Mark Twain: After reading Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, this two-part documentary by Ken Burns helped etch Twain’s life in my mind. The discovery that he travelled extensively within India was the high point.
Amritham Gamaya: Continuing on the MT diet, watched this classic helmed by Mohanlal on YouTube (subtitles available). The climax, understated yet so moving…
The Card Counter: The second of Paul Schrader’s ‘Man in the Room’ trilogy was Hollywood’s reckoning with the horrors of Guantanamo Bay.
Master Gardener. The third in the series by Schrader, continuing on the theme of a misfit living a low-key life, grappling with the horrors of his violent past and having a moment of reckoning. Cliched but nicely executed.
Black Doves: Thoroughly enjoyed a Netflix series after a long time. Like most thrillers, the plot was implausible yet managed to keep me engrossed. Keira Knightly is no longer the young damsel of my imagination, but a reminder of how I too have aged.
Ankur: Shyam Benegal’s debut was also a case study on rural society and polity. Surprisingly, my elder daughter found it engrossing enough to sit through the whole movie. Planning to watch the rest of his oeuvre this year.
Shtisel – Season 2: Wasn’t as good as Season 1 but the last few episodes showed how much heart this series has. Happy that I invested the time and planning to move on Season 3.
After reading Macbeth, I dived into the movie adaptations of the play:
Macbeth (1971): In 1969, the Hollywood diva Sharon Tate was murdered at her home by the Charles Manson gang. She was 8 months pregnant then and married to Roman Polanski. Manson and the gang were convicted in ’71, the same year that her husband released Macbeth. It’s widely believed that it was Polanski’s grief and rage that drove him to make this version famous for its violence and gore.
Joji: Sruthi hadn’t watched this earlier, so sat through it again. I still didn’t get the Macbeth reference.
Macbeth (2010): This was a clever adaptation – Macbeth set during the Second World War and largely shot in a bunker-like setting. The totalitarian vibe was also hard to miss. Patrick Stewart’s lines ‘Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow…” are worth listening.
Macbeth (2015): Fassbender as Macbeth. The movie relied on the Scottish landscapes to bring alive the setting of the play. Watched this with the kids.
Throne of Blood: Kurosawa showing how a Scottish chieftan’s story can very well be one from medieval Japan. The movie is known for its climax where Macbeth is not beheaded but shot dead by archers. The scene reminded me of Bhishma’s fall on the 10th day of the Kurukshetra. This short YT clip has the scene with an explainer on the techniques used to shoot it.
Maqbool: The first of Vishal Bharadwaj’s trilogy on Shakespeare. Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri as two constables with a knowledge of astrology, playing the role of the witches was a clever ploy.
Scent of a Woman – Watched this with Sruthi. Al Pacino’s only Oscar-winning performance was a masterclass—the depth and intensity he brings to the role of a blind, lonely, wealthy, and irritable man, tormented by desire yet painfully aware of its futility.
Marco : Undoubtedly the worst movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. The violence made this a pan-India ‘hit’. But seeing children murdered on screen in a script that resembles a school play put together by kids, isn’t my idea of bold cinema.
Battle of Algiers: Watched this to go with my reading of Alistair Horne’s magisterial ‘A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-62’. This classic showed the impossible situation that the French found themselves in Algeria when faced with the terrorism of the FLN. Little wonder why the Algerian Resistance was the key inspiration for the PLO and other terror outfits of Palestine. The only difference being that while the French had a France to go back to, the Israelis had nowhere to. The titbit from the movie that I found amusing was the critical importance given to UN resolutions and international attention. In 2025, this seems so anachronistic
The Instigators: Watched bits and pieces of this and I doubt if I’m going to persist with seeing it fully.
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Really interesting – I ll have to check some of these out – although regarding Israel the Palestinians are basically imprisoned with nowhere to go with no international powers backing them up. The plight of the Palestinians should be a terrible stain on many country’s (my own included) conscience.
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True. The plight of the common Palestinian is indeed terrible. And I don’t see a way out for them in the near future. 😦
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I think as an international community we need to boycott, divest and sanction in the same way as we did South Africa in 90’s.
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