth turned to bring us closer,
It turned on itself and in us,
Until it finally brought us together;
In this dream......

21 grams is the weight which a human being loses at the moment of his death,and this movie explores the myriad emotions that are attached with those 21 grams,the several forgotten memories hidden within those 21 grams,the guilt,the tears,the love and smiles which comprise those 21 grams.

The fragmented story telling in this film creates a emotionally wrenching impact as in one moment we are introduced to a character and in the next we find him lying,flooded with blood.This in a way is complex to follow,but if you let your mind flow along with the unveiling of story;in the end everything will be clear as a cloudless sunny summer day.

21 grams is basically the story of 3 people- an ex con who tried to reform but always found himself at the wrong end of the stick;brilliantly played by Benicio Del Toro, the wife of a man who gets killed in an accident along with his 2 daughters;portrayed by Naomi Watts and ultimately sean penn playing the role of the man whose ailing heart is replaced by the person who died in that accident.


The story moves without any definite time frame and the characters are revealed bit by bit in each scene until at the emotional climax when everything gets mingled in a picturesque manner...

A beautiful film, recommended for those who enjoyed memento,7 pounds, stay, fracture etc...