19:50 - 08/24/2013
Cross-cultural
I like the Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan. He is a great character actor, but I prefer the roles that are comedies or chick flick material. His face is very adaptable, so he conveys emotion really well. He also plays convincing gangsters, as well as military types.

Why do I bring this up now? Well I am watching Dil Se right now. Indian critics say the best part of this art noire film is the music. I agree, because I really don't like violent cinema, although the scenery from the Himalayas is breath-taking. I can watch the evening news for the real violence and a revelation of evil loosed on the world. Most people I know reverse that; they pay a lot to attend gory, gruesome movies, but don't have a clue or care what is going on in the real world. The way they carry on, you would be convinced that those actors' lives in real time are much more important. Bread and circuses (Juvenal). Voyeurism or escapism to divert themselves from the fact that real human beings - men, women, and children - are being destroyed, minute by minute, by the very people that are elected by them. Sigh. I feel a rant coming on. Sigh. Breathe, grasshopper, breathe.

Anyway, this film is about how someone with nothing left to lose becomes a terrorist/freedom fighter. I was taught about that transition when I worked as a volunteer with a survivor of torture from the middle east. This time Shahrukh Khan is the love interest of the woman who is the subject of the story. Shahrukh Khan gets beat up a lot. The story is universal and eternal, but very sad and depressing.

I put it on, because I made friends with a woman at my second to last job who was a Bollywood aficionado and we reconnected today. Funny, neither she nor I are native to India, but the office manager, who was, loathed our interest, at least, in the Indo-Canadian director, Deepa Mehta. I've mentioned her movies before. Very controversial in the Indian sub-continent.

Neither my friend nor I are still there, but that person is. The only affirmation there is that we did nothing wrong is that so many other of the females who worked in the office have quit or were let go. Even though she quit in May, my friend's replacement quit last month. Pattern?

Anyway, when she quit, my friend passed all her considerable library of Bollywood movies on to me. I will learn more Urdu/Punjabi/Hindi by osmosis. Some of the cultural premises are as baffling to me as I am certain Western socialization is to them. Good thing Bollywood movies address universal themes.

Anyway, A+ is calling so I'd better go.

previous - next

�