Reviews

Court is a penetratingly realistic, documentary-like depiction of the very slow and labyrinthine proceedings of the Indian justice system, of the lives of the protagonists and about Indian society at large. There is the absurd, trumped-up charge, the woman prosecutor's crazy logic based partly on outdated, 19th century colonial laws, the biased and ignorant police, the corrupt stock-witness for the prosecution and the fearful, uneducated country woman witness for the defense. The well-intended defense lawyer tries to be reasonable in court. At home he needs to escape from his mother's archaic attitudes and his father's emotionally remote rationalisations, finding relief listening to cool jazz in the privacy of his quiet, air-conditioned car and distraction with other Western ways, such as wine, European cheeses and drinking with friends in up-market bars. He is caught in these conflicting worlds of a polarized society. The effects of pervasive poverty on the underprivileged characters is consistently ignored by plaintiff and judge. Through ignorance and lethargy pretexts are created by the system and some of the professionals to trap defendants in never-ending detentions, often for years, for political reasons. The law is an ass and is applied with a myopic view by the judge, tempered by ambition, laziness and greed, covering up in turn malpractice and sluggishness by State authorities and companies thereby maintaining a miserable stale mate. I experience moments of despondence at the slow and corrupt churning of those wheels of justice. But, there is the Gandhian resilience, patience and stubborn persistence of the accused.

A totally delightful, witty and understated account on contemporary life in Iran. The director playing himself driving a taxi, to earn extra cash because his movies are frowned upon by the State, has seemingly casual encounters with various passengers. The documentary style filming is all done from a camera mounted inside the cab. The encounters range from various strangers representing different views on politics, art and life, women's necessary wiliness in a repressed society, of social and religious prejudices. One passenger recognizes Jafar as the film-director (!) and tries to get him involved with his black-market dealings in foreign and suppressed local films. Implications about Sharia law are being deconstructed when a friend refuses to inform the police after having been robbed because he cannot bear the idea of the thief being dismembered or even hung for his deed. An interesting role is played by his young niece whom he has to pick up from school. Her assignment is to make a movie with her own small camcorder, following the rules and guidelines imposed by her teacher and the State. This ploy allows him to indirectly expose bureaucratic and political absurdities about film-making itself and the stifling rules on daily life.

The confused meanderings of a teenage girl who is a spoilt brat and borderline psychotic. I suppose the film tries to portray rebellion for the sake of rebellion by an adolescent from a privileged world with colluding adults who are materially loaded and equally nihilistic and egocentrically exploitative. So, she challenges everyone's intentions and views whilst on an aimless, self-destructive merry-go-round of chain-smoking, alternatively smouldering and cursing, boozing until vomiting, screwing strangers at a whim, sniffing cocaine, to flopping wherever when she is spent. Quite weirdly, all this estrangement and aberrant behaviour doesn't evoke any empathy or real interest. Without wit or any development, the film fails to engage or provide any notion worth thinking or reflecting upon. It's a meaningless mish-mash dressed up as a road movie with no beginning, no direction, no plan or plot, no substance, no structure and no ending. Thus, the film is as self-indulgently serious as the main character. I found it unbearably boring and meaningless. Actually, apathy is so yesterday! Trying to be cool and postmodern it merely reveals itself as a pretentious, lazy, boring, time-wasting exercise. As the Romans said: CACATUM NON EST PICTUM.

Thank goodness for a well-crafted, old-fashioned comedy with sensible editing, excellent performances and a witty plot structure. "Wild Mouse" is a truly humorous, enjoyable movie. With gentle satire, the pathos of our human foibles is shown with finely drawn relationships. Although there is a likeness with Woody Allen's schemes here nobody is driven over the edge into extreme violence and tragedy. The main protagonists are Georg, who for years has been an erudite but somewhat snobbish and fierce classical music critic and his wife, a psychotherapist and counselor who at 43 has a belated desire to become pregnant. However, all their efforts have been fruitless, causing bilateral blaming and stress which she is unable to address despite her proficiency in such matters. Meanwhile, with the media business in decline Georg is made redundant but does not have the nerve to tell her. Instead he pretends going to work whilst helping an old school chum to run a fair ground roller-coaster, the 'Wild Mouse'. At the same time, he is taking feeble revenge on the chief editor who fired him by vandalizing his car. Then the story gets more complicated and comical… The film's characters are cocooned within their own preconceptions and limitations, as well as being trapped and pushed by work and social expectations, but they are not fundamentally malicious. Exasperated by such pressures they might however, act irrationally and get themselves into a 'spot of trouble' with some hilariously funny outcomes. I liked 'Wild Mouse' a lot and left the cinema smiling, whilst feeling quite reflective and slightly sad too. I'd rate it four out of five or a little more.

Young Indian men in loincloths are worshipping the Hindu goddess Kali by entering trance states dancing ecstatically, piercing their cheeks with arrows, fire-walking or enabling them to be suspended on meat hooks whilst being gently rocked parading with noisy music through crowds of devotees. Following these ritual scenes is a frightening car-ride in real time with young men, who offer a lift to a hitch-hiking couple, Durga and Kabeer aiming to get to a railway station. What initially looks like a benevolent act increasingly turns into a more and more menacing journey. The sense of dread about the men's latent frustration and violence is palpable. It's a Kafkaesque trip going nowhere, whilst trains are passing on tracks running parallel to the road. The couple repeatedly try to escape, but every time the van catches up to them and in the desolate country side they are convinced anew to continue with the disagreeable ride. After each interlude, the tension increases and the behaviour of the yobbos becomes more outrageous and ominous.

A capacity to exert power seems to be the central theme here. To start with, the goddesses Kali and Durga are on opposite sides of a spectrum of intentions. Kali is the goddess of death, doom and violence whereas Durga is the goddess who combats evils and demonic forces. On the human plain, these forces play out in different ways. A reciprocal relationship is evident between the men who have attained power and public attention under Kali's spell and the priests who are in charge of the ritual and command authority. Under their control the powerplay has a relatively benign, social effect of awe and veneration for the unseen forces in the universe whilst confirming the male-controlled status. In contrast, power wielded by protagonists away from the religious rituals is one-sided and antagonistic. At the bottom of the patriarchal power hierarchy is the woman, lacking a voice and driven to tears. Her situation is further diminished being a foreigner understanding Hindi only, surrounded by Malayalam speakers. The woman's partner is a captive of her fears about anything unfamiliar. Both are afraid of the lads who run the van. In turn, these are intimidated by corrupt police who randomly stop cars to question drivers and passengers, doing so threateningly and with contempt, dispensing demeaning commentary. The boys in the van are also fearful of their hoodlum bosses. And, there are other members in a pecking order of opportunists ready to exploit the vulnerability of women and strangers. The various power ploys are enhanced by the confusion and irritation caused by different cultural, cast and language backgrounds. Is their intimidating, fear-inducing behaviour an alternative means of trying to attain an altered state of mind, by hook or by crook? Is it about a hidden desire that affects us all to escape ordinary consciousness by drunkenness, drug-induced states or religious ecstasy? Is their bullying an appropriation of Kali's power for their own entertainment? More fundamentally at issue is the paradox of patriarchal worship of idealized feminine qualities, either demonic or favourable, meeting a concurrent, insidious and pervasive disregard of ordinary women who are confined to domestic realms and mostly unseen in society whilst virtually molested if an opportunity arises. It's a dark, topsy-turvy side of India, the complete opposite of the benign, spiritual aspect Westerners romantically have embraced in their quest for a 'higher consciousness'.